Milo and the Pirate Sisters (6 page)
Read Milo and the Pirate Sisters Online
Authors: Mary Arrigan
‘
I
t’s Milo and Shane!’ we called out, so that Mister Lewis wouldn’t be scared when he heard our voices.
‘Come in, come in!’ Mister Lewis whooped, looking over our shoulders to check that it was just us. ‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ he sighed as he locked the door and pushed a rickety chair up against the handle.
Shane and I looked at each other with amazement – like this wood-wormy chair
and rusty lock would keep out anyone that’d come knocking? No way. We’d already heard those croaky crow sounds above the rafters again and I wished the door was made of solid iron.
‘I know what you chaps are thinking,’ Mister Lewis said as we eased ourselves onto the cushions.
‘You can read our minds?’ Shane almost choked and he pulled his jacket over his head to hold in his thoughts.
‘No, lad,’ said Mister Lewis, shaking his head and wobbly nose. ‘Indeed no. What I mean is that I imagine you’re both wondering why I’ve decided to stay put in this place.’
‘So why
are
you staying?’ I had to ask. ‘It’s well creepy. You can still come back to my wardrobe.’
‘I know that, Milo,’ he whispered. ‘But,
if you think about it, I’m pretty creepy too, so I decided that I wasn’t going to be intimidated. It’s time I stuck up for myself.’
‘Good thinking, Mister Lewis,’ said Shane, with over-the-top enthusiasm. ‘We’ll be right behind you, me and Milo.’
We chatted a bit about school, because that’s the sort of stuff Mister Lewis likes to hear. He says that school in his time was all whacks and yells and freezing classrooms, and he never can understand how we could see ‘moving pictures in a box’. The first time he saw Big Ella’s telly, I switched it on to show him how it works. Unfortunately, it was an old Dracula film. He screamed all the way back to the tower – people talked about that sound for days afterwards.
It was beginning to get dark now, so we lit the candles and put them on the mantelpiece, leaving the torches until later
to preserve the batteries. Shane freaked out when one of the candles cast his shadow on the wall and only settled down when we put out the goodies that Big Ella had given us for our fake ‘sleepover’. The buns and cakes and fizzy coke took our minds off all things eerie. When the sky outside got darker, we lit the torches. We were actually so relaxed we were laughing at one of Mister Lewis’s stories when suddenly the doorknob rattled. We froze, like glassy-eyed dummies in a shop window. I swallowed the sausage I’d been chewing and half wished I’d choke and pass out before whatever was out there would enter. There it was again, that rattle.
‘Don’t worry, boys,’ whispered Mister Lewis. ‘The door is locked.’
Like that was comforting? I was too numb to even yell when the door splintered.
Worse still, Mister Lewis wafted towards the door of his small bedroom farther across the room. He turned to Shane and me and put his finger to his dead white lips. ‘Sshh,’ he whispered before going through a wall, ‘I’ll be back.’
T
he awful shrieks of whoever was hammering the door made me want to leap through the window. Shane was holding my arm so tightly my fingers went numb. But my biggest scare was that there was no way to escape.
The door burst open and a raggedy woman barged in, causing the candles to splutter. She was tall and skinny with hair like mangy cats’ tails under what looked
like a battered pirate hat. Her black dress had lots of patches, which didn’t quite cover some of the holes.
‘Ah, food,’ she cackled. ‘Ooh, are those new breads? Come, Eulalia,’ she bellowed, ignoring me and Shane, ‘there are wondrous items to fill our bellies.’
Eulalia stepped over the broken chair, a wide, gappy grin on her face. She too was wearing a grotty black dress and pirate hat. Her eyes lit up when she spotted the food. ‘Is it real, Mellie?’ she whooped as she lunged across the room like a pin to a magnet.
Without so much as a
how do you do and may we join you?,
they launched into our precious food with their bare hands, stuffing Big Ella’s sandwiches and buns into their wide mouths, slurping our coke and belching loudly.
Shane and myself stood like zombies, too
dumb to move. What was Mister Lewis thinking, leaving us on our own?
‘Don’t worry, Milo,’ Shane whispered in my ear. ‘Just remember that they’re only poor, raggedy folks who’ve probably been put out of their home. Just like other down-and-outs. They’ll go away when they’ve had a bit of food.’
But when they hurled themselves at Shane’s favourite chocolate cake he went ballistic. If there’s anything that fires Shane’s temper, it’s when anyone messes with Big Ella’s special, scrumptious chocolate cake.
‘Whoa!’ he bellowed. ‘You’ve scoffed enough already. That’s my cake. Hands off!’
That’s when Mister Lewis came back, this time through a door. He was holding a big umbrella with several spokes hanging loose.
Shane glanced at me and shook his head.
‘Perhaps you ought to leave now, ladies,’
Mister Lewis said politely.
The ‘ladies’ looked up at us like a couple of hungry tigers spotting their prey for the first time.
‘We are not going anywhere, old man,’ snarled Eulalia through a big, slobbering mouthful of cake.
Mister Lewis’s worried face was like dough that had been kneaded by dirty hands. ‘As a gentleman I regret having to do this,’ he said, reaching up to poke the beehive high up over the window with the bockety umbrella. The bees flew out onto the umbrella and Mister Lewis shook them loose. They knew exactly what to do, flying like war planes towards the enemy.
‘Cool,’ said Shane, nudging me in the ribs. ‘That’ll get rid of those two skinny mollies.’
We watched with glee as the bees circled over the cakes.
‘Wait for it,’ I whispered.
Wait nothing! The bees buzzed over them, took one look at the women and then zoomed straight back into the hive. If there had been a door on the hive, they would have slammed it.
Mister Lewis sighed deeply and shook his head. I mean, there’s nothing you can do if your bees decide that home is best when there’s trouble brewing. And I found myself wishing that we could do the same.
‘Pardon me,’ said Mister Lewis, but not as loud this time and with a note of defeat. ‘I really do think you have perhaps had enough. My two young guests and myself are simply having a quiet evening, so if you wouldn’t mind …’
‘We’re not going anywhere, old man,’ growled Mellie.
‘No, indeed,’ said her sister, wiping her
mouth with her sleeve. ‘There’s much food to consume. We haven’t eaten for such a long, long while.’
‘Huh, they’re making up for it now,’ muttered Shane.
‘Excuse me.’ Mister Lewis was beginning to sharpen his voice. ‘I think you ought to go back to your own rooms.’
‘Sit down, old man,’ snarled Eulalia. ‘We shall leave when our stomachs are replete. Our hunger is great.’
‘We have not eaten such food for over four hundred years,’ said the other, Mellie, through a mouthful of bun.
‘Did she say four hundred years, Milo?’ Shane whispered, pinching my arm.
I had no answer to that because my mouth had dried up with fear.
‘Ah,’ said Mister Lewis, politely. ‘Like myself, you are halfway spirits too.’
For just a few seconds the two women stopped munching to stare at Mister Lewis.
‘We don’t know what you talk about, old man,’ said Mellie. ‘All of this land belongs to us since it was taken by our ancestor Granuaile.’
‘We have got rid of everyone who tried to take it,’ put in Eulalia. ‘Some, perhaps, took longer than others, but we chased them all,’ she added with a laugh.
‘The last one being the foolish man who tried to build this mill,’ Mellie sniggered.
‘So,’ put in her sister. ‘You are not welcome here, old man. This is our watch, to keep safe the land of our ancestors.’
‘Just great,’ whispered Shane. ‘Now we have three bloomin’ ghosts. I don’t like this, Milo,’ he went on. ‘I’d like to go home now.’
I looked at the two ‘ladies’, still stuffing food into their skinny faces, not having
eaten for years and years. That’s when I came up with my master stroke of genius. A lightbulb switched on inside my head.
‘
S
hane,’ I whispered. ‘Get out your mouth organ.’
‘Huh? Are you mad?’ he hissed. ‘This is not the time for music.’
‘Just take it out and play it,’ I went on.
‘You mean nice music might put them to sleep? Good thinking, Milo. I’ll do it. I’ll do a real slow, sad one. What about “The
Fields of Athenry”?’
At the first screeching blast of the off-key mouth organ, Eulalia and Mellie stopped eating to stare at Shane. At the next bunch of rum notes he played, their mouths dropped wide open with amazement. When the next notes continued to attack our ears, Mellie and Eulalia had tears streaming down their cheeks.
I’d love to say that they were both entranced by music that they’d never heard before. But my real hope was that Shane’s squealing-pig sort of tune would send them running. As if! Those tears were not for the sad tune. The two hags were howling with laughter.
‘Hey, cut that out!’ I snapped.
‘Yes indeed,’ said Mister Lewis. ‘The poor chap is doing his best.’
It was then I heard another noise. Was
it my imagination or was I hearing faint footsteps coming up the winding stairs?
‘Hide behind my chair, boys,’ Mister Lewis whispered softly, just before going invisible.
If only we could disappear too! Me and Shane squashed together, listening to the footsteps on the creaky stairs coming closer. We clung to each other when we heard what was left of the door being kicked in.
I don’t know what I was expecting, but I was surprised when a small girl stepped into the room. Like some nerdy geek, I shut my eyes tight to block out whatever Eulalia and Mellie might decide to do to her. Call me a coward, but trying to do battle with them to save her was not high in my mind.
‘What are you two fools doing in here?’ said a cross voice that certainly didn’t belong to either of the two hags.
Peering through my fingers, I did a double-take
when I saw the women cowering away from the small girl.
‘You two clean up this mess, you hear? Oh, and tell me, sisters, where are the horses? I have not seen the beauties on my journey back.’
‘We were hungry,’ muttered Eulalia.
‘Starving,’ put in Mellie.
‘Did you hear that?’ Shane spluttered. ‘It was them!’
Before I could stop him, he jumped up and ran like a raging bull towards the two old crones and the little girl, bellowing at the top of his voice, ‘Did you two
eat
the horses?’
O
f course I had to chase after him; he’s my best mate and you have to look out for your best mate – even when he makes a total ass of himself by barging into a coven of shouting dead women and a thorny little whatever-she-was. Passing me out, with a top-gear waft, came Mister Lewis, waving his gloved hands about and trying to soothe everybody.
‘QUIET!’ shrieked the small girl. ‘What is
happening here? I’ve been to visit my father’s blood kinfolk and I come back toall this.’ She waved her arm round the room and glared at Shane, myself and Mister Lewis. ‘And who are you?’ she snarled, pointing to Mister Lewis.
‘Ah,’ he answered, raising his hat. ‘Lewis, my dear. Dead over a hundred years.’
‘And you two,’ she pointed at Shane and me. ‘When did you die?’
‘Die?’ exclaimed Shane, grabbing my arm. ‘Are we dead, Milo?’
‘No, lad,’ said Mister Lewis. ‘The little lady is just …’
‘Don’t “little lady” me!’ said the girl, poking Mister Lewis’s tummy. ‘I am Tara.’
‘I beg your pardon, Tara, my dear,’ began Mister Lewis.
That earned him another poke in the belly.
‘I am not anyone’s dear,’ she snapped.
I’m a pretty easy-going chap, my mother tells me, like when she wants something done, but I was not going to allow that spitfire ghostling talk like that to my good friend. ‘Whoa there, kid,’ I said with the lowest growl I could muster. ‘Mister Lewis is a gentleman, so you watch your mouth.’
The deadly silence and the shocked, terrified faces made me wish I’d kept my tongue inside my mouth.
The spitfire looked at me and I waited for boxed ears or a well-appointed kick. ‘All right,’ she said, holding out her hand to a stunned Mister Lewis. ‘I am Tara.’
Everyone let out a breath. Then Tara made her sisters pick up the debris of squashed cakes. I could see that Shane wanted to hold on to them, but even he wouldn’t dare cross Tara. Just before they left through the
broken door, Eulalia turned back and gave us the most evil glare, like a witch chewing a sour lemon.
‘Well, that went very well,’ said Mister Lewis when we were on our own again, pushing chairs and cardboard against the broken door to keep out the draught.
The candles were sputtering as me and Shane snuggled under a quilt that Mister Lewis had given us. He said he didn’t need it because wind went through him anyway. He was just happy to talk to his scared bees, calming them down.
‘Mister Lewis is right, Milo. That all went very well,’ whispered Shane, tucking his mouth organ under his cushion.
‘I hope so,’ I muttered as the last of the candles gave up, the cheap torch batteries died and darkness fell. Most of all, I hoped that the women wouldn’t come back
through the broken door for their revenge. I wished I could be like Shane, who would probably sleep like a baby even if aliens were to sweep down from space and zap him up to an icy cold planet.