The Haunting of Hiram

by Eva Ibbotson

  You could tell how important the programme was because the man who came on to announce it was Lionel Twitterstone who had been knighted by the Queen and who usually only covered things like the Grand National or a coronation or a Royal Tour.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said Sir Lionel; ‘tonight we bring you one of the great events of television history. Live from the United States by satellite, we bring you – a wedding! But not any wedding! Oh, no! A wedding between two of the most famous characters in America, if not the world: the ghosts of Carra Castle!’

  Sir Lionel took a drink of water and Lady Trottle nodded in a pleased way. Alex had telephoned her from Granite Falls and she knew what was coming, but on the sofa, the Ladies and Headless Hal hissed with fury and surprise. What was all this?

  ‘There can scarcely be anyone who has not heard of the heroic rescue by these remarkable spooks of winsome Helen Hopgood, daughter of Hiram

  C. Hopgood, the multi-millionaire.’

  A picture of Helen now appeared on the screen and Sir Lionel went on to tell the whole story of Carra Castle, the ghosts’ journey to America, the haunting of the cinema and the adventures that had followed, while on the sofa, the Ladies and Hal gnashed their teeth in rage. Haunting a pigsty, indeed! The wretched outcasts seemed to have done very well for themselves!

  ‘Thrown together by the danger they faced,’ Sir Lionel went on, ‘love blossomed between the spirit of a Victorian governess, Lettice Amelia Spinks, and the ghost of a Viking warrior, Krok Fullbelly, who passed on in the year eight hundred and ninety eight. Ladies and gentlemen, viewers of the world, it is with great pride that we present the first ever spook wedding to be shown on television.’

  Sir Lionel now looked anxious, but after a short time Carra Castle appeared, covered in flags and bunting.

  ‘Now while we wait to go into the banqueting hall where the ceremony is to take place, we’ll just have a few words with Bernard Potterton, whose brand new micro-chemical process has enabled the ectoplasm of ghosts to show up on film.’

  The words he had with Bernard Potterton were few indeed. The inventor was cut off in the middle of trying to say tri-ethyl-hexo-something-or-other, and the banqueting hall of the castle appeared. A table had been set up with a black cloth and candles, and beside it stood a wizard called Hector Stringer who had come specially from Minnesota to perform the wedding.

  The camera moved along the row of guests, picking out Mr Hopgood, then Helen, then Alex….

  ‘And next to the courageous Laird of Carra,’ said Sir Lionel excitedly, ‘or rather, sitting at his feet – and now please watch very carefully because this animal is the first – the very first, real, genuine phantom ever to show up on TV – the hellhound known as Cyril!’

  A close-up of Cyril now flashed on to the screen. He looked surprised, twitched an ear – then gave a gigantic yawn.

  ‘Isn’t that an appealing face?’ cried Sir Lionel. ‘No wonder this amazing phantom dog, along with the other ghosts, has been signed up by a Hollywood company to make a series of spook movies!’

  ‘Can you believe it?’ hissed the Green Lady. ‘That creature to become a film star!’

  ‘But now the ceremony is about to begin,’ Sir Lionel went on, ‘and here – yes, as clear as daylight, thanks to the Potterton process – is the bridegroom, Krok Fullbelly, as he stands waiting for his bride.

  Have you ever seen a handsomer groom? And beside him, a most unusual Best Man: a Severed Hand!’

  The camera moved down to show the Hand which was holding the ring crooked in its little finger and getting ready to climb up the Viking’s breeches and give it to him at exactly the right time.

  Next there came the most stirring music – the Lament for the Dead played on the bagpipes – and the bride entered the hall.

  She came on the arm of Uncle Louse and the old vampire was not in his wheelchair, he was walking! Finding a pair of teeth had changed Uncle Louse from a pathetic creature whose head looked as though it would fall off his withered neck to a strong and upright man. It wasn’t the blood he’d had from Ratty Banks, it was knowing that he could be useful; that he mattered.

  ‘Whoops!’ Sir Lionel had struck a slight snag over the bridesmaid. Flossie wore a wreath of deadly night-shade over her curls and looked a picture, but she’d got a bit bored hanging round while Miss Spinks got dressed and now Hector Springer’s spectacles jumped off his nose and started flying round the hall like a mad insect.

  But the bride bent down and said a few quiet words and almost at once the glasses landed back on the wizard’s nose. Then she straightened the veil of cobwebs on her freshly drowned hair and very solemnly and proudly she walked up the aisle to where Krok Fullbelly stood, waiting for her to come.

  ‘Oh, how beautiful! How absolutely beautiful!’ Lady Trottle was quite overcome. ‘Dear, dear Alex, that sweet little girl and those lovely, lovely ghosts! Oh, I do like a good wedding,’ she said, turning off the telly and leaning back in her chair.

  But the spooks of Dunloon were nearly off their heads with jealousy and fury.

  ‘The show-offs!’

  ‘The sneaky, underhand creeps!’

  ‘How dare they!’

  ‘Please be quiet,’ said Lady Trottle who was getting a bit fed up with her ghosts. ‘If you can’t behave yourselves, you can go and watch television with the housekeeper.’

  At this point, Sir Ian Trottle came in to the room. He looked serious, as though he had important news, and indeed he had.

  ‘I have found someone to buy Dunloon,’ he said to his wife. ‘A very rich American.’

  On the sofa, the ghosts looked at each other. A very rich American! That meant that Dunloon would be pulled down and shipped across the sea like Carra! And that they, too, would appear on television and become famous film stars!

  ‘We’ll show them,’ said the Green lady, whirring away with her fan. ‘We’ll be much more famous than they are!’

  Little did she know what was really going to happen to Dunloon!

  Twenty-Four

  Not long after Helen’s rescue, the crooks were brought to trial. Oscar was so waterlogged he had to travel on a stretcher and Ratty was quite crazy, still barking like a dog and telling everyone he’d got rabies. All of them were found guilty, of course. Oscar got life imprisonment and Ratty was sent to a special jail for people who weren’t just wicked but mad.

  But what happened to Adolfa was worse than that.

  When they took her to prison, they made her take off her own clothes and put on prison uniform. Then they took away her locket. Adolfa had been staring into space like a zombie ever since the Hand had frozen her, but now she screamed, rushed forward, and grabbed the locket from the prison wardress. Next she tore it open, and before anyone could stop her, she had taken out Hitler’s curls and stuffed them in to her mouth.

  For a few moments, she chewed at the greasy strands – then, with a great gulp, she tried to swallow them.

  What followed was truly horrible. She coughed. She spluttered. Her face turned blue … then black; she struggled for breath. Then she fell to the ground, twitched – and lay still.

  Hitler’s curl had choked her. Adolfa Batters was dead.

  Back in Granite Falls, Mr Hopgood kept his word. He gave the castle to the people of the town and there were dances and parties to celebrate. As for the Rex Cinema, it was renamed Spook Palace and became the most famous cinema in the world.

  The winter was a busy one. While the ghosts starred in a film of the Hopgood kidnap, Mr Hopgood sold his oil wells and his department stores and his factories and saw to it that the money he was giving away would be well spent in helping people all over the world who were homeless or hungry or poor.

  Then, in the late spring, they all sailed back on the Queen Anne and settled on the beautiful island of Sethsay. Mr Hopgood had some extra rooms built on to the old farmhouse and Aunt Geraldine came to visit and play bridge with him, which he liked. The school at Errenrig had been closed because
there weren’t enough pupils, and the headmaster moved into one of the cottages on the island so that he could teach Helen and Alex, and this worked out very well.

  Being back in Scotland was a great joy to the ghosts. Mrs Fullbelly turned out to be the best wife Krok could have wished for. She never tried to clean out his ears and because she was so happy her Water Madness got much better so that for days on end she was almost dry. The Hand had become an author and was writing the story of his life, but once a week Alex rowed him over to the site of the castle and there, all day, the Hand signed autographs. Carra Point now belonged to the National Trust and he and the ghosts had become so famous that people came from far and wide to see them.

  On a beautiful autumn morning about nine months after Helen’s rescue, something unexpected happened. Alex and Helen were throwing sticks for Cyril, who had become rather plump when he was being a film star and needed exercise. Uncle Louse was sunbathing and Flossie was sitting on a rock singing songs to make the Big Blob come out of the sea and speak to her.

  ‘Good heavens,’ said Alex, looking up at the sky. ‘What on earth are those things?’

  The others followed his gaze and saw three utterly bedraggled spooks flying wearily over the water. They were so tired that they landed half in the sea and it was some time before the other ghosts realized who they were.

  ‘Why, if it isn’t the Green Lady and the Red Lady and Headless Hal,’ said Uncle Louse.

  The Dunloon ghosts were in a most sorry state. Their grand clothes were crumpled, they had black bruises on their ectoplasm, the Red Lady’s hat had been knocked sideways.

  Alex looked at them sternly. He knew how unkind they had been to his ghosts and he wasn’t at all pleased to see them.

  ‘What brings you here?’ he asked, frowning.

  ‘We’re refugees,’ said the Red Lady. ‘Outcasts. On the run.’

  ‘We’re in a terrible state,’ said the Green Lady.

  ‘We wondered if you could find a corner for us here. Anywhere would do,’ said Headless Hal. The conceited fop was a wreck, his ruffles torn, his snuff box lost.

  Then they explained what had happened at Dunloon. The rich American who had bought the house had not pulled it down and shipped it to America as the ghosts had hoped. He had turned it into a school.

  ‘But not a proper school where children sit at desks and do lessons,’ said the Green Lady, fanning herself with the few bits of broken tortoiseshell that were left in her fan. ‘Something called a progressive school.’

  ‘It’s a school where children do exactly what they like and stand on the desks and throw things at the teachers,’ explained the Red Lady.

  The children in the school had been incredibly cruel to the ghosts, putting down banana skins in the corridors and catapulting their ectoplasm, and at last the spooks could take no more.

  ‘We would be grateful for anywhere to haunt; absolutely anywhere,’ said the Green Lady.

  But Alex was still angry. ‘After the way you’ve behaved, I don’t at all see why I should let you live on Sethsay.’

  Helen, with her kind heart, couldn’t help being sorry for the poor, tattered creatures from Dunloon. ‘Why don’t you ask your ghosts what they think?’ she said to Alex.

  So he did, and his ghosts behaved beautifully. ‘We’ll let bygones be bygones,’ said Uncle Louse, and Krok said something uplifting in Viking about forgiving those who have done you wrong.

  ‘There’s a ruined boat shed on the other side of the island,’ said Alex. ‘You can live there, but don’t come near us till you have learnt to be useful and simple spooks.’

  So the Dunloon ghosts glided away and the children made their way back to the house for lunch.

  ‘Are you coming, Flossie?’ Helen called as they passed the poltergeist still sitting and singing on her rock.

  Flossie shook her head. ‘I’m waiting for the Big Blob,’ she said, for she had learnt to talk properly at last.

  ‘I do wish he’d come,’ said Helen to Alex. ‘The Blob, I mean. I hate to see her just waiting and waiting.’

  ‘Then you’re silly to wish it,’ said Alex, ‘because waiting for things is lovely. The best part, perhaps.’ ‘Like us waiting to go to Patagonia, you mean?’

  ‘Yes, like that.’

  So they left Flossie on her rock and went back to the house, and to the beautiful smell of sizzling sausages. Mr Hopgood could eat anything now that he wasn’t a millionaire, and the Hand – once you lifted him up to the frying pan – was a fantastic cook!