‘Oh,’ Dad mumbled. ‘Abe, I don’t think we could get it ready in time for tonight. It’s filthy and everything everything’s covered in dust.’

  ‘PLEASE!’ Grandad Abe pleaded. ‘It would mean the worlds to me! I want to see everyone partying down here, the whole hotel and all the family. PLEASE!’

  A look of determination spread across Mum’s face.

  ‘What are enchanted mops and an eager team of home-sweet-home-hobs for?’ she laughed. ‘Let’s do it!’

  ‘Oh, Rani! That’s the spirit! My spookerish heart is filled with so much love for you all!’ Abe cheered.

  ‘Steady on now, Mr Banister,’ Maudlin grimaced, backing away as fast as possible. ‘We’re not going to hug are we?’

  PHEWY!!

  Congratulations, my human friend! You’ve made it to chapter nineteen of my story!

  I bet you didn’t think you’d have stuck with me for this long after reading about grouchy grannies and moaning magicals, but I promised things would get a lot more exciting, and I knew you could tell I wasn’t fibbing, even if Great-Great-Great-Grandad Abraham was … ha!

  But it’s not over yet! There’s plenty more to come. Just you wait…

  TIME TO CELEBRATE!

  I’d never seen Mum and Dad look so excited in my life!

  Without another word, we all rushed to the Atilantus station, and were all speeding back towards dry land before you could shout, ‘IT’S GOING TO BE THE GRANDEST PARTY EVER!’

  By the time we made it to the circular lift below reception and had trundled our way up above ground, all the plans were in place. One or two of our super nosy guests were still straggling about and they jumped to attention as they spotted us rising through the floor.

  ‘WE’RE GOING TO HAVE THE BIGGEST SHINDIG THE HOTEL HAS EVER SEEN!’ Mum shouted, frantically pacing about and flapping like a crazed rooster. ‘EVERYTHING OCULUS SAID WAS A LIE!’

  ‘Let’s invite everyone we can think of and all the non-human newspapers!’ Dad whooped. ‘The whole magical world will want to know that Abraham is back and we have a ballroom! AN UNDERSEA BALLROOM! AGAIN! We’ll be the envy of enchanted hotels everywhere.’

  In no time, Mum was standing on the stone reception desk, barking orders.

  ‘Nancy, you’re in charge of food! Make it a feast they’ll never forget!’

  ‘Aye-aye, Rani!’ Nancy giggled and sprinted off towards the kitchen. ‘I’ve got a recipe for manatee mucus meringue I’ve been dying to try!!’

  ‘Maudlin, you’re on party bags! Can you fill a few hundred with lucky charms and the odd hex for a bit of a surprise?’

  ‘I’ll see what I can rustle up!’ Maloney cackled and waddled off to her lepre-caravan in the corner of the foyer. ‘I’m sure I can find some real shockers!’

  ‘Abraham!’

  ‘Yes?’ The ghost was definitely startled to hear his name called.

  ‘You … ummm … you can just relax! You’ll be our guest of honour this evening! So why don’t you pop off to the mud spa or something? I’m sure even ghosts can enjoy a dip!’ Mum shouted like an overeager sergeant major.

  ‘Oh, lovely!’ Abe said.

  ‘Bargeous!’ Mum squawked, as Dad jolted and started to look a bit nervous. ‘Gather the enchanted mops and all the home-sweet-home hobs and get them back down to the ballroom, PRONTO!! We want that place gleaming like it was built yesterday!’

  ‘Okay, darling!’ Dad said, spinning on his heels and running for the cleaning cupboard.

  ‘I’ll sort out invitations and muster the staff,’ Mum blurted, thinking aloud. ‘Frankie? FRANKIE?!’

  What!?!? You don’t think I stuck around to be given a list of chores, do you?

  No way! I’m not nogginbonked!

  By the time Mum was ordering Dad to go sort out the cleaning, I was already sneaking off to my secret bedroom above the library to tell my best, best, BESTEST pet pygmy soot-dragon all about what had happened that day.

  PERFECT!!

  HIDING FROM CHORES

  As my armchair lift rattled up through the floor of my room, I felt practically giddy with happiness.

  Knowing for certain that Abe was innocent and I’d just been a big Worrying-Wilfred was wonderful. Great-Great-Great-Grandad Abraham really was just as much of the brilliant hero I’d always thought him to be.

  Suddenly everything in my dusty bedroom seemed new. The portrait of Abe and Oculus above the fireplace didn’t make me squirm with worry and confusion. All the piles of books felt more exciting… like I was one step closer to actually seeing some of the amazing things inside them for real, and I had that warm glow in my tummy, knowing that tonight we were going to have a proper Bulch/Banister celebration to welcome the newest (and oldest, I guess) member of the family.

  Oh! Speaking of warm glows…

  ‘Hoggit!’ I whispered to the fireplace. ‘Come on, boy, wake up. We’re going to have a party!’

  The coals in the bottom of the grate shifted and my favourite creature in the whole hotel opened one eye, then stretched a stumpy leg lazily into the air.

  ‘You won’t believe the things that have happened today!’

  Scooping the little dragon out of the fireplace, I carried him to the bed, and opened one of the big books I’d been looking at the night before. It was an anthology of rare animals.

  ‘What do you want to read about today?’ I asked, glancing down the page. ‘Nightgorms? Grimagonks? Spectrils?’

  Hoggit puffed out a little line of smoke rings.

  ‘Spectrils, eh?’ I said, scratching the little dragon under the chin. ‘A spectril is the ghost of someone or something still living that has escaped its body. A shapeshifter, it can be forced back to its host if touched by a genuine ghost. Spooky!’

  I flicked through a few more pages until I found a chapter on magical sea life.

  ‘Oooh! I saw one of those today,’ I laughed, pointing to an illustration of a lesser-spotted-blurtle. ‘It exploded all over Maudlin Maloney when she whacked it right on the nose!’

  Hoggit rolled onto his back on my duvet and puffed out another row of tiny smoke rings. He loves it when I read to him.

  Turning the page, I gasped.

  The next chapter was all about monsters of the deep. I thought about Abe’s perfumerator machine and the tiny bottles of red glass as I read about some of the great big nasties that were lurking out there in the oceans…

  For the next few hours, that’s all me and Hoggit did. Even Grogbah left us alone. He spent the entire afternoon skinny-dipping in the foyer fountains instead of trying to irritate me. BLISS!!

  Whip-Slicer Eel:

  Covered in razor-like scales, the whip-slicer eel is known to grow up to twenty metres in length and can cut straight through the hull of a fishing boat like it was butter.

  Location: South China Sea

  Hungletub:

  This enormous upside-down jelly is known to snatch humpback whales from the surface of the ocean as they rise to feed and breathe.

  Location: North Pacific

  Medusa Shrimp:

  Colossal in size, this bottom-dweller has been known to cause earthquakes with its constant burrowing and digging for food along the ocean floor.

  Location: Bay of Bengal, Indian Ocean

  Gundiskump:

  A gargantuan fish, known for eating anything it comes across. Lures prey with a glowing light growing on a stalk from its forehead. Mature adults have been known to swallow whole villages right from the seashore.

  Location: Atlantic Ocean, Baltic Sea and North Sea.

  But it wasn’t long after nightfall that the Yell-O-Phone started crackling away and I could hear Mum barking more instructions from the kitchen. It sounded like the whole hotel was in party-planning panic!

  From the sounds of things, Dad had only just made it back from his second long trip to the Briny Ballroom with the home-sweet-home hobs and he was now hurriedly sending out all of Mum’s invitations via a constant queue of goblin messengers from the sky door, and prawny-postmen from the sea door.

  Ooof had been ordered to carry all the crates of frog-grog down to the Atilantus, ready for our guests later that evening.

  Though there was one member of the family who was not happy about the party AT ALL! Granny Regurgita was FURIOUS that we’d opened up the other half of the hotel! I overheard Mum trying to explain to her that Abe was definitely not a lily-livered lumpling and we were going to throw him a party, but Granny just screamed, ‘OH, BOG OFF, YOU BUNCH OF NINKUMPOOPERS! I HOPE THE SNACKS GO OFF AND YOU ALL GET SQUITTLY!’

  Now can you see why I sneaked off when I did? Ha ha!

  THE GRAND RE-OPENING

  By the time eight o’clock arrived, I’d finally got changed into my smartest bell-hop outfit, and I could already hear the rumble of distant chatter from our excited hotel guests in the foyer. The celebration was about to begin.

  I hurried back down to the ground floor on the armchair lift, then ran out of the library to the grand reception hall, and…

  EVERYWHERE I LOOKED, THERE WAS PANDEMONIUM!

  The foyer was absolutely crammed with guests, dressed in their best party outfits and enthusiastically nattering as they lined up to be on the next lift-load down to the Atilantus station.

  ‘Cooee! Frankie!’ the Molar Sisters called when they spotted me in the doorway. ‘Thith ith tho exthiting!’

  ‘Whoever heard of an undersea shindig?’ Gadys Potts howled. ‘It’s the best thing ever. I can’t wait for a doggy-paddle!’

  ‘Have you seen my mum or my dad?’ I shouted to the geriatric tooth fairies and their werepoodle chum. They all pointed towards the reception counter, scratching ears and grinning gappy grins.

  Sure enough there was Dad, standing on the stone block and looking extremely flustered. He was clutching Mum’s special door key in his hand and was trying his best to manage the lift.

  ‘Don’t push!’ he snapped at an impatient boggart who’d just elbowed a family of moss gremlins aside, sending the stumpy things sprawling across the tiles. ‘Yes! There’s room for everyone. No one will be left behind, don’t worry. Mrs Blink, there’s really no reason for hysterics … no, you can’t bring your bed with you!’

  Dad spotted me and waved.

  ‘Frankie, you’d better hop on and get to the ballroom,’ he called. ‘Your mum is already down there with Ooof and Nancy. Who knows what chaos they’re dealing with?’

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said to an angry-looking hobyah as she shuffled and struggled her way to the front of the line. She tutted loudly as I stepped onto the circular lift before her.

  ‘GOING DOWN!’ Dad yelled. ‘NEXT STOP, THE ATILANTUS!’

  With that, he turned the key on the octopus lock and the lift-full of mumbling magicals began to lower into the floor.

  When we arrived down at the station platform, it was just as busy as the hotel reception.

  ‘Good luck!’ Dad said to me with a wink, before returning up to the ground floor above.

  Everywhere I looked there were crowds of eager guests, shoving and jostling to get their seat on the constant stream of fish-skeleton carriages that rattled back and forth along the tracks.

  I was about to duck around the elderly pine dryad, who was fussing with a pink bowtie he was trying to fasten around his trunk-neck, when I spotted Abe floating at the end of the wooden walkway.

  ‘Grandad Abe!’ I hollered above the loud babble of our gossiping guests, but he didn’t seem to hear me. I darted through the throng of people and ran up to my ghost grandad. ‘Abe, we should get down to the Briny Ballroom. You don’t want to be late for your own welcoming party.’

  But Abe didn’t move. He was staring at himself in a battered mirror that hung on the side of dilapidated ticket kiosk. It was one of those wiggly ones that made you look warped and lumpy.

  ‘I never imagined I’d see this place again,’ he sighed without looking away from his reflection. Instead, the old ghost smiled at me in the mirror. We both appeared weirdly swirly with giant middles, like we’d both grown super big bellies. ‘It’s a funny thing, coming back to haunt a place, but finding there are lots of memories haunting you right back.’

  I nodded, then opened up my mouth to speak, but stopped myself when I spotted that in his reflection, Abe’s left eye was green.

  ‘Ah, you noticed it too.’ Abe said, seeing me frown.

  ‘Puzzling, no? Looking glasses are strange things. They often show us truths we can’t see on our own.’

  ‘But … why?’ I stammered. ‘Why do you have one eye like Oculus?’

  ‘Who can say?’ Abe said, turning around to face me. I glanced up at him and saw both his eyes were blue away from the mirror.

  ‘I suppose it’s a little bit of history showing through the cracks, reminding me not to forget my son.’ Abe looked sad for a moment.

  ‘Come on, Grandad!’ I grinned my biggest grin and did my best to shake the glum ghost out of his mood. ‘There’s a party in the Briny Ballroom in your honour! You’re getting the welcome you always wanted.’

  Abe’s face creased into a smile.

  ‘You’re right!’ he laughed. ‘What am I doing here moping at a mirror? Let’s go, Frankie.

  A night to remember awaits!’

  THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA BALL

  ‘Would you look at that!’ Great-Great-Great-Grandad Abraham chuckled as we stepped (and floated) out through the Atilantus’s shining ribs onto the arrivals platform. ‘TERRIFIC!’

  I glanced up and felt like I might burst into tears for the billionth time that day. The Briny Ballroom looked completely different. All the cobwebs and the dust that covered every surface was gone, leaving everything shimmering and glinting in the warm, golden glow of the giant coral-shaped candelabra that lined the stairs. The home-sweet-home hobs had worked a complete miracle!

  Below us, the ballroom thronged with life. Music from the bandstand filled the air as an orchestra of anemanonks plucked at bizarre stringed instruments with their many pink and orange feelers, and the gleaming dance floor swirled with guests as they waltzed around the Under-Oak.

  I could barely stop myself from staring! Magicals can sniff out a shindig from miles away and it looked as though half the ocean had turned up to celebrate.

  Mergullies (jellymaidens from the darkest depths, and the builders who helped Abe construct the Atilantus) danced gracefully through the air, and kulpies splashed about in the fountains that were now exploding with jets of water.

  A pod of swelkies, with their half-man, half-lobster bodies, stamped out an intricate tap dance on one of the balconies and a party of dazzling mermaids galloped through the ceiling of the bubble, riding on coral-spiked hippocamps.

  ‘Ooh! It’th gorgeouth!’ a familiar voice blurted right behind me, as Dentina Molar flopped off the newest Atilantus carriage to arrive and nearly knocked me straight over the railing of the platform. ‘Come and look at thith, girlth!’

  More and more of our regular guests came bundling past me, pushing and shoving down the staircases to get closer to the action. Berol Dunch was so excited to discover she could swim through the air down here, she shot straight through Grandad Abe without so much as an EXCUSE-ME!

  ‘I think it’s time we joined in the fun,’ I said as Abe looked at me with a slightly bewildered expression.

  ‘I think you’re right, my boy. Quick, before someone else makes a dash through me. Ha!’

  As we headed into the crowd, I caught sight of more and more TERRIFIC things. This party was even better than TROGMANAY!

  Jars filled with twinkling plankton had been hung in the branches of the tree in the middle of the room, and everywhere I turned, I could see Nancy’s most delunctious treats and tummy-tinkling nibbles being carried about on enchanted trays that bobbed and swooped through the dancing couples.

  ‘Frankie! There you are!’

  I spun around and saw Mum awkwardly waltzing with Ooof.

  ‘Isn’t this lovely?’ she said, grimacing as our handyogre stepped on her toe.

  ‘Squibbly!’ I said, feeling slightly frazzled.

  ‘Did you see the carousel?’ Mum asked. ‘It scrubbed up beautifully!’

  I looked over and saw the carousel polished and shining with hundreds of little electric lights as it went in circles.

  ‘OH, I DO LIKE TO BE BENEATH THE SEASIDE!’ Nancy had finished her cooking for the evening and had somehow clambered onto one of the wooden seahorses. She was singing happily to herself, kicking her four legs back and forth as she rode the small thing around and around.

  ‘Ooof managed to get the old generators going. Didn’t you, Ooof?’ said Mum. ‘And the fountains!’

  The ogre grinned and trod on Mum’s toe again.

  ‘HELLO, FRANKIE!’ he beamed.

  ‘You two have fun,’ Mum said. ‘But don’t go far. It’s nearly time for your speech, Abe.’

  ‘My speech?’ Abe gasped.

  ‘Of course, silly!’ Mum laughed. ‘Everyone’s here to celebrate the return of you and the Briny Ballroom. You have to say a little something or they’ll all be disappointed.’

  Great-Great-Great-Grandad Abe nodded slowly and turned away, deep in thought.

  ‘Great!’ said Mum. Then she leaned in close to me and whispered, ‘Oh, and, Frankie, if you see your father or Maudlin, let them know it’s nearly speech time, will you? I want lots of familiar faces to be together, so we can support your grandfather.’

  With that, she turned back to Ooof and they waltzed clumsily away, mouthing, ‘ONE, TWO, THREE … OUCH, TWO, THREE … ONE, TWO, OUCH…’

  WHAAAAAAATT!?!?

  Grandad Abe excused himself politely and floated off to his tree house office to have a think about what he was going to say in his speech, leaving me to wander by myself.

  ‘Young man!’ a little voice squeaked just above my head as I passed beneath the Under-Oak, dodging dancing couples in all directions. ‘Young man, I have something important to tell you!’

 

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