Free The Beasts of Clawstone Castle by Eva Ibbotson

manage on her own.
    ‘Look, there’s an attendant!’ cried the professor. ‘Perhaps she’ll show us the way out.’
    The visitors looked uncertainly at each other, but after a moment Major Hardbottock resolutely made his way towards the girl sitting quietly on a chair at the far side of the room.
    ‘How do we get out?’ he asked.
    ‘Yes, out, out quickly. Show us the way out,’ begged the rest of the party.
    The girl on the chair smiled. It was a sweet smile and the terrified visitors were calmed for a moment.
    ‘This way,’ she said.
    She lifted an arm and pointed. Then she gave a little sigh, her lovely midriff separated into two bloodied and jagged halves, and the top part of her floated softly, gently, up and up towards the ceiling, while her lower half, in beautiful embroidered trousers, still sat peacefully on the chair.
    Upstairs in their hiding place, the children waited eagerly. As soon as Sunita had joined herself up again they were going to signal to Mrs Grove to lead the visitors out.
    But something had gone wrong. Sunita’s top half still floated high up among the chandeliers, her long hair seemed to blow in some unseen breeze, but she did not come down again. She circled the huge room; she looked down, bewildered. She was lost. She could not find her lower half.
    ‘Oh!’ Madlyn clutched her brother. This was awful. What if Sunita could never find the rest of herself ?
    They stared up at the ceiling – and then, as she gazed down at them, they saw her give an unmistakable wink.
    She hadn’t really lost the rest of her; she was just pretending so as to make her trick more scary.
    But this last haunting had been too much for one of the visitors. There was a clatter as a stick fell to the floor; then a dreadful thump as a body hit the ground.
    But it wasn’t delicate Mrs Field who had fainted. It was the man who had walked to the North Pole and
    bitten off his own finger; the man who had crossed the Sahara without a single camel.
    It was Major Henry Hardbottock who lay unconscious on the floor.

C HAPTER T WELVE
     
    I t was a terrible moment.
    ‘Oh, the poor man; how dreadful,’ said Aunt Emily, running out of her room. ‘What if he gets concussion?’
    ‘What if he sues us?’ said Sir George. ‘We’d be ruined.’
    While they waited for the ambulance, and Mrs Grove let out the other visitors, every kind of dreadful thought ran through the heads of the people in the castle. If the Major was seriously hurt they would never dare to let in visitors again. It looked as though, after all their hard work, the first Open-Day-with-Ghosts had ended in disaster.
    The ghosts, of course, started to blame themselves.
    ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have strangled him so hard,’ said Brenda, and Mr Smith was worried that he had stuck the wrong hand out of the oak chest.
    ‘It sometimes bothers people, seeing those slivers of muscle on the bone. Slivers can be very unsettling.’
    By the time the ambulance men came with a stretcher, Major Hardbottock had come round, but they insisted on taking him to hospital for scans and a check-up.
    ‘You never know with head injuries,’ said the first man, looking solemn.
    ‘I don’t like the look of his eyes,’ said the second.
    So the Major was driven away, and in the castle they settled down anxiously to wait for news.
    Sir George rang the hospital in the early afternoon, and again an hour later, and then once more, but no one could tell him anything. The Major was still having tests.
    ‘If they’ve found something serious I shall never forgive myself,’ said Aunt Emily.
    Supper was a silent and a gloomy meal. But just as they were clearing it away, Ned came running in from the village to tell them what he had seen on the seven o’clock news.
    ‘He was sitting up in bed – the Major – surrounded by journalists and telling them about this amazing castle he had seen absolutely chock-full of ghosts.’
    And sure enough, the following morning what the Major had