Mountwood School for Ghosts Read online

  That night, when Daniel had put his light out and lay in the darkness waiting for sleep, he heard something. At first he thought that it must be a pigeon under the slates. But it wasn’t the right cooing and scratching noise that pigeons made. It seemed to be coming from the wall beside his bed. On the other side of the wall, he knew, was an attic room just like his in the house next door. The noise was more a snuffling or gulping kind of noise. He sat up and put his ear to the wall. Now he could hear quite clearly. He heard stifled sobs, and sniffs. Someone was crying.

  Daniel lay down again and tried to think. Perhaps Mrs Bosse-Lynch was secretly a very tragic person, with a horrible sad secret that she crept up to the attic and cried about at night. He hoped not, because he didn’t want to feel sorry for someone whom Great-Aunt Joyce approved of. But it was far more likely that they had a prisoner in the attic. They had kidnapped someone, probably a rich man’s daughter, and sneaked her into the house. Soon they would cut off her ear and send it to the desperate parents. On the other hand, it could be a poor mad relation whom they didn’t want anybody to know about. Charlotte had read a book about someone like that. It was called Jane Eyre and was one of her absolute favourites.

  Either way, Daniel had to make contact. He sat up again and knocked three times on the wall. The sniffling stopped.

  ‘Hello, who’s there?’ he called. ‘Do you need help?’

  Still there was no sound. But then part of the wall slowly went soft and bulgy. The bulge got bigger, and separated itself from the wall. It was swirly and colourless, almost transparent. Then parts of it started taking shape, a hand appeared here, a leg there. The air in the room was suddenly icy cold, and in front of Daniel stood a small boy in a nightshirt, with golden curls and big weepy eyes.

  ‘You are a ghost, aren’t you?’ said Daniel. ‘I thought you were someone in trouble.’

  ‘I am someone in trouble,’ said the ghost, and huge ghostly tears started to roll down its cheeks. ‘I am someone in terrible trouble.’

  ‘I think I saw when you came,’ said Daniel. ‘You were in the removal van.’

  ‘Yes, I was,’ said the ghost. ‘It wasn’t a bus.’ The tears rolled ever faster down its pale cheeks.

  ‘Of course it wasn’t a bus, it was a removal van.’

  ‘But I thought it was,’ gulped the ghost. ‘And I don’t know where I am and I don’t know where Father and Mother are and—’

  ‘Please try to stop crying,’ said Daniel. ‘And keep your voice down or you’ll wake Great-Aunt Joyce.’

  The ghost was obviously a young child, and seemed to be working himself into hysterics. ‘If you calm down and tell me about it, I might be able to help.’

  Daniel was secretly a bit disappointed. Ever since the arrival of the removal van he had been hoping for something really shockingly ghastly, perhaps a leering headless skeleton or a viciously grinning ghost murderer who dissolved his victims in acid. Anything really that would scare Great-Aunt Joyce to death, or at least make her flee from Markham Street and never return. But if she came up now and saw this weeping boy, she would probably just slap him and shoo him out.

  However, even a small sad ghost is better than no ghost at all, and Daniel was a kind person and more than willing to sort out his problems if he could.

  ‘You’d better tell me the whole story,’ he said, and Perceval, for that was his name, came and sat on the bed and began.

  Percy told his story with lots of pauses for miserable sniffing and cries of ‘Oh, what am I to do?’ and ‘I shall be alone forever!’, so it took him quite a long time.

  Ronald and Iphigenia and Percy had materialized in good time at the service station, where they had met up with Cousin Vera and the other ghosts and spectres who had applied for Mountwood. There was quite a crowd milling about the parking bay where the bus was to pick them up. Some of them were old acquaintances, and they hung about, chatting, catching up on each other’s news. After a while, when the bus still hadn’t come, Percy had got bored and wandered off. There were lots of great big lorries standing silent and dark in the parking area. Percy glided among them, peeping in sometimes to look at the drivers snoring in their cabs. They had little beds with curtains, which reminded Percy of when he had been alive and his mother had read poetry to him before he went to sleep. His favourite one had started, ‘Where the bee sucks there suck I.’

  When Percy got back to the pick-up place, he saw a bus standing in the parking bay, revving its engine. There were no ghosts to be seen. He cried, ‘Help, help, wait for me! Don’t leave without me!’ and threw himself through the side of the bus just as it drew away and rumbled off into the night.

  ‘But it wasn’t a bus,’ said Percy sadly, looking with at Daniel with tragic eyes. ‘The bus had already left.’

  ‘Well, why didn’t your parents wait for you? They must have been worried sick when you didn’t show up.’

  ‘I don’t know, I don’t know. I have been aba . . . adn . . .’

  ‘Abandoned.’

  ‘Y-y-yes. Like the Babes in the Wood.’ Percy collapsed in hopeless weeping.

  When he had recovered slightly Daniel said, ‘I still don’t see how you could mistake a removal van for a bus.’

  ‘But I’ve never been on a bus. And it had words on the side like where we were going.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  But Percy could speak no more. With a final wail of ‘Poor me! Oh, sad unhappy me!’ he threw himself face down on the bed.

  Daniel heard Great-Aunt Joyce’s bedroom door opening, and her tread on the stair.

  ‘That’s done it,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll disappear,’ said Percy. ‘I’m quite good at it.’ And he started to fade, vanishing just as Great-Aunt Joyce appeared in the doorway.

  Daniel turned on his bedside light. Great-Aunt Joyce was wearing a flannel dressing gown and tartan slippers, and her hair was in curlers. She looked very angry, and peered around the room.

  ‘Really, Daniel, this is appalling. What on earth is going on? I must have silence after my pill. I shall be speaking to your father.’

  ‘Oh, it’s you, Great-Aunt Joyce. I was having a terrible nightmare.’

  ‘Were you now?’ said Great-Aunt Joyce suspiciously, and it seemed to Daniel that she stared intently at the exact spot where Percy had just vanished. ‘A nightmare, was it? That’s what comes of not chewing your food properly. Poor digestion.’

  When she had gone, a small voice spoke from the empty bed.

  ‘She doesn’t seem very nice,’ said Percy.

  ‘She isn’t. We’ll have to be absolutely quiet now, Percy. We’ll talk about this tomorrow.’

  Six

  Mountwood

  Percy’s parents hadn’t abandoned him. They would never do a thing like that. But when the ghost bus finally arrived there was quite a lot of confusion. It is always the same when people, or ghosts, are getting on a bus; there is quite a lot of pushing and shoving. Some of the ghosts were worried about travel sickness and wanted to be sure of a seat near the front; others wanted to sit with their friends, or bag a window seat. Ghosts are invisible a lot of the time, and sometimes as many as four or five ghosts tried to get in to the same seat. So it took quite a long time before they were all sorted out, and by that time the bus was well on its way, rushing north through the night.

  The bus was old, and so was the driver. In fact both bus and driver had passed away many years before, when an unfortunate combination of too much beer and a sudden downpour had put an end to them at the bottom of an old quarry in the Peak District. It was quite surprising how fast the rusty old wreck with its mouldy seats and shattered windows could go, considering the crumpled mess that had once been its engine. But it was powered by something quite different from diesel fuel, and could even take cross-country short cuts if necessary.

  ‘Where is Percy sitting?’ said Iphigenia, when she had finally managed to persuade a pair of rather silly water-sprites to move from the seat next to her husband.


  ‘I should think he is up at the front somewhere, near the driver. You know how he was looking forward to it.’

  But when Iphigenia glided up the aisle a little later to see that he was all right, he wasn’t there. She found Cousin Vera though, squashed into a window seat near the front beside a hugely fat ghost who had been housemaster at a famous public school and had died of apoplexy while enthusiastically thrashing a small pupil.

  ‘Vera, darling, where is Percy sitting?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, I thought he was with you,’ said Vera.

  Iphigenia, getting worried now, glided up and down the bus, calling for her son, but it was soon quite clear that Percy was not on board.

  ‘Ronald, Percy is not here! Oh, my poor boy! We must make them turn round and go back.’

  They went to talk to the driver.

  ‘You must turn around immediately; our son has been left behind,’ said Ronald.

  ‘Can’t do that,’ said the driver. ‘Can’t mess up my schedule. Got a pick-up in Birmingham, and have to be at Mountwood before dawn. They were very clear about that, and I’m not going to get myself into trouble with those three.’ He shivered, remembering his meeting with the three Great Hagges.

  ‘But good grief, man, this is an emergency. Our son is lost.’

  ‘Tell you what – I’ll try to send a message to a mate of mine who haunts the service station. He’ll find the boy and see he’s all right until you can pick him up, or get him on to another bus.’

  There was nothing to be done. Ronald fumed, Iphigenia pleaded and wept, but the driver was adamant. He wasn’t turning back for a slip of a boy who’d missed the bus. The other passengers were sympathetic. Cousin Vera wailed, the other ghosts gnashed their teeth, rattled their chains, moaned and groaned as best they could, but it was no good.

  In Birmingham the bus swooshed to a halt behind a disused gasworks in order to pick up a ghost called the Phantom Welder, who got on board with his phantom welding torch all a-sizzle and greeted his fellow-passengers with a cheery ‘Mornin’ everybody!’

  He soon realized that the atmosphere on the bus was not a happy one.

  Before they set off again the driver came down the aisle to talk to Ronald and Iphigenia.

  ‘Well, I’ve got hold of my mate, and he’s done a thorough search of the whole place, and your boy’s not there. He’s sure of it.’

  ‘What? It’s impossible!’

  ‘That’s what he said. Look, he’s a ghost, isn’t he? How bad can it be?’

  ‘Oh, you foolish man!’ cried Iphigenia. ‘My little Percy is sensitive. He has an artistic soul. He is not just any boy. He will waste away in sorrow.’

  But now Ronald sided with the driver. ‘Perhaps we’d better calm down a bit, Iffy my dear. It might do the lad a bit of good to fend for himself for a while. Learn something about survival.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said the driver. ‘When we get to Mountwood the Great Hagges can put out a proper “Missing Ghost” alert, and he’ll show up in no time.’

  So the bus flew on towards its destination. But there was no denying that the passengers were a lot less chatty than they had been when they left. The Phantom Welder, who was a good-natured ghost in a boiler suit and liked to get a party going, tried to start a sing-song. But it fizzled out like a damp squib. Soon his welding torch fizzled out too, and the busload of ghosts travelled on in silence.

  The bus drew to a halt in the front courtyard at Mountwood and the ghosts streamed out. Goneril was waiting to receive them.

  ‘Welcome to Mountwood,’ she declared. ‘You are of course tired after your journey, but before you retire for the day, we would like you to join us for a short introduction in the assembly hall.’

  She led the ghosts into the stone-flagged lower chamber of Mountwood, which was empty apart from three chairs on a raised dais. The Hagges had removed the cover from the well in the centre, so that Angus Crawe, who was after all the oldest inhabitant of Mountwood, could feel a part of things. So far he had kept himself to himself.

  There were no chairs for the ghosts, because ghosts really have no need of chairs, except for the sheer fun of sitting in them, and as Drusilla had pointed out when they were arranging things, they weren’t there to have fun. Fredegonda was sitting on the middle chair, with Drusilla to her left, and as Goneril took her place in the third chair, Fredegonda rose to speak.

  She had made a real effort with her appearance.

  ‘Correct, but not too formal, I think,’ had been Drusilla’s advice. So she had applied a bit of lipstick. She had also found some horse-leeches in a pond behind the house and placed them in a circle round her throat, where they now hung, plump and glistening and looking very fetching.

  Fredegonda smiled, and the effect, thanks to her bright green lipstick, was rather like slicing open a large watermelon. She began to speak. She was used to public speaking, and her voice carried easily to the back of the hall. In fact it carried all the way to the pub in the nearby village, where an old hill shepherd was nursing his evening pint. He shook his head. ‘Those weather forecasts are blooming useless. Didn’t say anything about thunderstorms.’

  Fredegonda’s speech was masterful. She told the ghosts about the great future that awaited them, about the satisfaction that hard work would bring and about all pulling together in a true spirit of fellowship. She said that there was no success without struggle, and no ‘I’ in ‘team’. She made some little jokes to make everybody feel at home and she finished with a rousing cry: ‘Ghosts of the world, unite! You have everything to win with your chains!’

  But in spite of her magnificent oratory, Fredegonda felt that her speech had fallen a bit flat. She had not grabbed her audience by the throat. They had not hung on her every word. Some of the ghosts were only half there, or in some cases even less, just an eyeball or an elbow. Hardly any of them were completely visible. There was one couple in particular whom she noticed. The gentleman with no skin was obviously trying to stay in shape, but his wife just disappeared.

  Afterwards the Great Hagges met in the staffroom for tea and titbits. Goneril came last. ‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said. ‘I’ve been sorting out the dorms. Actually I’m rather disappointed. First day of school, you know, one expects a bit of chatter and larking about, but these are a glum lot. Apparently that married couple –’ she consulted her list – ‘Ronald and Iphigenia Peabody, managed to mislay their son, just a little chap. They’re all in a state about it.’

  ‘To be perfectly honest that’s a bit of a relief,’ said Fredegonda, ‘I thought I was losing my touch. Getting rusty.’

  ‘Oh no, it was a marvellous speech,’ said Drusilla kindly, ‘but we must put out a “Missing Ghost” alert straight away. We can’t have something like that affecting their work.’

  ‘I’ll see to it,’ said Goneril as she poured the tea, and they all tucked into the tasty worm tartlets, lightly dusted with dandruff, which Drusilla had prepared earlier.

  Seven

  Charlotte’s Quest

  When Daniel woke the following morning, Percy was nowhere to be found. He called out to him softly several times, but there was no reply. As soon as he could get away from the house, he went to look for Charlotte.

  She lived at number two. He rang the bell, and Charlotte’s mother came to the door carrying Charlotte’s little sister, who had obviously been having her breakfast. A lot of it was on her face, and the rest of it seemed to be on Charlotte’s mother.

  ‘She’s over at Mrs Wilder’s, I think. Could you ask her to come back as soon as possible? I have to get up to the shops.’

  Mrs Wilder lived at number eight, all alone in the house. Charlotte was there quite often, helping her. She would have helped even if Mrs Wilder hadn’t had a house full of books and pictures, and a head full of interesting thoughts and memories, but it certainly made helping her more fun.

  The door was open, and Daniel went into the hall and called up the stairs. ‘Hello, Mrs Wilder. Is Charlotte
there?’

  ‘I’m up here,’ came Charlotte’s voice.

  Mrs Wilder was getting pretty deaf. Daniel went up and put his head around the door of the big room on the first floor. It was the same kind of room as Aunt Joyce’s, at least in size and shape. But otherwise it was completely different. There were bookshelves packed with books, and a writing desk covered in notebooks and pens and papers, and pictures on the wall. On the old marble mantelpiece were all the usual things – photographs and invitations and a couple of candlesticks – and also some less usual things: a pack of hand-painted tarot cards, a badger’s skull, a small silver coin from Afghanistan stamped with the head of Alexander.

  In the corner of the room was something that might have been just an ordinary stick, but was in fact a blowpipe from an Amazonian tribe called the Wai-wai.

  ‘A blowpipe is a marvellous murder weapon,’ Mrs Wilder had told Daniel once when he had asked about it. ‘Silent, deadly, accurate. And the poisons they use in South America kill in seconds.’

  Mrs Wilder was a writer. She wrote detective stories and was quite famous. Now she was sitting at her desk, a small slim old lady with grey hair that kept escaping from her various pins and hairclips. You always noticed her eyes first. They were dark brown and looked at you as though they didn’t see the outside of you at all, but saw everything that was going on inside your head. Her faced was lined – she was eighty-three. There were lines for smiling with, lines for crying with and lots of lines for thinking with.

  Charlotte was sitting on the floor in the middle of the room, surrounded by an ocean of photographs, old and new.

  ‘Hello, Daniel,’ said Mrs Wilder. ‘Charlotte is going through the photo box. It’s time to get it sorted. Soon it will be too late.’