Ghostsitters (7 page)

S
ir Horace clanked off down the garden path and out past the gate-that-was-stuck-on-top-of-the-hedge. It was a nice sunny day, the kind of day when it is fun to be outside. However, it is not fun to be outside with your best ghost who is leaving forever—especially if he is going to live with Nurse Beryl Watkins. I sighed. I was going to have to add “best ghost gone” to the list of Things that
Aunt Tabby Will Not Like When She Comes Home.

On the other side of the hedge someone had stuck a big sign into the grass on the edge of Spookie Lane. There was an arrow on the sign pointing down the lane, and it said:

Sir Horace's old castle was being sold…
today
!

Suddenly I had a Big Plan—a
very
Big Plan. But first there was something very important that I had to find. And I was pretty sure I knew where it was.

“Stay there,” I said to Wanda and Sir Horace. “I'll be back in a minute!”

I rushed back into Spookie House. I stuck my tongue out at Ned and Jed as I zoomed past them and then I ran upstairs as fast as I could to the ghost-in-the-bath-bathroom. I opened Sir Horace's treasure chest—okay, I know you shouldn't open other people's treasure chests without asking, but this was an emergency—and I rifled through all his dusty old papers. At the bottom of the chest I found what I was looking for—the deed to his castle! Stage one of the Big Plan completed.

In case you haven't already guessed, I will tell you what my Big Plan was. Its full title was the Big Get-Back-Sir-Horace's-Castle
Plan. It was
perfect
and it went like this: I would go to the auction for Water Wonderland—which was, of course, really Sir Horace's old castle. Wanda could come too if she wanted. I would show the auction people Sir Horace's deed, which proves that he still owns his castle. Then the auction people would make Morris FitzMaurice give Sir Horace back his castle. Sir Horace could live there instead of in Nurse Watkins's horrible alcove thingy, and Wanda and I could go and see him whenever we wanted to, and we would have all of his castle—or what was left of it—to play in.

Plus, I could cross “best ghost gone” off the list of Things that Aunt Tabby Will Not Like When She Comes Home because Aunt Tabby wouldn't even need to know that he had
gone. You see, there is a secret passage from Spookie House to Sir Horace's castle and Sir Horace could easily go between the two. Sir Horace often disappears into his secret room, so Aunt Tabby wouldn't know the difference. Wanda and I could even go down the secret passage to see Sir Horace—once he had fixed its scary maze. It would be fun.

But first I had to stop Sir Horace from going to Nurse Watkins's cottage. I was sure that once he had set his pointy metal foot inside her door he would never be allowed out again. I was going to have to do some Mathilda-style talking. I took a deep breath and began. “Sir Horace,” I said. “There is another birthday tradition at Spookie House.”

“Oh?”
Sir Horace sounded a little suspicious.

“If someone has a special Plan on their birthday, you have to help them with it.”

“Really?”

“Yes. If they ask you nicely.”

“Ah. And would
you
be asking me nicely to help you with a special Plan on your birthday by any chance, Miss Spookie?”

“Yes. I would.”

“I thought you might be. It is strange—there are so many new birthday traditions this year in Spookie House.”

“All traditions have to be new sometime, Sir Horace.”

“Very true, Miss Spookie. I myself remember quite a few when they were new. So what is your Plan that you require special birthday help with?”

Now, I didn't want to tell Sir Horace my Big Plan right away in case he said no. Sir
Horace can be a bit stubborn at times. So I just said, “Before you go to Nurse Watkins I would like you to come with Wanda and me to your castle.”

“Why?” asked Wanda.

“Shhh,”
I said.

“I do not wish to see any FitzMaurices,”
said Sir Horace gloomily.
“Or wheelbarrows.”
Not long ago Sir Horace had a bad experience at Water Wonderland when Old Morris FitzMaurice put him in a wheelbarrow and locked him in the keep.

“Wanda and I will make sure you don't see any,” I told him.

“We will?” asked Wanda.

“Yes,” I said. “We
will
. Let's get going.”

But I could see Wanda did not think this was a good idea. “It's a long way to walk,” she said.

“We can ride our bikes.”

“But what about Sir Horace?”

“He can ride Barry's bike,” I said. “He's about the same size.”

Wanda spluttered, “Sir Horace can't ride a bike!”

“What,”
asked Sir Horace,
“is this bike?”

“It's a bit like a horse,” I told him. “With pedals.”

“Very well, Miss Spookie,”
said Sir Horace.
“I shall ride the horse-with-pedals to my castle. And
then
to Nurse Watkins's.”

 

I think Sir Horace was surprised that his horse-with-pedals was more pedals than horse. Wanda wheeled Barry's bike out into Spookie Lane for him to try and Sir Horace laughed.
“Miss Wizzard, you jest,”
he
boomed.
“That is no horse.”

“But these are the pedals, Sir Horace,” I said. “Look.”

Sir Horace did not seem impressed—but when Wanda got on the bike and whizzed up and down the lane, he was amazed.
“Aha, now I see why you are called Miss Wizzard. It is the wizardry that keeps you from falling off.”

I nearly said that it was the showing off that stopped her from falling off, but I didn't.

“No,” said Wanda. “It's riding fast. That's all.”

Sir Horace did not get to be a knight for nothing. He is brave. I think it must have been really scary for a ghost in armor to get on a bike, but he did. Wanda and I held the back of his saddle and we showed Sir Horace how to hold the handlebars and where to put his feet on the pedals while Edmund hovered chewing his ghostly fingernails. Fang kept running in and out of the wheels, but since he was a ghost it didn't matter, although it looked weird.

“Push the pedals, Sir Horace. Push!” we said. Sir Horace pushed and the bike began to move.

“Push harder!”

Sir Horace pushed harder and the bike wobbled forward.

“Keep going, Sir Horace!”

“Faster, Sir Horace. You have to pedal faster!”

Sir Horace pedaled faster. Soon Wanda and I were running down Spookie Lane as fast as we could.

“Go, Sir Horace,
go
!” we yelled. We let go of the saddle and he pedaled off on his own. He didn't wobble once. He zoomed off down
Spookie Lane with Fang lolloping behind him and Edmund trying to catch up. I felt really proud—we had taught Sir Horace to ride a bike.

And then Wanda said, “We never told him about the brakes.”

Oops.

By the time we had run back to our bikes, gotten on them, and ridden off after Sir Horace, there was no sign of him. At the end of Spookie Lane there is a sharp bend, and as we raced around the bend we nearly rode right through Edmund, who was very stupidly standing in
the middle of the road waving his arms.

I nearly fell off my bike. “Watch
out
, Edmund,” I said, annoyed. “You will get run over.”

Edmund was jumping up and down like a big green soap bubble.
“The horse-with-pedals bolted,”
he wailed.
“It threw Sir Horace into a hedge!”

We followed Edmund down the sandy track that leads off Spookie Lane and goes to the beach. Soon we came to a tall, thick hedge with a big hole in it. Fang was standing guard. Sticking out of the hole were Barry's bike and Sir Horace's feet.

Wanda and I grabbed one foot each and pulled Sir Horace out. Quite a lot of the hedge came with him—but he was still in one piece. In fact he looked a lot better than the bike. Barry's bike was not the best bike in the world and it always had a few loose parts. Now it had even more.

Sir Horace insisted on getting straight back on the bike.
“If you fall off a horse you must get right back in the saddle,”
he boomed.
“Particularly if you fall off a horse-with-pedals.”

Wanda and I showed Sir Horace how to work the brakes and then we all set off. We cycled along behind the horse-with-pedals because Sir Horace knew the way—the sandy track went past his old castle.

It was fun riding along behind Sir Horace. Fang was really excited, and even Edmund was happy because Wanda had offered him a ride on the back of her bike and he was sitting sidesaddle on the luggage carrier.

Soon we could hear the sound of seagulls
and the sea. A few minutes later we were cycling along beside a wide ditch, which Sir Horace said was his old moat. And then, as we cycled around a bend, we saw the rest of Sir Horace's castle—Hernia Hall. I was really amazed, because underneath the smashed-up mushroom sheds was a whole forest of ruins, which had been there all the time. It was true that the castle did not look so great anymore, and there was obviously quite a bit missing, but you could easily see it had been a castle.

At the sight of his old home, Sir Horace slammed on his brakes in surprise, catapulted over the handlebars, and flew into the old moat. There was a loud
thud
and he landed in pieces.

Drat.

W
e picked up the pieces of Sir Horace and took them into the keep, which was a funny old round tower covered with ivy. Inside were piles of old junk. It was also very smelly because it was stuffed full of sacks of old bat poo left over from the days when it was part of the mushroom farm. Morris FitzMaurice used to buy Uncle Drac's bat poo to feed the mushrooms, but he was scared of
Uncle Drac and always bought more than he needed.

We put all the pieces of Sir Horace on the ground and then, in the beam of my emergency flashlight—which I always carry with me—Wanda and I began to put Sir Horace back together.

It was a bit scary too, as every now and then we heard Old Morris FitzMaurice and his daughter, Nosy Nora FitzMaurice, walk past, showing people around before the auction.

“Best knock this rubbish down and start again,” we heard Old Morris say to someone. “I left it standing because some people actually
like
this old stuff. Could be a castle theme park, I suppose.”

“Huh,” said the other person. “I shall knock it down and make a parking lot. There's money in parking lots. What's in there?”

Suddenly the rotten old door to the keep creaked open. I had switched off my flashlight just in time. Wanda and I dived behind a pile of moldy old bat poo sacks. Luckily the keep was so full of junk that Old Morris and Mr. Parking Lot did not notice the pieces of Sir Horace.

It took forever to put Sir Horace together again. By the time we had finished, the wings on Wanda's pink fairy watch looked weird. They were both almost at her little pointy pink toes. I guessed it meant that it was half past five—nearly time for the auction.

“Come on, Sir Horace, it's time to go,” I told him.

Sir Horace was sitting on one of the squishy
bat poo sacks. He got up and groaned.
“Indeed, you are right, Miss Spookie. I shall make my way to Catheter Cottage.”
He bowed stiffly.

“No!” I said quickly. “No, I didn't mean it was time for you to go to Catheter Cottage. I meant that it is time to go to the
auction
. It is time, Sir Horace,” I said very dramatically, “to get back what rightfully belongs to you!”

“What rightfully belongs to me, Miss Spookie?”
Sir Horace sounded puzzled.

This was the moment I had been waiting for—the moment when I would tell Sir Horace my Big Plan. But sometimes Plans do not happen the way you plan them. Sometimes there are things that someone has not told you, so you make your Plan without, as Uncle Drac says, having all the bat poo on the shovel.

But right then I didn't know that. I pulled out the deed from my pocket and said, “Soon it really
will
be your home, Sir Horace. Because we are going to go to the auction and we will show them
this
! It proves that all this”—I waved my arms around like they do
on airplanes when they tell you how to escape—“still belongs to
you
!”

“If only that were true,”
Sir Horace groaned.

“But it
is
true,” I told him and waved the deed in front of his visor just in case he had not seen it.

Sir Horace groaned and put his head in his hands, which I found very annoying since Wanda and I had just spent a very long time putting it back on. It is a bad habit that Sir Horace has gotten into; he says it helps him think. But it doesn't help anyone else think.

“This deed is
worthless
,”
boomed Sir Horace's head.

“No it's not,” I said. “It's
your
castle. The deed says so.”

“Alas, it is not. It belongs to FitzMaurice. It
is
his
.”
The head let out a horrible moan.
“He
paaaaaid
me for it.”

Now I was really mad at Sir Horace. “You have been telling me lies, Sir Horace.” I looked at him sternly. “That is not what you said before.”

“I only discovered the truth yesterday,”
said his head with a big sigh.

“Yesterday?” asked Wanda. “What happened yesterday?” Which was exactly the question I was going to ask.

“
I
am chief detective here, Wanda,” I told her. “So I ask the questions.” And before she could disagree I said, “What happened yesterday, Sir Horace?”

“You know what happened yesterday, Miss Spookie. The ring that you are wearing.
That
happened yesterday.”

“Yes, where
did
you get that ring, Araminta?” asked Wanda suspiciously. “What have you been doing?”

“It's nothing to do with
me
,” I said, feeling like someone who suddenly realizes they are the prime suspect when they thought they had only been asked to the police station for a friendly chat over a cup of tea.

“It's always
something
to do with you,” said Wanda.

“It is
not
!”

“Stop!”
boomed Sir Horace's head, which sounded horribly like Nurse Watkins.
“I will explain.”

So we sat in that smelly old ruin, with one of the pink fairy's wings slowly ticking its way toward her right knee and six o'clock, and we listened to the terrible story of what had
happened five hundred years ago in the caves far below us.

Sir Horace put his head next to him on an old bat poo sack, then he leaned against the wall and his head began to speak.

“I shall tell you the terrible tale of how I became a ghost.”
His voice echoed around the keep and sounded really spooky. Wanda and I shivered and I got goose bumps all over.

“The FitzMaurices were brigands and thieves,”
Sir Horace began.
“They lived in a huge castle in the next valley, but that was not enough for them—they wanted my castle too. One night Fang ran off, which he often did at a full moon. Edmund and I went out looking for him and we were ambushed by a party of FitzMaurices. They were a nasty bunch, Miss Spookie. Armed to the teeth with cudgels, swords, pikestaffs, and fierce hunting dogs. Edmund and I fought but we were outnumbered. We escaped to the grotto beneath my castle. I was sure we would be safe there, but in our haste we sprang our own portcullis trap and trapped ourselves.”

“I bet it was Edmund who sprang it,” I whispered to Wanda.

“Shh!” said Wanda sharply. “That is not nice, Araminta.”

“Trapped in our own grotto…”
Sir Horace's head moaned.
“I was struck down by the dastardly Jasper FitzMaurice, the leader of the gang. As I lay injured, he laughed and told his gang to pile up the rocks to stop our escape and to leave us to drown. He said my castle was
his
now. But I told him that if he took my castle he would be not only a murderer but a thief. So
he took off his ring and threw it at me, saying he would
buy
my hovel—as he called it.”

“Ooh,” gasped Wanda. “That was
so
rude.”

“Indeed, Miss Wizzard,”
sighed the head on the bat poo sack.
“The FitzMaurices have never had any manners.”

“So what happened
then
?” asked Wanda.

“I threw the ring back because in those days you could offer a ring for anything.”

“Even a rubbish old ring?” asked Wanda.

“Yes. Its value did not matter. If you put the ring on your finger, it meant that you agreed to the deal. I told Jasper FitzMaurice that his worthless junk would not buy one brick of my castle. That is the last thing I remember. Now, Edmund—”

Edmund jumped up and stood to attention.
“Yes, Sir Horace,”
he squeaked.

“What happened next? Tell me.”

Edmund coughed.
“Um…the big FitzMaurice, he, um, picked up the ring. He took off your gauntlet and pushed the ring onto your little finger and, um…he said: ‘I am no thief. This is payment. The castle is mine.'”

“Ooh!” gasped Wanda. “That is
so
naughty.”

“It was very naughty, Wanda,”
said Edmund dolefully.
“Then the big FitzMaurice, he climbed up the rocks, and his men rolled the last one in place…and we were trapped, and after that it was really scary and the water kept coming in and, Sir Horace, you wouldn't wake up, so I stayed with you and…”

“Oh, Edmund, don't cry,” said Wanda, trying to put her arm around him—which is not possible with a ghost. “How horrible. You were so brave.”

“Thank you, Wanda,”
sniffed Edmund.
“You are very nice.”

“Edmund was brave,”
said Sir Horace's head.
“And he was loyal. But he did not tell me about the ring.”

Edmund stared at his feet like he had done something wrong—which he had. Aunt Tabby says that not telling about something is as bad as telling a lie.

“All these years I have thought I owned my own castle and I did not.”
Sir Horace's head let out another groan.
“It is a terrible shock.”

I stared at my finger. So
this
was the horrible Jasper FitzMaurice's ring? Yuck. I wasn't so sure that I liked it anymore.

Wanda was staring at my finger too. “So how come
Araminta
has the ring?” she asked, sounding a little bit jealous, I thought. “Never mind that,” I told her. “The point is that Sir Horace
does
own his castle. He never
accepted
the ring—Jasper FitzMaurice pushed it onto his finger. That is totally different. Now, excuse me, Sir Horace, Wanda and I are just going to get your castle back for you.”

“Are we?” said Wanda.

“Yes, Wanda,” I said, “we
are
.”

Sir Horace stood up and put his head back on.
“Tonight there is a full moon,”
he said.
“Who knows what may be out there? You will not go alone, Miss Spookie.”