An English Ghost Story (3 page)

‘All sorts of things are stored away up here.’

‘Anything useful?’

Jordan tensed slightly but Mum laughed. Dad gave her waist a squeeze and kissed her.

The barn had a second storey, reachable via a wooden ladder and a hatch. They all looked up.

‘There isn’t anything up there,’ said the agent. ‘Miss Teazle was quite infirm. She wouldn’t have been able to manage the climb.’

‘I’ll do a recce,’ Tim announced. He swarmed up the ladder, disappeared through the hatch, clattered around in the dark, and poked his head back over the edge.

‘There’s a door,’ he reported, ‘in the wall, leading nowhere.’

She stepped out of the barn and saw what her brother meant. Twenty feet above ground was a wooden door, with a gibbet-like structure above it. The door rattled as Tim shoved it from the inside. It swung open and Tim leaned out over the drop, grinning broadly.

‘That was for lowering bales of hay down into the yard,’ Brian Bowker explained. ‘You might think about keeping it bolted shut to prevent accidents.’

They took the point.

‘Come down, Timbo,’ said Dad. ‘Before you do yourself an injury.’

Dad and the agent were both relieved when Tim vanished inside the barn and reappeared, dusty but unhurt, at ground level.

Brian Bowker knew he had a sale. He was talking as if there was a done deal and the Naremores were moving in a week from Tuesday.

Mum and Dad didn’t contradict him.

They all left the barn, for a last look around.

Jordan felt funny. She was – she realised with a shudder – happy. After all she’d been through these last few years, she was home. A fresh start in a new place. It felt right, in a way she had either forgotten or never known.

Her secret plan was revised. The Hollow changed everything. Rick would understand; he always let her do the forward thinking.

Afternoon sunlight made a green-gold haze about the place, an aura of contentment. Shapes formed and wisped in the light patterns. Jordan imagined they were reluctant to see her go, eager for her return.

She couldn’t wait to tell Rick about the Hollow but stifled an excited impulse to beg Dad for the car phone. The thought of calling her boyfriend now – with Tim and her parents eavesdropping – made her squirm inside. The family had been here less than half an hour and already she knew it was where they would settle.

In the hunchback, on the way to the last viewing, to a perfectly nice house that would have no chance of winning their hearts, Tim kept on about ‘his room’, listing places where his things could be put, and new things he would need. Usually, when he spun methodical fantasies upon impossible premises, he would continue until one or other of the family was forced to shoot him down. This time, they let Tim run on and on. This time, they understood exactly what he meant.

Mum pressed the play button on the in-car cassette player. Music filled the car, ‘Spring Spring Spring’ from
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
. Jordan shivered again, not with cold but love.

She looked back, out of the rear window, and kept her eyes on the Hollow, even when only the tip of the taller tower was visible. When they were on the main road, she turned around and felt the need to count heads. All four of them were in the car but it was as if they had left someone vital behind.

* * *

A
s soon as the family was away from the Hollow, they missed their new home, each in their different way, each feeling at bottom the same thing. But they took the sights, sounds and smells with them, to well up unbidden in their minds as the next few weeks stretched into the next two months and they impatiently went through the business of buying and selling, as if homes could be made with money and contracts.

Besides memories, the family – as a single entity and four discrete individuals – took from the Hollow something else, something subtler and more lasting, something they shared but never got round to talking about. The magic was private and should not be spoken of out loud, for fear that it would evaporate like dew in the sun. It was as if they had exchanged vows with the place, leaving something of themselves behind and taking something of it away.

At long last, after what seemed an age, summer came and the family returned to the Hollow.

by

This book was first published 11 October 1932
by Alder Bough Press

Reprinted fifty-two times

Paperback edition first published 1965
by Kilpartinger & Co. Ltd
Reprinted fourteen times

Magic edition published 1979
by Pyramid Children’s Books Ltd

Reprinted ten times
This edition reset and illustrations
reoriginated 1988, reprinted 1988

Published 1990 by Mythwrhn
an imprint of Real Subscriber Books Ltd
The Pyramid, 112–56 Cardinal Wolsey St, London E14 4DL
and New York, Delhi, Auckland, Cape Town and Toronto
Reprinted 1991 (twice),1992, 1994
Reissued 1997

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

O
nce, not so long ago and not so far away, there lived a good little girl named Weezie. Really, she was not so little as all that any more and perhaps not so good either. Her Mama and Papa said that since she had shot up so much the summer before she should be called by her proper name, which was not Weezie but something horrid.

When people used her proper name, she would pretend not to hear. She had been pretending for so long now that she really did not hear. She would go on humming to herself and ignoring her parents until they would finally give in and call out, ‘Weezie, my Weeze, please not to tease!’ Then she would look up and come indoors at a run.

Weezie liked to wear her blue pinafore, though its hem was well above her knees and Papa said she looked like a heron in it. She was still having lessons from Miss Emily Ginn, her governess. She would have to go away to a school when the leaves started to fall from the trees.

She lived with her Mama and Papa – and Miss Emily Ginn, Peter the Man, Katie the Cook and the goats Frisky and Whiskey – at Hilltop Heights, a big old house in the countryside far away from the city. Only Weezie knew, for she was clever in a way grown-ups had forgotten, that others lived with them. She knew Hilltop Heights was a Haunted House.

Everyone who ever lived at Hilltop, even when there was just a hill there without a house, had stayed on.

Oldest among the ghosts was Club, a Piltdown Man. He was not very bright and had little forehead to speak of, but was Weezie’s best friend in all the world. His special place was in the hayloft, which had once been his cave. Weezie and Club made drawings together, of the strange animals that had lived in his time and the strange people who lived now. Club was a highly talented artist and would certainly be as wealthy and respected as Mr Van Loon if he were alive today.

The other ghosts were her friends too.

Sidney the Saxon and Guillaume the Norman, who had fought with thick, brittle swords. Goodie the milkmaid and Crispin the Fey, who had eloped together to spite proud Queen Titania and shared a love that was still sung of. Rupert the Cavalier and Noll the Roundhead, who had fought with thin, tempered swords. Adventurous Captain Harry Persimmon, who had sailed the seven seas and had a leg eaten by cannibals and an arm eaten by a shark; and his stay-at-home brother Jarge Percy, who had lived to a hundred and twelve without ever walking beyond sight of Hilltop Heights.

Sometimes, the ghosts played jokes. When a psychical investigator came from London to look over Hilltop Heights, they perpetrated such fearful pranks that Weezie had to become very grown-up and tell them all off. It was not nice to turn a man’s hat inside out in mid air in front of him, even if he did lisp. When the investigator mentioned ‘ectoplasmic manifestations’ it came out as ‘ectoplaththmic manifeththtationthth’ and half a gallon of spit.

Hilltop Heights was an enchanted place. Every cupboard and carpet had its special qualities. In Weezie’s room was a magic chest of drawers. The top drawer always had the same thing in and the bottom drawer never had the same thing twice and the middle drawer was always a jumble of surprises. Weezie loved surprises.

The ghosts were Weezie’s friends.

One ghost, however, was not: the Gloomy Ghost.

She didn’t know his real name and none of the others did either. He didn’t show himself as he had looked when he was alive but instead lingered about a dreary part of the hill as a thick black cloud or a pool of murky slime. He clung low to the ground and seeped into the house like damp. Whenever the Gloomy Ghost was about, even on the sunniest and happiest of days, it felt like a long, rainy Wednesday afternoon. Weezie thought of him when she had toothache, and imagined his shadow gathering under the eaves when Miss Emily Ginn made her recite the seven times table.

Whenever china was dropped or a toe stubbed, the Gloomy Ghost was there. Whenever jam spoiled or a window broke, the Gloomy Ghost was sensed leaving the scene of the crime. But the worst habit of the Gloomy Ghost was that when he was most up to mischief, he would arrange matters so that Weezie, and not he, would take the blame.

She had lost count of the suppers she had missed and the times she had been sent to her room to learn her lesson. When that happened, the other ghosts would keep her company and endeavour to cheer her up.

They meant well and kept trying to help with her history lessons, but whenever Sidney and Guillaume or Rupert and Noll tried to tell her about the days in which they had lived they got into arguments and forgot about her.

Then, when even the nice ghosts were ignoring her, Weezie felt in her bones an icy shudder. The Gloomy Ghost’s chuckle. He could only be happy if she was not. When she was unhappy she leaked tears and screwed up her face until she became what Papa called ‘a Sneezy Weezie’. She hated to be called ‘a Sneezy Weezie’ more than she hated spinach and wasps, which were the worst things in the world. The only thing she hated more was her horrid, horrid real name.

The only times the Gloomy Ghost laughed out loud was when someone called Weezie ‘a Sneezy Weezie’. At those times, it was all Weezie could do not to blub like a baby.

All the ghosts had special places in Hilltop Heights, like Club’s cave or Goodie and Crispin’s herb garden. The Gloomy Ghost’s special place was a sad copse down by a stagnant stream. When not making mischief for Weezie, the Gloomy Ghost lay on the rocks like a pool of black slime or hovered low about stunted roots like a thick mist. More than anything, he liked it when Weezie got some of him on her blue pinafore and she had to wear something else until it was laundered.

Once, as a glorious summer morning was dawning and the ghosts were calling to Weezie to play outside in the sunshine, black ink was spilled over Papa’s ledgers and trailed across Mama’s best carpet by Weezie’s shoes. It was useless to protest that she had not been wearing the shoes, had in fact outgrown them months ago. There was blame to be had and she would have to take it.

In her room, jailed for a whole day, she was a Sneezy Weezie. There was nothing else for it.

Why was the Gloomy Ghost so gloomy?

None of the others could tell her. He just was what he was.

She wished now that the ghosts had been nicer to the psychical investigator. He might have been able to tell her what to do about the Gloomy Ghost.

When finally let out of her room for supper, which she was to take today without dessert as a punishment, she was determined to sort the Gloomy Ghost out.

Things could not go on like this.

After supper, when it was almost dark and the summer day was gone for ever, she went out to the Gloomy Ghost’s copse and stood over his black pool of slime.

‘Why are you so horrid to me?’ she asked, out loud. ‘I’ve never hurt you, and nor has anyone else.’

The black pool rippled.

She thought the Gloomy Ghost was laughing and stamped her foot. A loose stone splashed into the pool.

Suddenly, she felt awful inside.

The Gloomy Ghost was not laughing. He was crying, harder than she had in her room.

She forgot that she was very angry.

For the first time, between sobs, the ghost spoke.

‘You gave me your toothache,’ he said. ‘And that hideous multiplication table. Ghosts feel only what people near them feel. Whenever I came near you, you felt only nasty things. Seven times seven.’

She was surprised. She had not understood.

‘And why do you call me Gloomy? I don’t like it at all. No more than you like to be called Sneezy or…’

He used her real name, her horrid name. Hearing it was like a slap.

Weezie’s heart ached. She thought back and couldn’t remember when the Gloomy Ghost started to be gloomy. It seemed to be ever since she had known of him. But, she realised, she had been the one who gave him his name. The others had picked it up from her.

To him, it was as bad as her real name was to her. He hadn’t chosen it and he hated it. If he was called Gloomy, he became gloomy. Worse than gloomy, cruel and mean. But, underneath, he wasn’t like that. He wasn’t like anything. He was a ghost.

She wanted to comfort him.

‘There, there,’ she said, letting her hand lie close to the pool but not touching the slime. ‘What would you like to be called?’

‘I… I don’t know. I’ve forgotten my name.’

‘Poor thing.’

A tear leaked from her eye and dropped into the pool. Where it fell, the black became clear as water but thinner than liquid, like pure light.

‘I think I’d like to be called Merry,’ said the Gloomy Ghost.

‘The Merry Ghost?’

The pool rippled. Some slime accidentally got on Weezie’s hand and before she could think not to she had wiped it on her pinafore, leaving a black streak. She frowned, but made herself not get angry.

The streak faded to nothing.

The black pool rose up and became white, taking shape.

The Merry Ghost was a little boy, younger than Weezie but about her height. She could see through him, but he had a definite form. He was smiling but his eyes had no practice at not looking sad so they gave him away.