My Family and Other Ghosts Read online

  Also by Lou Kuenzler

  Bella Broomstick

  Bella Broomstick

  School Spells

  Bella Broomstick

  Halloween Havoc

  Bella Broomstick

  Strictly Spells

  Bella Broomstick

  Midnight Magic

  Princess Disgrace:

  First Term at Tall Towers

  Princess Disgrace:

  Second Term at Tall Towers

  Princess Disgrace:

  Third Term at Tall Towers

  Princess Disgrace:

  Winter Term at Tall Towers

  To my family and other friends.

  - Lou K

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Dedication

  Chapter One: A Dark and Stormy Night

  Chapter Two: The Ancient Yellow Scroll

  Chapter Three: The World is Just Not Ready for Brussels Sprout Biscuits

  Chapter Four: Turn Around Turn Around When Possible

  Chapter Five: High on High on the Windy Moor

  Chapter Six: Run!

  Chapter Seven: Is Anybody There?

  Chapter Eight: Everything Will be All Right

  Chapter Nine: Playing with a Poltergeist

  Chapter Ten: There’s Nothing as Frightening as a Headless Huntsman

  Chapter Eleven: Three Grey Ladies

  Chapter Twelve: There Really is Nothing as Frightening as a Headless Huntsman

  Chapter Thirteen: It’s Probably Best to Skip this One

  Chapter Fourteen: Ping!

  Chapter Fifteen: You Look Like You’ve Seen a Ghost

  Chapter Sixteen: Ring!

  Chapter Seventeen: Poo! Was That You?

  Chapter Eighteen: Welcome to Grave Grange

  Chapter Nineteen: A Ghostly Howl

  Chapter Twenty: Things May Seeeem Straaaange When You Staaaay at Graaave Graaaange!

  Chapter Twenty-One: Hauntingly Awful!

  Chapter Twenty-Two: If Only Grandpa Digby was Here

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Knock, Knock! Who’s There?

  Chapter Twenty-Four: The Clock Struck Twelve

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Garlic?

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Bad Dog! Shoo!

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: It Was (Too) Quiet

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Ring! Ring!

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Grave Grange is Not Haunted

  Chapter Thirty: Beef Wellington

  Chapter Thirty-One: The Dark, Dark Moor

  Chapter Thirty-Two: A Haunting Howl

  Chapter Thirty-Three: The Mystery of the Murky Black Pool

  Chapter Thirty-Four: Tally-Ho

  Chapter Thirty-Five: The Ghostly Chase

  Chapter Thirty-Six: Ghosts!

  Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Way Home

  Five Star Review

  A Sales Pitch

  Another Sales Pitch

  End Note: Something Fishy

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE: A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT

  It was a dark and stormy night … and Ivy Graves woke to see a shadowy face staring in through her bedroom window.

  “Oh my goodness!” she gasped. “It’s Grandpa Digby!”

  There were three reasons why Ivy was so surprised:

  One: She had never met her Grandpa Digby before. (She only really recognized him by the bushy grey eyebrows she’d seen in the faded photo of him in the living room.)

  Two: Ivy’s bedroom was on the eighteenth floor of a tower block (and there was no balcony outside to stand on – not even a proper windowsill, really).

  Three (and perhaps most surprising of all): Grandpa Digby was dead.

  He was very dead. Or, at least, he was supposed to be.

  Grandpa Digby had died ten-and-a-half years ago, on the very same day that Ivy was born. Just as she had come into the world, poor old Grandpa Digby had left it. Ivy had always imagined it being a bit like those swirly doors you see in posh hotels. One person comes in, then the revolving door spins round, and another person goes out. Except, in Ivy’s case, there’d been two of them arriving – because Ivy shared her birthday with her twin brother, Ash. Her younger twin, born twenty-two minutes after her (as she never tired of telling him). They had both been born on the same day that poor old Grandpa Digby had packed his mortal suitcase and checked out of the Land Of The Living Hotel.

  “Yikes!” cried Ash, sitting up in bed suddenly and banging his head on the bottom of Ivy’s bunk above him. “Did you see that? I saw a face at the window! A strange, shadowy face with HUGE bushy eyebrows. But … but … we’re eighteen floors off the ground and there isn’t even a—”

  “Balcony,” said Ivy, finishing Ash’s sentence. She did that a lot. “It’s a ghost,” she added calmly. “He’s floating.”

  “A … g-g-ghost?” Ash made a sound like a gulping goldfish, as the face bobbed past the glass.

  “Don’t you recognize him?” Ivy jumped down from the top bunk. “It’s Grandpa Digby,” she said, padding to the window. “We’d better see what he wants.”

  “Don’t!” cried Ash, as lightning flashed across the stormy sky.

  Ivy ignored him. She did that a lot, too.

  She calmly pushed up the catch and opened the window as far as it would go – which was about the width of a jam sandwich. All the windows, in all the flats on the eighteenth floor, only opened to a standard sandwich thickness. It was to stop anything thicker than a sandwich from falling out.

  “Hello, Grandpa Digby! Nice to meet you,” she said, peering through the gap. “Sorry.” She gave the window another shove. “That’s the best I can manage, I’m afraid.”

  “No bother, lass. Nice to meet you too,” said Grandpa Digby’s ghost. He had a thick, dusty voice, as if his throat was full of cobwebs. He floated closer to the window. “This’ll do nicely.”

  “Of course!” said Ivy, jumping up and down excitedly. “I bet you can walk through walls and windows and things, can’t you? I mean, you are a ghost…” She trailed off, wondering if it was rude to mention that sort of thing. Perhaps spooks didn’t like being reminded that they were D-E-A-D. But Grandpa Digby just chuckled and gave a musty cough, as the storm jostled him about.

  “Psst,” hissed Ash, tugging at the sleeve of Ivy’s pyjamas. “Psst … Ivy.” She ignored him (again).

  “Actually, I’m not so good at the whole walking-through-walls thing,” admitted Grandpa Digby, still floating outside the window and shouting a little to be heard over the wind. “I have a tendency to get stuck halfway through. I once spent six whole weeks wedged sideways in the plaster between the library and the ballroom at Grave Grange.”

  “Library?” said Ivy. “Ballroom?” She’d imagined poor Grandpa Digby lying quietly in the cemetery ever since he had passed away. But it was obvious now that this stormy night wasn’t the first time he’d been up and about. “Where’s Grave Grange?” she asked.

  Grandpa Digby didn’t seem to hear her – or perhaps he was ignoring her. Ivy didn’t like being ignored.

  “Where’s Grave Grange?” she repeated, shouting a little too loudly so that Grandpa Digby would be sure to hear her above the wind. But he still didn’t answer the question.

  “You should meet my friend Harold the Headless Huntsman,” he said, wagging a shadowy finger. “Now, he’s an expert wall-walker. So he should be, mind you. He’s had almost four hundred years to practise.”

  “Four hundred years?” said Ivy. “You know people who have been dead for four hundred years?” This was so exciting, she couldn’t bear it.

  “Aghhh!” Ash did not sound excited. He made a strangled sound like a python might if you tied it in a knot. “D-did you say Headless Hun
tsman?”

  “Pah! He’s a rotten old show-off, that’s what he is.” Grandpa Digby waved his hand dismissively. “I’ll tell you what, though, I’m not a bad slider myself. Not once I put my mind to it.” He floated right up to the glass and peered through the sandwich-sized slit. “Yes. I should manage that, no problem.”

  “A slider?” said Ivy. “Do you mean … you’re going to try and slip through that tiny gap in the window?”

  “It would certainly be easier than having to hold our conversation from out here,” said Grandpa Digby, a little crossly. “All this floating about plays havoc with my dodgy hip.”

  “Oh!” Ivy had never imagined that floating might be hard work but, as she peered out into the darkness, she could see the old ghost’s legs were churning up and down in mid-air as if he was pedalling an invisible bicycle. “Sorry,” she said, stepping back to make room. “How very rude of us, Grandpa Digby. Do come—”

  “No!” Ash leapt between her and the window. “What are you doing, Ivy? Are you mad?” he asked. “NEVER invite a ghost into your home.”

  “Actually, that’s vampires,” said Grandpa Digby, calmly sliding over the window-frame like a misty dishcloth. “You’re quite right, lad, NEVER invite a vampire into your home. But I’m afraid to say, ghosts can come in whether we’re invited or not.”

  The foggy dishcloth rearranged itself into a Grandpa Digby shape again, as he stood in front of them on the carpet.

  Close up, under the electric light of the bedroom, Ivy saw that his ghostly skin was not a rich, dark brown colour (like the photograph of Grandpa Digby in the living room). Instead, his shadowy outline had a sort of blue-ish tinge. His feet were the shadowiest of all, melting into bluey-grey mist where they touched the floor.

  “Hello!” he said, patting each of the twins on the head.

  “Brrr!” Ivy giggled. “That’s cold!” It was as if she had been touched by a snowman.

  “Yikes!” Ash leapt in the air

  “Sorry! We ghosts tend to be a bit chilly.” Grandpa Digby smiled. “I hope I haven’t given you the heebie-jeebies, turning up like this,” he said. “I expect I do look a bit of a fright.”

  The old ghost glanced towards the full-length mirror on their wardrobe door.

  “Oh, dear me,” he chuckled.

  His baggy shirt, jacket and trousers were dusty grey and a cobweb poked from his top pocket like a forgotten handkerchief.

  “We’re just glad you came,” said Ivy, stepping closer and looking into the mirror too. Although Ash was still hanging back, cowering in background, she could see all three of their reflections framed together – like a spooky selfie with Grandpa Digby in the middle.

  Ivy spotted the family resemblance right away.

  We’ve all got slightly sticky-out ears, she thought with a giggle, although Ash and Grandpa Digby’s were more noticeable. Hers were hidden by her shoulder-length curly hair.

  The twins both had dark brown hair. Grandpa Digby’s was dusty grey, but funny little tufts stuck up on the top in exactly the same way that Ash’s always did.

  What Ivy noticed most was that all three of them had identical big brown eyes. Beneath his bushy grey eyebrows, Grandpa Digby’s still twinkled brightly, bringing a glow of warm light to his shadowy face.

  “Wow!” Ivy gasped. “This is so cool!”

  “Wrong,” whimpered Ash. His hand shot out towards the dressing table and he grabbed the old baseball cap he always wore and rammed it on to his head, pulling it right down over his own big sparkly eyes as usual. “This is not cool at all,” he mumbled. “It’s creepy … and weird … and supernatural.”

  “Ash!” Ivy kicked him in the shins (a little harder than she meant to).

  “Don’t be so rude,” she hissed. She knew he was shy, but that was no excuse. Not when a real live ghost (or a real dead one) had come all this way to visit them from beyond the grave, and on such a terrible night too.

  “How about a nice, warm cup of tea?” she asked. Old people love tea. The least she could do was offer Grandpa Digby some. “We’ve got biscuits, too,” she added encouragingly. “Dad baked them. So they might be a little unusual, but…” Ivy paused, wondering if ghosts could eat or drink anything at all once they were no longer A-L-I-V-E.

  “Or I could wake Dad up for you, if you like,” she said, remembering he was Grandpa Digby’s son. Dad had raised the twins on their own, ever since their mum had left when they were babies. He was the best dad in the world, but he’d been very glum lately – especially after losing his job as the chef in a local burger bar (his “experimental” custard-flavoured mustard had not been a good idea). Ivy thought it might cheer Dad up to be reunited with his long-lost father from beyond the grave.

  But Grandpa Digby shook his head. “Best not. It’s you youngsters I’ve come to see. I have something important to tell you,” he said in a ghostly whisper. Something which could change your lives – and my afterlife – for ever!”

  “What is it?” Ash whimpered, sounding like he’d rather stand barefoot on the prongs of a plug than hear the answer.

  “Tell us,” begged Ivy, almost exploding with excitement.

  “I want you two and your dad to come and live with me,” said Grandpa Digby simply. “At Grave Grange.”

  “Wicked!” cried Ivy, feeling at once that living with a ghost was definitely going to be exciting. “But you still haven’t told us: where is Grave Grange exactly?”

  “Ah!” said Grandpa Digby, with a slow smile. “The real question is what is Grave Grange?”

  “Well? Go on!” Ivy couldn’t bear the suspense a moment longer. She tried to grab at Grandpa Digby’s sleeve, but her fingers passed right through as if she was touching a spider’s web. “Tell us everything!”

  “Grave Grange is a hotel,” he explained at last, “in a big, old house, on a big, old hill.”

  “A big, old, haunted house?” Ash shuddered nervously.

  Ivy, meanwhile, was leaping up and down in the air, clapping her hands. At last, a REAL adventure! “I’ve never even stayed in a hotel, let alone lived in one,” she blurted out.

  “Then you’re in for a treat!” Grandpa Digby’s eyes twinkled beneath his huge grey eyebrows.

  “What Grave Grange needs,” he explained, “is a new head chef – the sort of person who could be his own boss, and run the hotel too.” Grandpa Digby waved a rolled-up scroll in the air. “All the details are here.”

  “A head chef? That would suit Dad perfectly. It’s his dream job,” cried Ivy, thinking how wonderful it would be to live in a hotel – and with Grandpa Digby, too. She took the scroll and thrust it into Ash’s hands. She knew he’d be interested in double-checking all the tiny details, but she didn’t care. All she knew was that it was a brilliant idea.

  “Dad loves cooking,” she beamed.

  “But we can’t run a hotel,” said Ash quietly.

  “Of course you can. I’ll be there to help,” promised Grandpa Digby. He was already slipping back over the windowsill. “All you have to do is convince your dad that the move is a good idea. Although … perhaps it might be best if you don’t mention—”

  “Ghosts?” said Ash. “Visits from dead people?”

  “Exactly! That’s the spirit.” The old ghost wagged a blurry finger at them from beyond the glass.

  “Goodbye, Grandpa Digby,” called Ivy, as his shimmering shape melted away into the dawn light. “We’ll join you at Grave Grange as soon as we can, I promise.”

  CHAPTER TWO: THE ANCIENT YELLOW SCROLL

  The ancient yellow scroll almost crumbled to dust in Ash’s shaking fingers.

  “Yikes,” he said. “I don’t like this one little bit.”

  There were three main reasons Ash wasn’t keen on the scroll:

  One: It looked scary (like the skin of an Ancient Egyptian mummy he had once seen in a museum).

  Two: It smelt scary (like damp dungeons, cobwebs and … well, a bit like the toilets at school).

  Three (and
most terrifying of all): It had been thrust into their hands by a ghost – so whatever was written inside was bound to be scary. (Very scary.)

  “Can’t we just throw it out of the window and forget anything ever happened?” asked Ash, peering into the pale dawn light, where Grandpa Digby’s ghost had long since vanished.

  “No!” said Ivy. “We can’t.” She folded her arms and glared at him. “Grandpa Digby came all this way to visit us. He’s come up with a brilliant plan to find a new job for Dad. The least we can do is read what the message says.”

  “Fine.” Ash sighed. He peered out from under his cap and saw that Ivy’s face was glowing. She was wrinkling her nose and her big dark eyes were sparkling with excitement (bad signs). He knew it was useless to argue with her when she was like this. His twin sister was only twenty-two minutes older than him (as she never tired of telling Ash), but they both knew she was the boss by about twenty-two thousand light-years. Worse still, she was always on the lookout for adventure. Ash did not like adventure. Ash did not like change – not even rearranging his sock drawer. Yet here was Ivy, and the ghost of dead Grandpa Digby, trying to turn their whole life upside down.

  “Just remember,” he said, “whatever happens, it was your idea.” Ash opened the scroll quickly (as if he was pulling off a plaster) so it would be over before he had any more time to worry.

  CREAK! The paper made a high, whining sound as it unrolled, like the door of a haunted house blowing in the wind.

  “Ahhhh!” Ash leapt backwards, dropping the scroll on the floor. They both stared down at the open page and read what it said:

  “Come tomorrow?” said Ash. “Is that it?” Grandpa Digby had promised details. This was just two words scrawled in green ink, and whoever had written them couldn’t even spell properly.

  “There’s an address too,” said Ivy. “Look.” She pointed to a smaller line scribbled at the bottom of the scroll.

  Grave Grange, Darkmoor.

  “Dartmoor!” said Ivy. “How lovely.”

  “No,” Ash corrected her. “Not Dartmoor, Ivy. Darkmoor.” An address like that should be warning enough. It practically screamed STAY AWAY.