by Alex Shearer
On their way to the tackle room, they passed Mr Gibbings’ and Miss Rolly’s offices.
Hearing their footsteps, Mr Gibbings, whose door was open, pretended not to be studying the crossword that lay in front of him on his desk, and he did his best to look busy – mostly by means of frowns and grimaces, none of which were convincing.
‘Hello,’ he waved. ‘Can’t chat, I’m afraid. Up to here in work.’ And he indicated his chin as a measure of the depth and height of his labours.
They passed Miss Rolly’s office. Her door was slightly ajar. She didn’t hear them. She was intent on a book, propped up in front of her. Its title was: Women’s Suffrage: The Battle for the Vote.
Waiting to be read when that volume was finished was another tome, entitled: Equal Wages, Equal Rights.
Things in the tackle room were just as Tim and Thruppence had left them the day before. While Thruppence wrote down the necessary words and incantations for the raising of ghosts, from Grimes and Natterly’s Manual of Ghost Hunting, Tim selected a heavy glass vessel with a large glass stopper. He made sure that the one fitted the other and that there was a good seal between them.
Not going to get out of there in a hurry, he thought.
He stuffed the glass jar and stopper into his backpack. Together they seemed to weigh a ton.
‘How are you getting on?’ he asked Thruppence, who was busy with pen and notebook.
‘I’ve nearly finished here,’ she said. ‘Almost got it all down.’
‘You know,’ Tim said. ‘I was thinking about bait. Ghost bait.’
‘Ghost bait?’
‘To put in the jar to lure it in. Something pungent.’
‘Yes?’
‘I thought maybe … how about … one of your dad’s kippers?’
Thruppence put down her pen.
‘Kippers?’
‘Yeah, a kipper. You get one of your dad’s kippers, and we’ll put it in the jar. And if you bring one of your dad’s kippers to lure the ghost in, then I could maybe bring one of my dad’s old wooden legs along – as there’s a few in the basement, left over from the old days. Then, if there’s trouble, we can batter the ghost over the head.’
‘With a wooden leg?’
‘What do you think?’ Tim said.
‘Tim,’ Thruppence said, ‘a ghost is a spirit, isn’t it? It isn’t solid. So how can you hit it over the head with a wooden leg? The wooden leg’ll go straight through it.’
‘You’re splitting hairs, a bit,’ Tim said.
‘No, I’m not.’
‘We could still use it for knocking the stopper into the glass container. And also for defending ourselves, like if instead of summoning a ghost up, we accidentally get a zombie by mistake.’
‘A zombie?’
‘Yeah. They’re pretty solid, aren’t they? Or a werewolf. Be very handy to have a wooden leg in your hand if a werewolf attacked you.’
‘Tim –’
‘No harm in being careful … ’
Thruppence stared at him, open-mouthed. There were many thoughts going through her mind, and many things she could have said, but she decided against saying most of them. Instead what she said was,
‘Tim, why do you think a kipper is going to lure a ghost?’
‘It might have been fond of kippers while it was alive.’
There was, undeniably, a kind of logic and reason to this. But Thruppence still felt that it was unlikely.
‘Don’t you think something a bit more, well, a nicer smell might be better?’
‘I’m prepared,’ Tim said, ‘to give a kipper a go. I mean, if you want to catch a mouse, you use a bit of cheese; a fish – a worm. If you want to catch a spider, you use a fly. If you want to catch a ghost, what’s wrong with trying a kipper?’
Thruppence sighed.
‘All right, Tim,’ she said. ‘I have to say that I think this is something of a long shot. But I guess we’re doing this job together. So, if you want to try a kipper to start with, then I’ll bring one along.’
‘If it doesn’t work, we can maybe try a biscuit,’ Tim said.
Thruppence completed her notes.
‘Have you got the jar?’ she said.
‘In my bag.’
‘All right. Come on.’
Mr Gibbings was still at his crossword, and Miss Rolly at her books. Neither looked up as the two children went past. At the front door they called out their goodbyes, and a ‘Cheerio now!’ came from Mrs Scant. Mr Copperstone was, presumably, still at his afternoon slumbers. He would wake up just before it was time to go home, his day’s work over, and then he could enjoy a well-deserved rest.
The old grandfather clock, in the corridor of the Ministry of Ghosts, chimed its longest chime. It did so twice a day, to mark the end of the old day and the start of the new, and the halfway point in between.
On this occasion, the chimes rang at midnight, and they echoed eerily, not merely through the building, but out onto the deserted cobbles of Bric-a-Brac Street. Somewhere a cat meowed, and a rival responded, and then there was a scattering of milk bottles, and then the chimes fell silent, and midnight was here. Midnight, the bewitching hour, when (according to those who believed in such things) ghosts walked the earth.
A door creaked, half a mile away. A back door. A back door belonging to the fishmonger’s shop, Good Coddley’s, and out into the alleyway, all dressed in dark clothes, and with soft shoes on her feet, and with written-out spells in her pocket for the summoning up of ghosts, came Thruppence Coddley herself. In her hand she held a plastic pouch, tightly sealed, and inside that pouch was … a kipper.
Treading lightly and with caution, Thruppence skirted around to the front of the shop, glancing up at the windows to ensure she had not been heard leaving and that all were still slumbering within. Then, the more distance she put between herself and home, her step grew more jaunty, confident and carefree. She hastened along the cobbles in the direction of a dark spire a few streets away, silhouetted against a cloud-empty sky, by the light of a roving moon. This was St Bindle’s Church, the local place of worship, and once (though no longer) of burial. Its ancient graveyard had long since been filled up, and the deceased now sought fresh pastures, further out of town. The gravestones here were old and tumbling, with faded letters etched upon them, and many unrecognisable names, of those who had fallen asleep or were with their maker, or who were enjoying peace at last.
Thruppence was approaching the graveyard from the south, heading in a northerly direction. Approaching from the west, and heading in an easterly direction, were other soft footsteps. Someone else was abroad at that hour. He too was stepping lightly, a procedure that was complicated in his case by the heavy contents of the rucksack on his shoulder, and by the weight of the large, adult-sized, wooden leg under his arm.
This, of course, was Tim Legge. Unlike Thruppence, he had not sneaked out of the back door, but had made his exit by the front. But he had been equally cautious in feigning sleep when his mother had looked in on him, and had been every bit as silent in dressing, in turning the bedroom door handle, and in tiptoeing down the stairs. Now here he was, heading for the prearranged rendezvous with his fellow ghost hunter, where he hoped to meet not just her, but at least one – if not a larger quantity – of ghosts.
Thruppence was first to arrive. She selected the most comfortable looking of the gravestones and perched herself upon it. A yew tree grew among the graves; there were always yew trees in cemeteries, though she did not know why. The church spire above her pointed the way to heaven and showed her where the moon was, and the sparkling stars.
There was a sound … But it didn’t perturb her. She knew who it was.
‘Tim – that you?’
‘Yeah. Is that you?’
‘Who else would it be? Did you get out all right?’
‘No trouble. You?’
‘Fine.’
‘Anyone see you?’
‘No. At least I don’t think so. You?’
; ‘No. Did you bring your stuff?’
‘Yes, here. Did you?’
‘Yeah, here.’
Tim brandished the wooden leg. Thruppence looked at it, somewhat nonplussed.
‘Couldn’t you have brought one of your cricket bats instead? Or one of the baseball bats your dad makes? They’d be a bit easier to use than this. I mean, if you want to whack someone over the head, a wooden leg isn’t what you’d call ideal, is it?’
‘My dad would miss one of his bats, but he won’t miss one of his legs,’ Tim said.
‘I’ll have to take your word for that then,’ Thruppence said. ‘And have you got the big glass jar?’
‘Here,’ Tim said, carefully opening his backpack and taking the glass vessel out. It was like a very big jam jar, but with a thread in the inside of the neck, so that the equally heavy glass stopper could be screwed in tight. The glass of the jar was so thick you could barely see into it, and the glass, instead of clear, was a deep greeny blue.
‘Where’s the kipper then?’ he said. ‘You haven’t forgotten it?’
Wordlessly, and with an attitude of some disdain, Thruppence held out the plastic bag and Tim took it from her. He peeled it open and pushed the kipper into the jar. He had to force it a bit, but he finally got it inside, then he shook the jar around so that the kipper fell flat to the bottom.
‘Looks tempting to me,’ Tim said. Then he looked around for a bin. ‘What’ll I do with this bag?’
‘Over there.’
He went and dropped it into the rubbish.
‘Right,’ Tim said. ‘You got the spells there then, and the hallucinations?’
‘Incantations!’ Thruppence snapped.
‘Incantations, hallucinations, same difference,’ Tim said.
‘Nothing of the sort –’
They both heard a rustling in the long grass behind the gravestones. ‘What was that?’
They froze. Waited. Stared. Silence again.
‘Just the wind,’ Thruppence said.
‘There isn’t any,’ Tim pointed out.
‘Maybe a cat then. Or a hedgehog. Or a squirrel. Whatever it was, it’s gone.’
But it wasn’t. It was a small urban fox, which poked its nose out from behind a gravestone, saw the two figures, appeared more startled by them than they did by it, and ran off as fast as all four legs would take it.
‘See. Just a fox,’ Thruppence said. ‘So come on, let’s get to work.’
Each of them had brought a torch along, but they were not needed.
The moonlight was bright enough to read the inscriptions on the stones by – at least those not lost by erosion to wind and rain and weather.
‘How about here?’ Tim said. ‘There’s hundreds of them in here.’
While ‘hundreds’ was something of an exaggeration, there were certainly more than one. He was standing by a small mausoleum, in which several generations of the same family were interred. The family name was, somewhat appropriately, Stiff. Several Stiffs slumbered there together.
‘We’ll have more chance if there’s a lot of them,’ Tim said. ‘I mean, one grave, well, the person in there might have been quite a happy sort, and have no reason for wanting to come back and … whatsit again?’
‘Walk the earth,’ Thruppence said.
‘Yeah. Walk the earth. But if you’ve got a big mob of them in there, well, there’s bound to be a couple of discontents … ’
‘Maybe,’ Thruppence said.
‘There’s bound to be someone with unfinished business, doomed to … what was it again?’
‘Walk the earth.’
‘Walk the earth. So I suggest we try here first. Let’s get the Stiffs up.’
‘All right,’ Thruppence said. ‘Though I don’t really see why we can’t just use the incantations and the spell for the whole cemetery.’
‘We only want one ghost,’ Tim pointed out. ‘Not thousands of them. There won’t be room in the jar. They’ll suffocate in there –’
‘Tim,’ Thruppence pointed out. ‘Ghosts aren’t going to suffocate. Ghosts are dead.’
‘Well, you know what I mean,’ Tim said. ‘We don’t want overcrowding. It could be a health and safety issue.’
Thruppence wasn’t entirely sure that she always did know what he meant. But never mind that for now, she told herself.
‘Okay. Are you ready with the stopper, to seal up the jar if a ghost does appear?’ she asked.
‘Ready as I’ll ever be,’ Tim said.
‘All right. Let’s get busy.’
Swiftly, but surely, following the copied-down instructions from Grimes and Natterly’s Manual of Ghost Hunting, Thruppence got to work.
Taking a stick from the ground, she traced out a hexagon – a six-sided star shape – in the moss which overgrew the stone lid of the tomb. Next, Thruppence took a small candle from her backpack – a tea light which she had borrowed from the kitchen drawer – and she lit it by means of matches she had taken from the same place.
‘Shouldn’t really be using matches at your age,’ Tim said.
‘I happen to be highly sensible,’ Thruppence told him. ‘And you’re spoiling my concentration.’
The night was so calm that the flame of the candle burned without a flicker. It cast a warm, ethereal glow. A cloud appeared in the sky above now and crossed the moon.
Thruppence placed the candle in the middle of the hexagon.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Here goes. You ready?’
Tim nodded that he was ready. And indeed he looked ready – ready for anything.
At his feet was the jar with the kipper inside – bait for any ghosts that might now appear. In his hand was the stopper for the jar, and as soon as a ghost was inside, he was ready to clamp that stopper into the hole at the top and to screw it tight. Not far away from him, well within snatching-up distance, leaning on a gravestone, was the wooden leg. One whack with that, and a man would be rendered unconscious. What it might do to a ghost, who knew? But there was no harm in trying.
The cloud sailed on, like a lonely ship in an empty sea.
‘Okay. Let’s say the words – together.’
Thruppence held up the paper with the incantation written upon it, and they both read the words out, their voices blending together, seeming to turn into one.
‘I summon all ye ghosts and spirits,
All ye phantoms, all ye sprites,
All ye sad, unhappy creatures,
Doomed by fate to walk the night.’
They paused, they waited, nothing yet, just the burning candle and the height of the spire and the stars and the moon and the quiet of night, and in the far, far distance a sound of perhaps a baby crying, or a small animal, lamenting its hunger or its pain.
‘I summon all ye wraiths and demons,
All ye spectres, trapped in time,
And all ye fiends – for any fiend
Of yours is a fiend of mine.’
Again they paused. Again they waited. The candle flickered now. The air felt cooler. There were signs of a faint mist lying on the ground, even rising from it, like cotton wool.
‘I summon all ye apparitions,
Command that ye will now appear.
Make thy presence known and certain,
Make thy features sharp and clear.’
Now a definite chill, and a wide silence, so profound that they scarce dared to break it, and yet they had to go on to the final verse.
‘Come to me without delay,
Come to me – thy crimes confess.
And with this book and with this candle,
I will help you to find rest.’
It wasn’t a book, strictly speaking, it was a piece of paper with things copied from a book upon it. But Thruppence didn’t feel that should matter. So the spell was done now. All there was to do was to wait.
The seconds stretched long and distant, seeming like hours. But then there were noises, whisperings, fleeting and remote at first, but coming nearer, surely, coming nearer.
‘Thruppence … ’
‘I hear it,’ she whispered back.
They stood, tense, at the ready, full of fear now, but fighting the fear with all their will.
On the footsteps came. But this was not – surely not – the approach of some wraith or spirit without material substance. This was … this was something else.
‘Thruppence, what have we done? It’s not a ghost … it sounds like … ’
On the steps came, firm and solid, flat and sturdy, moving with dull rhythm, in some lifeless, mechanical way, as if the steps were those of a creature not from this world. They sounded like the steps of some zombie-like thing, a Frankenstein’s monster, with horrid bolts upon its neck, composed of the parts of fresh corpses, stitched and fashioned together. On it came. Here it was now, coming from behind the yew tree and casting a huge, an immense, a giant, towering shadow in the moonlight.
‘Thruppence, I don’t know what we’ve done, but that’s no ghost. That’s something else. That’s something awful coming.’
‘I know. Grab your stuff. Come on. Let’s get out of here!’
Tim needed no second telling. He grabbed at the things that were within reach. He snatched up the jar – though the kipper fell from it – and stuffed it into his backpack. The wooden leg he had to leave behind. In seconds he and Thruppence were leaping over grass and gravel, over grave and tombstone, and they were running with all the speed they could muster, and they didn’t dare to look back once.
They only slowed for breath when they felt the familiar friendliness of cobblestones under their feet, and they found themselves – though they had not realised they had run so far – in Bric-a-Brac Street, and right outside of the Ministry of Ghosts. But the place looked quiet, and even friendly, far friendlier than what they had left behind. It was all in darkness, with only the moonlight upon its windows, and the brass plate smiling by the door.
‘You don’t think it’s coming after us, do you? Whatever it was. You don’t think it saw us? You don’t think it knows where we live?’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ Thruppence said. ‘I think we’re safe now. Come on, let’s get to the end of the road, then you go your way and I’ll go mine –’
‘We have to go home alone?’
