The Haunting of Hiram Read online

  This ancient ghost had been born in distant Transylvania, the son of a poor woman who sent him to the local castle to learn to be a cook. Little Stanislaus soon learnt to bake and roast and boil – and he learnt, too, to be a vampire. Everyone there sucked blood at night: it was the thing to do just as in other places it is done to smoke cigarettes. (Actually it is far healthier to be a vampire than a smoker because blood is full of iron which is good for you, whereas cigarettes are full of nicotine and tar which aren’t.)

  Stanislaus had risen to be Head Cook when the ninth MacBuff, who was doing a Grand Tour of Europe, came to visit the castle bringing his niece, Henny. Henny MacBuff was forty years old at the time, with piggy eyes and a behind so large that she walked through doors sideways. No one thought she would ever find a husband but she took one look at Stanislaus’s black moustache and pale, pointed ears and insisted on marrying him and taking him back to Scotland.

  At Carra, Stanislaus (whom they named ‘Louse’, of course) gave up being a vampire. His teeth were giving up in any case and he settled down to be a good husband to Henny, who was as kind as she was ugly. But after Henny died, life became difficult for him. The new mistress of Carra was a hard woman and as he grew older and feebler, Uncle Louse was just shoved into corners and forgotten. Then when he was ninety-nine years old and couldn’t see too well he ran over his own false teeth, crunching them to smithereens under the wheels of his chair. They had been a present from Henny before she died and after that the old man just lost the will to live. One day he simply drove his wheelchair over the cliff and became a ghost.

  There were two more phantoms to come and Alex waited patiently, for he wanted to speak to all the ghosts at once.

  Little Flossie could be heard before she came. A suit of armour crashed to the ground, and then there was the thump of overturning stools, for Carra’s youngest ghost was a poltergeist.

  Flossie was born at the time when Good Queen Anne was on the throne and she’d been a pretty child with blonde curls, a snub nose and masses of freckles. But Flossie was born angry. Almost everything annoyed her. She hated porridge and roast beef and milk, and in particular she hated people. She bit her nursemaid in the stomach when she sang nursery rhymes and she dropped her baby brother in the earth closet because he looked silly.

  Her parents were very much upset by all this and when Flossie was five years old they took her to a priest who said she was possessed by a devil.

  ‘You should put her face downwards on the floor,’ he said, ‘and jump on her back till the devil comes out of her mouth.’

  However, before her parents could do this awful thing, Flossie got whooping cough and died.

  The last of Carra’s ghosts was a dog.

  Some dogs can be heard coming by their excited barks or their tails thumping against a door. But when Cyril came, it was the sound of his stomach brushing softly along the rough stone floors that one heard: a gentle sound like the wind in the summer trees or a wavelet leaving a sandy shore.

  He was a black dog with a large, whiskery, square-muzzled head; big saucer eyes which were red but full of soul; long eyelashes and a forked and fiery tongue. So far so good: all hellhounds look like that. But between his head and his tail there was a long, long body – you could have put four dachshunds end to end between the front of Cyril and the back. To carry such a body properly one would need at least eight legs, but Cyril had only four, and short ones at that, so that it was not surprising that his backbone drooped, and his sagging stomach wandered along the ground like a hairy Hoover. The ‘phantom drainpipe’, the butler called him, which was a good description, but unkind.

  Hundreds of years ago, Cyril had had a different name and been a proper hellhound, helping Cerberus, the famous three-headed dog, to guard the gates of the Underworld. Cyril had snapped and growled with the best of them, but he just wasn’t built for that kind of work. So the Chief Devil sent him out into the world above to be a phantom dog and run with the Wild Hunt, that dreaded band of demon hounds who race through the sky, bringing doom and destruction to all who see them.

  But the Wild Hunt went very fast, and one day Alex’s great-great-great grandmother (who was then young and beautiful) found the dog whimpering outside the portcullis, licking his poor, sore legs and obviously unable to go any further.

  So she had taken him in and given him the name she would have given to her new baby if it had been a boy (but it wasn’t), and Cyril had haunted Carra ever since.

  They were all here now. Time to begin.

  ‘Ghosts of Carra,’ said Alex, clearing his throat, ‘I bring you grave news.’

  They came closer. Uncle Louse jammed his ear-trumpet into his whiskery ear. Miss Spinks stopped dabbing at one webbed foot with the hem of her skirt and lifted her pale, sad face attentively. Krok Fullbelly put down his axe.

  Alex had prepared a speech, but now he found he couldn’t go on. A lump came into his throat and he had to shut his eyes to keep in the sudden tears.

  Some children are brought up by their parents, some are sent away to boarding school so that it is their teachers who help them to grow up. But Alex had been brought up largely by his ghosts.

  Being a baby can be horribly boring. Lying in a pram waiting for someone to come and change your nappy; being plonked into a high chair while some ham-fisted person spoons pulp into your mouth…. But Alex had never been bored. Skeletal fingers had rocked his cradle, ghostly wheelchairs had galloped over his pram. Miss Spinks had dripped past him, festooning his pillow with duckweed, and when he was shut like a prisoner in his playpen Flossie had come and hurled his toys round his nursery till he fell over from laughing. Krok Fullbelly had been like a father to the orphaned boy: as for dogs – Alex had never wanted another dog, not after Cyril.

  And it was these ghosts that he was going to send away! No, thought Alex wretchedly, I can’t … it’s impossible.

  But he had given his word to Mr Hopgood. He had promised – and with a great effort he said:

  ‘The Castle has been sold. To a gentleman from America.’

  The ghosts digested this. None of them had been to America, but from haunting the library and the butler’s black and white television set, they thought they knew about it and there was talk of cowboys and Indians and gangsters and Chicago.

  ‘But you won’t go away?’ asked Krok. Like so many large, strong people he was very tenderhearted.

  ‘I’ll be staying nearby,’ Alex said. ‘The headmaster at Errenrigg has offered me a room in his house during the term. But the thing is… Mr Hopgood has a little daughter. She was ill with polio and she’s delicate and he won’t take any risks with her.’

  ‘What sort of risks?’ asked Miss Spinks.

  ‘Well, being frightened. By seeing ghosts, for example. Like you.’

  At first the thought that they were frightening pleased the ghosts. Krok put on his helmet and tipped it over one eye, and Uncle Louse gave a gleeful chuckle. But then, one by one, they became worried.

  ‘You mean we would have to be invisible all the time?’ asked Krok.

  Alex shook his head. ‘That wouldn’t do, I’m afraid. You couldn’t expect Cyril to understand – and Flossie’s very young. No, it’s worse than that. I’m afraid I … I have to ask you to go and live somewhere else.’

  The silence that fell now was a terrible one. Then Miss Spinks gave a moan and covered her face and Uncle Louse took out his ear-trumpet and poked at it with shaking fingers, not able to believe he had heard what he had heard.

  ‘Somewhere else?’ repeated Krok in his deep Viking voice. ‘How can we go somewhere else? This is our home!’

  ‘It’s my home too,’ said Alex. ‘But I’m going. I have to. Carra’s got to be looked after properly and if someone else can do it we have to help them.’

  ‘Then we’ll come with you,’ declared Krok, and little Flossie nodded and sent a couple of mousetraps scudding across the floor.

  ‘I wish you could. But the headmaster’s house really
wouldn’t do. It’s just a small semi-detached; you’d be miserable there. But I know where you can go and where I can come and see you quite often because my mother’s cousin still lives there.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Dunloon,’ said Alex. ‘Dunloon Hall, down in Northumberland.’

  The ghosts stared at him and Cyril, who sensed that all was not as it should be, lifted his head from Alex’s feet and howled.

  ‘That trumpery chocolate box place?’ Uncle Louse was so upset that he drove his wheelchair right through Alex. ‘Why it’s not even five hundred years old!’

  ‘And it’s over the border! It’s in England!’ said Krok. Being a Viking, he wasn’t actually Scottish at all, but he often felt Scottish.

  ‘Ghosts of Carra!’ said Alex, making a last desperate effort because he was at the end of his tether. ‘This is a chance to do something nobler than you have ever done before. Who knows but if you do it, you may be released from the eternal torment of haunting and be summoned back to your home in the skies. Or something. My Aunt Geraldine is getting old. Her chest wheezes. She wants to go and live in Torquay. The butler wants to join his brother. The housemaid—’

  Krok put up a hairy hand like a policeman.

  ‘Please understand, Oh Laird of Carra,’ he rumbled, ‘that no one here gives a fig – or a button or a toenail – for the butler. Or the housemaid.’

  ‘Or your Aunt Geraldine,’ put in Miss Spinks. ‘All that fuss just because I made a puddle on the pillow.’

  ‘For none of these people would we dream of stirring from our beloved home,’ Krok went on, looking longingly at the cobwebs, the bat droppings, the pile of rusty thumbscrews on the floor. ‘In fact we could see them all roasted slowly on a spit and not lose a minute’s haunting. No, if … if we agreed to go somewhere else we would be doing it only for—’

  He paused and Alex could see a flush spreading through his ectoplasm, turning his beard to the rich red it had been when he was alive.

  ‘For what?’ he asked.

  ‘For you,’ said Krok Fullbelly.

  And then he vanished and, one by one, the ghosts of Carra followed suit.

  Three

  Dunloon was quite different from Carra Castle. It was extremely grand, almost a palace, with statues of gods and goddesses on the terrace and a deer park – and it was a long way from the sea.

  Inside, there were salons crammed with satin chairs, and clocks with marble people lying on top of them, and glass cases holding things which were valuable, but useless, like snuff boxes or the bedsock that Charles the First had worn before they chopped off his head.

  Dunloon belonged to Sir Ian Trottle, a man so stuck up and snooty that he once spent a whole day sitting on the lavatory because he was too proud to shout for loo paper. It was his wife, Lady Trottle, who was the cousin of Alex’s mother. She was silly but good-natured and had always remembered Alex’s birthday and sent a present at Christmas.

  What Alex hadn’t known (because he hadn’t stayed there since he was very small) was what a snobbish lot the Dunloon ghosts were.

  There is a kind of spook that glides about in a silken crinoline and high heels (if it’s a woman) or velvet pants and a powdered wig (if it’s a man). Over-dressed phantoms like these are not usually up to much except laying a clammy hand on someone’s pillow or giving a genteel moan behind the panelling – and it is feeble nonsense like this which gives haunting a bad name.

  The Dunloon ghosts were like that. There was a Green Lady who carried a jewelled fan and spent hours arranging beauty spots on her ectoplasm and her sister, who was a Red Lady, and haunted in a hat decorated with ostrich feathers. And there was a male ghost called Handsome Hal who wasn’t handsome at all, but a silly fop whose idea of frightening people was to leave an artistic bloodstain beside their bed.

  Alex had telephoned Lady Trottle and explained about his ghosts. She had said, ‘Of course you can send them, dear,’ and had even remembered to leave a message in stinkhorn juice on the floorboards of the Long Gallery. But were the Dunloon ghosts pleased that they were going to have visitors? They were not!

  ‘It’s abominable, having that uncouth set of spooks foisted on us,’ drawled Handsome Hal, fiddling with his cravat.

  ‘That awful old man,’ said the Green Lady, setting up a nasty draught with her fan. ‘I mean, a vampire is one thing, but a cook!’

  ‘We must think of it as a duty,’ said the Red Lady, who was older than the others and liked to tell them what to do. ‘After all, poor Lady Trottle’s mother had to have evacuees during the war. Dreadful children with lice and cockney accents. Only in the servants’ hall, of course.’

  ‘I say, that’s an idea,’ said Hal, looking more cheerful. ‘We could keep them in the servants’ hall. Not let them haunt above stairs at all?’

  ‘We shall have to see,’ said the Red Lady. ‘Just as long as they don’t bring any animals. Animals in the house I cannot abide!’

  The Carra ghosts left their home on a misty night at the end of June.

  Never had the castle looked more beautiful. The seabird droppings glistened white against the slimy stones; ravens cawed on the battlements. Everyone was there to see them go: the rat which lived behind the oak chest in the East Tower, a pair of bats, mother and son, who had stayed behind when the others went to feed. Rows of cockroaches were lined up to say goodbye; the spiders swayed from their threads in sympathy, and a wet friend of Miss Spinks – a river spirit – had come out of the water and sat crying and dripping on a stool.

  As always before a journey there were many things to decide. Should Uncle Louse travel with his head off, which was safer, or with his head on, which would look better when he arrived at Dunloon? Should Cyril be made to wear a collar, which he hated; did Krok need his axe and his sword?

  Alex was everywhere, lending a hand and giving comfort. It was he who helped Miss Spinks tie up her feet in flannel because she was shy about them being webbed and it was he who found Flossie’s thighbone, which had rolled behind the coal scuttle. (Most young children have something they have to hold before they can go to sleep; a teddy bear, perhaps, or a woolly blanket. With Flossie it was the thighbone of a dead sheep covered in dark green mould, and nothing else would do.)

  But at last the parting could be put off no longer. It was a moment so awful that no one could believe it was really happening. Ghosts that are needed and loved are not just transparent splodges that pass through doors and shriek and clank. Their ectoplasm grows firm and strong; they can eat, and they can think and feel as deeply as people who are real.

  Since Alex was left an orphan the ghosts of Carra had shared his life and they did not see how they could bear to go away.

  Again it was Alex who knew what to do. With steady steps he climbed the stairs to the battlements and in a firm, clear voice he said:

  ‘Farewell, ye Ghosts of Carra and may the Spirits of Doom and Darkness go with you on your way.’

  Then he stood to attention and saluted. The ghosts, seeing how brave he was (though deathly pale), became brave also, and one by one they glided away over the ramparts and turned towards the south.

  Everything would have been all right if it hadn’t been for Cyril. Cyril, though a hellhound, was only a dog, and had not understood exactly what was going on. He thought they were just going for a little evening glide, for how could anyone expect him to leave Alex? And after bounding through the sky for a mile, the hellhound turned round and raced back, his little legs going like pistons, to land with a thump on Alex’s feet and lick him with his fiery tongue and make him see that all was well.

  So it all had to be done again – saying goodbye – and this time Alex could not manage to be brave. Long after Cyril’s lead had been hitched to the wheelchair and his howls had died away, Alex just sat there as still as stone – and even the ravens and the screech owls respected his sorrow and let him be.

  The next day the servants left and the day after that Alex took his Aunt Geraldine to
Torquay.

  Carra was now empty and on the first day of July, just as he had said he would, Mr Hopgood came.

  Dunloon had no less than one hundred rooms so it should have been easy enough for the Dunloon ghosts to leave their visitors in peace.

  But they didn’t. All day long, the Red Lady and the Green Lady, glaring like angry traffic lights, picked on the newcomers and nagged while the namby-pamby Hal with his snuff and his ruffles sneered and drawled.

  They didn’t like Krok’s table manners. He belched, they said, and he ate with his hands and this was perfectly true. A Viking who drank genteelly from a cup with his little finger crooked round the handle wouldn’t have lasted very long, and not only the Northmen but the Chinese think belching is a polite way of showing that you have enjoyed your food.

  ‘And those disgusting beetles in your beard,’ said the Red Lady. ‘Really, you might at least comb them out.’

  But Krok had always had beetles in his beard. They had been there so long that they had passed on and become little phantoms and Krok wouldn’t have dreamt of disturbing them. The braver a man is – and Krok had been very brave – the less he will bully little creatures who cannot defend themselves.

  Uncle Louse, of course, was fair game for the toffee-nosed Ladies. They jeered because he mumbled without his teeth and spoke in a Transylvanian accent; they hooted with laughter when he got muddled and put his pipe into his ear and tried to smoke his ear-trumpet.

  ‘The old fool ought to be kept out of sight of decent people,’ said the Green Lady, making sure that Uncle Louse would hear and be hurt by her words – and as early as four o’clock in the afternoon they wanted to know if it wasn’t Flossie’s bedtime.

  Miss Spinks felt their unkindness particularly. She had never got over the fact that Rory MacBuff had jumped out of the window rather than hold her in his arms, and when people were unfriendly, her Water Madness got much worse. One day she got into the bath which a housemaid had been running for Sir Ian Trottle in his private bathroom. When the maid came back to turn off the water and found a grey governess with long hair sitting in the tub, she screamed the place down.