Spooky the Sprite & the Great Hullaballoo

Chapter One

It was a cold Halloween and for a day and a night the most awful, smoky fog had hung over the quiet streets of Camberwell. At midday the sun was dimmed and the autumn leaves wilted. And at midnight the moon and the stars weren’t able to shine. All the people going about their daily business shuffled about the smoky streets feeling very sad indeed.

At number 42 Teddington Square, Auntie Margaret was quite beside herself with worry.  ‘It’s that Grimly and Grizzle!’ she cried, as she bustled about in her apron while wafting her feather duster through the air. ‘It’ll be that Treacle Tart Factory that’s caused this. There hasn’t been a fog like it for years. I can’t even hang my clean sheets out to dry!’

Emily listened to Auntie Margaret grumbling on like this all day. Emily was very fond of Grimly and Grizzle’s Treacle Tarts and loved the smells that wafted out of the factory, but this smoke was different. It had already made her cough a little when she opened the living room window to let out a ladybird trapped behind Auntie Margaret’s net curtains. 

‘Why in the world of beasts and men would you want to let in all those dreadful fumes?’ asked Auntie Margaret.

‘I’m so sorry, Auntie Margaret,’ said Emily very sadly. ‘I was just letting out a ladybird that was trapped and wanted to escape.’

‘Oh, better he stays indoors than outdoors in that awful, smoky fog,’ replied Auntie

Margaret, as she fiddled with the window latch. ‘You know, we never turn away any of Mother Nature’s creatures here,’ she said, before making a squeaky kissing noise with her lips almost as if to call in a cat. To Emily’s complete surprise the ladybird flew back in and went back to its perch on the windowsill where it seemed to be very comfortable indeed.

It was certainly true, Emily reflected, that Auntie Margaret did offer a home to many of the lost creatures of Camberwell. There were the Camberwell Cats, Sascha and Tigger, who had lived with Auntie Margaret quite happily for years, after appearing one day in her garden and never showing the slightest interest in leaving and there was also a goat named Billy who happened to wander in one day, two chickens in the shed named Doris and Doolally, a tortoise named Terry, a hamster called Cyril and 6 goldfish named after each of the Seven Dwarves all except Sneezy because, as Auntie Margaret said, everyone knows that a goldfish can’t sneeze. Even Emily had been a lost creature of sorts a long time ago. She had never known her real parents and had been looked after by her Auntie for as long as she could remember, surrounded by the lost and found of Camberwell, where Emily had always felt very much at home under Auntie Margaret’s very warm and protective wing.

And so, Emily had spent a long and rather dreary day locked indoors with only Auntie Margaret, two cats, a tortoise, a hamster, 6 goldfish and a ladybird for company (with the goat and the chickens safely hiding from the smoky fog in the shed).

All in all, it was a very sad state of affairs. She had been quite poorly of late with her cough and wasn’t able to go out trick or treating with the other children and in any case, very few of the local children took any interest in her anymore as she was so often ill. Most of the time, she had to content herself playing with the Camberwell Cats or talking to the goat in the garden. Although now she had a ladybird to make friends with, but she didn’t imagine that was going to be very much fun even if the ladybird was rather pretty and did appear to be in need of a friend.

I wonder how you go about talking to a ladybird, thought Emily as she lay in bed that night trying to get to sleep. She imagined herself crouching by the window in the morning saying, ‘Good morning, Mr. Ladybird. How are you today and how did you sleep? Very well indeed, I hope!’ And then she thought that perhaps Auntie Margaret would know the language of the Ladybirds as she seemed to know a great deal about those sorts of things.

Just as she began dreaming that she was flying off with the ladybird to the Ladybird Kingdom, Emily was awakened by the strangest fizzing sound coming from the garden outside. It sounded almost like fireworks. It was barely a week until Guy Fawkes night and those naughty boys from number 38 were always letting off firecrackers in the Square. Doris and Doolally would be frightened half to death, Emily thought, I better have a look. So, she turned on her bedside lamp and went on her tippy toes to her bedroom window where she pulled back the net curtain to reveal the greatest cloud of brilliant white smoke billowing out from the compost heap below. Oh, my goodness! As if we don’t have enough smoke to deal with, she thought. The smoke was filled with fizzing and crackling sparks and the whole compost heap was aglitter and aglow. Emily barely had time to wonder what the cause of it might be, when there was the greatest crash, bang and a wallop and onto the ground in front of the compost heap tumbled a little boy. He sat up and shook his head and looked quite bewildered. As the cloud of smoke began to clear, he got to his feet and was just taking his first unsteady steps when he spied Emily at her window looking quite amazed. A slightly cheeky, but very charming grin broke out across his face as he spied Emily and he called out, ‘Can I come in?’

He certainly wasn’t one of the boys from number 38, thought Emily. He was far younger than them, perhaps only 10 years old, about the same age as Emily. He was wearing a peculiar little hat on his head and had on a rather worn-out woollen suit, that looked far too big for him, so much so that his hands were completely lost in the sleeves. His trousers, which were so big they would’ve fallen down if he hadn’t kept pulling them up, ended in great heaps that piled up over his two over-sized sooty black boots. Probably the most remarkable thing about him though was that he had a strange, glowing light that seemed to shine out of him somehow. Just a glimmering glow. Not very much at all really. Some might not even notice it. But Emily did.

‘We never turn away any of Mother Nature’s creatures here,’ Auntie Margaret had said. Emily thought that if this was good enough for a ladybird it should be good enough for a little boy, so she decided to let him in. 

No sooner had she opened her bedroom window, than the little boy quickly shinned all the way up the drainpipe and clambered in over the windowsill.

‘Knew I could count on you,’ he said, with a wink, as Emily sat back on the bed and he jumped down onto the floor.

‘Is your name Emily, by any chance?’ he asked.

Emily was so startled she almost fell off the bed onto the floor. 

‘How do you know that?’ she asked.

He smiled. ‘I’m supposed to meet an Emily here and you look like an Emily to me.’