by Daren King
Frightfully Friendly Ghosties
School of Meanies
Also by Daren King
Mouse Noses on Toast
Sensible Hare and the Case of Carrots
Peter the Penguin Pioneer
The Frightfully Friendly Ghosties Series:
Frightfully Friendly Ghosties
Ghostly Holler-Day
New York • London
Text © 2011 by Daren King
Illustrations © 2011 by David Roberts
First published in the United States by Quercus in 2014
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e-ISBN: 978-1-62365-990-5
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, institutions, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons—living or dead—events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Contents
1. Ghost School
2. Haunted Homework
3. The Ghost Headmaster
4. Plums
5. Badge, Satchel, and Books
6. Charlie’s Polite Advice
7. Wither’s Abysmal Poetry
8. Agatha’s Helpful Breeze
9. Humphrey’s New Friend
10. Eggs, Bacon, and Porridge
11. Bumping Lessons
12. The Still-Alive Headmaster
13. Who’s Afraid of Humphrey Bump?
14. Humphrey’s Speech
15. Crime and Punishment
16. The Headmaster’s Wife
17. The Last Laugh
About the Author and Illustrator
1
Ghost School
Ghost School is boring. You get told off for bumping!
Bumping is my best thing. The only thing I like better than bumping is cake and lollipops, and the only thing I like better than cake and lollipops is bumping a box of cake and lollipops, and—
“Humphrey!”
It was Tabitha Tumbly. Tabitha is the youngest grown-up ghosty and the nicest of them all—no fibbing!
“Humphrey Bump, what happened to that box of cake and lollipops?”
“The cat bumped it,” I said. “I mean, the cat knocked it over, with her paws.”
Tabitha folded her arms and frowned at the upside-down cardboard box and the lollipops scattered across the kitchen floor and the splodged cake.
“Humphrey, are you fibbing?”
“No,” I said. “I mean, yes. I mean, I don’t know.”
We were in the kitchen at the back of the house, just me and Tabitha, and it was a school day but I didn’t want to go.
“Put your blazer on,” Tabitha said. “I’ll float you to school.”
I looked at where I’d left my blazer in a heap on the kitchen table. “I’m not going to school today.”
“But it’s your first day back.”
“That’s why I’m not going. The first day back is horrible.”
My blazer floated off the table and hovered behind me like a bat. Tabitha is a poltergeist. She can move things with her powers. No fibbing!
“Why don’t you like the first day?” Tabitha asked as I poked my arms into the blazer.
“It’s horrible. You haven’t seen the other children all summer, and then you have to see them—and they make fun of you because you’re fat!”
“Children can be so mean,” Wither said, floating in from the garden. “And, Humphrey, you’re not fat. You’re just, er, overly proportioned.”
Wither is a poet. That’s why nothing he says makes any sense.
“Come along, Humphrey,” Tabitha said, floating into the hall. “We’d better wisp, or you’ll be late.”
“I’ll wisp with you,” said Wither.
“It’s a lovely day for a wisp, and I need to stretch my transparent bits.”
Ghost School used to be a still-alive school, in the old days, but then it got run down, so the still-alives built a new school on the other side of the village.
“Wait,” I said as Ghost School loomed into view. “I have to tie my shoelaces.” And I wisped behind an old oak tree and hid.
“Humphrey?” Tabitha said, floating back and forth. “Humphrey, where did you go?”
“There’s nobody here,” I said in a sort of tree voice. “Just us trees, and—”
The two grown-up ghosties peered around the trunk, and Tabitha took my hand and led me back to the path.
“You’ll be fine when you get there and see your friends waiting for you,” Wither said.
“I don’t have any friends,” I said. “Everyone hates me.”
But then I spotted Samuel Spook and Phil and Fay Phantom flitting across the playground, and I let go of Tabitha’s hand and bounced off through the school gates.
2
Haunted Homework
“Ghost School is stupid and rubbish, and, um, I’m not going to Ghost School ever again!”
I’d practiced saying that all the way home, but then I saw Tabitha and Agatha chopping vegetables in the kitchen, and the words bounced about inside my head, and when I opened my mouth nothing came out.
“Humphrey, how was your first day back at Ghost School?” Tabitha asked as carrots rolled across the cutting board.
“It was, um, fun,” I said, bobbing by the stove.
“Dinner will be ready soon,” Tabitha said. “Pie, with your favorite side helping of sausages, pie, sausage pie, french fries, pie and pizza.”
“Us girls are having salad,” Agatha said, biting a pointy, pointless carrot.
“I’m not hungry,” I said, even though my tummy felt like a cave.
“That’s not like you,” Pamela said, emerging from the cellar, her arms piled up with plates. Pamela Fraidy is always nervous, so the plates rattled and clanged.
“Humphrey,” Agatha said as I floated out to the hall, “you look as if you’ve found a lollipop and dropped it.”
On the stairs I floated past Wither and Charlie Vapor. Charlie winked at me and took off his hat.
“Master Bump,” Wither said, “Charlie doffed his trilby, and you didn’t so much as bid him good day.”
“I did the polite thing to do,” Charlie said. “The least you can do, Humphrey, is do the polite thing to do too.”
“But it isn’t a good day,” I said, bumping the banister. “It’s a rotten day, and then some.”
“Don’t be mean,” said Wither, pursing his lips.
“Humphrey is sulking,” Charlie said. “Today was the first day back at school. He’ll feel right as rain tomorrow.”
At the top of the stairs I bumped through the bedroom door, then bumped it closed behind me. I had my own bedroom now that the still-alives had moved out. The grown-up ghosties shared the four-poster bed in their old room.
I rummaged through my blazer pockets and pulled ou
t a fluffy doughnut. I was halfway through munching it when I heard Charlie and Tabitha talking on the landing.
“I don’t know what’s gotten into him,” Tabitha was saying. “He used to love Ghost School. Have a word with him, Charlie.”
“You talk to him, Tabitha. You’re closer to him in age. Humphrey won’t listen to an old stooge like me.”
“But you’re a man, Charlie. All boys together! And you can pass through. In you float!”
Charlie Vapor can pass through doors and walls and, well, anything—even when he’s got his hat on. I’m not telling fibs!
I’d just taken another bite of the doughnut when Charlie’s head passed through the bedroom door.
Charlie winked at me and doffed his hat. “Are you all right, son?” he said in his cockney accent.
I nodded. My mouth was full.
“Glad to hear it,” Charlie said, and he passed back.
The door handle turned by itself—Tabitha using her powers again—and Tabitha floated into the room.
“Humphrey, I’ve brought you a snack,” Tabitha said, and she dropped a crusty pork pie onto the bed.
“That wouldn’t feed a mouse.”
Tabitha smiled, sort of kind but telling me off at the same time. “If you want your dinner, you will have to float to the kitchen.”
“I’m not hungry,” I fibbed.
“Then there really is something wrong. Either you’re coming down with the flu, or something happened at school and you’re afraid to say what.”
“Nothing happened at school,” I said. “I’m just doing my homework, that’s all.”
“If that’s true, the homework must be haunted and see-through,” Tabitha said, “because all I can see are doughnut crumbs and a grumpy face.”
I looked up at Tabitha’s big eyes and said, “Tabitha, if I tell you something, do you promise not to be cross?”
Tabitha sat beside me on the bed. Well, floated. Ghosties can’t sit on things, they can only float above things.
“I got expelled,” I told her. “I’ve been thrown out of Ghost School. For good.”
3
The Ghost Headmaster
After breakfast the next morning, Tabitha Tumbly and Charlie Vapor wisped me straight to the Ghost Headmaster’s office.
Charlie knocked on the door with his knuckles, doffed his hat—the polite thing to do, no fibbing!—and passed through the wood.
“Let’s leave Charlie to it,” I said, and I tried to wisp out of the window but Tabitha snapped her fingers and the window slammed shut.
The door to the Ghost Headmaster’s office opened, and Charlie was there in the doorway. He looked like he’d seen a ghost.
“Best manners,” Charlie whispered into my ear as Tabitha and I floated into the office. “The Headmaster is in a bad mood.”
“He’s always in a bad mood,” I said.
“Close the door,” the Ghost Headmaster said in his vaporous voice, and the door slammed closed and Tabitha looked at me and winked. “Right,” the Ghost Headmaster said, wisping around, “what’s all this about?”
“Um,” Charlie said, hiding behind his hat.
“Humphrey is a pupil here at Ghost School,” Tabitha said. “At least, he was.”
“Ah, the Rotund Rascal,” the Ghost Headmaster said with a smiling mustache. “That’s what the teachers call the boy. Humphrey Bump, the Rotund Rascal.”
“I’m not a rascal,” I said, my voice shaking. “I just bump a lot, for fun.”
“Yes,” the Ghost Headmaster said. “And, thus, expulsion.”
Charlie frowned. “If only Wither were here,” he whispered. “Wither understands all that poetic talk.”
“What the Ghost Headmaster is saying,” Tabitha whispered, “is that the reason poor little Humphrey got expelled is because he bumps.”
“Always bounding about,” the Ghost Headmaster said as he sat in a transparent ghostly chair. “The boy simply does not fit in. Humphrey Bump is a round peg in a square hole.”
“It’s hardly my fault the hole is the wrong shape!” I yelled, and Charlie elbowed me in the tummy and told me to shush.
“Take, for instance, the brass band incident,” the Ghost Headmaster went on. “I’d arranged for a marching band to parade by the school gates. All went well until Humphrey here bumped the conductor, and the conductor got his head stuck in the tuba and tumbled into the percussion section and bounced off the big bass drum and ended up up-ended in a hedge.”
“Bumping is fun,” I said, and I bumped the Ghost Headmaster, knocking him off his ghostly chair.
“You oaf!” the Ghost Headmaster cried, wisping to his phantom feet. “Get that boy out of my school at once.”
4
Plums
That afternoon, I heard the clack-clack-clack of the clicky-clacky typewriter, so I peered into the study, and there was Wither typing up his poems, and Agatha dialing a number on the telephone, and Pamela, Charlie, and Tabitha floating by the window.
“Wither,” Charlie said, “leave it to Agatha. By the time the post-phantom delivers the letter to the other ghost school and the ghostly head teacher types a reply, Humphrey will be old enough for college.”
Wither wasn’t typing up his poems as I’d thought. He was typing a letter to another ghost school!
“Don’t be mean,” Wither said as he typed with one bony finger. “The typewritten word carries a certain—”
“Let Wither waste his time if he likes,” Tabitha said. “Agatha, have you finished dialing that number yet?”
“My hair keeps blowing into my eyes,” Agatha said, “and I dial a wrong digit and have to start all over again.”
Agatha Draft is the sort of ghosty who blows an eerie breeze wherever she floats. She’s also dead posh.
“There!” Agatha said as she finally finished dialing.
“Put this in your mouth,” Pamela said, and she popped a purple plum between Agatha’s lips.
“What is it?” Agatha said, sounding more posh than ever.
“A plum,” Pamela said, “to make your voice plummy.”
“Agatha’s voice is plummy enough as it is,” Charlie said, adjusting his tie.
Tabitha and the other grown-up ghosties gathered around to listen as Agatha talked into the mouthpiece. “We were wondering if you had room for our boy. Humphrey is the name. Humphrey Bump.” Agatha raised an eyebrow at this point and plonked the telephone receiver back into its cradle.
“What happened?” Tabitha asked.
“The rude thing hung up on me,” Agatha said.
Agatha telephoned several other ghost schools, but whenever she mentioned my last name, they hung up.
When Tabitha announced that there were no ghost schools left to call, I bounced through the door and bumped every ghosty in that study—no fibbing!
“Calm down, Humphrey,” Charlie said, straightening his trilby.
“Hooray!” I yelled. “I won’t have to go to Ghost School ever again.”
“I’m afraid Humphrey is right,” Tabitha said. Just as I was about to bounce off to the garden and bump the ghostly gardener into a prickly hedge, Tabitha added, “There is only one thing for it. Humphrey will have to go to Still-Alive School, with the still-alive children.”
Wither tugged the smudged letter from the clicky-clacky typewriter and crumpled it into a ball. “But, Agatha, the still-alive children are meanies.”
“It’s a mean world,” Agatha said, plucking the plum from between her lips. “And it’s even meaner to those who do not possess a proper education.”
5
Badge, Satchel, and Books
I spent the next few days stuffing my mouth with pies, sausages, pizza, pies, and cake. If I make myself fat, I thought, my uniform won’t fit and I won’t have to go to Still-Alive School.
“Almost done,” Agatha said early on Monday morning. Me and the grown-up ghosties were floating around in the living room, watching her sew a new badge onto my ghostly blazer. “There,” Agat
ha said, and she held up the blazer for all to see.
“Where did you find a ghost Still-Alive School badge?” I asked her, licking my lollipop.
“It’s rather a sad tale,” Agatha said, almost in a whisper. “One of the still-alive pupils climbed into the lion cage at the zoo. The lion ate him in one gulp. When he turned into a ghost, Charlie pinched the ghostly badge from his ghostly blazer.”
“I didn’t pinch it,” Charlie said. “I swapped it for a tub of raspberry-ripple I-scream.”
“Fancy being eaten by a lion,” said Pamela Fraidy. “The very thought gives me the shivers.”
“Serves the boy right,” Wither said. “This boy had a nasty habit of bopping felines on the head with a rolled-up comic book. Kittens to begin with, then tabby cats and alley cats—”
“I guess he got greedy,” Agatha said. “Now, try this on.”
“Thank you, Aunty Aggie,” I said. “I can’t wait to start my new school,” I added with a crafty smile.
I slipped my arms into the sleeves, then pulled the blazer at the front, but the buttons wouldn’t reach the buttonholes, not even nearly.
“Humphrey,” Charlie said, wisping out from the lampshade, “you’ve put on weight.”
“What a pity,” I said, tugging the blazer from my arms. “I’ll just have to stay at home and read comic books.”
“You will do no such thing,” Agatha said.
“This explains why he’s been eating so much,” Tabitha said. “Humphrey, you should be ashamed of yourself.”
“You will have to go to Still-Alive School whether the blazer fits or not,” Agatha said.
“But the still-alive children will laugh at me,” I blubbed. “They’ll call me Small-Blazer and poke me with a stick.”
After breakfast, I found Wither and Tabitha in the hall.
“Humphrey,” Tabitha said, “are you sure you don’t want one of us to float to school with you?”