Shrinking Ralph Perfect (10 page)

Early next morning, Tom called a meeting of the whole house. ‘Last night,’ he announced, ‘Ralph had a visitation – from Miriam.’

‘So what’s new?’ Kyle grunted, faking a yawn.

‘He saw her,’ said Neville, knocking ash from his pipe. (Ralph wished he’d knock it against Salter’s head.)

‘Saw her?’ Jemima gasped. Her long, fair curls shook like wallflowers in a spring breeze.

‘Oh, how lovely, what’s she like?’ asked Mrs Spink.

‘Huffy,’ said Ralph. He thrust his hands into his pockets.

Mrs Spink steepled hers in a thoughtful pose. ‘In the spirit world, they’d say “troubled”, Ralph.’

‘You’re telling me,’ muttered Wally, who’d been hit by a flying can just the day before and had a spreading purple bruise on his elbow to prove it.

Tom called the group to order. ‘She appears to be a young society girl, aged about seventeen. We’re not sure why she materialised. It seems she made a connection with Ralph and confused him with someone called ‘Rafe’, who we’re guessing was her intended partner.’

Kyle Salter exploded with laughter.

‘Be quiet. It’s not funny,’ Penny snapped at him.

And just for a second, the bully flinched. Ralph wondered idly if a good strong word from a loving parent early in his life might have made Kyle a different boy. He was certainly getting savaged for his bad behaviour now. Sweeping her hair firmly out of her eyes, Penny lectured him sharply. ‘Ghosts don’t haunt a place without good reason. There’s usually some kind of tragedy involved. This Miriam girl would have died here, most likely. And from what Ralph’s told me it sounds as though she was jilted by her fiancé. It’s my guess she died of a broken heart.’

‘Oh dear. How dreadful,’ Mrs Spink said.

‘Quite,’ said Penny. ‘If she’s throwing things about, she’s emotionally disturbed and might be seeking revenge on my son.’

‘I don’t think she was, Mum,’ Ralph said quietly.

‘Ralph,’ his mum hissed in that not so very quiet ‘please don’t contradict me in company’ voice.

Ralph shuffled his feet. ‘It’s just…I don’t know. I thought she sort of liked me.’

Tom coughed into his fist. ‘Your mum has a point, though, Ralph. We should be on our guard. You did zap Miriam, remember. If she wakes up somewhere with a
big ghostly headache she might really start to move the furniture about.’

As if by magic, bangs and crashes of all description began to filter down from the tower room. This wasn’t the first commotion Ralph had heard up there. It seemed to be Miriam’s focal point, as though she was having an ongoing ‘domestic’ with the occupant of that strange, locked place. As the crashes settled, the wailing voice shouted, ‘Belt the keeper!’ or something like it. Ralph scratched his head. What
was
that deranged voice saying?

‘Zapped her?’

He turned to see Kyle staring hard at him.

Salter switched his gaze to Tom, who by now had seated the stone on his palm, showing it round like a jewel on a cushion. ‘Ralph took this from Jack’s fridge, just before he was miniaturised. We’re not sure what it is, but it repelled Miriam when she touched it. Doesn’t seem to have the same effect on humans.’

Mrs Spink closed her eyes and cupped a hand above the stone, catching its radiance in her palm. It was pulsing away like an amber-coloured heart. Twice now Ralph had seen it change colour.
Was the heat making it
unstable?
he wondered.

‘It is a crystal. It has great energy,’ said Sylvia. ‘I do
not believe it is of this world.’

The electrician, Wally, leant forward to inspect it. ‘Look how the light’s bouncing round inside it. I think it’s sparking, creating a charge.’

‘It is in tune with the cosmos,’ Mrs Spink pronounced.

‘Dunno about that,’ said Wally. ‘If you ask me, it’s some sort of power cell or battery. Maybe it’s connected with the workings of the transgenerator?’

‘Oh, well, that’s
really
dandy,’ said Kyle.

‘Meaning?’ Tom asked.

Kyle threw up a hand. ‘How often do you go to your fridge?’

Neville blew a funnel of smoke from his nose. ‘I take the lad’s point, Tom. How long’s it going to be before Jack checks t’fridge and finds out this stone thing’s missing?’

‘And when he does,’ applauded Kyle, ‘where’s the first place he’ll look for his ‘cosmic battery’? Right here, in Miniville. Well done, Rafe, old bean, nice double whammy – bagged off the ghost and set us all up for a rumble with Jack. The only consolation is, with any luck, you’ll be first in the fingernail jar.’

‘But the stone was shut away in a box,’ said Ralph, clocking fretful glances from the miniones around him;
Jemima’s face was a mess of despair. ‘He probably doesn’t open it all that often.’

Which was a perfectly reasonable conclusion to arrive at, because nothing nasty had happened…yet. Kyle’s logic, though, was harsh but correct. If Jack discovered the stone was missing, his list of suspects for the robbery would be short. Very short. One name, most likely. ‘The boy,’ R. Perfect.

Tom took a more optimistic view. ‘All the same, this could still be a breakthrough. If this does turn out to be something Jack needs, we might be able to use it to our advantage.’

‘How?’ asked Wally. ‘We’re workmen, not scientists.’

Tom looked at them all in turn. ‘It’s possible we could do a deal with him: exchange the stone for the release of Penny, Sylvia and the children.’

‘No,’ said Penny, standing up, facing him. ‘One out, all out. Or I don’t go.’

Tom looked at her sadly.

‘No,’ she repeated. ‘I won’t go. That’s final.’

Without you, thought Ralph, filling in the gaps. She won’t go without you, that’s what she means.

‘Me, neither. I’m no kid,’ growled Kyle, beating his gorilla fist against his chest. But Ralph didn’t buy this act of bravado. Why, he couldn’t say. Perhaps it was the
greedy squint in Kyle’s cold eyes when his gaze fell upon the mysterious stone? Or maybe it was just Kyle Salter, period?

Daylight flooded in.

‘Time’s up; he’s lifted the sheet,’ said Tom.

Ralph glanced through the window and saw Jack throwing the covering aside. The builder’s thin, scarred face loomed close. His bloodshot eyeball searched out his workforce.

‘RISE AND SHINE!’ He sneezed violently and knocked the trestle table. The house shook as though a minor earthquake had hit. Spud O’Hare, with only one arm for balance, lost his footing and fell against the wall, crying out in pain as his shoulder took the impact. Penny and Mrs Spink went to him, settling him onto a nearby mattress. A slate came crashing off the roof and the vase that Luke Baker was cruelly mixed up in wobbled and toppled off the mantelpiece.

Kyle Salter dived forward and caught it.

Even Ralph, for all he hated the Salter gang, breathed a sigh of relief.

‘To work,’ said Tom, picking up his toolbox. ‘We’ll discuss this again, later. Any bright ideas about the stone, I’d like to hear them. Ralph, come on, you stick with me today. Long time since I trained an apprentice.’

And they went downstairs, into the parlour.

On the way, Tom returned the stone to Ralph and told him to keep it well out of sight. Ralph buried it deep in his hanky, in his pocket. He thought back to Tom’s words about doing a deal and a terrible sadness gripped his heart. He said, ‘Jack’s never going to let us out of here, is he?’

Tom paused a second, then walked on. ‘We need to fix a valve on this,’ he said, dropping his tools beside an old-fashioned radiator.

‘He can’t let us out. We’ll tell,’ Ralph continued. ‘He’ll keep us here, won’t he? Looking after the house? Putting doors right when they fall off their hinges. Making sure the wallpaper peels when it’s supposed to. We’ll be his workmen for ever, won’t we? We’ll
all
be Miniville ghosts.’

Tom thought about this quietly and then he said, ‘During the Second World War, three captured British soldiers found a way out of their prison camp by digging a tunnel in the yard outside their hut. They covered the hole with a gymnasium horse the Germans had allowed them to exercise with. The prisoners dug for months, concealing the soil they’d scraped from the tunnel in bags suspended inside their trousers, which they shook out when they walked around the yard. All three
escaped, because they were clever and had courage and because they never once stopped believing they could do it – and neither will we. Jack will slip up one day, Ralph. We’ll find his weakness; this stone may be it. Keep looking. Keep believing. That’s all I ask. Now, radiator.’

Ralph nodded and studied the valve. ‘Is it leaking?’

‘No, but it’s going to. This is Miniville, remember.’ Tom opened his tools and took out a wrench. He was spinning its silver-coloured jaws to size when Ralph heard a splattering noise outside.

‘What’s up?’ asked Tom, aware that he’d lost his mate’s concentration.

‘Nothing. I think it’s just started to rain.’

A few pudgy drops flew past the window.

‘Rain?’ said Tom.

Ralph looked again. Yes, a heavy shower was definitely coming down.

And then the dumb gong banged inside his head… 

…erm, Ralph, how can it rain inside a fish tank?

‘WATER!’ Tom yelled at the top of his voice, clanking the side of his toolbox with the wrench. To Ralph’s amazement, he quickly turned the box over and spilt the contents with a loud, metallic clatter.

Neville and Kyle burst into the room – Neville with a big white plastic bag, Kyle with the saved Luke Baker vase. Tom gave a disapproving frown but all Kyle said was, ‘He’s my mate, it’s what he would have wanted.’ He yanked the front door open, pounded down the steps and into the rain, Neville close behind.

‘What’s going on?’ asked Ralph.

‘Grab anything you can find that holds water,’ said Tom. ‘Hurry, Ralph, he doesn’t give us long.’ And
he
dashed into the downpour, too.

By now a whole string of water-gatherers had begun to scurry past with pails and buckets and tin cans and jars. Mrs Spink came through in her stockinged feet, carrying her Wellington boots at arms length.

Ralph stopped her by the door. ‘Mrs Spink, what’s happening?’

She pointed outside. The ‘rain’ was belting down,
sluicing through a hole in the down pipe by the door, splattering the mane of a lion statue. ‘This is how we gather fresh water, dear. Jack sprays us now and then from his watering can.’

His
watering
can? Ralph took a step back. ‘But he spits in it. And Knocker slobbers his tongue round the rose. And you can’t drink water that’s been in your
boots.
’

‘It’s better than going thirsty, dear.’ And away she went, with her wellies at the ready.

Ralph couldn’t believe it. He glanced into the thin strip of Miniville garden and saw the miniones splashing about, drenched to the skin, holding high their pots and vessels, trying to guess where Jack would tilt the can next. It was shameful and humiliating. Watered on, like weeds. And dangerous, too. For if Jack decided to tilt the can sharply, the water droplets exploded like bombs off the bottom of the tank. Neville was knocked off his feet by such a blast and swilled into a pool of free-standing water. He was rescued by the one-eyed decorator, Sam. Ralph didn’t fancy it one little bit, but for the good of the group he knew he’d have to join in and get soaked too. There was just one problem. ‘I don’t have anything to collect water in,’ he shouted.

But as he turned to search, a container appeared. It was a rounded glass lampshade in the shape of a large
white raspberry, like the type he’d seen in his grandma’s bathroom. And it was floating.

Just floating.

In mid-air.

Out of nowhere came a woman’s voice. ‘So, Rafe, we’re alone again.’

Ralph’s feet fused to the floor. ‘M-miriam, I th-thought you’d gone away?’ he stammered, making slow circular movements of his eyes. This time, the ghost hadn’t shown herself. But her prickly presence was all too apparent. And Ralph didn’t like the way she was bouncing that shade. It reminded him of a demon bowler preparing to unleash a wicket-breaking delivery, the ‘wicket’ in this case being his head.

‘I see. Is that what you want?’ she huffed, raising the hairs on the back of his neck like a row of magnetised iron filings.

Ralph shut his eyes and ground his teeth. He didn’t want to be haunted, but he did have some sympathy for Miriam’s cause. It
was
her house they’d invaded, after all. He tried to give a tactful answer. ‘I didn’t mean to send you flying. I didn’t know it would happen. It was just a sort of accident, sorry.’

‘Hmph,’ she went.

Ralph’s ear tips froze. ‘I mean it,’ he squeaked.
‘Please believe me. We just…I just…want you to be happy.’

Aw, that sounded totally naff, but Miriam did not react aggressively. In fact, she seemed rather pleased by the remark. ‘Oh Rafe,’ she said with a rush of cold air that made the strands of his fringe beat fast, like cilia. ‘Stay with me forever. That would make me happy.’

The lampshade bobbled. The tools on the floor began to dance. Ralph made a cry like a startled blackbird. He didn’t like this. He’d always hated that film
Mary
Poppins
– and here he was, starring in a real-life version.

‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I don’t belong here, Miriam. I’m—’

‘Ralph, come on,’ Tom called from outside.

‘Oh!’ went Miriam, annoyed by the intrusion. A rubber-handled hammer rose up off the floor.

‘Don’t!’ Ralph cried as the hammer went spinning towards Tom’s head. Luckily, it clipped the inner frame of the door and dropped to the floor with no damage done.

‘Who are all these people in our house?’ the ghost tutted.

Ralph clenched his fists and blew a little steam. He’d had enough of this. This ghost needed…busting. ‘Miriam, I command you…come forth!’

That sounded even naffer than the previous line – yet surprisingly, it worked. There was a pause, then the beautiful ghost shimmered forth. Despite her general washed-out appearance, she seemed to be a deeper shade of grey around the cheeks.

‘It’s not
our
house. It’s
your
house,’ Ralph told her. ‘We don’t want to be here. We’re trying to escape. We’re being held prisoner by a man called Jack. You must have seen him?’

‘The ogre?’ she queried, looking for the first time vulnerable – and frightened.

‘Yes. No. Sort of. Yes. He’s normal size, really; he just made you tiny. He’s stolen you from Yorkshire.
He’s
the one you should throw things at. He’s going to put you on display at the seaside, Miriam.’

‘Oh, how I love the sea air,’ she breezed. ‘Do you remember when we walked along the promenade at Eastbourne?’

Ralph slapped a hand across his eyes. ‘Miriam, I’m not
your
Rafe.’

There was a pause. Miriam turned away, stage left. ‘Oh, I know,’ she said crossly, tossing him the lampshade. Ralph fumbled the catch but managed to keep a grip. He glanced outside. He could still gather water, if he was quick.

‘I have to haunt
someone.
It’s my job,’ Miriam sighed. ‘It’s far more interesting if I pretend you’re him.’ She toyed with a string of pearls around her neck, letting them spill through her fingers as she spoke. ‘I suppose you’re going to leave me, now, just like he did?’

‘I can’t. I told you, we’re trapped in here.’

Miriam twizzled a bone china hand and practised some wraith-like ballet steps. ‘Then we are equals, for I am trapped also.’

‘But you’re a ghost,’ Ralph said as she pirouetted round him. ‘You can go where you like. You can walk through walls if you—’

Bingo. Suddenly, an idea struck him. An idea so bizarre and yet so very neat that he wondered how his brain could have missed it before. Could the ghost be the opening they were looking for? ‘Miriam, can I ask you a question?’

‘You’d like to dance a Charleston?’

‘No,’ Ralph said.

‘You want to ask for my hand in marriage?’

‘No,’ Ralph said. ‘It’s about being a ghost.’

‘I’m so lonely,’ she sniffed, laying a hand across her breast.

‘You don’t have to be,’ said Ralph, making her pout. ‘Your Rafe is out there somewhere, isn’t he?’

Miriam flicked her eyes to one side.

Ralph pointed to the outside world. ‘All you have to do is go and look for him, don’t you? Erm, can you walk through glass?’