“Yes, you’d better watch out. There’s one on the chair you’re about to sit on,” I growled back at him.
Ella got up to return her tray to the kitchen. I nodded in her direction. “Does either one of you know that girl? The one with the long dark hair?”
Angus looked at her and lowered his voice. “That’s Ella Littlejohn. Her grandmother does ghost tours for tourists. My dad says the old lady’s a real witch. I mean, she’s supposed to have tame toads in her garden and everything!”
Stu snorted disdainfully.
“What’s so funny?” Angus hissed. Ella was walking out of the dining hall with some of her friends. “Dad says her grandmother has put a curse on at least four people.”
“Your dad also said Stonehenge was built by aliens.”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Yes, he did.”
I left the two to their fight and looked out the window. Just a few more hours and it would be dark again.
Well, looks like you’re in trouble.
“I… eh… have to go,” I muttered. I ignored Stu’s curious look and ran after Ella.
I found her outside, even though it had started raining again. She was leaning against a tree, looking at the cathedral. She didn’t seem very surprised to see me.
“My grandmother says there’s a Gray Lady in the cathedral,” she said as I sidled up to her. “But I only ever saw the boy who haunts the cloisters. He’s a mason’s apprentice who fell off the scaffolding while they were finishing the tower.” She caught a raindrop with the tip of her tongue. “He likes to scare the tourists. Whispers old swear words and such things. Quite silly, really, but he’s probably just bored. I think most ghosts are bored.”
That seemed to be a pretty bad excuse for hunting eleven-year-old boys across the Cathedral Close. But I kept that opinion to myself.
The rain had darkened the walls of the cathedral, and it now looked as if it were built out of the gray skies themselves. Until then I’d pretty much ignored the cathedral, together with everything else that brought the tourists to Salisbury. But I hadn’t forgotten that on the evening before, it had seemed like the only safe place in the whole damn city. (See? I also like to swear when I’m scared.) So I felt particularly disheartened when I heard that there were also ghosts behind those walls, even if those ghosts were merely dead apprentices, not hanged men.
“I… eh…” I wiped a few raindrops from my nose. Ever since my arrival in Salisbury, rain had been falling so often that it felt as if the whole world were being dissolved in water. “I heard about your grandmother. Do you think… I mean… could she maybe help me?”
Ella pushed her wet hair behind her ear and looked at me thoughtfully. “Possible,” she said. “She knows a lot about ghosts. I’ve only seen a few, but Zelda’s met dozens.”
Dozens! The world was obviously a much more worrying place than I had thought. Until then the worst I had ever encountered was a bearded dentist.
“You’re a boarder, right?” Ella asked. “Just ask the Popplewells if you can come visit us. Or do you go home on weekends?”
Home. Going there would have meant being forever marked as the homesick crybaby who made up stories about ghosts so he could go back to his mum. I hear you ask, And? Definitely better than being dead. But I already had that pride thing back then—not to mention that I couldn’t stand the neighbor who was looking after the dog and my sisters.
“No,” I mumbled. “Not going home.”
“Great.” Ella caught another raindrop on her tongue. She was as tall as I, even though she was a year behind me. “Then I’ll tell my gran you’re coming by tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? But that’s too late. What if they come back tonight?” The panic in my voice was embarrassingly obvious, but I could still hear that hollow whisper in my head: The hare always ends up dead.
Ella frowned. “I told you they can’t do anything to you. They can’t even touch you. The only way ghosts can hurt you is through your own fear.”
Great! I definitely had more than enough of that.
My desperation was obviously still splashed all over my face, because Ella sighed. “All right!” she said. “Then come by today. But no later than half past four. Zelda takes her nap at five, and she gets terribly ratty if her nap is disturbed.”
She fished a pen out of her jacket pocket and took my arm. “We’re in number seven,” she said as she wrote the street name on my arm. “Just take the path through the sheep meadows. Our house is right behind the old mill. But don’t step on the toads. My grandmother loves them more than anything.”
Toads. Angus’s father had been right about that. Whatever. A raindrop smudged one of the letters on my arm. I quickly pulled my sleeve down over it. Ella’s handwriting was quite pretty. Of course.
“Do you live with your grandmother?” I asked.
“Only when my parents are on tour.”
“On tour?”
“Second violin and flute. They play in an orchestra. But it’s not a very good one.” She turned around. “See you at four thirty,” she called over her shoulder.
I looked after her as she ran toward the school building.
Four ghosts and a witch’s granddaughter. Can’t get crazier than that, I thought. But of course I was wrong about that as well.
AN OLD MURDER
There was only one way I could speak to Ella’s grandmother before her afternoon nap: I had to steal away during homework period. I’d get into quite a lot of trouble, but the hope of getting rid of the four ghosts made it worth any detention. At around ten past four, I squeezed myself through the window of the boys’ bathroom. I nearly ran into Bonapart on the path leading to the gate, but luckily he was so lost in thought that he didn’t notice me.
Rain was again bucketing down while I stumbled along the path that leads across the marshy meadows to the old mill. The sun was nowhere to be seen, but I could guess it was already hanging dangerously low, and with every step I kept turning around, fearful that the four hanged men might pay me an even earlier visit that day. But all I saw were a few soaked sheep and two hikers who were just as wet as I.
The house of Zelda Littlejohn lies behind an untended hawthorn hedge, which even then was left to grow so high that I could barely make out the ridge of the house’s red roof. The garden gate was jammed shut, and when I finally managed to push it open, I saw two toads jumping away. A third one was sitting on the doormat. It looked at me through amber eyes as if it had never seen anything as strange as I. It uttered a croak as I pushed the slightly rusty doorbell, and when Ella opened the door, it tried to jump past her and into the house. But Ella was faster; she caught the toad with a practiced hand.
“You should be ashamed of yourself!” she said, looking sternly at the wildly kicking creature. “After what happened this morning, you’re all banned from the house for at least a month.”
She put her prisoner into a big pot next to the door. Two other toads were already sitting in it. Ella put a cloth over the pot.
“My grandmother nearly stepped on one this morning,” Ella said, gesturing at me to follow her into the house. “She sprained her foot trying not to squash it. I keep telling Zelda she shouldn’t let them into the house, but she won’t listen.”
As we walked past the living room, I spotted two more toads sitting on the sofa. Ella followed my glance and sighed.
“Yes, I know. They’re everywhere,” she said, leading me down the corridor. The wallpaper was covered in sunflowers, which were big enough to make you dizzy. “Zelda says she keeps them only because they eat the slugs, but that’s nonsense. The garden is full of slugs, despite all the toads. I heard that she was already crazy about them as a child and that she kept bringing them to school.”
I was wondering what Bonapart would have said about a toad on his desk, but before I could picture the scene, Ella stopped in front of a door.
“The doctor said Zelda won’t be able to do any tours for at least two weeks,” she whisper
ed. “So she’s in quite a foul mood.”
I braced myself for the worst. However, the old lady, who was lying on a bed and had a bandaged foot, did not seem very frightening. Zelda looked like an owl that had fallen from its nest. Her glasses seemed far too big for her little wrinkly face, and her short gray hair looked like ruffled feathers. Like her granddaughter, Zelda didn’t much go for greetings or introductions.
“That him?” was all she asked as she eyed me through her thick glasses.
“Be nice to him!” Ella replied. She sat down at the foot end of the bed. “His name’s Jon, and the ghosts have already freaked him out enough.”
Zelda, however, just snorted disdainfully and kept eyeing me so suspiciously that I started to blush. She could probably read from my face that I thought her granddaughter was the prettiest girl in the whole school.
“Didn’t you say he saw four ghosts?” Zelda asked, reaching for the coffee mug on her bedside table. “That boy looks as pale as if he’s seen at least a dozen! Unusual for them to appear in groups,” she observed before taking a sip of coffee. “Most ghosts are loners.”
“Ella… Ella said you’ve met quite a few?” I muttered.
“Oh yes! I see them everywhere. No idea why they love to show themselves to me. I don’t even like them! The first one I saw was my grandfather. One morning he was sitting on my bed, and I got to listen to him complaining about my grandmother’s new hairdo. I usually advise people to ignore them, but Ella tells me that the four you saw have become quite unpleasant. So why don’t you tell me what exactly they did, and I’ll tell you how to get rid of them.”
Zelda didn’t interrupt me while I told her about the riders under my window and the chase across the Cathedral Close. She just drank her coffee and raised her eyebrows a few times. (Zelda’s eyebrows were as dark as Ella’s, though the grandmother surely had to use dye to maintain that color.) It was only when I got to the bit at the cathedral that she suddenly frowned.
“He called you Hartgill?”
“Yes. That’s my mother’s maiden name. But I have no idea how they could know that.”
Zelda put her mug back on the bedside table. “Get me those crutches the doctor left this morning!” she said to Ella.
“But you’re not supposed to get up!” Ella protested.
“The crutches! Now!”
Ella shrugged and did as she was told. Her grandmother cursed the pain as she hobbled down the corridor. I soon learned Zelda always swears using strange plant names: stinkwort, nettlemuck, skunkbush, sumac. She seemed to have an endless supply of those. Zelda hobbled into her living room. On shelves next to the door were boxes with labels such as FEMALE GHOSTS OF SALISBURY, POLTERGEISTS OF WILTSHIRE, GHOST STORIES OF SOUTHWEST ENGLAND, and HAUNTED HOUSES IN SUSSEX.
“Ella!” Zelda ordered, pointing at one of the boxes on the lowest shelf. Ella pulled it out, giving me a worried look. I didn’t like the label either: DARK TALES.
Zelda sank into her sofa with a suppressed “Stinkbane!” Then she started flicking through the index cards in the box with a deep frown on her forehead. Finally she pulled out a card. “There we are. Hartgill. I had a feeling I’d seen that name somewhere!” she mumbled. Then she gave a deep sigh.
“What?” I asked in a failing voice.
“Heavens, Jon!” Zelda said. “Why did your parents have to send you to school in Salisbury, of all places? This was bound to happen. Kilmington is barely an hour from here.”
“K-Kilmington?” I stammered. “Uh—”
Zelda cut me off. “Call your mother. Tell her she has to send you to another school. As far away from Salisbury as possible.”
One of the toads on the sofa croaked, as if seconding Zelda’s suggestion. I felt my knees go as soft as toad spawn.
“F-far away? Does that mean there’s nothing you can do about them?”
Zelda swiped the two toads off the sofa and gave the card to Ella.
“There. Read this to him. I think I know who’s hunting him.”
Ella looked at the card with a frown.
“Lord Stourton,” she read, “hanged March 6, 1556, on Salisbury’s Market Square, with a silken rope, in deference to his noble blood. The claims that Stourton was buried in Salisbury Cathedral are wrong, even if there are stories that describe the apparition of a noose above the crypt; those have been wrongly attributed to him. He was buried together with his four servants, and he’s said to be haunting the graveyard in Kilmington.”
Ella put down the card, and Zelda gave me a quizzical look.
“Does that sound like them?”
Maybe. My hand involuntarily touched my neck. Lord Stourton… Giving a name to my pursuer didn’t really help.
“But why is he after Jon?” Ella asked.
“Read on,” Zelda replied.
Ella picked up the card again. “Stourton and his servants were hanged for the murder of”—she caught her breath and looked at me—“William Hartgill and his son John.”
Zelda took off her glasses and polished them with the hem of her blouse. The flowers on it were nearly as bad as those on the wallpaper. “That should explain why your ghost isn’t very keen on the Hartgills, don’t you think?” she said. “Hartgill was Stourton’s steward, and Stourton tried several times to kill him. Terrible story. John Hartgill saved his father twice, but in the end Stourton lured them both into a trap and killed them. It was a horrific murder, even by the standards of those times.”
There was another croak from behind the sofa.
“Stinkwort! There’s another one!” Zelda groaned, peering over the back of the sofa. “I think I may have to get rid of the little beasts. Maybe I should take them all to the millpond and—”
“Zelda!” Ella interrupted sternly. “Forget about the toads. What about Jon? There has to be a way to get rid of these ghosts! Just like you got rid of that headless woman who used to sit in your brother’s kitchen. Or the poltergeist from the old mill…”
“Balderdash! Nobody ‘got rid of him’. It just got too noisy for him there!” Zelda put her glasses back on. “And Stourton’s a ghost of a different caliber. The stories about him are the spookiest you’ll find for miles around.”
“Spooky?” I whispered.
“Yes, but don’t put too much stock in those, boy.” Zelda tried hard to sound calm. “People around here talk a lot when it gets dark. Most of it is foolish twaddle—though those stories are pure gold when it comes to my tours.”
“What stories? Come on, tell us.” Ella could really sound quite stern.
“As I said, nothing but twaddle!” Zelda groaned as she rubbed her bandaged foot. “That dead lord has been blamed for a few strange deaths in the area, and people always manage to bend it so that the victims were all male Hartgills.”
“D-d-deaths?” I stuttered. “But… but Ella said ghosts can’t really harm you!”
“Yes, and that is true!” Zelda said in a very firm voice. “I told you… twaddle. Over in Kilmington they claim that Stourton has a pack of black demon hounds that chase his victims to death. And here in Salisbury we have that story of the chorister whom Stourton supposedly threw out a window in your school, just for being very distantly related to the Hartgills. It’s all nonsense! Ghosts are annoying, and sometimes they can be quite frightening, but it’s as Ella said—in the end they’re all completely harmless.”
Harmless? I could still hear that hoarse voice in my head, and I felt the blade of his sword on my neck. Harmless was definitely not how I would have described him.
Ella also seemed unconvinced by what Zelda had said. She was still frowning at the card in her hand. “What if the stories are true?” she asked. “What if those ghosts really can kill Jon?”
Zelda uttered a curse as she pushed herself up from the sofa. It sounded something like “thistlecrap.”
“Don’t worry, my darling,” she said. “They won’t harm a hair on his head, no matter how scary they seem. They are dead, and all they want is a little bit of a
ttention. But if I were Jon, I’d still find myself another school. That Stourton fellow is supposed to be quite a persistent ghost. Jon probably won’t be getting much sleep if he stays in Salisbury. Come!” she said. “Help me get back to the bedroom. This foot is going to drive me mad, I can tell already. Maybe I should ask the doctor to saw it off. Isn’t that what they do in the movies?”
Zelda held out her arm, but Ella didn’t move. She can also be quite stubborn.
“What if they come back tonight?” she asked.
Zelda looked at me.
“Ignore them!” she answered. “They hate that. And stay away from open windows—you never know.” Then she held out her arm again. But Ella still wasn’t moving.
“Zelda, what about the knight?” she asked. “Don’t you always say he’s just waiting to be called to someone’s aid?”
Zelda dropped her arm again. “Heavens, Ella! That’s just another one of those stories I tell the tourists. You know I tell them a lot of things that aren’t true.”
“You also told that story to my mother. As a bedtime story. And she told it to me.”
“Because it’s a great story. But nobody has ever seen him.”
“Because nobody has ever called him.”
I had no idea what they were talking about. I just knew that I was still scared. So terribly scared that I felt quite sick. I could see the millpond through Zelda’s living-room window. It reflected the gray afternoon sky. Just a few more hours and it would be dark again. Where would the ghosts be waiting for me this time?
Ella and Zelda were still arguing.
“Well, then…” I mumbled, turning toward the door. “Thanks.”
A toad was sitting in front of the door. I caught it and put it in the pot with the others. Then I stepped outside and pulled the door shut behind me.
What now?
Back to the school, what else, Jon? I thought. Maybe you could say you spent the whole of study hall in the bathroom. Mrs. Cunningham is quite gullible. And then you could call your mother.