Uncle Drac got out of the van but I didn’t move. I heard the back doors open and the sound of my trunk being dragged out. I heard Uncle Drac shout, “Argh! My foot!” I heard footsteps on the gravel, then grunts and groans, and I guessed Uncle Drac and Barry were carrying my trunk up the steps. And I knew that soon it would be my turn to follow it. Suddenly, I saw a revolting squashy thing pressed up against the van window. Something had come to get me …
“Go away!” I yelled.
The squashy thing stepped back and I saw it was Uncle Drac. Uncle Drac’s face has a squishy look to it anyway, but when he presses it against a window (because he thinks it is funny) it looks disgusting. He pulled open the door and said, “Come on, Minty. Come and meet Miss Gargoyle.”
“No,” I told him.
Uncle Drac got back in beside me. For a moment I hoped that he and I were going to drive away into the night and leave Barry at the school in my place. I smiled as I imagined Barry Wizzard wearing my school uniform. I shouldn’t have smiled because Uncle Drac said, “Oh, Minty, I knew you’d like it here. Miss Gargoyle is an old friend of Mummy’s—er, I mean your great-aunt Emilene. And she is very nice. It will be much more interesting for you to be here than at home, and—between you and me—it will be safer too.”
“Safer?”
Uncle Drac nodded. “I am not meant to tell you this, Minty, because Aunt Tabby doesn’t want to worry you, but there is a problem with the bats.”
“I know that, Uncle Drac,” I said. “And I think it is really unfair. It is because I rescued Wanda from the bats that I am being sent away. It is all because of the stupid bats.”
Uncle Drac looked at me. “Well, Minty, you are half right. It is not because you rescued Wanda, but it is because of the bats. Or one bat in particular.”
I stared at Uncle Drac. “Which bat?”
Uncle Drac blinked. “I mustn’t say any more, Minty. I just wanted you to know that this is not your fault.” He sighed. “It is my fault. And I am very sorry, Minty. I do hope you will forgive me.”
I wasn’t sure what it was I had to forgive Uncle Drac for, but I said I would and he smiled and showed his white pointy teeth. “Well, Minty,” he said. “It is time to go up those steps and say hello to Miss Gargoyle.” He got out and held open the door for me. The moment had come. I shuffled across the seat and stepped out on to the drive. Then Uncle Drac gave me a really sweet little suitcase. “It’s your emergency school kit,” he whispered, taking my hand. We walked up the steps together. At the top, Uncle Drac pushed me forward. “Go on, Minty,” he whispered.
Miss Gargoyle frowned at me like I had already done something wrong. Then she peered at me through her spectacles and I realised she could not see more than a few feet in front of her. “Ah, Araminta Spook,” she said. “I have heard so much about you. Welcome to Gargoyle Hall!”
Miss Gargoyle was just about the same height as me, although she was a lot wider, and round like a beach ball. With her long black dress she looked as if she had just stepped out of a very old photograph. Her black hair was scraped up into a topknot that had a big pin pushed through it with a small jewelled parrot sitting on the end of the pin. She had tiny eyes like little blue beads that stared at me through her very thick spectacles.
The girls with the lanterns on either side of her did not look nice at all. They were identical twins, both very thin and about twice as tall as Miss Gargoyle. They wore long black tunics, with white shirts underneath from which their long thin necks grew up like stalks. They had sharp beaky noses and big teeth and they were identical apart from the colour of the sashes around their waists: one was blue and one was yellow. They stared down at me like two vultures.
“Araminta Spook,” said Miss Gargoyle. “Follow me.”
I grabbed hold of Uncle Drac to make sure he came too. Miss Gargoyle led the way through a really high entrance hall with a wide staircase sweeping up to a gallery above, and with tall columns soaring up to the ceiling. It had a black and white chequerboard floor and the Vulture-girls’ shoes made sharp, clicketty-clacketty noises on the tiles as they followed us. Miss Gargoyle led the way into her study, which was a cosy little room with a fire burning in the grate. The Vultures followed us and stood by the door, glowering. I sat down by the fire and Uncle Drac went and lurked by the curtains. Miss Gargoyle brought me a big red book; written on the front were the words: Gargoyle Academy for Girls. School Register. Miss Gargoyle opened it and there was a whole page full of names that had been crossed out and had LEFT written beside them.
“Sign your name there, please, Araminta,” Miss Gargoyle said. She gave me a pen, so I very carefully wrote my name underneath all the crossed-out ones:
ARAMINTA SPOOK
Miss Gargoyle smiled for the first time. “Welcome to Gargoyle Academy for Girls.” She very carefully locked the register in her desk and put the key to the drawer in her pocket. The two Vultures scowled.
“Now, Araminta,” said Miss Gargoyle. “I do like to get to know my new girls, so I will see you here in the morning at ten o’clock for a little chat. But you must be tired now. Violetta and Philomena, our two head girls, will take you up to your cabin in the junior girls’ corridor.”
The two Vultures looked down at me like I was something dead on the ground. Hmm, they seemed to say. Supper.
Suddenly everything was happening too fast. I grabbed hold of Uncle Drac and dragged him away from the curtains. “Miss Gargoyle,” I said, “this is my uncle Drac. And I have to say goodbye to him properly, because I may never see him ever again.”
“Oh dear!” said Miss Gargoyle. She stepped closer to Uncle Drac and peered at him so that her little blue eyes almost disappeared behind her thick glasses. “Is this Dracandor Spook?” she asked.
Uncle Drac nodded.
“Dracandor,” said Miss Gargoyle, “I am very sorry to hear you are so ill. Emilene never mentioned it.” She shook her head anxiously. “You don’t look too good, I can see that now.”
Uncle Drac looked worried. “Don’t I?”
I decided to set Miss Gargoyle straight before Uncle Drac got even more flustered. “Uncle Drac isn’t ill,” I said. “What I meant was that now I am here, I won’t be going home until I am grown up, so I won’t be able to see him until I am really, really old—in fact, I shall be so old that he won’t even know who I am.”
Miss Gargoyle looked surprised. “Goodness,” she said. “You’re not going home until you are grown up? Well, well, I’ve never heard that one before. Now, Araminta, it is the weekend and you will have the school to yourself for the next two days—apart from our head girls, of course.” She looked up at the two Vultures nervously. “Matron will bring you some cold supper when you are settled in and I look forward to our little chat tomorrow. Off you go now.”
Uncle Drac gave me a little wave and mouthed, “Bye, Minty.”
The two Vultures eyeballed me. “Follow us, Spook,” they said.
So I followed them, into the depths of my boarding school. Into the place I was going to live in for ever.
“This is your cabin, New Girl,” said Vulture-with-the-yellow-sash.
“It’s just you and Matron up here now,” said Vulture-with-the-blue-sash.
“Hur-hur!” The Yellow Vulture laughed like she had swallowed a toad.
They spun around on their metal heels and marched out, slamming the door behind them and making the wooden walls of my cabin wobble like the sets in Aunt Tabby’s vampire films.
I sat down on one of the lumpy beds and looked around. My cabin was basic but it was OK. It had a washbasin, two narrow beds, two chests of drawers and a rail with hangers on it set into an alcove. It was at the very top of Gargoyle Hall, which I liked because it reminded me of my bedrooms at Spook House and it was actually a lot like our Tuesday bedroom. What I didn’t like was that I was there on my own. Before Wanda came to live at Spook House I was on my own all the time, but I didn’t mind because that was all I had known. But when Wanda arrived everything
became much more fun, and now I really, really missed her. I stared at my trunk, which was sitting in the middle of the floor, while I listened to the clicketty-clacketty of the Vultures’ metal-heeled shoes going down the stone steps at the far end of the corridor. Then the sounds died away and I was alone.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I jumped up like something had bitten me. What was that?
Tap. Tippitty-tap.
It was coming from my trunk. Aha, I thought, I know what has happened. One of Uncle Drac’s bats has got stuck in the trunk. I was quite pleased because I thought it would be nice to have a bat in my cabin for company, but suddenly there was a horrible moaning sound like a trapped ghost.
“Ooow … oooh … arooo!”
Bother, I thought, Edmund is in there. Typical. I would have much rather had Fang or Sir Horace, but I supposed there wouldn’t have been room for Sir Horace, and Fang never goes anywhere without him. But I reckoned that any ghost—even Edmund—might come in useful at a boarding school, so I got the envelope with the key to the padlock out of my pocket and undid the lock. The top of the trunk burst open with a crash!
Something really horrible jumped out of the trunk.
Ha ha, just joking. It was Wanda!
Wanda went hopping around the tiny room like she was on fire or something. “Argh. My feet have fallen off. Ouch ouch ouch!”
I could hardly believe that Wanda was actually here. I was thrilled to see her but I didn’t want to let Wanda know that, because she would have got annoyingly big-headed about it. “Be quiet, Wanda, you total dingbat,” I told her. “You’ll get the Vultures back and then you’ll be sorry.”
Wanda threw herself down on my bed and started rubbing her feet. “Ooh, I’ve got horrible pins and needles,” she moaned.
Suddenly we heard the thud-thud-thud of heavy footsteps coming along the corridor. Wanda looked at me all googly-eyed. “Are those the Vultures?” she asked.
“No, silly. The Vultures have clicky-clacky claws,” I told her. “This is someone different. Probably some kind of monster.”
“Monster?”
“Yes. So you have to hide.”
I pushed Wanda underneath my bed, pulled out the top cover and draped it down so that it hid the space below. I was just in time, because as soon as I had finished, the door flew open and a square-looking person strode in carrying a tray. I wasn’t totally sure if the person was a man or a woman. Its face looked a bit like a brick, plus it had very short hair and what Aunt Tabby calls a five o’clock shadow—which is what Uncle Drac gets when he can’t be bothered to shave. But the square person was wearing a blue dress with a little white collar, so I guessed it was probably female.
“Arvy Minta,” the square person said in a very strange accent. “Velcome to Gargoyle Academy for Girls. ’Ere is your supper.” She put a tray down on one of the chests of drawers, then she stepped back and looked at me. She had little green eyes that reminded me of peas fresh out of the pod and despite the scary haircut she looked surprisingly friendly. “I zink you vill be verrr ’appy ’ere,” she said. “You look like a Gargoyle kind of girl.”
“Oh! Er, thank you …” I said. I was not sure if it was a compliment to be a Gargoyle kind of girl.
“You may call me Matron,” said the square person. “I have a room at ze end of ze corridor. If you are frightened, you vill knock on my door.”
“Oh.” I wondered why she thought I might get frightened.
Matron glanced over her shoulder as if to check that no one was listening. “Now, Arvy Minta, ze night roars are nothing to worry about,” she said. “I can assure you that we do not have any monsters in Gargoyle Hall. Not even a leetle one. We have a zero tolerance monster policy in operation. Sleep vell.”
With that, Matron was gone, thud-thudding along to the other end of the corridor. I heard the bang of a door closing—it sounded like the door to a bank safe—and then the clank of four heavy bolts being shot home. Zero tolerance of monsters or not, Matron was taking no chances. I was so glad that I was not alone right then. Good old Wanda, I thought.
The supper was very nice. We had a flask of hot chocolate, some orange juice, egg sandwiches, some squishy cakes, a bag of grapes and a huge bar of chocolate. And when I opened Uncle Drac’s little emergency suitcase I found that—apart from a box labelled “Emergency Kit”—it was full of packets of cheese and onion crisps. Perfect.
After we had finished supper, I began to unpack my trunk. A really tiny and very sweet blue bat with cute orange eyes flew out and fluttered around the room. Wanda dived under the bed and would not come out until it had hung itself upside down on the curtains.
“I don’t see why you are making such a fuss,” I said. “You’ve been in the trunk with it for hours.”
“But I didn’t know it was in there,” Wanda said.
I thought that was probably a good thing as I wasn’t sure Wanda would have been brave enough to get in my trunk with a bat.
Wanda peered into it, frowning. “I hope it hasn’t pooed on my rabbit costume.”
“You packed your rabbit costume?”
“Of course I did, Araminta,” Wanda said, rifling through my spare school uniform and all the other weird stuff that you seem to need for boarding school. “It is my favourite thing in the whole world.”
I could not believe Wanda had brought her stupid rabbit costume to school. Brenda and Barry gave it to her for her birthday and she loves it to bits, even though she looks really, really silly in it. I watched her pull the costume out and hang it up on the rail in the little alcove. Then I watched her fish around a bit more and take out loads of packets of gummi bears. She piled up the packets beside her bed and said, “OK, Araminta. The rest of the stuff in there is yours.”
I finished unpacking the trunk. At the bottom of it was a huge book like a doorstop, which I guessed was the one Great-aunt Emilene had put in. I picked it up expecting it to be something boring about manners, but it wasn’t. It was called The Complete Casebook of Sherlock Holmes and it was by someone called Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. When I opened it I saw it was all about a very clever detective and his slightly dim sidekick. I was so surprised—how did Great-aunt Emilene know? “Look at this, Wanda!” I said. “Isn’t it great?”
Wanda smiled, but I could tell she was thinking about something else. I was hanging up my spare uniform beside the stupid pink rabbit suit when she suddenly said, “I expect Mum will wonder where I am.”
I was surprised. “Doesn’t she know?” Wanda never does anything without telling Brenda first.
“No…” Wanda sounded a bit miserable.
“Perhaps you had better phone and tell her,” I said.
“I haven’t got a phone,” said Wanda. “And neither have you, Araminta.”
“There’s a really old-fashioned one at the end of the corridor that you have to put money in,” I told her. “I’ll show you how to use it.” I looked in the suitcase that Uncle Drac had given me and, just as I had expected, there were some coins for the phone. Good old Uncle Drac.
We tiptoed down the corridor, heading for the light at the far end by the stairs. The telephone was in an alcove along with a huge pile of old phone books. Wanda stared at the phone numbers written all over the wall. “How do we know which number to use?” she asked. “Do we just keep trying all those numbers until we get the right one?”
Sometimes I wonder how Wanda has managed to survive to the age she is. Brenda and Barry don’t tell her anything useful at all. “No, Wanda,” I said. “We use the right number the first time.”
I put the money in the coin slot and Wanda said, “Where are the buttons?”
“You don’t need buttons, you use this.” I pointed to a silver disc on top of the phone, which had ten holes in it. “This is a dial,” I told her.
In each hole was a number from nought to nine. I put my finger in hole number nought, which was the first number, and dragged the dial all the way around to its stopping place. It made a nice clicking s
ound.
Wanda looked really impressed. “How do you know things like that?”
“Uncle Drac took me on a Phone Practice Expedition when I was younger. We went to all different kinds of telephones and I had to call Aunt Tabby from every single one. It was really fun.” I felt a bit sad talking about Uncle Drac, so I decided not to do so any more and carried on dialling the number for Spook House. It took ages for the dial to go round to the little stopping-bit at the bottom and then back up again, but at last I heard the weird ringy-ring ringy-ring echoing faraway in Spook House.
Aunt Tabby picked up the phone. “Yes? What do you want?” Aunt Tabby doesn’t like answering the phone and she always says that.
“Good evening, Aunt Tabby,” I said very politely, because you must always be polite on the phone. “This is your niece, Araminta Spook, calling.”
Aunt Tabby gave a funny little squeak. “What are you doing, Araminta?”
“I am telephoning Spook House, Aunt Tabby.”
“I know that,” said Aunt Tabby. “But why?”
“Because Wanda wants to talk to Brenda.”
“Wanda?”
“Yes. Would you be so kind as to fetch Brenda please?”
There was a kind of muffled scream and I heard Aunt Tabby yell, “Brenda, Brenda! Araminta has got Wanda!”
There was a sound like an elephant charging down the stairs and then Brenda shrieked so loud down the phone that I had to hold it miles away from my ear. When she had stopped I said, “Excuse me a moment please, Brenda. I will pass you over to Wanda.”
Wanda took the phone like it was a snake or something horrible and held it away from her ear. She didn’t say much at all, except for, “Yes, Mum,” and, “No, Mum,” and, “No, Mum, Araminta didn’t make me do it.” At last, after Brenda’s voice had come yelling out of the phone for what felt like hours, Wanda took a deep breath and said, “No, Mum. Actually, I am not coming home. I am staying at school with Araminta. It is very nice here and I have had two packets of gummi bears. Goodbye.” And then she put down the phone.