rushed to the sofa. The seal with Sardanapal’s personal stamp was dangling on one wire. However, the stamp itself, fortunately, was whole. Someone was wheezing quietly in the leather trunk.
“Now you believe that she’s there?” Lieutenant Rzhevskii was interested. “She hid there when I – hee-hee – asked her to repair a little knife in my back. We occasionally moan so that she doesn’t get bored there. Here watch!” Issuing blood-curdling moans, the spectre started to fly above the trunk. The trunk began to shake a little and bob up and down. The daughter of Uncle Herman began to squeal.
“Rzhevskii! Leave her alone, I say!” Tanya ordered, after considering that Pipa could go completely crazy from terror. Moronoids are quite unfit for such encounters. But Lieutenant was not thinking of stopping. The more violently the trunk bobbed, the more worked up he got. He even started to pour ketchup onto the trunk, groaning, “Blood! Blood everywhere!”
“Well, stop! Briskus-quickus!” Tanya shouted angrily. The spectre was pulled with a loud chomping sound into the floor, and Unhealed Lady, becoming a grey fog, quickly darted into a vase. “Never handle ghosts this way. Terribly dusty in here! I have choo… aller… choo! gy!” the vase immediately began to moan.
The trunk stopped shuddering. The one sitting in it was clearly listening. “Come out, Pipa! Otherwise you’ll suffocate,” ordered Tanya.
“I’ll not come out! It’s you, guilty of everything! Cursed witch! Must burn you on the stake!” Pipa answered from the trunk, managing to sob and hiss at the same time.
Tanya was angry. The daughter of the Durnevs, as always, stuck to her own repertoire. “Come out, I say! Who asked you to look in there anyway? Did I ever ransack your things?”
“So what? This is my apartment, my parents’. And all the things here are mine, nothing here is yours… Oh-oh-oh! I’m scared! Fo-o-ol!” Suddenly Pipa’s voice trembled, and she burst into tears. Tanya almost went deaf. Lieutenant Rzhevskii with his frightening howl was simply an amateur compared to Pipa.
Unhealed Lady, hiding in the vase, had just been describing some of her regular sores. On hearing Pipa’s sobbing, Lady decided that Pipa was crying from sympathy and also burst into tears herself. “How touching! Didn’t think that the history of the corn on my heel would upset you so. Not exactly like all these insensible donkeys!” she said, sobbing.
Lieutenant Rzhevskii, already recovered from the action of the restrain spell, carefully floated out from the corridor. This time the restless spectre was in a dark-blue work robe, with a mop in his hands. He had clearly borrowed both from the cabinet of the maid who came to the Durnevs three times a week. “Little lady, I very much apologize! A cleaning woman was called? I’m here!” Lieutenant asked and, without waiting for an answer, started to fly around the room, grinding red tracks onto the ceiling.
Tanya understood that if Pipa was not immediately driven out of the trunk and the ghost returned there, this could end with anything. Once and for all, the ghost completely letting himself go would destroy everything in the apartment and start to fly through the entire building frightening the neighbours, and Pipa would sob and squeal until someone called the police.
“That’s it, Pipa, come out! Out of there quick! I need the trunk!” Tanya ordered. She tried to open the lid but Pipa clutched with a death grip and held it from within.
“Wait! Now I’ll drive her out!” Lieutenant Rzhevskii made use of the fact that the lid of the trunk was slightly raised during the fight, and, holding the mop atilt, infiltrated through the slit. “And here’s also the brigade of maid-psychopaths with new rags for the nose! Need to wipe your tears?” he cooed.
From the trunk was heard no longer a screech but a howl. The lid was thrown open, and Pipa jumped out like she was scalded, pursued at her heels by the off-his-rocker spectre and by Unhealed Lady. Moreover, Lady got the idea into her head to tell Pipa how once during an operation the surgeon left his glasses in her stomach.
Pipa howled non-stop, arbitrarily rushing along the room and trying to force her way through into the corridor. But every time Lieutenant Rzhevskii appeared in her way, with a straight face juggling his own ears and nose. Pipa waved her hands at him and jumped back.
Tanya sat on the bed and, having propped up her head with her arms, was observing all these disgraceful goings-on. Then she recalled that she had left the double bass on the stairs, and went out for it. The double bass was in the same place where she had left it. Staff General Cutletkin was too frightened to stretch his greedy paws out to it.
“Enough is enough! Must also go insane gradually!” she thought, returning. “By the name of the Sovereign of Spirits go back!” Tanya pronounced and, sitting down, touched the warm seal with the stamp. Something flared up dazzlingly. A whirling tornado stirred the curtains. An unknown force pulled the ghosts into the trunk. The lid was slammed shut. Sighing with relief, Tanya carefully repaired the stamp and began to move the trunk under the sofa.
By inertia, Pipa still ran around the room several times, and then she jumped out into the corridor and from there began to threaten Tanya with all kinds of trouble. “Now you wait! Papa will see the ceiling, and then they will precisely send you to the colony for minors!” she squealed.
“But I didn’t smear the ceiling!” Tanya objected.
“But I’ll say that you did! You, you! Nevertheless, no one will believe in ghosts! I’ll say that you took a boot, put it on the mop and made prints on the ceiling!” Pipa started to giggle disgustingly. She recovered amazingly quickly after the shock.
This threat was the last straw. Tanya flared up. She pressed Pipa into a corner, took aim at her with the middle finger, released a pair of green sparks as a warning, and pronounced with utmost seriousness, “Fucusdruidis pipus beyond max-convertus!” After this, Tanya turned and quietly walked to her room.
As she also expected, a worried Pipa rushed behind at a trot. She was terribly suspicious – well, simply a spitting image of Uncle Herman. “Wait! What did you just say?” she muttered.
“What did I say?” Tanya did not understand.
“Well this… pipus boaris… fucus… something there…”
Tanya turned and, squinting, looked at Pipa. “Ah, that’s what you’re talking about! It’s a delayed spell of transformation!” she explained significantly.
“Whose transformation? And why delayed?”
“Because it doesn’t act immediately! And it’s even a trivial spell in general, don’t pay any attention.”
“Trivial?” Pipa asked again distrustfully.
“Uh-huh. Simply if this evening I have any trouble or you blather anything unnecessary at all, you will grow pig ears, and bristle will appear on your face! You will go to school in a gas mask… Hey, Pipa, what’s with you?” Pipa began to tremble. She remembered very well the fur, which grew on the hand of her chief toady Lenka Mumrikova, when they attempted to flood with glue the teach yourself book of magic.
Not without reason Pipa was the daughter of the deputy. In a flash she considered everything and horror appeared in her eyes. “But if you have no trouble?” she quickly asked. “If there isn’t any?”
“Hmm… Then, possibly, the spell won’t snap into action,” said Tanya, looking at Pipa attentively. She already understood that she had won. The senseless spell composed in a hurry proved to be right on target. How would Pipe know that delayed magic comes only in third or fourth year instruction?
