The Haunting of Hiram Read online

  But the mastermind, and the person that really mattered, was the woman.

  She’d been christened Janet Batters and she was one of seven sisters whose mother brought them up to play in a band called The Beautiful Batters. The band was a success, but Janet never fitted in. She was odd from the start. Then one day she found a picture of Adolf Hitler in a magazine with his moustache and his arm stretched out in a Nazi salute.

  Janet thought he was wonderful. She liked the dictator’s slicked-down hair and his mad, round eyes and when she read about what he’d done, trying to conquer the world and exterminate the people he didn’t like, she thought he seemed exactly like a god.

  So she changed her name from Janet to Adolfa and bought a locket with a swastika engraved on it. Inside she put two greasy black curls which an antique dealer had told her had been cut off Hitler’s head when he was a baby. (He was lying, of course, but Adolfa was too far gone to notice.)

  Next she joined something called CREEP. CREEP stood for the Council for the Re-Education of the English People. The loonies who belonged to it wanted Britain to be run like a police state with everyone marching about in uniforms and being flogged if they didn’t obey the rules. CREEP wanted to get rid of dogs because they made a mess and they wanted to get rid of the Queen because she kept talking about peace and goodwill whereas what CREEP wanted was a blood-thirsty war to make Britain great. (They thought that wars were good for people.) There were a lot of other things that CREEP wanted to get rid of: old people because they weren’t any use, and pop concerts, and vegetarians. And like all people with mad ideas they started by throwing bombs.

  Adolfa was very good at this. She didn’t mind if children were blinded or innocent people had their legs blown off. But throwing bombs is expensive, and soon Adolfa was promoted to go and raise more money.

  This was the reason she had come to America with her accomplices. For one of the ways of raising money is by kidnapping the children of rich people and holding them to ransom.

  And who was richer, or loved his daughter more, than Hiram C. Hopgood of Granite Falls?

  Ten

  Lorries had been arriving all day, unloading the square stones and round stones and pillars that had been Carra Castle. Then they drove away; darkness fell and the night-watchman who guarded the site lit his brazier and settled down in his hut by the road.

  For an hour the heap of stones was silent. Then there was a rustle, a black muzzle appeared, and Cyril gave a short bark which was at once hushed as a hairy hand came down on the dog’s head.

  But Cyril had woken the other ghosts. Stiff, their ectoplasm badly crumpled after the long journey, they rose and looked about them.

  ‘Where are we?’ asked Miss Spinks.

  ‘Texas,’ said Krok. ‘It must be.’

  They gazed at Texas, which seemed to be a large field with a building on either side and a petrol station opposite.

  ‘Stars!’ said Flossie, tilting her head upwards and looking quite pleased for once.

  But what she was gazing at were not stars. A necklace of lights was strung along the front of the Skyway Motel on their left. On the right, a winking blue crown hung on the roof of the Rex Cinema.

  The ghosts were travel-weary and confused. The thought that they were now American ghosts was hard to grasp.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Uncle Louse wanted to know. ‘Do we just go on haunting these stones or what?’

  Krok frowned. ‘No, that wouldn’t be right. We promised Alex we wouldn’t haunt the castle. We must find somewhere else, but close enough to keep watch.’

  But Flossie couldn’t take her eyes off the blue crown with the lights that came on and off. ‘Is it a palace?’ she asked.

  ‘A kind of palace,’ said Krok, who knew things. ‘A picture palace. They call it a cinema too.’

  ‘Flossie wants to go into the palace,’ said the poltergeist.

  ‘Not ‘‘ Flossie wants’’,’ said Miss Spinks wearily. ‘‘ ‘I want’’. Or rather, ‘‘ please may I—’’ ’

  It was at this moment that there came from the Rex Cinema the most delicious noise. A bloodcurdling scream, followed by hollow laughter … and then another scream even more bloodcurdling than the last.

  The ghosts looked at each other and smiled. It was years since they had heard such a pleasant sound. Did it mean perhaps that there were other hideous phantoms nearby? That they might, here in America, find friends?

  ‘We’ll go and have a look,’ decided Krok.

  So they made themselves invisible again and calling Cyril to heel they glided across the car park and into the cinema itself.

  Inside it was dark, but far from empty. Rows and rows of people sat with their faces tilted upwards at the screen – and on the screen itself were the loveliest things you could imagine!

  First the ghosts saw an overgrown grave in a churchyard. Then, rising from the grave … a vampire! A crazed vampire in human form with great long teeth and an evil leer!

  By great good luck they had come in at the end of a horror film!

  Uncle Louse couldn’t take his eyes off the screen. It might have been him in his younger days – the mad vampire now flitting in through the lighted window of a house … entering the bedroom, sinking his teeth into the throat of the beautiful girl who lay there fast asleep.

  ‘Aaagh!’ screeched the girl, waking up, and leapt from the bed to escape the frightful creature. But the vampire was faster than she was … it raced after her … it pinned her against the wall.

  ‘That’s me!’ whispered Uncle Louse, terribly excited. ‘The spit and image while I still had my teeth!’ (This wasn’t quite true. All Uncle Louse had done was take a sip or two from the maids as they slept, and they were strong, sensible girls who mostly didn’t even wake up. But when you are old you remember things differently.)

  Only Cyril wasn’t staring at the screen and that was because he had found something better – feet! Cyril liked many things: drains and bones and sausages, but there was nothing he liked better than hot and richly scented human feet. And here were rows and rows of them – feet smelling of horse dung and feet smelling of dust … feet smelling of gravy, and other, lesser dogs – and feet just smelling truly and deeply of feet. Up and down the rows went Cyril, his nostrils flaring, while the people just sat there and never knew that a hellhound had passed them by.

  But on the screen, things were going badly for the poor vampire. Some dreary detectives had come and dangled garlic in front of its nose, making it go all shivery and pale, and then they drove a stake through its heart and left it there, twitching. Uncle Louse was terribly upset, but films do sometimes end sadly, and there is nothing to be done. The silly woman that the vampire had been feeding on kissed one of the detectives and then the curtains swished together and all Cyril’s interesting feet started to move towards the door. Next came the usherettes to make sure that nothing was left on the seats, and then a man put bars across the exits and turned out the lights, leaving the Rex Cinema dark, but not deserted.

  It was then that Krok had his good idea.

  ‘You know, I think we could do worse than stay here for the time being. The walls are strong, there’s no chance of a sudden attack,’ he said, for Vikings are always worried about being ambushed in their sleep. ‘We’d be able to keep an eye on the castle, and there’s plenty of room to stretch out between the seats and no one to worry us.’

  ‘But where could I drown myself?’ asked Miss Spinks, who had got very dry on the journey.

  ‘There’ll be basins in the cloakroom,’ said Krok. ‘Go and have a look.’

  Miss Spinks drifted off and came back looking much more cheerful, with dripping hair.

  ‘Yes, you’re right. There are basins and a drinking fountain too.’

  Uncle Louse was still upset about the vampire, but he too agreed – and so it was that the Rex Cinema became the ghosts’ new home.

  Eleven

  Alex was enjoying himself at Green Meadows. Mr Hopgood cou
ldn’t have been kinder and Alex found himself liking and respecting Helen more with every day that passed. So it annoyed him the way Nurse Boniface bullied her and the way the whole house seemed to be turned into a kind of hospital.

  ‘Why do you let them feed you all those pills?’ asked Alex. ‘Red pills, green pills, blue pills – your poor stomach; it must be like a jumble sale in there.’

  Helen smiled, but her dark eyes were troubled. ‘They’re supposed to make me better.’

  ‘Better from what? You’re not ill. Why don’t you just refuse to take them? Are you scared of Nurse Boniface?’

  ‘Well, she’s kind of fierce. But I suppose what I’m scared of more is upsetting my father. She only does what he tells her.’

  ‘Look, what your father wants is for you to get strong. Why don’t you chuck the things away for a week, then if you get worse you’ll know the pills have done you good and I’ll eat humble pie.’

  ‘Or a haggis?’ said Helen, grinning.

  Helen couldn’t throw all the pills away because often Nurse Boniface stood over her to see if she swallowed them, but whenever she could, she buried them in a pot of geraniums. Alex was right, she didn’t feel worse, she felt better.

  Helen was allowed to swim – the doctors said it wouldn’t hurt her – but at first she wouldn’t bathe with Alex because she was embarrassed about her limp.

  When Alex found out what was worrying her, he got angry. ‘Look, if we’re going to Patagonia, you’ll have to stop all this nonsense about exactly how long your left leg is. I simply can’t be bothered with it. By the time we get there my nose might have been bitten off by a condor or anything. Good Lord, Krok’s got three toes missing and his right ear is—’

  He broke off, flushing. The last things to mention in Green Meadows were his ghosts.

  So they went swimming and actually Helen swam very well. After Alex had splashed Nurse Boniface a few times ‘by accident’ she went away and left them in peace.

  At the end of the first week, Mr Hopgood asked Alex if he’d like to go riding. There was a ranch not far away where they rented out horses.

  Alex was really excited by the idea. He’d scrambled about on Highland ponies, but there’d been no money for proper riding. To ride here in Texas, perhaps with cowboys, was the best thing he could hope for.

  ‘Can Helen come?’ he asked Mr Hopgood.

  ‘Sure. She can’t ride, of course – and it’ll mean taking a bodyguard along – but she can watch.’

  The ranch was in open country, quite high up, and the horses were marvellous: lean, rangy beasts with wise eyes. A man called Rafe, in blue dungarees, put Alex up on a palamino. The saddle had a high pommel just like a Western. Alex started on a leading rein, but soon he was trotting round the paddock on his own, and then cantering.

  But after an hour, he said something to Rafe and dismounted, and Rafe led the horse to where Helen was watching.

  ‘You’d like a go, your friend says?’

  Helen nodded, hardly daring to speak. She was lifted up and though Rafe only walked her quietly up and down, she was riding like an ordinary girl!

  ‘Well, how did you get on?’ asked Mr Hopgood that night.

  ‘It was great!’ said Alex. ‘Helen rode, too.’

  Mr Hopgood put down his napkin. ‘Helen! Good God, boy, she might have fallen and crushed her leg.’ He was quite pale and his hand began to shake.

  ‘But she didn’t,’ said Alex cheerfully.

  Mr Hopgood was about to storm and make a scene, but then he looked at his daughter. Since Alex had come, Helen was a different girl.

  After that the children went riding most days and as they drove past the building site they could see how fast the work on the castle was getting on. Already, the foundations were dug, there were cranes and bull-dozers everywhere and you could see the layout quite clearly.

  ‘It doesn’t seem right that we should live there when it’s been in your family so long,’ said Helen.

  But Alex said it didn’t matter; things changed. ‘I’ve kept Sethsay – that’s an island off Carra Point – and I’d as soon be there as anywhere else in the world. There are white beaches and seals that sing when the weather’s misty. And anyway, it won’t be long till we’re off to Patagonia.’

  It wasn’t himself that Alex worried about, not for a minute. But though he was having such a good time, he couldn’t help worrying night and day about his ghosts. If only I knew they were all right, he thought now. If only they weren’t so far away – thousands and thousands of miles away across the sea.

  That was what Alex was thinking as they drove past the Rex Cinema towards the Three Star Ranch.

  Most of the workmen on the building site were happy to have a well-paid job. They worked hard and sang and cracked jokes and at lunch-time they went into the huts and drank beer and ate sandwiches.

  But two of the workmen were not happy.

  Oscar the Hulk did not like wheeling heavy wheel-barrows with bags of cement in them. He got blisters on his hands and he got sweaty and he got tired. Pretending to be Madame Zugorsky, wearing a blonde wig and wobbling about on high heels, had been all right, but Oscar had no use at all for hard work.

  ‘I don’t see why we don’t just grab the brat and collect the ransom and go back home,’ he grumbled to Ratty Banks. ‘If anything goes wrong, we can always kill her and find another one. America’s stuffed with millionaires.’

  Adolfa had sent both of them to get jobs on the building site, but Ratty nearly didn’t get taken on at all. The foreman had taken one look at all the places where Ratty’s muscles weren’t and said he didn’t want him. But Ratty had squeaked and begged and shown him a book he’d bought on the station bookstall called The Guggenfelder Body Builder. This was full of exercises which an all-in wrestler called Bertie Guggenfelder had put together to help people develop their bodies, and the idea of Ratty getting to look like Mr Guggenfelder (who’d won the Iron Torso Competition three years running) made the foreman laugh so much that he let Ratty stay.

  Adolfa, meanwhile, had booked into the Skyway Motel. She pretended to have nothing to do with Oscar and Ratty, and the manager of the hotel thought she seemed a most respectable British lady with her lace-up shoes, her steel-rimmed spectacles and her sensible coat and skirt. It was a good job that he couldn’t see her at night, kissing a picture of Adolf Hitler, or watch her as she took out the locket with his hair in it. Adolfa, stroking with a bitten forefinger what she thought were the dictator’s curls, was not a pleasant sight.

  It was a good thing, too, that he didn’t know what she kept in locked boxes under her bed. A set of different wigs and disguises so that she could spy on the people in Green Meadows without being recognized; two fine coils of rope; some stocking face masks; a pair of Sonnenheim pistols … and a silver knife with a pearl-encrusted handle.

  If the manager of the Skyway Motel had known what she meant to do with that knife, he wouldn’t just have chucked her out of the hotel, he’d have been sick.

  When Oscar and Ratty had been on the building site for five days, they went to meet Adolfa at the Twinkle Hamburger Bar on the road that led out of Granite Falls to the West.

  Adolfa was waiting for them, looking more like an old-fashioned school mistress than ever.

  ‘I’ll have two hamburgers, a large helping of chips and a beer,’ said Oscar hungrily when the waitress came.

  ‘No, you won’t,’ said Adolfa. ‘You’ll have one hamburger and a small helping of chips and no beer at all, and so will Ratty.’

  Then she poured out three glasses of water and stood up. ‘We will drink to CREEP,’ she said.

  ‘CREEP,’ mumbled Oscar, looking miserable because he wanted a beer.

  ‘CREEP,’ said Ratty – and almost fell across the table because he’d knotted his legs together in the Guggenfelder exercise for strengthening the muscles of the calves.

  ‘Well?’ said Adolfa, sitting down again and looking at them in a nasty way.

  �
�What do you mean, ‘‘ Well?’’, Adolfa?’ asked the Hulk nervously. (He was a very henpecked Hulk.)

  ‘I mean, well what have you discovered, what have you learnt, what have you done?’ said Adolfa, and opened the locket.

  ‘Done?’ said Oscar in a hurt voice. ‘Worked ourselves into a lather, got sunstroke, got cramp…’

  ‘Got nasty blisters,’ squeaked Ratty.

  ‘I’m not interested in all that. You were supposed to study the lay-out. To snoop. To pry. To find out something useful.’

  ‘We did,’ said Oscar. ‘All the time we snooped and pried, didn’t we, Ratty? Only there isn’t anything to discover. There’s just this field and people putting up a building.’

  Adolfa lifted her finger from Hitler’s curl. A few of the greasy hairs stuck to her bitten skin and she put them back carefully with the rest.

  ‘You know, I think there’d better be something to discover,’ she said slowly. ‘Yes, I really think so. And quite soon.’ She snapped the locket shut. ‘I mean, you wouldn’t want me to get unpleasant …’

  Twelve

  The ghosts had been living in the cinema for several days.

  It was an old building. When Granite Falls was just a frontier town, it had been a variety theatre and it had hardly changed since then. There were storerooms behind the stage and lots of doors that led into oddly shaped corridors and plenty of cooling draughts that whistled up from the floor boards. The red plush seats were worn and shabby and the curtains over the screen were badly frayed.

  All this made the ghosts feel much more at home than they would have done in one of those modern cinemas that is just a centrally heated box. Not that there weren’t disadvantages. The place was cleaner than they would have liked because ladies came each morning to Hoover and dust, so that the poor spiders never got a chance to make a proper web and the cockroaches were shooed away as soon as they showed their heads. But Cyril was happy with the feet, and there was no one to bully them, so it might have been a great deal worse.