Ghosthunters and the Gruesome Invincible Lightning Ghost

by Cornelia Funke

  “Don’t worry!” said Tom. “That’s Hugo. He just acts horrible. He’s totally harmless!”

  “What?” Hugo inflated himself — not without difficulty, given that he was clad in a foil bag. “Harmless? Did yooooou call me harmless?”

  “Put a sock in it, Hugo!” said Hetty Hyssop angrily. “You’re to carry this poor fellow here to the stairs. And woe betide you if you frighten him again. Got it?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get all the toughest jobs!” moaned Hugo. All the same, though, he took the bellboy on his back. By now the bellboy had ceased to care what happened to him, anyway. Only when he touched Hugo’s icy back did he flinch for a moment.

  “Off we go, then!” whispered Hetty Hyssop. “Let’s get out of here!”

  They ran along the burning corridor, looking back with ever increasing anxiety.

  “Hetty!” whispered Tom. “I’ve got a very strange feeling!”

  Hetty Hyssop stopped and listened. “A shower!” she whispered.

  Now Tom could hear it, too: a splashing and running of water, interspersed with contented grunts and snuffles. It sounded horrible.

  “Wh — wh — wh — what — what’s t — t — t — taking a sh — sh — shower?” stammered Tom. “Th — th — the…!” A terrific bang stopped him midsentence.

  Behind them, the corridor burst into flames. Sparks, flashes, and balls of fire as big as children’s heads were shooting out of the walls and ceiling. “Run!” cried Hetty. The stairs were still five bedroom doors away.

  “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrgggghhh!” moaned something behind them, sounding so hideous that Tom’s legs turned to jelly and Hugo turned pink all over.

  “Come on, down the stairs!” Hetty Hyssop pulled from her belt the strange hair-dryer-like thing, and switched it on. It sounded like a police siren, and puffed icy cold air into the path of the thing that was coming at them from the flames.

  Flickering, it stopped.

  Hugo and Tom stumbled down the first few steps while Hetty Hyssop was still standing on the landing. Tom turned to her, worried, and finally got a really good look at the ghost that had been following them. It looked like a walking fire.

  The icy air from Hetty Hyssop’s fan did prevent it from coming any closer, but it didn’t seem to bother it particularly. The ghost twisted its hideous face into a grin, pressed its fiery fists against the walls, and opened its cavernous jaws. A hot puff of air swept thunderously toward Hetty Hyssop, and blew her and her two assistants down the stairs. They tumbled down a whole floor before they could get back on their feet — and the fiery monster was still there laughing at them, his laugh hollow, hideous, and abysmally mean.

  6

  Hetty Hyssop marched straight across the hotel’s entrance hall, her white curls flapping and her face covered in soot. Tom and Hugo, with the bellboy still on his back, could barely keep up with her.

  The guests, who were reading their newspapers in front of the fireplace, spilled their coffee into their laps with shock when they saw the ghosthunters. Hugo’s white figure in particular provoked piercing squeals and a couple of faintings. The ASG, of course, was delighted. And Hetty Hyssop didn’t care. She was boiling with rage, frothing with rage, really, fit to burst with rage.

  Without a word she handed the bellboy, who was still shaking slightly, to the astonished porter. Then she stormed into Alvin Bigshot’s office, Tom and Hugo trailing in her wake.

  The manager was standing behind his desk, feeding the fish. He dropped the canister into the aquarium when Hetty Hyssop wrenched open the door.

  “What, what… um, what’s the matter?” he asked, baffled.

  “Come with us!” said Hetty Hyssop, taking him by the tie and dragging him to the door.

  “But my dear Mrs. Hyssop!” protested Alvin Bigshot, trying in vain to escape. “Whatever has happened? Have — have you solved our little problem?”

  “Our little problem!” The tip of Hetty Hyssop’s nose began to twitch. “I don’t know whether you’re simply stupid or a confirmed liar. Whatever the case, I need fresh air, or I’ll explode!”

  She dragged the manager, who was by now poppy red with embarrassment, through the dining room, past his guests who were eating their meals, out onto the large veranda, and then down the steps to the beach. Only there did she stop, on the soft sand, and release his tie.

  With trembling fingers Alvin Bigshot straightened it, and looked around uncomfortably. The beach was empty save for a couple of walkers in the distance. The sky was gray and the sea wind blew fine drizzle into their faces. Even Hugo found this wonderful after the ovenlike fourth floor. But Alvin Bigshot looked most unhappy.

  “I don’t understand, madam!” he complained, buttoning up his white suit. “Why don’t we go inside and have a little something to eat? We’ll catch a chill out here!”

  “Don’t you ‘madam’ me!” said Hetty Hyssop, taking off her aluminum shoes. “We’re going for a walk along the beach now, and you can finally tell me what’s really been going on here recently.”

  “I’d like a little nap.” Hugo yawned and disappeared into the backpack, before Tom also took off his shoes and tramped along behind Hetty Hyssop and the hotel manager. The soles of his feet were still quite hot from their fiery adventure, and the cool sand felt good on them. Even the cold autumn wind was pleasantly refreshing after the heat on the fourth floor. Though Tom could certainly have done with something to eat.

  “Hot water!” spluttered Hetty Hyssop. “Broken air-conditioning! Thanks to you and your barefaced half-truths, we could have been burned to a cinder up there! And that bellboy who we found in the linen cupboard — didn’t you notice he was missing?”

  “A bellboy?” The manager shook the sand from his shoes. “Well, you know, we have so many of them. You don’t tend to notice if you’re one short!”

  This rendered Hetty Hyssop almost speechless.

  “Do you know what we should do with you?” she asked in a threateningly calm voice.

  The manager twirled his mustache nervously.

  “I know,” said Tom. “We should put him in the service elevator and send him up to the fourth floor. Then he can take a closer look at his ‘little problem’!”

  Alvin Bigshot threw an evil glance at Tom. “A tasteless suggestion!” he said. “Truly tasteless!”

  “Oh, I don’t think it’s at all bad,” said Hetty Hyssop. “And I’ll ask Hugo to make it happen if you don’t finally tell me the whole story. About the thunderstorm, for starters!”

  Tom looked at her in amazement. Alvin Bigshot, however, turned as pale as Hugo’s ghostly chest.

  “How do you know about that?” he gasped.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” asked Hetty Hyssop, sinking down into a deck chair.

  “Well, you know…” Alvin Bigshot cleared his throat and looked down at his once so carefully polished shoes, which now were full of sand. “It mustn’t get around that we have, um, such violent thunderstorms here. Unfortunately, they happen quite a lot and, um, some guests find storms like that extremely off-putting. You get my drift. At the end of the day, we use our good climate in our advertising. Sea air is healthy throughout the year and so on. You know the sort of thing. And quite apart from that” — the manager nervously ran a hand across his bald patch, which was already quite wet from the rain — “quite apart from that, there’s no way I could have known that storms would be of any interest to you!” He sneezed. “See? Now I’ve caught a chill!”

  Hetty Hyssop dug her toes into the sand, looking gloomy. “OK. You couldn’t know anything about the significance of storms when you’re plagued by ghosts, and I” — she sighed — “I should have asked you. But when you made it all sound so harmless, it never occurred to me that we might be dealing with something so incredibly dangerous!”

  “Incredibly dangerous?” repeated the manager. “Dangerous? What do you mean?”

  Tom swallowed and remembered the sight of the Fire Ghost blowing them down the stairs.


  “Did your lightning conductor work when the last storm hit you?” asked Hetty Hyssop.

  “Not really,” admitted Alvin Bigshot. “Could we go inside now, please?” He sneezed again.

  “My goodness, surely you can stand a bit of sea air!” Hetty Hyssop snapped impatiently.

  “I hate the sea,” muttered the manager, looking at the gray waves with distaste.

  “What do you mean, your lightning conductor didn’t really work?” asked Tom. “Did it work, or didn’t it?”

  “All your telephones suddenly went dead,” said Hetty Hyssop. “Didn’t they, Bigshot?”

  The manager looked at her in astonishment. “And how do you know that?”

  “So it’s true! That’s a catastrophe!” Hetty Hyssop tore at her white curls. “That means we’re dealing with one of the five most dangerous ghosts on Earth — and what kind of equipment have we got? Children’s toys, nothing but children’s toys. My sole consolation is that hardly anything works against this monster, anyway!”

  Alvin Bigshot looked at her in horror.

  And Tom suddenly felt sick. “So what kind of ghost is it?” he asked.

  Hetty Hyssop hauled herself up from the deck chair with a deep sigh. “It’s a GILIG. No doubt about it. I’ve never come across this kind of ghost in my entire career, and goodness knows I could have done without it now!”

  “A what?” stammered the ashen-faced manager.

  Tom just stood there staring at the hotel. It looks spooky, he thought. He could make out something flickering red through the soot-stained windows.

  “A GILIG!” he whispered. “Oh no!”

  “But what is that?” cried Alvin Bigshot in despair. “Just tell me!”

  “Tom, you explain,” said Hetty Hyssop and, taking one last look at the sea, she tramped back to the hotel. Tom followed her, Alvin Bigshot trailing by his side, nervously trying to catch his eye.

  “So, what is it?” he asked once again in a shaky voice.

  Tom knew only too well what a GILIG was. He had studied every volume of Hetty Hyssop’s ghost encyclopedia in great depth. There was something about GILIGs in Volume 23. “Particularly disgusting apparitions,” it said. The article could be summarized in very few words: The chances of surviving an encounter with this ghost were pretty much zilch.

  7

  “GILIG stands for Gruesome Invincible LIghtning Ghost,” explained Tom as he and Alvin Bigshot made their way up the steps to the hotel veranda. Hugo was still snoring away peacefully in the backpack. “GILIGs materialize in the case of particularly violent lightning, and mostly get into buildings down the telephone lines. Once they’re in, it’s incredibly difficult to get rid of them again without smashing the whole building to smithereens!”

  The manager almost pulled off his mustache in shock.

  “GILIGs can reduce humans to ashes or shrivel them up,” Tom continued. “But their favorite thing is to turn them into minor Fire Ghosts!”

  “Which is presumably what happened to your fourth-floor guests,” said Hetty Hyssop over her shoulder. “How many of them were there?”

  “Seven.” The manager sighed faintly. He looked completely crushed as they made their way across the formal lounge. Once again, all the guests turned to look at them, but none of the ghosthunters took any notice.

  “Seven!” Hetty Hyssop shook her head. “And that on top of everything else. We’ve caught one, so that leaves six. Goodness knows where they’ve gone. Where did you put the thermos?”

  “On my desk,” murmured the manager.

  “Good,” said Hetty Hyssop. “Then let’s have a closer look at our prisoner!”

  The thermos stood next to the aquarium. Hetty Hyssop slipped on an oven glove, carefully opened the lid, and fished out the captured ghost. It looked distinctly pale and dopey, though not as thinly stretched as when Tom first caught it.

  “This flask contains dry ice,” explained Hetty Hyssop. “It cools Fire Ghosts without bringing them into contact with water. Come closer, Bigshot. Does this ghost look like any of your missing guests?”

  Hesitantly, the manager came closer. “Oh my goodness!” he cried in surprise. “It’s Mrs. Elsie Redmond. She’s been staying with us for years, always in October. Incredible!” He moved even closer. “I have to say, the transformation didn’t do her any favors!”

  “Tom, dear.” Hetty Hyssop stuffed the fiery Mrs. Redmond back into the thermos and screwed the lid on tightly. “Send Mr. Lovely a fax and ask him to find my textbooks and copy down all the information he can find about GILIGs, and then send it to us. I know dangerously little about these monsters!”

  “Done,” said Tom, and rushed to the reception area, where the hotel fax machine was located. Mr. Lovely had been a good friend and reliable helper of Hyssop & Co. ever since the ghosthunters had saved him from a monstrous IRG (Incredibly Revolting Ghost). In haste, Tom scribbled down Hetty Hyssop’s message, handed it to the porter, and shot back to the manager’s office. When he got there, Hugo had just finished his little nap and was floating up by the ceiling, yawning. The manager was feeding his fish again, and Hetty Hyssop was sitting on the edge of the desk tapping her foot impatiently.

  “As soon as Mr. Lovely’s information arrives,” she said, “I’ll write out a list of all the things we’ll need before it turns dark. And please let your guests and staff know at once about the dangerous situation. Tom will listen and make sure that you don’t downplay it as shamelessly as you have done so far!”

  “What?” Mr. Bigshot recoiled from the old lady as if she personally were the GILIG.”What am I supposed to do? Tell the guests? Have you gone mad?” He shook his head energetically. He couldn’t stop shaking his head. “No. No. You can’t ask me to do that! Over my dead body! I’d be ruined, don’t you see? Utterly ruined! No, no, never. No! “

  “Fine!” Hetty Hyssop shrugged her shoulders. “As you prefer. In that case Hugo will tell everyone!”

  “It’d be my pleasure!” Hugo floated toward the office door, filled with gleeful anticipation. But quick as a flash Alvin Bigshot blocked his way.

  “Stop!” he cried. “Stop. Very well, I’ll do it. I call this meanspirited blackmail, but I’ll do what you want!”

  “You’d better,” said Tom. “Or do you think your guests will still be able to pay their hotel bills once they’ve been turned into Fire Ghosts?”

  The manager looked at the thermos containing Mrs. Redmond, then went slowly back to his desk and lifted the receiver of the telephone on the right.

  “Tell the guests to assemble, please,” he said sullenly. “Yes, of course that means all of them. And all the staff, too. Ten minutes in the lounge. I have an important announcement to make!”

  Then he slammed the receiver down and plopped into his armchair.

  “You must have all the sockets on the ground floor sealed up with icing,” said Hetty Hyssop. “Otherwise the GILIG will eavesdrop on us — and we don’t want that, do we?”

  “Icing!” whispered the manager. “Sockets. Icing. I think I’m going mad!”

  8

  Finally, eighty-three people were gathered in the Seafront’s lounge: guests, chefs, chambermaids, bellboys, and anyone else who happened to be in the hotel. When Alvin Bigshot informed them, amidst much throat-clearing, that a couple of floors above their heads a giant Fire Ghost was rampaging around, these eighty-three people took the news in a variety of ways.

  Tom counted eighteen instances of fainting; forty-one hasty departures from the lounge followed by immediate suitcase-packing or canceling of reservations without notice; three fits of mad rage; and six demands for compensation.

  There remained only fifteen people: two chefs, two chambermaids, one bellboy, and ten guests who, for a variety of reasons, weren’t prepared to leave the hotel.

  First, there was the bellboy who the ghosthunters had rescued from the linen cupboard. By way of thanks, he offered to help the trio, much to Tom’s astonishment. Then there were the chefs, who felt that as t
hey’d already survived an encounter with a little Fire Ghost, there was no need for them to run away from a bigger one. The chambermaids had no desire to lose their jobs over a rumor of a ghost. And as for the ten remaining guests, six of them thought that at last something interesting was going to happen to liven up their dull vacations. The remaining four just didn’t believe in ghosts: They suspected a complete and utter swindle on the part of the hotel management.

  While the manager gloomily watched his guests flee, Tom and Hetty Hyssop were waiting impatiently for the fax from Mr. Lovely. Hugo found this all far too boring, so he went off to scare a few guests while they were packing their suitcases, before rummaging around in the cellar for a while.

  When Mr. Lovely’s fax finally arrived, Tom and Hetty Hyssop sat themselves down on one of the wonderfully squishy sofas in the hotel foyer, though Tom could have easily done without the brightly burning fireplace, which reminded him all too much of their last encounter with the ghost they would soon have to face again.

  “Any sockets around here?” asked Hetty Hyssop.

  “Two,” replied Tom. “But both secured with icing!”

  “Good, then start reading. I don’t have my reading glasses with me!”

  Tom began to read aloud Mr. Lovely’s fax:

  Tom raised his head. “That was the first extract… shall I carry on reading?”

  Hetty Hyssop nodded and looked into the fireplace. “Bad, bad, bad,” she muttered.

  Tom took the next page of Mr. Lovely’s fax and once again read aloud:

  Tom raised his head and looked at Hetty Hyssop.

  “That,” she said, “is very interesting indeed!”

  “And we stopped Hugo from sliming all over the place!” cried Tom.

  “Hmm, most regrettable,” said Hetty Hyssop. Tom continued reading:

  Tom looked up. He and Hetty Hyssop exchanged a grim smile.