“Not far to South Mendip,” the officer said, raising his voice as the sirens kicked on. “Just the other side of McBurney’s west pastures. By road it’s twenty minutes, but it’s a straight shot through the pastures; you could walk in half the time.” He stepped on the gas. “Off we go! Make way for the Griffinage dog.”
Will felt a flush of excitement as the siren blared. It wasn’t as loud as he’d expected from inside, but much more exhilarating. Again, he momentarily forgot about the ghosts as Officer Targent swung the patrol car up the Griffinage driveway, honking the horn for good measure. They were turning onto Queensway Road when Meg tugged Will’s arm and leaned over to cup her hands over his ear.
“I saw bones down there, Will. I’m sure I did. I felt them on that ledge. A skeleton. I’m sure it was a real human skeleton.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
South Mendip Hospital
When the squad car turned into South Mendip Community Hospital’s drive, the ambulance was just pulling away, slowly, with its lights off. Officer Targent clicked off his siren.
“They’ve taken her in already. I’ll help you find the room,” he said as the children tumbled out of the back seat with Uncle Ben. “Oh no, you don’t. You stay outside,” he added, addressing Uncle Ben. Uncle Ben promptly sat on Officer Targent’s foot and looked accusingly at the police officer.
Officer Targent folded his arms and jerked his head at the glass entrance doors. There was a NO SMOKING sign next to a prominent NO DOGS sign. Will groaned.
“Can’t you say he’s your police dog?” asked Will.
Officer Targent shook his head.
“German shepherd, Belgian Malinois, Dutch herder, maybe a Doberman or springer spaniel . . .” Officer Targent ticked the names off with his fingers. “Those are police dogs. I’ve never heard of one of these fuzzy-headed, giant-pawed dogs being on a police dog unit. Especially not a muddy one with a tongue like that.”
Meg looked at Uncle Ben. His tongue was as long as her forearm. Right now it was sticking out and dribbling dog drool on Officer Targent’s pant leg.
“How about over there?” said Meg, as Officer Targent tried to extract his foot from under Uncle Ben’s bulk. She pointed to a patch of grass and bushes marked MEMORIAL GARDEN to the side of the hospital doors. There was a row of azaleas and a motorcycle parked nearby.
“Nice and shady,” she added.
“Right. Fine,” said Officer Targent, still wiggling his trapped foot. “Put the dog in the shade.” He gave a sigh as Uncle Ben lifted his rump and followed Meg and Will to the memorial garden.
“Do you think he’ll stay?” asked Will. They didn’t have a leash to tie him with.
“He’ll stay,” said Meg. “He knows we’re going in there. Didn’t he run all the way from Yeovil to get here? He wants to be with us.”
“With Ariel,” Will corrected.
Meg cupped Uncle Ben’s ears in her hands and peered into the dog’s great brown eyes. “Ariel’s inside, Uncle,” she said. “We need you here. We’ll get you inside somehow, I promise. Now: Stay. Good boy.”
Ariel was lying on a white-sheeted hospital bed upstairs in the children’s ward, still holding the doll, when Meg and Will came in. It was a private room, marked ROOM 3. A nurse dressed in a teal tunic stood by, checking her chart and adjusting a bag of clear liquid, which hung on a hook beside the bed. Beside them, a young doctor wearing blue scrubs and a stethoscope was leaning over Ariel and massaging her left ankle. She looked up when she saw Will and Meg.
“Your sister’s going to be fine,” she said. “She sustained a sprained ankle in the fall, but nothing to worry about. No broken bones. The ankle will be sore for a while, so she needs to rest. Because of the fall, we’ll probably keep her overnight just to watch her.”
The doctor finished her examination, patted Ariel’s leg, and after a brief chat with the nurse went out.
“If it’s just her leg, why is she sleeping?” asked Meg.
“Had a bit of a fright, didn’t she?” said the nurse. “Falling down an old well. You kids should know better than to play around one of those. Loads of them around the hills, here, but they should all be capped. Anyway, it’s quite normal for someone to pass out like this after a nasty accident, especially a little maid like your sister. Poor thing,” continued the nurse. “White as the sheets when they first brought her in. Looked as if she’d seen a ghost!”
Meg gasped and tried to pretend she had coughed. Will began coughing too.
“Cover your mouth,” admonished the nurse. “We keep things sterile around here, if you please.”
“Oh yes, we will,” said Meg, dutifully coughing into her elbow. She smiled at the nurse.
“Mmm,” said the nurse. “She’s resting now, just leave her in peace. Vitals all good—she’s stable. No worries about shock. I’ll be back in a mo’ to check on her.”
The minute the nurse was gone, Meg and Will rushed up to the bed. Ariel’s hair was plastered to the hospital pillow, her face warm and the right color again, her breathing soft and mellow. At first, Meg worried it was too soft. She leaned forward and put her cheek against Ariel’s mouth and was rewarded with a steady whisper of air.
“She’s breathing,” said Meg.
“Of course she’s breathing!” said Will. “ ‘Vitals all good,’ remember? You think the nurse would have left her if she weren’t breathing?” The hospital atmosphere was reassuring. All these uniformed professionals going their rounds in red, navy, and teal tunics. Everything was bright lights and modern technology. Nothing at all like the Griffinage, or the manor’s ancient towers. He looked around Ariel’s room: all gleaming, computerized, and twenty-first century. Not a likely habitat for a ghost. For the first time that day, Will relaxed.
“Where do you think the nurse went?” asked Meg.
“Probably for her afternoon tea. It’s that time of day.” He paused and looked embarrassed.
“Oh, Will, not now!” groaned Meg.
“It’s not me; it’s my stomach,” said Will. “I can’t help it if ghosts make me hungry. All that hiccupping, and I haven’t eaten since lunch.” He paused again. “I’ll just check on Uncle Ben, okay? And if there’s a vending machine nearby, I’ll bring you something.”
“Oh, all right,” said Meg, turning her back on him. She took up vigil next to Ariel.
Will stepped out into the linoleum hallway. The hall was lined with private patient rooms like Ariel’s, plus some bigger ones with multiple beds and curtains separating them. A row of windows stretched along one side, and Will noticed the windows looked out on the memorial garden. He thought he heard the hum of a vending machine around the corner, but first ran over to the windows and peered down. There was the great brown furry body of Uncle Ben next to the azaleas. He was sniffing the tires on someone’s motorcycle.
“Hello, William.”
Will spun around. There stood Father Casey, dressed as before in his blue jeans and sneakers, but this time he also wore a formal black shirt and white clerical collar on top of his jeans. It was strange to see the curate outside St. Giles church. Of course, thought Will, ministers always visit people in hospitals. It’s one of their jobs.
To Will’s astonishment, Father Casey did not seem at all surprised to see him there.
“Visiting, are we?” asked Father Casey.
“Yes,” said Will. How did he know about Ariel already?
“Very kind of you. Know which room?”
“Um . . .” Will nodded vaguely toward Ariel’s door.
“No, it’s around the corner. Cadbury Ward, bed two. I’m sure he’ll be glad to see you. Now I’ll say good-bye. I’ve got two more visits myself.” Father Casey moved on with a cheery wave.
“Who will?” called Will.
“Down the hall. Around the corner!” called Father Casey. He waved again, but Will did not see. He was already running down the hospital hallway.
Will skidded to a stop outside Cadbury Ward, a room with several beds
and curtain dividers. Bed two was right by the door. The patient had one leg strung up in a purple cast, and lay awkwardly in a green-and pink-dotted hospital gown. His sturdy arms sprouted red hair that looked out of place on the starched white sheets. The man looked up and whistled.
“Well, here’s a turn of things,” he said, struggling to prop himself up by the elbow. “Here I am supposed to be looking after you, and now you come along to look after me.”
“Shep!” cried Will.
It was Shep all right. From his curly red hair to his bearlike frame. Will couldn’t help sighing with relief. It was good to see Shep at last, even if he was wearing pink and green polka dots with his leg strung up in the air. “What happened? We’ve been looking for you everywhere!”
“Well, you should have looked under the woodpile at the timber yard,” said Shep, shaking his head ruefully. “Had a bit of an accident there. My leg, timbers, and a forklift. Not a pretty combination. Bashed in my leg and they sent me here. Not by forklift, thank goodness. Would have been a bumpy ride.” He rubbed his eyes and looked puzzled.
“Now wait a minute, I’m not thinking straight. Must be this blasted painkiller they have me on. What are you doing here? Where are the others? And what’ll I tell Effie?” He plopped his head back on the hospital pillow and groaned.
“We came with the cops,” Will blurted out. “I saw Father Casey in the hall. The ghost got Ariel in the well, and Meg was down there, too. And you’re wrong about ghosts. They’re horrible.” The excitement of finding Shep faltered. Will’s mind raced, all the events of the afternoon jumbling up, plus all the pent-up questions.
“Whoa, slow down. Why are you kids at the hospital? Is someone hurt?”
“Ariel. It’s her leg.”
“Ariel?” said Shep. He struggled to prop himself back up on his elbows and stared hard at Will.
“We’ve been trying to find you all day. There’s two ghosts. And we need to sleep at your place. We have to.” He spilled the rest of the story out—his night attack, the fast exit through the roof, Ariel missing, and all the adventures at the well.
Shep was quiet for a moment. He looked pale, and there were no cheerful winks. He stared directly at Will. “The ghosts I saw as a kid never did this, Will, I swear it. That ghost girl is Katherine Croft, a girl who used to live in the Griffinage long ago back when it was Cook’s Cottage. She hasn’t been active in years, so I’m mighty surprised you’d see her. Fact is, she’s a distant relative of mine, cousin of some sort. I played with her as a child—conkers, hide-and-seek, no harm done. But always only playful. Never anything else. Something unusual has stirred them up. We’ve got to quiet them down again.”
“Do you think she’s safe here in the hospital? Ariel, I mean?”
“Yesterday, I would have said she’d be safe sitting in a ghost’s lap. But something’s changed. I can’t say what. But I do know this: The doctors can’t help. They’re focused on bodies in this world. Not the souls that slip out. Doctors don’t know anything about ghosts.”
Will’s stomach clenched. The easy feeling he’d enjoyed being in the modern hospital evaporated.
“I won’t leave you alone on this,” Shep went on. “I’ll just have to get myself out of this place somehow or other.” He kicked at the hospital sheets, then winced as the movement jostled his injured leg.
Will winced too. Meg would be furious with him for being gone so long. What if something was happening right now to Ariel? He leapt to his feet.
“I’ve got to get back to them,” said Will.
“Go!” said Shep. Will tore off down the hall.
Around the corner, there was a cluster of teal-jacketed nurses. Will sped up. It wasn’t Ariel’s room, or was it? He’d only left a few minutes ago, and everything had been fine. Will reached the knot of people and heard Meg’s voice through the crowd. It sounded strained and strange. She’s frightened, he thought. Something’s happening.
“Blood pressure’s dropping!” a nurse called out.
“What’s her pulse?”
“Sixty, forty, thirty . . . I’m losing it.”
Will pushed his way through the legs blocking the doorway and squeezed into the room. Ariel was lying on the hospital bed as before. Meg was at her side, squeezing her hand and calling out her name. A nurse with a dark bun stood by with a blood pressure monitor wrapped firmly around Ariel’s arm. On the other side, a stocky male nurse with black-rimmed glasses kept glancing at the monitor in dismay. Two other staff encircled the patient.
Ariel groaned and tossed to one side. Just then, a nurse shifted to the right so Will could finally see.
Straddled across Ariel’s chest sat the manor ghost.
Her legs bent and tucked back in a kneeling position, her hands cradling Ariel’s cheeks, the ghost was sitting astride the little girl. Green velvet spilled over them both. The sight of green velvet made Will’s stomach twist, bringing back all his terror from last night. Long black hair tumbled over Ariel’s small frame. The curtain of hair mostly blocked the ghost’s face, but it looked as if she were whispering.
Meg sat inches away from the ghost. Her shoulder almost touched the manor ghost’s knee. Will sucked in a breath between hiccups, only to realize he’d been hiccupping in a low, steady stream and the air smelled of burned matches. How could no one see? Meg and the nurses were so close.
“She’s here!” he called to Meg.
The nurses ignored them, immersed in their discussion of blood pressure and hypotension.
“What? Which one? How do you know?” Meg sat bolt upright. She swiveled her head from side to side as if looking for something and then stared desperately at Will.
“The manor ghost. Inches from your nose! She’s sitting on Ariel!”
Meg drew back instinctively.
“What’s she doing?” she asked.
The manor ghost was crooning over Ariel now, stroking her hair. With each stroke of her fingers, the color in Ariel’s face faded a bit more. And, as Ariel’s skin paled, the ghost’s aura brightened. Will threw his arm across his face to hide the glare. His hiccups were gone now. Meg suddenly gasped and said “Oh my gosh, she’s right here! I can see her now.”
The nurse who was monitoring heartbeat, breathing, and other vitals suddenly moved fast. “Pulse is dropping . . . breathing shallow.” She pushed a bright red button located next to Ariel’s bed. A moment later, a new doctor and another nurse burst in.
“Dr. Fenster!” cried the nurse. “Five-year-old female, brought in for a fall, sprained ankle left side, but nothing else. Stable since she arrived at four twenty-seven. Now everything’s dropping.”
“Oxygen!” said the doctor. “And IV. Why isn’t she on an IV? Hook it up! It’s not there for decoration.”
Meanwhile, the manor ghost was inching closer to Ariel’s face until she was sitting high on her chest. Her hands still stroked Ariel’s cheeks, but her eyes also lingered on what Ariel held in the crook of her arm. She completely ignored Meg and Will.
“It’s shock,” said the doctor.
“It’s the doll!” Meg cried.
“She wants the doll?” asked Will.
“No, she wants a child, but I’ll bet the doll’s the object that brought her here!”
“You’re right,” exclaimed Will. “The doll came in the chest, and she’s totally focused on it. She won’t even look at us with Ariel holding it. Can we get it off?”
Without waiting for an answer, Will grabbed for the doll, but his arm knocked sideways as one of the nurses shifted left and cut him off. Will squirmed to the side and tried to push at the ghost instead, but the manor ghost didn’t move, and all Will felt was a blast of intense cold.
The doctor was monitoring the readout screen with her back to the kids. “Strange,” she said. “You said she took a fall? All vitals down. Her heart rate seems like cardiogenic shock. I’ll check again for head trauma. Give her a dose of dopamine.” She turned and noticed the kids standing nearby.
“Wha
t are they doing in here?” she asked, flipping her thumb in their direction.
The next instant, rough hands landed on Meg and Will’s shoulders, and they were propelled out the door by a big-bosomed nurse.
“The doctor will call you,” she said. “The café’s downstairs.” And with that the door slammed, shutting in Ariel and the doll with one doctor, five nurses, and the manor ghost.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Escape
Outside in the hospital’s linoleum hallway, Meg and Will stared at the plain grey door marked ROOM 3.
“Shock!” said Meg. “They’ll never save her. They don’t know what’s wrong, and they’ll never believe us!”
“I know, but the doctors might delay the ghost a bit. Give us some time. All that oxygen and stuff,” said Will.
Meg’s face crumpled. She suddenly looked lost.
“I saw her that time, Will. I actually saw her. She’s hideous. So much worse than the girl ghost. What are we going to do?”
“Listen.” Will spoke sharply. “She’s latched onto Ariel. The doll brought her here, but we know it’s not really the doll she wants. Number one, we’ve got to shake the ghost off Ariel. Number two, we’ve got to connect the two ghosts. That’s our solution. That’s the only way they’ll leave us alone: if they fix each other’s longings.”
“But both ghosts want Ariel!” wailed Meg.
“We’ve got to make a substitute,” said Will with a determined look on his face. “We’ve got to change their minds. It’s the only way.”
Meg stared at Will stunned. She wiped her nose and smeared it on her pant leg, something she’d never do at home. Maybe her harrowing experience in the well was catching up with her. She slumped against the wall.
“So what can we do?”
Will wished he were anywhere but here. The fact was, he didn’t know. How does a ghost change its mind? It was all a horrible nightmare. Worse than the manor ghost cornering him in the bedroom, worse than the girl ghost hovering by the well. Because now a ghost was cornering Ariel in the middle of the day in a perfectly respectable, modern British hospital and he couldn’t do anything about it. They desperately needed a plan, but Meg usually helped him think up plans. Now here she was leaning against the wall, looking at him and expecting him to save them.
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