Ghost and Bone Read online

  In a daze, Oscar read through every page of both files, scanning as fast as he could. He went quicker through his own file, which was rather dull, as he had already discovered. His father’s was three hundred pages long, but there was a useful index at the back for key moments, and a timeline at the start with a summary. There was nothing in either file saying that Oscar’s Curse had killed his father. Oscar found himself wondering why the files didn’t mention his Curse at all. But it didn’t matter. Oscar’s dad was dead because of Oscar. Why had Mr. Mortis allowed them to switch? There must be some clue. Anything that would help make it right.

  But there was nothing. Just more reminders of the many ways that Oscar squandered his father’s sacrifice by not living life to the fullest, by locking himself away on his own the whole time.

  When morning finally arrived, Oscar needed to turn back to his human self again and feel alive. His dad had sacrificed his own life so Oscar could keep his. He wanted to appreciate it.

  He left word at the pub, in case Sally came to find him. Then he turned into his living form and went out into the living city of London.

  As soon as he turned bodily again, crushing tiredness and hunger smacked him hard in the face like a brick in a sock. His bad leg ached. But Oscar didn’t mind. His dad had died just so that he could feel this awful. He was damned if he was going to give it all up by becoming a ghost.

  He crutched slowly to the nearest human café. He had just enough real change in his pocket to buy himself a decent breakfast. The kind of breakfast his dad had loved. The bacon was good, but the tea tasted like golden nectar. The real thing just couldn’t be beat.

  Oscar was finishing his second pot when Sally staggered in. She didn’t bother to pick her way around the other tables and breakfasters but walked right through them as if they weren’t there. She was weighed down by a large leather-bound tome about the same size as a suitcase.

  “Morning, Oscar,” she said. “You get some sleep? You look like death.”

  Oscar wasn’t really in the mood for jokes.

  “Rough night,” he said. “It’s hard to sleep.”

  “Got a present for you. It’s the official biography of Mr. Mortis. Sir Cedric suggested that I get it out from Records. He figured there might be something useful in here, maybe an explanation for why he’s taken an interest in you. You like books, don’t you? Fancy a read?”

  He pointed to the gargantuan text. “Every page?” He’d done enough reading last night.

  “Sure. Wish I could have a piece of your bacon.”

  Oscar suddenly become aware that people in the café were staring funnily at him. To them it must have looked like he was talking to thin air.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he muttered. “Got something to show you too.”

  Back in Oscar’s room, Sally was utterly gobsmacked by what Oscar had discovered. As Oscar’s story unfolded, her mouth dropped open and stayed that way.

  “Lawks!” Finally she found her voice. “Mr. Mortis personally brought you back from the dead, Oscar! Do you know how crazy that is?”

  It wasn’t crazy. It was awful.

  “But why did my dad have to die?” Oscar asked bitterly. “Why couldn’t Mortis just save my life if that’s what he wanted to do?”

  “Oh, no.” Sally held out her hands like a set of scales. “The balance of life and death, Oscar! It has to be maintained. There’re rules. Big, important rules. If they get broken, the whole world might break down. That’s Mr. Mortis’s main job, to make sure that people die when they are supposed to. But this switcheroo! I’ve never heard of anything like it. It breaks every rule there is.”

  Sally had to sit down, and she began to talk it all through, what it meant, how it could happen, the reasons behind it. Her mind was still whirring away, her thoughts tumbling over one another like a basket of cats in a clothes dryer. Oscar watched her grimly—he’d feel a lot better if she didn’t seem so excited. This might be interesting and intriguing for her, just another revelation in the case—but this was Oscar’s life.

  “We have to show these to Sir Cedric! He might know if this has ever happened before. Though I don’t think it has, or has it? No. Why did Mortis intervene? What’s so important about you? I don’t even think it’s possible. Golly! What a mess.” She gathered up the papers and stuffed them in her bag. “Great detective work, by the way. You should be a ghoul, Oscar.”

  A quick coach ride later, they arrived at the Department of Contraptions. Oscar felt full of energy in his ghost form, and it made him feel guilty; he shouldn’t enjoy the ghost world so much. His dad had died so Oscar could live. But for now, Oscar had to stay a ghost to find out the truth.

  It didn’t help Oscar’s guilt that the Department of Contraptions turned out to be the best place he had ever been in his life…or death.

  The entrance was right beneath the flashing neon signs in Piccadilly Circus. But within ten seconds of passing through the small, unmemorable door, Oscar had completely forgotten about that famous London sight. It was long gone, along with every reasonable, rational thought in his head.

  “What do you think?” Sally asked him.

  He tried to say something, but it all got mixed up and then mashed together in his mind, so that all he could manage was “Urg.”

  “That isn’t a word, Oscar,” Sally said. She patted him on the back. “But I think it nicely sums it up.”

  There’d been a lot of mind-frying revelations since he became a ghost, but the Department of Contraptions was like plunging your brain into a deep fryer.

  * * *

  “Impossible, eh?” said Sally, grinning.

  They were standing on the very edge of an enormous…hangar. The roof was somewhere above them, maybe, but the building was so big it actually seemed to have its own weather system. Funny clouds were floating high above, lit up by strange flashes of light and distant explosions. The air was thick with the greasy feel of phantasma.

  “What’s that?” Oscar asked, craning his neck back to look at the monstrous pink airship that was hanging from the ceiling above them. But sitting within the gigantic space of the Department of Contraptions, the ship looked like someone’s forgotten birthday balloon.

  “Oh, that’s the Party Zeppelin.” Sally shrugged. “The Ministry of Ghosts’ summer bash is really something.”

  “But what is this place?” Oscar asked.

  “Well, some ghosts, rather than using their dead lives to carry on doing whatever they did when they were alive, decide to come up with the craziest inventions they can think of. The Department is where they work and experiment together. But there is also a Restricted Property office, where all the illegal or dangerous contraptions are stored. Things like phantasma-sucking devices, for example. We can see if any have been checked out.”

  “Right. Brilliant.”

  “Try not to gawk too much—we’ve got a long way to walk.”

  It was hard. Everywhere Oscar looked, he saw all kinds of wonderful stuff. Dancing cows swooped above them carrying messages on their horns. Sally explained that these had been created last week by a Life Maker—someone who creates afterlives for the Other Side at the Department of Afterlives—on his day off.

  Sally showed Oscar the Zonomorphs, the weird clanking machines that Life Makers used to craft their afterlives. They looked a bit like a cross between a steam train, a windmill, and a very fancy oven. A huge battery of them was set up just inside the door, and they were belching out purple smoke as Sally and Oscar walked past.

  In the distance, giant revolving letters changed color and spelled out inspirational slogans like Die Better! All sorts of ghosts were coming and going through doors that popped out of nowhere. There was a cheerful bustle to the place.

  Despite everything that Oscar had been through, he couldn’t help smiling.

  “In here, the Minis
try can keep an eye on the inventors and make sure they don’t release anything dangerous into the real world. Because everything’s powered by phantasma, you can dream up some pretty odd ideas.”

  As Sally and Oscar continued into the enormous warehouse-like room, a small, floating personal chandelier began to hover over their heads.

  “Restricted Property,” Sally said to her chandelier.

  The chandelier glowed pink and swung away to the right, leading them on into the maze. They walked past or through dozens of inventions in the works. Oscar’s favorite was a room full of vehicles: some were like the carriage that brought them there, others were more modern motorbikes and cars, and then there were the machines that looked like they’d been put together inside someone’s dream. A giant baby with wheels. A fishcopter. A rocket-powered rocking horse.

  In another room, ghosts were flying about, all working together to build an enormous sculpture of Queen Elizabeth I. It seemed to be made out of individual grains of rice, painstakingly hand-painted.

  “Why?” Oscar asked.

  “Why not?” Sally said. “It’s only taken them thirty years. Pretty quick work if you ask me.”

  After an utterly jaw-dropping fifteen-minute walk, their chandelier guide brought them to the heavily guarded entrance.

  Intimidating guards armed with scary-looking weaponry like giant mechanical fly swatters and bowling ball throwers that hummed with phantasma checked Sally’s credentials before letting them inside.

  “These guys are new,” Sally whispered. “Not sure if I like ’em.”

  Beyond the entrance was a dark, gloomy cave. Various pieces of confiscated machinery were piled haphazardly about. A clerk with an extremely bored expression sat at a table in the back. His face brightened considerably when he saw that he had visitors.

  “How may I help you kids?” he asked. “Here to find out about the naughty stuff, eh?”

  “I’m Detective Sally Cromarty. I’m from the Ghouls,” Sally said, flashing her badge again. “I want to know if any ghost has signed out equipment for channeling or storing energy in the past few months.”

  The clerk’s smile vanished. He dragged out yet another huge leather-bound record book. He licked his finger and began to page slowly through it.

  “Never in a hurry, are they?” Oscar whispered.

  “Lots of empty time,” said Sally. “Got to fill it somehow. Come on, have a look at this stuff!”

  She took Oscar on a tour of the confiscated contraptions. She showed him sticks of dynamite and piles of plastic explosives that, when detonated, gave off a powerful shock wave of phantasma that could tear ghosts apart; a catapult that threw samurai swords; a pair of goggles that could see into vaults; and a real skeleton key made of bones that could open any ghost doorway in existence.

  “Those tools were used by the Kray twins. Me and my dad helped catch them forty years ago. Proper pair of villains, they were.”

  Oscar found himself drawn to a complicated piece of machinery in the corner of the room. It had brass valves and odd handles and a wonderfully ornate gear system. It looked like a clock for turning time inside out.

  “What does this do?” he asked, reaching out and running his finger over the frame.

  “It’s for counterfeiting coins, I think,” Sally said. “Wait! Do you hear something?”

  With a hissing sigh, the machine sprang to life. Cogs churned; steam vented. A deep, groaning noise issued from somewhere deep inside.

  “What did you press?” Sally hissed. “Stop it!”

  “I didn’t press anything,” said Oscar.

  With a rattling roar, a torrent of golden sovereigns started vomiting from a funnel in the side of the machine.

  “Stop that!” the clerk screamed. “That’s dangerous!” He sprinted over and started heaving on various levers. Cogs clicked and whirred. Gradually, the coin torrent slowed to a trickle and then stopped.

  The floor was now covered in a small lake of coins. A fortune.

  “Can I clean these up?” Oscar asked. “I’m very sorry.”

  “Don’t touch anything!” snapped the clerk. “And I’ll do it.”

  The clerk opened a door in the air with a key he pulled from his pocket and hauled out a vacuum cleaner. He started vacuuming up the coins. Sally and Oscar got out of his way.

  “He’s right, you know,” Sally said. “You’d better not touch anything, specially that dynamite. If that goes off…Pff, wouldn’t be much of us left.”

  “But I didn’t press any buttons! Or levers…or anything.”

  “Exactly. You just stroked it, and it sprang to life. I saw.”

  “Oh,” Oscar said, still a little puzzled. “So what happened?”

  “You happened.” Sally’s eyes were shining with excitement. “Normal ghosts can’t do that. Your phantasma is very, very powerful. Remember the reading we took of you on the phantasmagraph in the mortuary—it was off the scale. These machines are powered by phantasma, and your phantasma caused it to go haywire. Think! That was just one touch! Imagine what you could do with the proper training!”

  The clerk sucked up the last of the coins and put the vacuum cleaner back in its invisible closet.

  “I’d just gone through the book, when you had your little accident.” He sniffed. “There’s only been one high-level access recently.”

  “Oho!” said Sally. “What did they take?”

  “Funnels, a Hungry Bottle, and a Ghoul Eye,” he said. “I remember them because they didn’t say anything and they were covering their face with a hat and a scarf.”

  “That’s our man,” Oscar said.

  “Or woman,” Sally said. “Did they leave a name?”

  The clerk ran his finger down the list. “Yes. Ren Simons.”

  “Hmmm…That’s another name that could be a man or a woman,” Oscar said.

  “Yep.” Sally was chewing her lip. “Doesn’t help us much. Except they took a Hungry Bottle. They are very, very dangerous.” She turned back to the clerk. “And was this ‘Ren’s’ paperwork in order?”

  “Do you think I would have let them take a Hungry Bottle if it wasn’t?” shot back the clerk, bristling.

  “Of course not.” Sally smiled pleasantly. “And thank you for your patience.”

  “Sorry about the coins,” Oscar added.

  They made their way back, guided by their flying chandelier.

  “This is really bad,” said Sally. “Only someone with the tippy-toppest level of security clearance could take a Hungry Bottle.”

  “Well, who could that be?”

  “About seven or eight ghosts in London,” Sally said.

  “And is Lady Margaret one of them?” Oscar asked.

  “Yup!” Sally nodded. “She’s fishy as a ferret. We have to tell Mr. Mortis! But how can we? What was it? A forty-year wait!” She pounded her fist in her hand. “We have to find a way to see him. Jump him somehow.”

  A door suddenly opened in the air in front of them, and a lady ghost stepped out pushing a ghost baby in a stroller. The baby was talking on a phone attached to a teddy bear.

  “We’ll need to meet an accurate assessment of the operational parameters before we can give the go-ahead,” the baby snarled. “And I don’t think Morrison will like it.”

  Normally, Oscar would have been fascinated by such a crazy sight, but he hardly noticed. He’d stopped dead in the corridor with a funny, faraway smile on his face.

  “Toddle on,” Sally said, turning when she realized he was no longer with her.

  Oscar didn’t move.

  “I think I’ve got an idea,” he said.

  “Are you sure about this, Oscar?” Sally asked out of the corner of her mouth. “You can still back out.”

  “No,” Oscar said. “I mean, yes, I’m sure, and no, I’m not backing out.�
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  “I mean it. This is a bad idea.”

  They were hurrying down the final oak-paneled corridor at the top of the Ministry of Ghosts headquarters. Again, they’d made it through all the barriers, until only the last—Mr. Mortis’s terrifying secretary—remained.

  “What’s the worst that could happen?” Oscar said, trying to sound brave.

  “Oh, that’s easy,” said Sally. “The worst is you plummet three hundred feet to your actual death on the pavement. You’ll look like raspberry jam.”

  “Welp. Too late now,” Oscar said.

  The secretary had seen them coming. Her smile was so chilly it could have frozen lava.

  “I told you to come back in forty-one years,” she said. “Yesterday.”

  “We wanted to check if you’d had any cancellations…Moira,” Sally said, squinting at the badge on the secretary’s chest. “We’re optimists, see?”

  “How quaint. Let me assure you there have been no—Hey! HEY! What do you think you’re doing!” the secretary shrieked as Oscar took off running.

  He was past her desk in a flash, feet flying.

  The secretary was stunned only for a moment before she pressed her alarm button. A siren started wailing. The two enormous security guards appeared from their cubbyhole. They moved quickly, like agile mountains, and blocked the way.

  Oscar didn’t swerve to avoid them. He ran faster. The two giants grinned.

  Just before he crashed into them, Oscar turned bodily.

  The guards grunted in astonishment as he passed right through their ghostly bodies.

  A moment later, Oscar turned back into a ghost and ran on down the corridor. Behind him, he heard Sally cheering.

  Ahead was a heavy mahogany door. The brass plaque on it read:

  MR. M. MORTIS

  MINISTRY HEAD

  Oscar didn’t bother opening it. He used another trick—flashing bodily for a second and then back to ghost. But this time his feet were about to fall through the floor when he switched back, so he tumbled headfirst into the office and rolled across the carpet.