“Daphne, not too high,” warned Mac. “Daphne’s a bit untamed,” he explained. “Right-o. I expect everyone could use some refreshment.”
With a hand at Grandy’s elbow, Mac led them all around to the front of the castle and through its iron-hinged front doors.
The inside front hall of Glenn Bly was larger than Tower Hill Middle’s lunchroom cafeteria.
“Crumbs! You could do ten backflips in a row across this floor!” Claire exclaimed, hoping someone would invite her to try.
“Look!” Luna shrieked, and everybody jumped. She pointed. “A hanging tapestry, a stone fireplace, and a curving staircase! How castle-ish!”
“Er, yes,” said Mac. “The drawing room is this way. I’ve set out an early supper.”
Claire walked across the flagstones to get a better look at the large, faded tapestry.
“That tapestry depicts the Battle of Sodden Field, a bloody combat that took place in 1616,” Mac explained. “The Boyds against the Blys. Needless to say, the Blys won, otherwise this castle would be called Glenn Boyd, and I wouldn’t be standing here. But victory came at a cost. Nearly four hundred soldiers were lost.”
“Ah, for shame,” clucked Grampy.
Claire scanned the soldiers that had been stitched into the tapestry. Immediately, her eye caught the face of a young man who did not look much older than her brother, Justin. Dressed in plain chain-mail armor and astride a silver steed, the boy and his horse seemed to glow from the fabric. In fact, Claire thought, they looked alive enough to charge straight off the tapestry and gallop through the castle doors.
Claire sniffed. If she hadn’t known any better, she would have sworn she smelled strawberries.
Transfixed, Claire kept her eyes on the tapestry boy, even after the others drifted out of the hall and into the drawing room.
“That’s Sir Percival Quilty,” said a voice at her shoulder. “He was a brave young knight who died in battle.”
Claire turned. A girl stood next to her. She was taller than Claire and blue-eyed like Mac. Her curly ginger hair was scattered with ever green needles, and there was a sly look on her face.
A True Scottish Lass!
“I am Daphne Bly of the castle Glenn Bly,” said the girl.
“And I am Claire Bundkin of the United States of America,” answered Claire.
“Well, American Claire, I’m glad you think you’re brave enough to stay with us here,” said Daphne Bly, “considering that our castle is haunted by a fierce and beastly ogre.”
Claire wasn’t scared that easily. “I’ve heard you had a haunting problem. But can you prove it?” she dared.
Daphne looked surprised. Then unsure. Then determined. “Yes!” she declared, flushing. “Just not this minute.”
“Sorry, lass. Seeing is believing!” said Claire.
Nose in the air, Daphne flipped around and skipped off to join the others.
“Aha!” Mac smiled as Claire followed Daphne into the drawing room. “Here is my granddaughter. Daphne, may I introduce you to the lovely Mrs. Arianna Bramblewine; her short and balding husband, Fred; and their twin granddaughters, Claire and Luna Bundkin.”
Without a look in Claire’s direction, Daphne said hello and shook hands nicely with everyone. Then she popped a biscuit into her pocket, turned on her heel, and trotted out the door as fast as she had entered.
“I do apologise,” said Mac, looking somewhat embarrassed. “Daphne doesn’t have much practice meeting people. As you might remember, Arianna, dear, my granddaughter is an orphan. She’s been my ward ever since she was but a wee thing of six months, when her parents died in a terrible hang-gliding accident. I’m afraid Daphne’s been left to herself too much.”
“Ooh. An orphan raised in a castle. How romantic,” whispered Luna.
Claire frowned. She didn’t think that girl was one bit romantic.
On the contrary, Daphne Bly True Scottish Lass, had Claire’s witch senses pricked up for mischief.
3
Bold Night, Shy Knight
FROM THE BEDROOM WINDOW, Luna watched a pale vein of lightning split the night sky. She closed her eyes and snuggled deeper into the feather mattress, counting one-crackled-cauldron, two-crackled-cauldron, three—
Crrr—aaack! Ka-boom! Blam!
“Claire?” she whispered. “Are you awake?”
“Of course I’m awake!” Claire’s voice came from the other side of the canopy bed they shared. “Who could sleep through this lightning and thunder?”
“Not me. I wish our room was cozy,” said Luna, although earlier that evening, she had been delighted when Mac had shown the girls to this beautiful bedroom. It had its own Juliet balcony, corner harpsichord, and a romantic name, Elderberry Chamber.
With their grandparents down the hall and settled into the even more majestic Peacock Chamber, they had all turned in for an early sleep.
But there’d be no sleep in this earsplitting storm.
Ka-boom!
“Crikey!” Luna shifted up in the bed. She did not like unexpected noises. “Claire! I just had a spooky thought! Do you think Glenn Bly’s ghost scared up this storm?”
“If a ghost scared up this storm, he’s doing a fantastic job!” Claire sat up, too, and squinted at her sister. “Loon, why are you wearing your lady-in-waiting Princess and the Pea costume as a nightgown?”
Luna touched the lace neckline. “Because I love-love-love olden-days clothes,” she said. “And this was the most romantic thing I had.” She squinted back at her sister. “Claire, why are you wearing your Camp Bliss T-shirt to bed? Aren’t you cold?”
“No. I love-love-love this T-shirt,” said Claire.
Kerrr-blam!
“Ugh!” Luna covered her ears.
But Claire’s nostrils flared. “Luna! I smell strawberries! Can you?”
Luna sniffed and shook her head no. Her sense of smell was not good. She tilted her head toward the door. “But I do hear a jingle-jingle, clinkity-clink. It’s very soft. Do you hear it?”
“No,” said Claire. “But if I use my nose and you use your ears, maybe we can figure out what’s going on. Come on, Luna. Time for some detectiving!”
With that, Claire leaped out of the bed. Luna noticed that her twin was also wearing a pair of cutoff jeans shorts. Claire definitely had forgotten to pack her nightgown. Probably her toothbrush and her spy globe, too. Crumbs! Claire was a bad suitcase-packer!
Luna slid out of the bed, knotted on her bathrobe, and slid on her pink fuzzy slippers. “Proceed with caution!” she reminded her sister. Luna never thought that Claire proceeded with enough caution.
Barefoot and bathrobeless, Claire slipped out the bedroom door.
In the echoing corridor, they could hear rain loud as marching drums against the roof and stone walls. The hallway’s narrow windows gave a view of moonlit trees bent backward against the wind.
Luna shivered as she tiptoed behind her sister. The ghost of Glenn Bly must be very angry to cast such a spooky storm!
As they moved down the hallway, the jingle-jingle, clinkity-clink noises got louder.
“My nose will lead the way!” Claire whispered.
Luna hooked Claire’s pinkie through her own to steady herself as she followed. The corridor was longer than a bowling alley, and the carpet runner was worn thin as lint.
“The noise is getting louder,” Luna whispered.
“The scent is getting strawberry-er,” assured Claire.
At the curved staircase’s landing lurked a moonfaced grandfather clock. In the shadows, it looked like a skinny giant.
“This place needs night-lights,” Luna whispered.
As if in answer, an electric zing of lightning lit up the hall, and for an instant revealed a slim, dark-haired boy who was standing still as ice next to the clock.
“Shadows and shape-shifters!” Claire gasped. “It’s the boy from the tapestry!”
Thunder boomed in answer.
“I saw him, too,” squeaked Luna. Ev
ery hair on her head stood up in fright. She clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a scream.
“Who goes there?” hissed Claire. She inched toward the apparition. “Are you the fierce, ghostly ogre of Glenn Bly?”
“I am a ghost, yes. But I am hardly an ogre, and my proper name is Sir Percival Quilty,” the boy whispered back. “Who art thou?”
“I’m Luna Bundkin, and that’s my sister, Claire,” piped up Luna. The longer Luna looked, the less spooky the ghost seemed. Except for his medieval clothes and his wan complexion, Sir Percival might have been any old eighth grader from Tower Hill Middle School.
“Ta, you strawberry-scented specter! We found you!” exclaimed Claire. “Our very first night in Scotland, and we nabbed the ghost of Glenn Bly!”
“Speaking freely, I believe the fact of the matter is that I have nabbed you,” retorted Sir Percival. “This is my castle! ’Tis a mystery how you both can see my phantom image, but by the troth of my knighthood, I order you to depart from Glenn Bly at once!” He shook his phantom finger at them.
“Why?” asked Claire. “We just got here!”
“Plus, we haven’t done anything wrong,” said Luna.
“Ye must depart, nitwits, because the castle is guarded and protected by me,” said Percival, his voice cracking. “Haven’t ye heard my warning?” He lifted the silver amulet that hung around his neck and shook it.
Jingle-jingle. Clinkity-clink.
Luna scoffed. “But that’s hardly a haunt at all! I could haunt this castle with my eyes closed and one hand tied behind my back!”
To prove it, she shut her eyes, stuck a hand behind her back, and cast the one ghost-ish spell she knew, the Chain Chant. It went like this:
My ghostie haunts the attic; my ghoulie haunts the eaves.
They’ll drag their chains and spread their gloom,
They’ll chase my friends from room to room.
’Til everybody leaves!
As soon as Luna finished, a terrible clanking and scraping sounded over their heads.
“Horrors! ’Tis the sound of iron chains dragged across the floor. Stop it at once!” Sir Percival hunched his shoulders to his ears.
Luna smirked. She was very good at the Chain Chant spell. The last time she had used it was at Frieda Gunderson’s sleepover party, and everyone had been so scared that they had voted to keep the bathroom light on all night.
Claire was laughing. “You outspooked our ghost, Loon!”
Luna snapped her fingers to stop the spell. She didn’t want to wake up anybody.
Boom!
Thunder! All three of them jumped. Sir Percival jumped highest.
“I guess you didn’t conjure up this thunderstorm, did you?” asked Luna.
“Conjure a storm? Me? Why, I am not a spell-casting witch!” protested Sir Percival. A thoughtful expression crossed his face. “Ach, but ye maidens are, aren’t ye? Ye see and hear me with special, witch-y senses.”
“That’s right. Claire and I are one-point-five-star witches. Good detectiving, Sir Percival,” said Luna. She wanted to give the knight a compliment, since his haunting had been so pitiful.
“Percival, why do you smell like a strawberry patch?” asked Claire.
“’Tis a long tale,” replied Sir Percival. “To begin at the beginning, which would be some time in the eleventh century; good folk used to grow—”
But just then, a tiny object whistled past Luna’s ear and landed on the carpet.
“What is that?” cried the frightened young knight. He leaned down to look. “How odd. A moonlike sphere, no larger than a wee sparrow’s skull.”
“It’s a golf ball,” said Luna.
Now footsteps pattered down the corridor.
“Who goes there?” hissed Claire.
“Fred Bramblewine, your grandfather, goes here!” Grampy dressed in his pajamas, came tiptoeing down the hall. He was holding a golf club. “I thought I had this area to myself.” Grampy blinked. “Anyone seen my golf ball?” He looked right past Percival.
“The doddering old-timer does not possess the witch-sense to observe me,” said Percival.
“Don’t call Grampy a doddering old-timer. He’s very good at golf,” whispered Luna.
“Aha!” said Grampy, picking up the ball, which was right next to Percival’s toe. “Found ya!”
“Grampy!” Claire exclaimed. “Why are you up so late?”
“I’m practicing my putt,” Grampy explained sheepishly. “Tomorrow is the first round of the golf tournament. I want to impress your grandmother.” He put a finger to his lips. “But I don’t think she needs to know about any of our late-night shenanigans. I won’t tell if you won’t. Let’s go, girls. Back to bed.”
Then Grampy placed one hand on each twin’s shoulder, and steered Luna and Claire down the hallway.
When Luna turned around to check on their ghost, Sir Percival Quilty had disappeared.
“But he’ll be back,” Luna predicted after Grampy had dropped them off at Elderberry Chamber.
Claire yawned. “Listen, the rain is only a sprinkle now.”
The twins jumped into their soft ocean of a feather bed and smoothed the covers evenly so they wouldn’t fight over them later. “I can’t wait to tell Grandy that we found Percy, the not-very-spooky, strawberry-smelling ghost.” Claire sighed. “That was an easy mystery to solve.”
“Nothing’s solved yet, Clairsie,” said Luna. “I don’t mean to be a doomsday prophet, but my witch-hunch says it doesn’t add up.” She plumped her pillow and smoothed the ruffles of her nightgown. “We found a friendly ghost, not a fierce one. Crumbs, Sir Percival can hardly haunt. But what if there are some other, real baddies around this castle? And what if Grandy wants us to pop them?” Luna shivered. “Aren’t you a teensy little bit scared, Clairsie? Clairsie?”
From the other side of the bed came the sound of a snore.
Obviously, Claire was not too scared. Luna’s twin had fallen fast asleep.
4
Bloatus
THE NEXT MORNING, CLAIRE WOKE to sunshine filtering though the windows of Elderberry Chamber. Good, no more rain. But then she saw an empty pocket of space under the quilt where Luna had been.
“Haggis and hailstones, I must’ve overslept!”
She decided to skip showering. When she raced downstairs to the kitchen, she found that everyone had already enjoyed breakfast. Mac, Luna, and Daphne were now doing after-breakfast chores. Mac was sweeping the floor, Luna was stacking the dishes, and Daphne was polishing the silverware.
A bed-and-breakfast castle was a lot of work, thought Claire. She was glad her own home back in Philadelphia did not double as a hotel.
“Hullo, Claire!” greeted Mac when he saw her. “Your grandparents told me to tell you that they’ll be playing golf all day. However, Daphne and Luna will wait for you. Get a bite to eat, and after we finish up the morning chores, Daphne said she’d show you the grounds.”
“Okay” said Claire. Crumbs! she thought. If Grandy was off at golf, that meant she and Luna would have to wait all day before they could tell her about Sir Percival.
Meanwhile, it looked as if there was no escaping morning chores, or spending the day with Miss Daphne Bly.
Claire took a long time eating her bowl of something called muesli, cereal that tasted sort of like Oatie-oats, but better. Then she got to work helping Mac, angling the dustpan in those hard-to-sweep places.
“Thanks, Claire,” said Mac when they were done. “I’m stepping out to tend the stables now, so come ’round later if you want to exercise the horses. Think that might be fun?”
“Aye!” Claire had never been horseback riding, but she hoped she could make her horse go faster than Daphne’s.
“As long as my horse doesn’t go too fast,” said Luna.
That’s when Claire noticed that her twin looked terrified.
And Miss Daphne Bly was looking very mischievous, indeed.
What was that pesky lass up to?
O
nce Mac left, Claire found out.
“Oh, Claire! All morning, Daphne has been telling me such terrible things about the history of Glenn Bly!” Luna wailed. “So many wars and tortures. Tell her, Daphne. Tell Claire some of your stories.”
“Just the usual rot,” said Daphne as she eyed Claire. “Battles, bloodshed, and beheadings.”
Claire shrugged. She did not scare as easily as her twin. “All castles have gory ancient histories.-”
“True enough, American Claire,” Daphne admitted, “but I’ve saved the worst for last.”
“Daphne says Glenn Bly is haunted by a fierce and evil ogre,” Luna gasped. “I knew it! I knew there was a real baddie lurking.”
“Yeah, yeah. I heard about the ogre yesterday. But what I want to know is, where is he now?” Claire asked.
“Oh, everywhere and anywhere,” Daphne answered.
“Ever seen him?”
“Yes, but not recently.”
“What’s he look like?”
“Hunchback, slimy, bit of a purplish gash on his eyeball.”
“What does he eat?”
“Wild mushrooms and little dogs.”
“What’s his name?”
“Bloatus.”
“How’d you know his name?” Claire asked. “Did he tell you? Have you spoken to him?”
At so many questions, Daphne clammed up.
“Or maybe...your Bloatus is bogus,” Claire accused.
“I’m not a liar!” Daphne retorted, her cheeks flaming pink. “Bloatus is real, and he’s dreadful! He watches over my grandfather and me, but he despises everyone else. I’m quite surprised he hasn’t tried to scare you by now!” She quirked an eyebrow. “Are you sure you didn’t hear Bloatus last night, jangling and clinking his bloody spiked chain?”
Claire exchanged a look with her twin. Yes, they had heard a jangling, all right. But it had turned out to be the not-at-all spooky jingle-jangling of puny Percival Quilty.
“I’ve got an idea. Let’s go horseback riding and see if we can find Bloatus anywhere. Then Luna and I’ll decide if we’re scared of him or not,” challenged Claire.
Daphne looked startled. Then firm. “Very well. I’ll go put on my riding clothes,” she said, and she flounced out of the kitchen.
Witch Twins and the Ghost of Glenn Bly Page 2