Ghosthunters and the Incredibly Revolting Ghost Page 7

  Miscellaneous Listing of

  NECESSITOUS EQUIPMENT AND NOTEWORTHY ORGANIZATIONS

  CDEGH Clinic for the DE-spookifi cation of GhostHunters

  CECOCOG CEntral COmmission for COmbating Ghosts

  COCOT COntact-COmpression Trap

  FIGHD FIfth GhostHunting Diploma

  GES Ghostly Energy Sensor

  GHOSID GHOst-SImulation Disguise

  LOAG List Of All Known Ghosts

  NENEB NEgative-NEutralizer Belt

  OFFCOCAG OFFice for COmbating CAstle Ghosts

  RCFCAG Retention Center For Criminally Aggressive Ghosts

  RICOG Research Institute for COmbating Ghosts

  ROGA Register Offi ce for Ghostly Apparitions

  SGHD Second GhostHunting Diploma

  THGHD THird GhostHunting Diploma

  Preview

  “I suggest we only go as far as the third floor!” said Hetty Hyssop when the elevator door closed behind them. “And then we’ll creep up the stairs. OK?”

  Tom nodded, and pressed the button.

  “Can I fiiiiinally come out?” grumbled Hugo, wobbling out of the backpack. He looked around, astonished. “What’s all this?” With a jolt the elevator started moving, and Hugo was jerked against the wall.

  “Help!” he wailed. “Help! What’s going on?”

  Tom giggled. “It’s an elevator, you dumbo!”

  “Oh, really?” Irritated, Hugo blew his moldy breath into Tom’s face. “And what use is that to anyone?”

  “Ssh! Just be quiet!” Hetty Hyssop looked anxiously at her feet. “Do you notice anything?”

  Tom looked down. He could feel something warm, very warm, beneath the soles of his shoes. Fortunately his shoes, like Hetty Hyssop’s, were filled with aluminum foil folded thirteen times over, and had specially coated soles.

  “What’s that?” he whispered.

  The floor of the elevator turned bright red and bubbles started to form. “I’m suffocating!” wailed Hugo, and floated up to the ceiling.

  But it was no cooler there, either.

  “Watch out!” cried Hetty Hyssop, and she and Tom clung to each other. The elevator went faster and faster, as if someone were shoving it along from below.

  Any second now we’ll go through the roof, thought Tom. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, but that made it even worse. So he opened them again — only to see a fiery finger boring a hole through the red-hot floor. Tom jumped back with a yell.

  Another finger appeared, and another, and another, until an entire hand was poking up through the floor, fiery red and steaming. Snap! It made a grab for Tom’s legs.

  Hugo was hanging beneath the ceiling, howling like a dog. Hetty Hyssop, however, sprang protectively in front of Tom, who was trembling and kicking wildly, and threw sugar lumps all over the fiery hand. Like frightened worms, the fingers jerked back and disappeared into the floor, hissing as they went.

  The elevator raced on, braked sharply, plunged back down, whistling as it went, and rattled up again. The ghosthunters desperately tried to stay on their feet. Tom kept bashing the emergency brake, but nothing happened. Then with a terrible jolt that almost threw them flat onto the red-hot floor, the elevator finally stopped. Groaning, it hung on its cables.

  “What — what’s wrong now?” whispered Tom. He got the answer at once.

  With a hiss the elevator door opened and a truly repulsive fiery red head with eyes like lightbulbs grinned at them. It opened its massive mouth, and yellow ghostly flames licked Tom’s legs.

  “The icing!” cried Hetty. “Go on, Tom!”

  His fingers trembling, Tom shot the rest of the icing into the fiery mouth.

  The grisly creature clearly didn’t like the taste. It had a terrible attack of hiccups that shook the elevator as if it were a baby’s rattle. Hetty Hyssop grabbed the baking tray from her back and banged it hard on the gruesome ghost’s head. With a belch the head disappeared into thin air.

  The door banged shut and the elevator hung clanking and groaning in the air somewhere between the floors.

  “It’s turning cooler again!” whispered Tom. He was still trembling slightly. His icing baster was empty; Hetty Hyssop’s baking tray lay on the ground, dented beyond repair.

  “That certainly wasn’t any normal Fire Ghost!” grumbled Hugo, floating gently to the ground.

  “No, it certainly wasn’t!” Hetty Hyssop tried to fix her baking tray onto her back again. She looked very irritated. “That Bigshot played down the problem so much that we almost ended up as incense sticks. He’s in for it — if we ever get out of here in one piece!” The tip of her nose was positively hot with rage. “What do you think, Tom? Should we go up or down?”

  “Up,” he replied.

  “Up? What do yooou mean, up?” Hugo waggled his icy fingers around indignantly under Tom’s nose. “Doesn’t anyone care what I think?”

  “Nah,” said Tom. “In any case, you run off and hide the moment things get a bit tricky!”

  “Fine. Fine. If that’s how yooou want things!” Hugo folded his white arms across his chest. “Then yooou can save yooourselves from this thing. I’m not helping yooou! No: I have my pride, toooo!” And with that he disappeared into Tom’s backpack.

  “Pass me the spare baster,” demanded Tom.

  Hugo’s white hand emerged and threw the baster at Tom’s head. Tom just grinned and pressed the button for the third floor once more. The elevator set off again with a jolt, and rattled as it flew upward.

  “My dear Tom,” said Hetty Hyssop. “You really are a remarkably brave young man. I simply couldn’t have a better assistant!”

  “Oh, it’s nothing!” murmured Tom, straightening his glasses in embarrassment.

  Then the elevator stopped.

  But not on the third floor.

  It stopped on the fourth.

  Also By

  Cornelia Funke

  DRAGON RIDER

  THE THIEF LORD

  INKHEART

  INKSPELL

  About the Author

  CORNELIA FUNKE is the author of the bestselling novels Dragon Rider, The Thief Lord, Inkheart, and Inkspell. She lives in Los Angeles, California.

  Copyright

  First published in Germany as Gespensterjäger auf eisiger Spur by Loewe Verlag

  Original text copyright © 1993 by Loewe Verlag

  English translation by Helena Ragg-Kirkby copyright © 2006 by Cornelia Funke

  Interior illustrations copyright © 2006 by Cornelia Funke

  Cover art © 2006 by Guy Francis

  Cover design by Elizabeth B. Parisi and Leyah Jensen

  First Scholastic paperback printing, August 2006

  Published in the United Kingdom in 2007 by The Chicken House,

  2 Palmer Street, Frome, Somerset BA11 1DS.

  www.doublecluck.com

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920, by arrangement with The Chicken House. SCHOLASTIC, THE CHICKEN HOUSE, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

  eISBN: 978-0-545-40599-7

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  Cornelia Funke, Ghosthunters and the Incredibly Revolting Ghost