Ghost and Bone Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2019 by Andrew Prentice

  Cover art copyright © 2019 by Alexander Jansson

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Prentice, Andrew (Andy) author.

  Title: Ghost and bone / Andrew Prentice.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Delacorte Press, [2019] | Summary: Twelve-year-old Oscar Grimstone is cursed with killing things at a touch, and can also transform into a ghost, but a journey to the city of ghosts may lead him to discover his true identity. | Identifiers: LCCN 2018057889 (print) | LCCN 2018060854 (ebook) | ISBN 978-0-525-64394-4 (ebook) | ISBN 978-0-525-64393-7 (hardback)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Identity—Fiction. | Ghosts—Fiction | Future life—Fiction. | Blessing and cursing—Fiction. | Fantasy. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Action & Adventure / General. | JUVENILE FICTION / Fantasy & Magic.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.P91914 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.P91914 Gho 2019 (print) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Ebook ISBN 9780525643944

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  About the Author

  To my brother and sisters: you are all awesome and I love you.

  “Hold tight, Mr. Jenkinson,” Oscar Grimstone said. “I’m just going to lean in a bit here. Don’t mind me.”

  Mr. Jenkinson made no reply. But then, his mouth was sewn shut with tiny, invisible stitches, so he couldn’t have complained even if he wasn’t dead.

  Oscar carefully slipped the bow tie around the man’s neck.

  He caught a strong whiff of porridge as he did it. That was normal. Before Oscar’s mum sewed her clients’ mouths closed, she always tucked in a few bags of oats to plump up their cheeks. It was one of her secrets.

  “Nice floppy knot…” Oscar’s fingers twirled nimbly. “We don’t want it to look like a clip-on, do we?”

  She had loads of little secrets, his mum. Odd things happened to a body after it died, and it took even odder things to make it seem like they hadn’t.

  What we do is an art, she liked to say. Don’t you forget it, Oscar.

  Oscar didn’t need convincing. Leaky, stinky stiffs were carried in the back door and peaceful dreamers went out the front to the graveyard. He knew undertaking was magic.

  “How does that feel for you, Mr. Jenkinson?” Oscar cocked his head to one side, admiring his handiwork.

  Again, Mr. Jenkinson kept up his poker face—but Oscar was sure that if his client could talk he’d be delighted. The bow tie was perfect. The cuffs were perfectly ironed, the hands folded and dusted with talcum powder. You could only faintly make out the smell of embalming chemicals, which Oscar pumped into Mr. Jenkinson to keep his body fresh, just like with Egyptian mummies. A few spritzes of aftershave did the trick. He’d done a fine job.

  “Very dapper. You know, loads of your family are coming to see you on your big day, plus half the town. Popular guy.” Oscar glanced at the grinning picture of the living Mr. Jenkinson as he picked up a comb. “And you wore a side part, right?”

  Carefully, because dead people’s skin had a nasty habit of peeling off if you tugged it too hard, he began to comb Mr. Jenkinson’s hair.

  Oscar was fully aware that twelve-year-old boys aren’t often found chatting away with corpses, or combing their hair, but truth be told, Oscar was at his best around the dead. Secretly, he preferred them to living people. They didn’t ask awkward questions or say he smelled of bleach. They were good listeners.

  And dead people also talked, so long as you knew the right way to look. You could tell a lot about a person from their corpse.

  Take Mr. Jenkinson: Oscar knew that he’d smoked at least thirty cigarettes a day, because he’d seen the yellow stains on his fingers. He knew that he’d smiled a lot, because when he was doing his makeup, the deepest wrinkles were the laugh lines around his eyes. He knew from the tattoo Mr. Jenkinson had over his heart that he’d once loved a girl named Mabel very much.

  Oscar wondered if Mr. Jenkinson had met up with Mabel wherever he’d gone.

  “One last touch and then you’re ready.” Oscar took a deep breath as he glanced at the vase of lilies by the door.

  He’d been dreading this moment. He reached for his crutch, which was leaning against the wall beneath a framed photo of his dad. You can do it, Oscar, his father’s voice seemed to say. Oscar limped across the room, ignoring the dull pain that always cramped up his leg if he stood in one spot for too long.

  He couldn’t keep his fingers from trembling a little as he snatched up the largest flower. He cut it down for size, nearly nicking his fingers he went so fast. Then he scuttled back toward the corpse, moving as fast as his bad leg permitted.

  But he wasn’t fast enough. Just before he got to Mr. Jenkinson, the flower withered. The petals turned black and fell to the floor.

  “No,” Oscar hissed. “Not again.”

  “Osky? Are you finished, love?” His mum poked her head around the door. “I’m just going down to the shops—will you…” She narrowed her eyes. “What are you hiding behind your back?”

  “Nothing, Mum,” Oscar lied. He kicked the petals under the table. The dead flower was scrunched up in his fist.

  Oscar didn’t want her to know.

  He didn’t want anyone to know about the Curse, which was what he’d started calling it. Problem was, people were starting to notice, especially at school.

  When it was his turn to feed the class’s tropical fish, he’d sprinkled some flakes into the tank. The next thing he knew, Jerry the clown fish was bobbing on the surface, white belly up. Nobody felt worse for poor Jerry than Oscar, but after that, Gary Stevens started whispering about how he’d poisoned him. The whispers spread quickly.

  That was nothing compared to what had happened in the last PE lesson before the end of the year. They always made him goalie—because of his leg, he couldn’t run. But this time every blade of grass around him had withered and died. It looked like he’d sprayed a big circle of weed killer on the penalty spot. Then the whispers became taunts. As usual, Gary Stevens and his goons were the worst. They sneered at him every time they passed in the hallways.

  Killer boy. Ghoul. Freak.
<
br />   Gary Stevens started saying that the people in his morgue weren’t dead when they went in but died when they looked at Oscar.

  It was a good thing it was summer.

  “You really shouldn’t spend so much time down here,” his mum said. She looked worried. “Why don’t you go out for some fresh air?”

  “But I like it down here,” Oscar said.

  For a moment, his mum looked like she wanted to argue; then she smiled.

  “All right. In an hour, we’ve got another client coming. That’s two in a day!”

  “That’s good, Mum,” Oscar said. He shoved the dead flower stem in his pocket when she wasn’t looking.

  “I know. It’s been so slow! I swear people have just stopped dying. Really, it’s the strangest thing. Usually July’s a good month.” Her smile slipped a little. “Now, if people are going to see you, could you do your poor mum a favor and change into something a little cheerier? It really helps put clients at ease if you don’t look like a vampire, Osk.”

  “Mum!” Just like every other day, Oscar was wearing the clothes that made him feel most comfortable. Black T-shirt. Black jeans. Black boots. These perfectly matched his black eyes and his jet-black hair. He even had on black socks.

  “Please, Osk! We really need this job. See, I’ve bought you a new shirt.”

  Oscar took the plastic bag she offered. Inside he found a sensible yellow shirt with a starched collar.

  He held it up to his chest. “You think they’ll prefer this? Really?”

  “It fits and I like it,” his mum said. “Cheery.”

  Oscar raised an eyebrow but didn’t argue. Mum had been so worried recently about the business and Oscar locking himself away indoors all summer. He only had to wear the shirt for a meeting, and it would make her happy.

  “Good. You put that on,” she said. “And I’m off to the butcher’s. I’m getting sausages. We are celebrating tonight!”

  Oscar heard the front door slam. He slipped off his T-shirt and shivered as goose pimples puckered up his back. They had to keep the temperature barely above freezing in the mortuary. Corpses and summer heat did not mix well.

  He dragged the shirt over his head without unbuttoning it. That was a mistake. Something, somewhere, snagged. Now he was blind and his arms were stuck over his head.

  Oscar was just thinking how lucky it was that no one could see him, when he heard two soft scratches echo through the room. At the same time, he felt a chill of icy dread spread through him

  “Hello?” Oscar said. The shirt was still stuck over his head.

  There was another scratchy, skittering noise.

  Something was very wrong here. Something horrible. His blood felt cold.

  “Who’s there?” Oscar shouted. No answer. He was still stuck in the stupid shirt. He backed away blindly and banged into a body cart. Dishes and metal trays crashed on the floor.

  Desperate, Oscar grabbed the collar and ripped. The top few buttons tore off their thread.

  Oscar blinked. Five scalpels kept in a tray in the corner of the room were hovering in midair just above Mr. Jenkinson.

  Oscar was too frightened to scream. The dead man’s eyes and mouth were sewn shut, but wispy tendrils of silver fog were leaking through them, and curling across his skin. The fog seemed to be holding the knives up in the air.

  Without warning the knives flew at Oscar’s head. Oscar threw himself to the ground just in time. The knives smashed into the wall behind him.

  The mist was everywhere, twining around the cart holding Mr. Jenkinson, which was rolling toward him. Oscar yanked the shirt off his back to free himself. Then he dived out of the way again, ignoring the shooting pain in his bad leg. Mr. Jenkinson sailed past and crashed into the wall beneath the knives.

  “Help!” Oscar shouted, but no one could hear him. A low, rumbling roar made him whip around just as a huge, heavy tank of embalming fluid was flying down the narrow passage between the wall and the row of spare carts.

  Oscar rolled to the side. But as he tried to sit up to make a run for it, he was struck straight in the head. Blinding stars filled his eyes.

  Something rubbery wrapped itself around his throat. It was horribly strong. It squeezed.

  Oscar choked, trying to breathe. He looked down and saw that the hose from the embalming tank had wrapped itself around his neck like a snake. The silver mist slithered all over the hose, up toward his jaw, like it knew what it was doing. Like it wanted Oscar. It scratched across his skin like a freezing burn.

  Oscar began to kick his feet wildly, trying to smash the tank, but the hose was iron strong and it was crushing the life from him. Oscar tried to scream, but he couldn’t even breathe. Then a bright, flashing light burst behind his eyes. The mist filled his vision. His head was roaring. The last thing he saw was the picture of his father on the wall. Smiling. Let me go, Oscar thought. LET ME GO!

  And as Oscar said it, a switch flicked inside him.

  Oscar dropped free. It was a miracle. For a heartbeat, Oscar looked up in utter astonishment as the snakelike hose snapped shut over empty air.

  How did I get out of that?

  Oscar sprinted for the door, his terror driving him faster than he’d ever run before. He reached out to open it.

  But his hand drifted straight through the handle. He toppled forward through the door, landing in the corridor.

  Most of Oscar’s panicking brain was telling him he needed to get out of here RIGHT NOW. But a small voice was trying very hard to get all these bewildering events in order. A big question was: How did I just fall through solid wood?

  As he went to push himself to his feet, he saw his hands and realized the answer.

  Because his hands weren’t there anymore. Or rather, they were only half there.

  His fingers seemed to be made of the same shimmery see-through fog he’d seen curling out of Mr. Jenkinson. Panicking, he looked at the rest of his body, but the rest of him was fog too. When he stood up, he could even see the floor through his shoes.

  The shock was so powerful that for a brief moment his mind went blank. He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he saw that his hands had reappeared and his jeans were black again.

  He could also hear a regular thudding noise. It sounded like the embalming tank didn’t know how to open a door.

  Oscar didn’t want to wait for it to find out. He jumped to his feet—and fell back down straightaway. Gasping, with the thudding noise chasing him down the corridor, Oscar dragged himself along the wall to the door, where he grabbed the spare crutch in the umbrella stand.

  He burst into the street. He didn’t care that he was shirtless. He needed to get away as fast as he could. I need to warn Mum!

  As he ran, he glanced over his shoulder. No objects were flying at him, which was good, but out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of something that might have been worse.

  A figure was watching him. It was standing in the shadowy alley that ran down the side of his house. A wide-brimmed hat shaded its eyes, and something like a bandanna covered the lower part of its face. As Oscar looked at the figure properly, he realized it seemed to be shimmering.

  Then it was gone.

  “You could’ve just told me you didn’t want to wear that shirt,” Oscar’s mum said. “It wasn’t cheap, you know.”

  “I’m telling you the truth, Mum! The…the…” Oscar flailed an arm at Mr. Jenkinson. “Everything attacked when I was putting it on! I had to rip it off. It was this poltergeist! He had a hat, and I think he was controlling the mist!”

  It was bad enough that everything was back to normal. Mr. Jenkinson was lying on the slab with his hands neatly folded over his chest, like there had never been a magical mist that seeped out of him. Even his makeup hadn’t smudged—although Oscar was pretty sure his hair used to be parted on the other s
ide.

  All the other objects in the room had returned to where they were meant to be, as if they hadn’t tried to murder Oscar.

  He wasn’t that sure, though. In fact, Oscar was worried he was losing his mind. He glared at the hose, trying to figure out how it came alive. He almost wanted it to rise again just to prove he wasn’t lying.

  “Oh, Oscar…,” she sighed, chucking scraps of shirt in the bin. “Come on….Let’s go to the kitchen. Have a cup of tea. You’ll feel better.”

  His mum’s solution to every crisis was tea. Oscar suspected that if a crazed man-eating lion charged her, her first thought would be to ask if it wanted one lump of sugar or two. She took four this time, which meant she probably thought the apocalypse was coming.

  “What are people going to say, Osk? Running about town like a naked maniac! You looked completely crazy. That gossipy butcher will have a nice story to tell, and you can be sure that he’ll tell everyone.”

  “People aren’t interested in me, Mum.”

  “It matters, Osk. Who’s going to bring their dead granny here if they think we’re the sort of people who buy sausages half-naked! Undertaking is the most serious business there is.”

  “I’m sorry,” Oscar said.

  “No! I’m sorry. It’s not right for a boy to spend all summer with dead people. Especially if he’s…” His mum stopped herself. She took a deep glug of tea.

  “If he’s what?” Oscar said.

  “I was…I was just going to say…” She sipped her tea again. She didn’t want to meet his eye.

  “Let me guess. You wanted to say ‘especially if he’s already odd.’ ”

  His mum didn’t look up.

  “Why don’t you just say it? Maybe I am. But so what? I can’t change, Mum.”

  Mrs. Grimstone smiled sadly. “I don’t want you to change, Osk. You know I didn’t mean that. It’s just after the accident the doctors said I had to watch out for signs. It was an awful bump you took.”