The Haunting of Hiram Page 5

  But there was no answer to that. They should have gone ‘pop’ but they didn’t.

  At night there were dances in the ballroom, or music playing in the smaller lounges and the ghosts liked all of it – except the Zugorsky Trio.

  The Zugorskys played slimy sorts of tunes with soppy titles which they announced in a strong foreign accent, and the ghosts simply could not bear them. It wasn’t just the gooey music that they played; it was something creepy and unpleasant about the trio themselves.

  Madame Zugorsky was huge and wore a glittering silver dress which made her look like an outsize trout. She had a head full of yellow curls which were arranged in a sort of tower and fell over her forehead, and she pounded the piano so hard with her great hands that the ghosts feared for the poor keys. On the other hand, her husband, Mr Zugorsky, was so weedy and pimply and small that when he came on to the platform with his cello, they didn’t see how he was ever going to get it between his legs. As for Carmen Zugorsky, Madame Zugorsky’s sister, she had long black hair and swayed about with her violin, closing her eyes and feeling the music in a most sickening way.

  Yet it was from the creepy Zugorskys that the ghosts learnt what was to happen to Carra castle.

  Krok had got his sea legs now and often strode round the deck, remembering the days when he had been on a longship and brought terror to the people on the shore.

  He was just passing one of the cabins on B deck when he heard voices and saw Madame Zugorsky’s blonde sausage curls framed in the open porthole.

  ‘Are you sure that’s what he’s going to do?’ Madame was saying in her deep voice, and Krok stopped, surprised, because she had quite lost her foreign accent. ‘Build the castle up again in Granite Falls and live there with his kid? In Texas?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure,’ snapped Carmen Zugorsky, tossing back her long black hair. ‘I don’t make mistakes. The foreman who’s in charge of the stuff down in the hold knew all about it.’

  Krok moved forwards, desperately excited.

  ‘If we wait till he’s got it built up it should be a walkover.’ It was still Carmen talking and she too had dropped her foreign accent. ‘The place he’s in now is worse than Fort Knox to get into.’

  ‘But we can’t wait that long,’ squeaked weedy Mr Zugorsky. ‘It’ll take ages to build up a bloomin’ castle.’

  ‘We can wait exactly as long as it takes to do a proper job,’ said Carmen silkily. She hadn’t raised her voice, but the little man backed away and banged his behind on his cello case.

  ‘EEEKH! AAGH!’ The sudden screams came from Madame Zugorsky. She was clutching her huge bosom with one hand; the other pointed at the deck. ‘A b … beard … hanging in the air … a bed reared … I mean a red beard!’ Her teeth were chattering and she was the colour of cottage cheese.

  Krok turned round to see what she had seen, but there was nobody behind him. Then he realized that he had been careless. A ghost that wants to stay invisible needs to keep his mind on what he’s doing and he had been too excited by what he had heard to pay attention. Quickly, he vanished. At the same time the porthole was slammed shut. But Krok had heard enough. Carra was to be rebuilt, its proud towers reaching for the sky! Even if they themselves could no longer haunt the castle they would be able to watch over their old home. And surely, somehow, they would find a way of getting a message back to Alex in Scotland. Mr Hopgood would be certain to keep in touch with the boy. Once Alex knew what was happening to them he would know what to do. Alex knew everything!

  Happier since he had been since they left Carra, Krok went off to find the others and give them the good news.

  Eight

  Helen had been waiting all afternoon for the sound of her father’s car. He had gone to the airport to fetch Alex and she was getting more and more nervous. Not about herself – there was nothing to be done about her. Alex, with his piercing eyes and his sunburnt knees wasn’t going to waste two minutes on her, she knew that, but she had thought he might like the haggis.

  Helen had told the cook what a haggis was and though Maria hadn’t really believed her she had gone to the butcher and told him. In fact, quite a lot of people in Granite Falls had had good ideas about what went into a haggis. The garage attendant said that bits of windpipe were important and the ironmonger (whose grandmother came from Skye) said he remembered her mentioning minced arteries – those thick white ones that took blood from the heart.

  Maria had worked hard all day, chopping and stuffing and steaming, but it was difficult for Helen to believe that anything ought to make the kind of smell that was coming from the kitchen. Not that it was any good blaming Maria. She came from Puerto Rico and you can’t get much further from Scotland than that.

  If Helen was feeling nervous about meeting Alex, Alex wasn’t exactly looking forward to meeting Helen. They had stopped off at the Hopgood Building on the way from the airport and the way everyone bowed and scraped to Mr Hopgood had made Alex realize just how rich and important he was. The daughter of a man like that would be thoroughly spoilt and used to ordering everyone about. Not that he cared, really – she’d better not try bossing him about; but perhaps it was a pity that the baby he’d sat next to on the aeroplane had done quite so much finger painting with its spinach on his jeans.

  Otherwise, though, Alex liked Texas: the warm sun, the wide cars cruising like ships along the freeways, the flowering thorn trees. Granite Falls was a two-hour drive away from Houston in open countryside and wherever you looked you seemed to be able to see for miles and miles and miles.

  But when they drew up outside the gates of Green Meadows, Alex was shocked. Getting out of Wormwood Scrubs couldn’t have been more difficult than getting in to Mr Hopgood’s home. It was a full five minutes before the dogs stopped barking and the buzzers stopped buzzing and the electronically operated gates lifted to let them through. Being a millionaire, it seemed to Alex, was no joke.

  But at last they drove between smooth green lawns watered by sprinklers and trim flower beds, and drew up at the front door. A small girl with long dark hair was waiting at the top of the steps

  –and when she saw Alex she looked, for some reason, terribly surprised.

  Two hours later, they sat at supper in the luxurious dining room with its beautiful paintings and embroidered rugs.

  Mr Hopgood couldn’t eat much because of his acid stomach, but the food so far had been delicious. They’d had big, juicy prawns cooked in a creamy sauce and cornbread with parsley butter – and the second course looked as though it was going to be just as nice. Maria, the cook, who had a gold tooth and a beaming smile, had brought in a dish of tomatoes and peppers and a bowl of fluffy rice.

  But the meat which went with this seemed to be odd. On a big plate in the middle of the table lay something which looked like a football which had suddenly come out in awful boils.

  Still, Alex wouldn’t have dreamt of refusing it. Perhaps it was some special American dish like hominy grits, which he had read about though no one had been able to tell him what it was. He put a forkful in his mouth and somehow managed to keep it there. A MacBuff of Carra didn’t spit things out – not when he was a guest in someone’s house.

  ‘Is it all right?’ asked Helen anxiously. ‘Does it taste nice?’

  She had been too shy to say much when Alex came, and then he had gone to his room to unpack, so that he hadn’t seen much of her yet, but it obviously mattered to her that he liked this truly fiendish meat.

  Alex nodded and gulped down what seemed to be a mangled tapeworm mixed with a piece of shredded rubber glove. ‘Does it have a name?’ he asked politely. ‘I mean, is it a Texan national dish?’

  Helen looked at him in amazement. Then suddenly she began to laugh. She laughed so much that it seemed as if she would fall off her chair.

  ‘It’s … a … haggis,’ she managed to splutter. ‘At least, we thought it was!’

  ‘Oh!’

  Alex’s mouth began to twitch; then he too began to laugh and presentl
y it all came out – how Helen had thought he would be six foot tall with piercing eyes, and how he had thought she would shout and order people about and sneer at his jeans.

  After that, Helen forgot her shyness and when supper was over she showed him her books.

  ‘Oh, you’ve got Land of the Tempest,’ Alex said excitedly. ‘That’s a marvellous book, isn’t it? That’s where I’m going first of all – to Patagonia. To find the giant sloth. I’m sure it’s not extinct!’

  ‘I’m sure too,’ said Helen. ‘Why should it be? After all, when Prichard went in 1902 they’d just found some sloth hairs in a cave. Why should it be extinct? Will you go to the West Coast? Where there are humming birds and parrots right up to the snow line?’

  ‘Yes, I will.’ Alex was perfectly confident. ‘I want to go to the places that Darwin went to in the Beagle. The weather’s the trouble, but if one has proper equipment it’ll be all right.’

  ‘You’re so lucky!’ Helen’s head rested on her hand like in the photograph that Alex had seen and her voice was very wistful. ‘I’d give anything in the world to go to places like that.’

  ‘Well, why don’t you?’ Alex was studying a map in the book, seeing in his mind the forests and the glaciers and the fjords with icebergs like fantastic castles floating on the water.

  ‘How can I?’ Helen’s voice was very low and she touched, with a forlorn gesture, her weak leg.

  Alex thought she was being stupid and he said so.

  ‘Your leg’s bound to get better. Everything gets stronger as you get older, so why not your leg? Anyway in most of those places you don’t have to walk; you can go by canoe – or on a mule.’ Then he said something that he hadn’t meant to say, it just came out. ‘You could come on my expedition if you like, when I’ve got it ready. If you wanted to.’

  Helen didn’t say anything – not a word – but from that moment on she gave up the idea that she was soon going to die. There were far more interesting things to think about, now, than that!

  The following morning, Mr Hopgood took Alex to see the site on which he was going to build the castle. Alex had expected them to drive to a place far out in the country; perhaps a desert with prickly pears and a view of the hills like in a Western. He’d thought that Carra would look very good in a place like that. But Mr Hopgood had decided to rebuild the castle in the middle of Granite Falls where the people could be proud of it, and where there were shops and good roads. A few years earlier, he’d bought a large field between the Rex Cinema and the Skyway Motel, thinking he might build a factory on it. It was this field that he had chosen for Carra, and now he pointed out to Alex all the advantages: the level ground, the good drainage and a main road handy so that he could get to his office in Houston without delay.

  ‘You see, I reckon life’s pretty lonely for Helen out where we are. You have to be so careful about security. But here in town there’ll be more company for her.’

  Alex saw the sense of this. After all, there was no reason why one shouldn’t have a castle between a cinema and a hotel, with a garage across the road.

  ‘The Queen Anne docks tomorrow,’ said Mr Hopgood. ‘So the lorries should be here within the week – and then we’ll engage the workmen and put the skids under them. I’ve allowed two months for the rebuilding. We’ll have the Opening Ball the week before Christmas.’

  ‘As soon as that?’ Alex was impressed.

  Mr Hopgood nodded. ‘What I do, I do.’

  Nine

  On the day before the Queen Anne was due in New York, Flossie saw something that surprised her. Like all small children, she was very curious and she liked nothing better than to float through the cabins as the ladies and gentlemen inside them were cleaning their teeth and preparing to go to bed.

  She was just passing through the Zugorsky’s cabin on B deck when she stopped and her little mouth dropped open.

  Madame Zugorsky was standing in the middle of the floor. She had wriggled out of her silver fish scale dress, which had fallen to the ground. Now, she lifted her petticoat over her head and stood there in her pants and bra. Her legs were the hairiest Flossie had ever seen and her knees were like doorknobs.

  It was the next part, though, that was so strange. Madame Zugorsky took off her bra – and her bosom came off with it! Flossie couldn’t believe her eyes, but it was so. Madame Zugorsky’s bosom now lay on the dressing table – and what was left on her was just a flat place covered with curly hair.

  Flossie was so amazed that she glided straight back to Miss Spinks and told her what she had seen, but the governess only told her not to be rude.

  ‘A lot of ladies need a little help in front,’ said Miss Spinks, sighing, for she herself was very flatchested. ‘Padding is not at all unusual.’

  But Flossie said it wasn’t padding, it was all of it. No one, however, listened to the little girl, though she was perfectly correct and had made a most important discovery.

  The pianist of the Zugorsky trio was, in fact, a man.

  The following morning, they came into harbour.

  ‘Now, remember,’ urged Krok, ‘we must keep right on top of the stones down in the hold. If we get separated from the castle when they come to unload, we’re lost.’

  But the ghosts couldn’t resist gliding up on deck for a quick look at New York’s famous skyscrapers and the huge Statue of Liberty with its bronze arm lifted, welcoming the tired people who came from Europe.

  ‘Ah, how beautiful,’ sighed Miss Spinks, and all around them the American passengers dabbed their eyes and sniffed because they were coming home.

  The poltergeist, though, did not care in the least about the view. She stood by the rails, her fierce little eyebrows drawn together in a scowl and her green eyes searching the muddy water.

  Flossie was looking for the Blob.

  From the moment that the creature had surfaced and stared with its bulging eyes at the ship, Flossie had loved it. All through the voyage she had longed for it to come again so that she could talk to it and touch its sinister suckers and give it things to eat.

  She’d waited and waited and now they were leaving the ship and still it hadn’t come.

  ‘Blob?’ called Flossie in her high, piping voice. ‘Are you there, Blob?’

  ‘Shh!’ The governess looked round anxiously. The ghosts were all invisible, of course, but Flossie’s voice carried a long way.

  Saying ‘Shh!’ to a poltergeist is a mistake. Flossie’s pearly teeth ground together, she tugged her left ear – and the next moment, every single hat on the head of every passenger rose into the air, did a somersault and flew overboard.

  But before the amazed passengers could find out what had happened, the sound of the ship’s engines died away and the gangways were lowered.

  They had arrived.

  The Zugorsky trio left the Queen Anne along with the other passengers and were driven to a hotel room in Manhattan.

  There a number of things happened.

  First, Madame Zugorsky took off her high-heeled shoes and her pearls and her dress. Then she took off her wig. Lastly, she took off her petticoat and the bra with the two pink balloons that Flossie had seen and put them on the dressing table.

  What was left now was a heftily built man in his underpants. He had a cropped head of blonde hair, pale blue eyes and almost colourless eyelashes. His name was Oscar Pickering, but he was also known as the Hulk or the Albino, and he was as brutal and thick-headed a thug as you could imagine.

  Since Madame Zugorsky was a man, it follows that weedy little Mr Zugorsky was not her husband. In fact, Mr Zugorsky, who was now wriggling out of his tight black shoes, was a petty crook called Ratty Banks who’d begun to steal almost before he could walk.

  Meanwhile Carmen Zugorsky was tugging at her long black hair, which came off suddenly, leaving her with a short, grizzled crop like an old-fashioned school marm’s. Then she wiped off her heavy make-up, took out her contact lenses, and put on a pair of spectacles with thin steel rims.

 
The woman who now stood peering at herself in the mirror looked like a respectable middle-aged spinster, but of the three of them she was by far the most dangerous and the one the police wanted to catch most of all.

  ‘Well, we made it,’ said Oscar the Hulk, fingering his scar. It was a jagged scar on his forehead and he told people he’d got it in a fight outside a pub, but actually it had been made by a small girl called Simonetta Briggs who had hit him with a lemonade bottle in the school yard because he kicked her brother’s dog.

  The woman by the mirror turned. ‘What do you mean, we’ve made it?’ she snapped. ‘We’ve not begun. We have to get to Granite Falls, we have to make contact with the Bulgoni Brothers, we have to infiltrate the house….’

  ‘All right, all right. I only said—’

  ‘Well, don’t. Don’t say anything. I don’t want to hear from you,’ she spat, and the Hulk shut his mouth.

  Oscar had had a good start in life. His parents were respectable butchers who sent him to an expensive school and paid for piano lessons and always saw that he was nicely dressed.

  The bad streak in Oscar came from inside him. He began by stealing cats and dogs off the street and selling them to be minced up for pet food. By the time he was fifteen, he had stolen a van and was rounding up wild ponies from the New Forest and getting fifty pounds a piece from the knackers for their carcases. He was eighteen when he killed his first man – a gamekeeper whom he strangled with his bare hands when the man tried to stop him dragging a mare away from her foal.

  After that, Oscar was on the run, but the police never caught up with him – perhaps because the picture they put out of him as a Wanted Man looked so peculiar that no one could believe he was real. And yet it was a good likeness; the Hulk did have a flat nose, fat lips and eyes like frozen frogspawn.

  As for Ratty, he’d been the kind of boy that starts by stealing his school mates’ pencils and rubbers and goes on to steal their bicycles and cars. People had done their best for Ratty – in one borstal they’d even taught him to play the cello – but he was never out of prison for long.