Ghosthunters and the Incredibly Revolting Ghost

by Cornelia Funke

That didn’t sound quite so reassuring. “So how’s that going to happen?” asked Tom.

  “Very easily!” said Hetty Hyssop, flicking through the red book and evidently looking for something. “Aha, here it is: ‘The Eviction of an ASG.’ Pay close attention to this, young man! I’ll read it to you… .”

  4

  Tom sat on his bed biting his fingernails. For the nine hundred ninety-ninth time his gaze wandered to his alarm clock. Ten to eleven.

  At eleven sharp he had to be in the cellar. An hour before midnight. That’s when ASGs are at their weakest, so Hetty Hyssop had said.

  Tom’s Ghost Eviction Equipment lay on the carpet in front of him. Why do I of all people have to get rid of this lousy ghost? he thought, peeved. Why didn’t it strangle Lola instead? But complaining wouldn’t help, either. The ASG had to go — or he’d never get a wink of sleep again.

  Sighing, Tom took off his glasses and cleaned them carefully once more. He’d taken Hetty Hyssop’s advice and was wearing only red clothes. That hadn’t been easy. He’d “borrowed” the red sweater from his father, and the socks from Lola.

  Five to eleven. Tom stuffed the hot water bottle under his T-shirt. Yuk! That felt nasty. Luckily Mom hadn’t seen him filling the wretched thing, or she’d have thought there was something seriously wrong with him.

  “Heat is an absolutely reliable means to scare off ASGs,” Hetty Hyssop had said.

  Well, let’s hope so, thought Tom. The thing’s a pain in the butt to carry.

  Then he stuck a spare pair of shoes into the back of his belt and hung Mom’s circular mirror around his neck. Next he sprayed himself from head to toe in Lola’s favorite perfume and tucked Dad’s old boom box under his arm.

  “Music is a wonderful weapon against the smaller ghosts!” Hetty had said. “But it has to be the right music. I personally always recommend Mozart — you can’t really go wrong with ASGs and Mozart!”

  So Tom had purloined some Mozart from his parents. The only thing missing was the raw egg. Carefully Tom slipped it into his sweater pocket.

  “Don’t take a flashlight, whatever you do, young man!” Hetty Hyssop had warned him. “Flashlights drive ghosts absolutely mad. But you will realize very soon that one can see rather well in the light a ghost exudes.”

  Tom would have felt a good deal better with a flashlight, but never mind. With one last look around he checked whether he’d forgotten anything. Boy, I hope nobody sees me like this, he thought. Then he stuffed a couple of pillows under his blankets to make it look like he was lying in bed, turned off the light, and opened his bedroom door.

  It was exactly eleven o’clock.

  Nobody spotted him. How could they? Lola was no doubt lying in bed listening to soppy music on her headphones. And Mom and Dad were watching TV.

  In the stairwell all was quiet as well. Tom decided not to turn on the lights, just to be on the safe side.

  Otherwise he might find Miss Parker peering down at him at any minute. The light from the streetlamps coming in through the corridor window was enough, anyway.

  Silently Tom crept past the apartments of Miss Smarmy-Smith, the Pinschermans, and Mr. Rinaldini. He could hear muffled TV noises coming from behind all the doors. Typical, thought Tom. I’m saving the building from a vile ghost, and they’re all sitting peacefully in front of their TVs. Tom released a deep, self-pitying sigh — and then stood stock-still.

  There. Just a few steps down, a moldy green shimmery something was dancing in front of Caretaker Grouchman’s door.

  The Cellar Ghost. No doubt about it.

  Tom felt the goose bumps rising despite his hot water bottle. A glistening trail of slime stretched up the dark stairs all the way to Grouchman’s doormat, which was so revoltingly slimy that it looked like candy someone had sucked on and spat out again.

  I’ll just tiptoe back upstairs now, thought Tom. I’ll tiptoe back upstairs as quiet as a mouse. Let stupid old Grouchman sort out that specter! Main thing is, it’s gone from our cellar. But precisely at that moment — when Tom just wanted to turn around — the ghost looked up at him.

  It opened wide its garish green eyes, grew at least six feet high, and stretched its icy fingers out to him.

  Tom trembled so much that Dad’s sweater slipped off his shoulders. That’s it, he thought, squeezing his eyes shut. I’m dead.

  But this time the icy fingers didn’t grab him. Instead, a low moaning filled the stairwell. Cautiously Tom opened one eye. The ghost stared into the mirror on his chest, moaned again — and quickly floated back downstairs.

  Tom’s teeth stopped chattering immediately. The hideous thing was running away! It had run away from him! One-nothing, Tom, and three cheers for Hetty Hyssop! The courage of a lion spread through Tom’s wildly beating heart. Certain that victory was his, he rushed past Grouchman’s door and down the stairs. The mirror bumped against his chin; the spare shoes jumped out of his belt; the hot water bottle almost slipped out of his sweater; and the whole time he had to avoid those wretched slimy trails. But nothing could stop him. One more flight of stairs and he was in the basement.

  Wailing, the ghost rushed down the long, dark corridor — past Igor Grouchman’s cellar door, past Miss Parker’s, and past Miss Smarmy-Smith’s. Then it suddenly turned around, emitted an angry howl, and disappeared — through Tom’s cellar door.

  Tom braked sharply and gasped for breath. “That,” he cried as he unlocked the door with trembling fingers, “will get you nowhere!”

  Then he switched on the boom box, turned it up to full volume, and stormed into the cellar accompanied by a pounding orchestra.

  “Aaaaaaoooooooooooooooo!” shrieked the ghost, beating a wobbly retreat into the farthest corner of the room. Tom turned on the freshly installed lightbulb. Pop! Once again it exploded into a thousand pieces.

  Doesn’t matter, thought Tom. I’ve almost got it.

  “Aaaaaaaaarrrgh!” choked the ghost, turning bluish. Probably the effect of Lola’s perfume. Tom was groping his way deeper into the dark cellar when the boom box gave up on him. And however desperately Tom shook it he couldn’t get a single peep out of it. Bad news. Extremely bad news.

  The ghost immediately grew, till it hit the ceiling. “Woooooooohhhh-hahaha-hahaha!” it howled, puffing itself up and spitting a revolting yellow liquid onto the mirror. Then, with a foul smile, it floated over to Tom.

  Retreat! thought Tom. Orderly retreat! — then he realized that he was once again glued to the spot. And his spare shoes were somewhere up on the stairs. Curses.

  “Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaa!” howled the ghost, who reached for him with his moldy hands — then fell back, wailing.

  The hot water bottle. Two–nothing, Hetty Hyssop.

  “Ha — that’ll teach you to gloat, you freak!” cried Tom, whipping the raw egg out of his pocket. “And I’ve got something else for you!”

  Smash! He hit the ghost right in the center of its pale chest.

  “Aaahhhheeee!” it howled, rubbing at the raw egg like mad. And then it began to sob — and shrink. Until it was a whole head smaller than Tom.

  “Get out of our cellar!” cried Tom. “Now!”

  “Noo, noo, noo, nooooo!” sniveled the ghost, pressing its egg-covered fingers over its face. “Have mercy on meeeee, ooohh, please!”

  Baffled, Tom set his glasses straight.

  “I don’t know where else to go!” howled the ghost, hideously rolling its green eyes.

  Hetty Hyssop hadn’t said anything about sobbing ghosts. Flabbergasted, Tom plonked himself down on a milk crate. Was this some kind of trick? But the ghost really didn’t look that dangerous anymore. It even shimmered slightly pinkishly.

  “Have you always lived down here?” asked Tom.

  “Of course not!” the ghost sniveled irritably, and for a moment its hideous mold color reappeared. “D’you think it’s fun living in this third-rate cellar? But —” it started sobbing again “— what choice dooooo I have?”

  “What do you m
ean?” asked Tom. “Where did you live before?”

  “None of yooour business!” said the ghost, flickering like a broken lightbulb. “No, absoluuutely none of yooour business!”

  “OK, so get lost, then!” said Tom, insulted. “Or I’ll go and get a dozen eggs.”

  “Bully!” sniveled the ghost, rolling its eyes in indignation. “You have a disgusssting personality. My story is far tooooo sad to tell anyone.”

  “Oh, come on,” said Tom. He was starting to feel curious.

  “Alright then!” said the ghost, rubbing at the raw egg once more. “But then I can stay here?”

  “We’ll see,” said Tom. “First you have to tell me the story!”

  “Disgusssting,” the ghost muttered again. But then it sank down onto a pile of old newspapers and began… .

  5

  This is the story Tom learned about on his first ghosthunting night — translated into human language as precisely as possible.

  The true home of the ghost who now lived in Tom’s cellar was an old villa on the edge of town. The ghost had been haunting the place for more than one hundred fifty years. The big old house was dark and damp; there was a little echo in the entrance hall; and the inhabitants over the years had been wonderfully easy to scare. In short, the ghost had been completely happy there — until a couple of weeks ago… .

  “It was just before dawn,” said the ghost, sniveling. “I was just about to stop scaring folks and go to bed when it came! A dreadful ghost. Horrible and mean, oh sooo mean! ‘I like your house!’ it howled, and grabbed me. Then it dragged me onto the roof, took a deep breath, and blew me away. Right out of my own house! My home!” Sobbing, the ghost broke down. But no tears came from its green eyes — just bits of silvery dust.

  The ASG could hardly continue its story. The big ghost’s breath had sent it whirling right into Tom’s street. And since it was already getting light outside, it looked for the darkest, oldest building, and then sneaked into the cellar.

  “This one here smelled particularly pleasant — of spiders and woodlice,” sniveled the ghost. “But now —” it wrung its pale hands “— now I’m being chased out of here, tooooo. Whatever will become of me?”

  Tom took off his glasses and cleaned them. He always did that when he was embarrassed and didn’t know what to do next. In fact he felt rather guilty.

  “Do you have some kind of name by any chance?” he asked. “Or am I just supposed to call you ‘Ghost'?”

  “My name is Huuuuuuuuugo,” sniffed the ghost.

  “Well, that’s not a very spooky name!” said Tom, putting his glasses back on.

  “So? I can’t help my name,” Hugo replied. “What’s your name, then?”

  “Tom!”

  “Humph, that’s definitely not better!” said Hugo, and started to wail again.

  “Stop that! I’ve got an idea,” said Tom. “I know a woman who knows a lot about ghosts. She told me how to, uh —” he felt the blood rushing to his face “— um, that is, she told me what ghosts don’t like!”

  “Aha! Like raw eggs!” said Hugo, immediately turning his annoyed moldy color.

  Embarrassed, Tom set his glasses straight again. “Yeah, yeah, I know. What I’m trying to say is this woman might know how you can chase the big ghost out of your house!”

  “You think so?” Hugo began, wobbling around with excitement. “You really think sooooo?”

  “I’ll ask her first thing tomorrow,” said Tom. “And you keep quiet down here, OK? Grouchman’s already going to go ballistic when he sees the slime in the stairwell!”

  “Paaaaaaah,” said Hugo, giving Tom an insulted look, and pushed off behind a sack of potatoes.

  Yawning, Tom climbed the cellar steps and opened the door onto the stairwell, no longer expecting dire things to happen. Wrong again.

  “Got you, you rascal! So you’re the culprit!” boomed a familiar voice above his head — and the next moment Tom found himself hanging upside down with his legs waggling around helplessly in the air. “Just you wait, kid!” growled everyone’s favorite caretaker, Mr. Igor Grouchman. “Now get scrubbing! For the rest of the night, until your knees ache. And that thing there —” he pulled the boom box out from under his arm “— that’s disturbing the peace, even if you do sneak off to the cellar to listen to it!”

  “Let me go!” snapped Tom, kicking and lashing out all around him. “I haven’t done anything!”

  “Really?” hissed Grouchman. His hissing sounded even more threatening than his yelling. “Then look at my doormat. And these stairs. Well?” He held Tom, still kicking, with his nose right above the ghost slime. “How do you explain this mess?”

  “That wasn’t me!” said Tom, enraged. “Put me down now, or I’ll scream!”

  “Scream away,” said Grouchman, grinning broadly. “Then you can tell your parents what you’re doing in the cellar at midnight.”

  Tom bit his lip. Curses! How was he supposed to explain that one?

  “Ha, that shut you up all of a sudden, didn’t it?” Grouchman laughed, putting Tom back on his feet. “Now don’t you move an inch from there, you hear me? I’m going to get a nice big bucket and rag, and then you can get rid of all that muck, quiet as a mouse and fast as lightning!”

  Grinding his teeth and frowning fiercely, Tom nodded. What choice did he have?

  He scrubbed the stairwell until three in the morning. While everyone else in the apartment building — his own dear family included — was lying in their warm and surely very comfortable beds.

  6

  “Well, this is a surprise!” said Hetty Hyssop as she ushered Tom into her living room for the second time. “Didn’t my advice work?”

  “Yes, yes. In fact, it worked brilliantly, but …” Tom dumped his backpack on the sofa and sat down beside it. “I’ve got another problem!”

  “Aha,” said Hetty Hyssop. “Good. I’ll make us another pot of tea!” And she’d already disappeared into the kitchen when a white hand snaked through the fabric of Tom’s backpack.

  “Hey, we had a deal,” hissed Tom. “You stay there until I tell you. Got it?”

  “It’s very uncomfoooortable in here!” said the voice from the backpack.

  Hetty Hyssop stuck her long nose around the door. “By the way, young man,” she said, “you can tell that ghost in your backpack to come out!”

  Tom looked at her, speechless.

  Hetty Hyssop twisted her mouth in amusement. “Young man, there’s no way I can miss that musty, moldy smell even if it’s hiding in a backpack. Just a second: I’ll close the curtains — the daylight would make your ghostly companion feel sick and sneezy on the spot.”

  Of course the curtains were red, like everything else in the strange room.

  Hugo floated out of his hiding place with an embarrassed grin, looked around — and crumpled up, horrified.

  “Aaaargh, ooohoooooooo, aaaaargh!” he howled, pressing his white hands in front of his face. “What a dreadful room! Nothing but horrible red and mirrors everywhere. Dreadful!”

  “I’m sorry,” said Hetty Hyssop, “but I quite often have to deal with seriously dangerous ghosts. And they tend to find this room pretty off-putting!”

  “Oohoooo, I can’t stand it!” wailed Hugo. And — whoosh — he disappeared back into Tom’s backpack. Hetty Hyssop shrugged and went to fetch the tea from the kitchen.

  “Let’s talk about your second problem, young man,” she said as once more Tom shoveled revolting amounts of sugar into his tea. “I presume it has to do with your companion there.”

  “Too right!” said Tom, and told her the whole sad tale.

  When he had finished, Hetty Hyssop wore quite a serious expression on her face and was fiercely kneading her pointy nose. “Well, well, well,” she said. “I think I know which house we are talking about. Not long ago, I passed an old villa that smelled exceptionally strongly of ghosts. I’m afraid you have really got a problem on your hands this time.”

  Tom’s heart mis
sed a beat. “What — what do you mean?”

  “Well, this extremely repulsive ghost who chased your companion away is clearly an IRG, or Incredibly Revolting Ghost, as the full technical term for this species goes. And goodness knows, young man, you don’t mess around with an IRG!”

  Tom swallowed. “That means we … can’t do anything? Hugo has to stay in our cellar?”

  Quiet sobbing came from inside the backpack.

  “Oh no, that’s not what I said,” replied Hetty Hyssop. “I only pointed out that picking a quarrel with an IRG is very dangerous. Extremely dangerous — even for a professional ghosthunter. With this species you won’t get very far using mirrors, music, and raw eggs!”

  “So,” Tom hardly dared to ask, “what works against IRGs?”

  Hetty Hyssop kneaded her nose until it was as red as her living room. “Well, there’s only one thing I know of,” she said. “Graveyard dirt!”

  Tom looked at her, dumbfounded. “Come again?”

  “Graveyard dirt. At least a bucketful. Yes — and you’ll also have to practice squinting, young man. Squinting can save your life if you meet an IRG.”

  The old lady stood up and went over to her bookshelf. “I’ll give you something to take with you,” she said, pulling out a small book. “You’ll find in here a very instructive list of the known characteristics, likes, and dislikes of ASGs and IRGs. Chapter Two, if I remember rightly. Study it carefully!”

  She handed him the book, but Tom shook his head. “No,” he said hoarsely. “No, thanks. Let’s forget the whole thing. As far as I’m concerned, Hugo can stay in our cellar until the end of time. I think I’d rather go home now!”

  The sobbing in Tom’s backpack turned into a wailing and gnashing of teeth.

  “That’s a pity, young man,” said Hetty Hyssop. “I just wanted to offer you my help!”

  Tom looked at her, confused. “But you said it was terribly dangerous!”

  “Oh well!” The old woman shrugged. “Life is dangerous, isn’t it? And I feel a bit sorry for your pale friend here. If we’re well enough prepared, we’ll have no trouble banishing this IRG!”