A Bad Case of Ghosts by Kenneth Oppel

Author:Kenneth Oppel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada

Chapter 6

Ghost Overload

“There’s birds in the bathroom now!” blustered Mrs Barnes.

“Just try to ignore them,” Mr Barnes suggested. “They’re perfectly harmless.”

“There’s no privacy in this house any more!” Mrs Barnes grumbled.

Giles couldn’t help smiling. In the past two days, the ghost birds had taken over the entire house. They appeared and vanished without warning, sometimes one or two, sometimes dozens at a time. Most of them did seem to prefer Giles’s bedroom, but it was not at all uncommon for a ghost cockatoo or a ghost budgie to turn up in the living room and roost on the television, or perch on a towel rack in the bathroom.

The regal ghost parrot seemed to have taken a special liking to Giles’s mother and would often settle affectionately on her shoulder during meals, or as she walked around the house.

“What a ridiculous creature,” Mrs Barnes would mutter, trying to shoo it away without success. “Won’t this thing leave me alone!”

Giles’s mother was not taking the ghostly invasion well at all. Giles knew that it was very hard for his scientific mother to admit that there really were ghosts living in their house and nibbling at her earlobes.

“We’re not telling anyone about this,” she instructed them. “I’d be the laughing stock of the mathematics department. Ghost birds! Hah!”

“Can’t we even tell Aunt Lillian?” Giles wanted to know. “She’d be thrilled to see ghost birds.”

“Absolutely not,” said Mrs Barnes. “She’d tell everyone she knew. She’d call the papers. We’d be on the nine o’clock news. No. We tell no one.”

As for Giles, he found he was gradually getting used to the ghost birds. He thought they were sort of beautiful, these sleek, silvery things, glittering with mysterious light. A few days later he discovered that you could make them disappear by blowing on them. They would flicker like a candle flame and then dissolve. But it was only temporary and after a few minutes, they would come back.

Often he could ignore the ghost birds altogether, but that wasn’t always possible when they filled his room as if it were some giant cage, shrieking and chirping and beating their wings. He’d started wearing ear-plugs in bed at night so he wouldn’t be woken up by their early morning racket.

“When are we going to get rid of these things?” his mother roared that evening at the dinner table, puffing at every ghost bird that fluttered into view.

“Tina and Kevin are working on something,” Giles said.

“They are geniuses,” Mr Barnes reminded his wife.

“Geniuses, right!” said Giles’s mother. “I just hope they manage to clear these birds out of our house before I go crazy!”

Later that evening, Giles was sitting up in bed, trying to read. A finch flew over and perched on the top of his book. Giles blew on it and it disappeared. He read another sentence and then an African swallow dive-bombed him.

“Hello, hello!” said the parrot, who suddenly decided to put in an appearance.

Giles lay his book down with a sigh. His room was overrun once again.

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