Ghostsitters (4 page)

“Ooh, missed!”
said Ned—or was it Jed?

“Missed again!”
chortled Jed—or was it Ned?

“Stop!” yelled Mathilda.

Ned and Jed stopped and Sir Horace stomped off grumpily. They began to follow him, walking in the stiff-legged way that Sir Horace walks. But I jumped in front of them and said, “If you follow Sir Horace like that you will be sorry.”

“Ooh,”
they laughed.
“We are
soscared.”

“You will be
very
sorry,” I told them sternly. And then I tried out my newest expression—Cross-eyed Giant Transylvanian Vampire Bat About to Bite.

I don't know why, but they laughed. It was extremely rude. But then Wanda did something quite unexpected.

Wanda's dad, Barry, is a magician, and she has learned quite a few tricks from him. Wanda doesn't do them very often, but when she does they are really good.

She slipped a small bag out of her pocket and put it in her hand. Ned and Jed were so busy laughing that they did not notice. Then she went up to them and said, “Leave Sir Horace alone or else—” which got them laughing even more.

“Or else what?”
they cackled.

“Or else
this
!” Suddenly Wanda clapped her hands together. There was a big bang and a loud flash and lots of green smoke.

Ned and Jed yelled and ran off.

“That showed them,” said Wanda, dusting her hands off.

Sometimes I am glad that Wanda Wizzard is my friend.

W
hen I am grown-up and I am taking care of someone younger than me because their bossy aunt will not let them be on their own, I will definitely cook them dinner. It is only fair. But Mathilda did not cook us dinner.

It was getting really late and Wanda and I were hungry. We asked Mathilda what was for dinner. She shrugged and said, “I don't know. What
is
for dinner?”

“But you should know,” said Wanda. “You're looking after us.”

Mathilda looked vague and said, “We could order a pizza.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “What's a pizza? What are you going to order it to do?”

Wanda laughed. “Cook dinner,” she said. And Mathilda laughed too.

I had a definite feeling I was missing something here. “What's so funny?” I asked, really annoyed, as it is not nice when people laugh at what you say and you don't know why.

“A pizza is something you eat,” said Wanda. “You can get someone to cook you one in a pizza shop and they bring it to you on a bike.”

Now it was my turn to laugh. “Don't be stupid,” I said. “Why would anyone want to
cook us something and bring it here on a bike?”

“I don't know,” said Wanda, “but they do. Mom and I used to order lots of pizzas before we moved here. I miss that,” she said, sounding a bit sad, then she perked up and said, “Pizzas are really yummy.”

So Mathilda called up the pizza place, and sure enough, about half an hour later the doorbell rang. As Wanda and I rushed to get the door we heard a loud yell and some thuds. When we opened the door there was no one there—except Ned and Jed, of
course
. And three boxes scattered down the path. And a bike racing away down Spookie Lane.

“Drat,” said Mathilda—at least that's what I thought she said, although Wanda told me later that it was something much more rude. Mathilda ran out and gathered up the boxes. “Ned, Jed,” she yelled, “you
idiots
! That was our dinner.”

I don't know why Wanda said pizzas were yummy, because they weren't—although Wanda said that pizzas were not usually mashed up into cold gooey sludge with bits of grit in them.

When people are taking care of you they usually do all the cleaning up and stuff like that, although obviously you have to be polite and offer to help (and hope that they say, “That's all right, you go off and play”). But we never got as far as the offering-to-help part because Mathilda didn't do any of the cleaning-up.

We had eaten our pizza/sludge in the big room at the front of the house because
Mathilda and Wanda both said that is what you did—you ate pizza and watched TV. Well, there isn't a TV at Spookie House because Aunt Tabby does not approve of them, so I lit the fire that good old Nurse Watkins had laid in the grate. Oops—did I just say “good old Nurse Watkins”?

Wanda and I picked up all the empty pizza/sludge boxes, plus the empty root beer glasses
and
all of Mathilda's candy wrappers—as she chewed a lot of licorice and dropped the wrappers anywhere.

While we struggled out of the door with our arms full, Mathilda sat by the fire, flicking through one of the magazines she had brought with her. She unwrapped another piece of candy. “Want one?” she asked,
holding the bag out dreamily, still reading her magazine. I don't like licorice and neither does Wanda. We shook our heads and staggered out with all the yucky stuff. “Missed one,” Mathilda called out as we went.

“Missed what?” I asked.

“Candy wrapper. Over there.”

“Pick it up yourself,” muttered Wanda.

When I am almost grown-up I will most definitely
not
sit hogging the fire, reading dumb magazines and stuffing my face with licorice while someone else cleans up my soggy pizza box. Okay, so I don't like licorice anyway, but that is not the point. I would not even behave like that with Swedish Fish.

 

Although there are lots of kitchens in the basement of Spookie House, the one we always use now is the third-kitchen-on-the-left-just-past-the-boiler-room, as Brenda says it is foolish to keep using different kitchens like we used to before she and Barry and Wanda came to live with us. But it is a long walk along the basement corridor to get there, and by the time we did our arms were aching. I should have realized we were in for trouble when we saw Ned and Jed leaning against the door.

The third-kitchen-on-the-left-just-past-the-boiler-room looked like something had exploded in it. The kitchen was full of a huge cloud of flour and there was food
everywhere
.

“Duck!” yelled Wanda suddenly.

“Where?” I asked, wondering how a duck could possibly cause so much mess.

And then an egg hit me on the back of my
head and ran down my neck and I dropped the pizza stuff.

Another egg hit Wanda and she screamed and dropped all of her garbage, too. Not that you would have noticed, as the floor was already covered with food. There was flour everywhere and tons of broken eggs and squashed tomatoes and jelly and milk and crushed cookies and all of Brenda's packets of Choco-Drop Krackles tipped out everywhere. It was awful, but then I saw something that
really
upset me.

“My cheese and onion chips!” I yelled.

“Where?” asked Wanda, staring at the disgusting gloopy mess that covered the entire kitchen.

“Everywhere!” I can spot a crushed cheese and onion chip at a hundred feet, and it was true, they were
everywhere
. They were stuck in the jelly, floating in the squashed tomatoes, and sprinkled all over the runny egg. I was furious. And Ned and Jed were still leaning against the doorjamb grinning like it was really funny, so I told them what I thought of them. “You are horrible, horrible ghosts,” I yelled. “Go away!”

“Yes, go away and
don't come back
,” Wanda shouted. “Or else!”

Ned and Jed disappeared down the corridor.

“That told them,” said Wanda.

It was really yucky cleaning up the kitchen and it took forever. Wanda was very grumpy. She stomped upstairs to get Mathilda to help—since it was
her
ghosts who had caused all the trouble—but Mathilda had gone up to her room and had
locked herself in. Wanda said she banged on the door and rattled it like crazy but Mathilda did not answer. So we had to do all the cleaning up ourselves. It was not the fun time that I thought we were going to have with Mathilda and two ghosts.

We cleaned up the kitchen—all except for the ceiling, which we could not reach, even when I made Wanda stand on the table holding a mop. So we had to leave it covered with squirts of tomato juice, splats of egg, and strawberry jelly. I could not help but wonder what Aunt Tabby would say about it when she got home. Quite a lot, I figured. In fact there was a whole list of stuff she was going to say quite a lot about. It went like this:

 

Things that Aunt Tabby

Will Not Like When She Comes Home

• One garden gate thrown on top of the hedge
  
• One dead spider plant
  
• One house full of bats
  
• One bedroom full of clothes thrown everywhere
  
• Five smashed picture frames
  
• At least two dozen moldy curtains strewn around the house
  
• Ditto books
  
• Ditto flowerpots
  
• One smashed-up chest
  
• Hundreds of old tennis balls
  
• One kitchen ceiling covered in food