Ghost and Bone Read online

  “But, Mum! I’M. NOT. SEEING. THINGS!”

  Oscar had never shouted at his mum like that. His mom’s knuckles went white as she gripped her cup in front of her, like a shield. Then she spoke quietly and fast. “Love, I think you should go and see a doctor. A proper one. They’ll help you—and it’ll get you out of the house….”

  Oscar hadn’t drunk a sip of his tea, but he stormed up to his bedroom.

  * * *

  It was almost midnight before Oscar calmed down. He hadn’t left his room and had missed dinner, even though he was hungry and the sausages smelled delicious. He lay in his bed staring into the dark.

  His mum thought he was going crazy.

  There was nothing wrong with him. His head was fine. Well, maybe his neck was still aching a bit where the tank had nailed him. But that was just the proof he needed to know he hadn’t imagined it all.

  And it definitely wasn’t anything to do with the accident either. His leg had been shattered in five places in the car crash that killed his dad, but there was no damage to his brain. Anyway, that was years ago, when he was a baby. He’d never seen anything like that mist in all his life.

  Actually, Oscar thought, that isn’t true. The dead clown fish and the poisoned grass were real and weird, not to mention all the dead flowers….

  Maybe it’s good she didn’t believe me, Oscar told himself. Suddenly, he felt relieved. She didn’t know about the other stuff. Which was good.

  This was the scariest thought. What if it was all his fault? What if his Curse had made the corpse come alive? Maybe it was all linked.

  It was too horrible to think about—and that was just the problem. Oscar realized that he hadn’t really been thinking properly at all. He’d been ignoring everything, hoping it was going to go away. And now it seemed to be getting worse.

  What if it got really bad?

  What if he hugged his mum and she died?

  The thought was interrupted by a sudden chill of icy dread running down his spine. It was exactly the same feeling he’d had in the morgue, as Mr. Jenkinson attacked. Oscar’s heart thudded as the tingling cold crept through his body.

  He remembered the shimmering figure in the hat that he’d seen standing outside his house. The ghost.

  Maybe that thing had come back?

  The curtains in his room fluttered gently. He switched on his lamp and limped across the room to shut the window. His fingers reached for the curtain, and slowly, he inched them open.

  Marigold Street looked as normal as ever. Sleepy houses, parked cars, neatly trimmed hedges.

  Across the road, Gary Stevens, Oscar’s nemesis and neighbor, was walking his dog. His new dog. The other one had died recently. Gary had blamed Oscar even though he had nothing to do with it.

  The new dog seemed to have spotted something. It was tugging at its leash and growling.

  Oscar just had time to wonder why, when he was blinded by a bright flash of light.

  When he could see again, a shimmering green carriage was rolling down the road, drawn by two rake-thin horses. The carriage lurched up onto the pavement. It was heading right for Gary!

  “Watch ou—”

  The cry caught in Oscar’s throat as he saw the carriage roll right through Gary and his dog, which barked madly. Gary didn’t appear to have noticed at all. The carriage continued, rattling through cars and lampposts as if they weren’t there.

  “What’s going on?” Oscar murmured.

  The carriage drew to a sharp halt outside Oscar’s house.

  The dread froze inside him.

  Oscar stopped breathing. As he looked down, he realized the horses weren’t just thin. They were actually skeletons, with flickering ghost bodies.

  This was bad.

  Maybe the ghost had come back to finish the job? Oscar imagined the dead bodies slowly sitting up in the morgue, standing, and with blind eyes climbing the stairs to murder his mother in her bed.

  Oscar turned for the door to warn her, just as two ghostly figures jumped down from the cart. The first pulled an apple and a carrot from her pocket.

  Oscar blinked. This wasn’t what he was expecting.

  The girl ghost gave the snacks to the horses.

  Oscar blinked again.

  She was a girl about Oscar’s age, dressed in very old-fashioned lacy clothes. She wasn’t a skeleton, although she shimmered just like the horses. She pulled an object from her belt and squinted at it.

  The other figure was tall and thin. Oscar couldn’t tell if he was a skeleton or not because he was completely encased inside a full suit of plate armor.

  Both of them wore little silver shields on their chests like sheriff badges. As they walked closer, Oscar saw the thing in the girl’s hand. It looked like a wooden hair dryer. She was shaking it, as if it wasn’t working.

  The knight gave the hair dryer a whack with his metal fist. That seemed to do the trick because the girl held it up and pointed it at Oscar’s house. She muttered something under her breath.

  Carefully, Oscar bent down to the opening in the window to hear what she was saying.

  “Heaps of phantasma coming from here…” The girl’s voice. “Illegal use of poltergeisting including corpse animation…Fifth-level breach at least.”

  The knight’s reply was muffled under his visor.

  “Right! It’s a very powerful signal. Haunt me sideways! And I thought the Monday shift was supposed to be quiet.”

  Shifts? Signals? What are they talking about? Quickly Oscar’s fear slipped away as a fierce curiosity surged up in its place. He had to find out what was going on.

  The two figures walked right up to Oscar’s front door and stepped through it.

  Oscar crept across his bedroom and peeked out into the hallway. The house was dark. There was no sign of the two visitors. He couldn’t hear anything except for the rasping snores of his mum from along the corridor.

  He grabbed his crutch and snuck down the stairs.

  His heart was hammering like a piston by the time he reached the mortuary door. He still couldn’t hear anything. The two figures (if they were in there) were moving silently.

  He put his ear to the wood.

  “Good gracious!” That was the girl’s voice.

  Oscar froze.

  “I’m picking up a very strong source of phantasma! This is incredible! Look at the dial. It’s whizzing!”

  The knight grunted something.

  “Not from in here, though. It’s…”

  Before Oscar had time to react, the two ghosts stepped through the wall, almost on top of him.

  “…out there,” the girl finished.

  It was hard to say who was more surprised. They all goggled at one another. The two ghosts were easier to notice close-up, even though they were still see-through. The girl was dressed in Victorian clothes: long skirt, hat, high collar. She had a young face but old, watchful eyes. The knight had a mean-looking sword strapped to his belt. His hand was on the pommel.

  “Cedric. I reckon he can see us!” the girl said.

  The knight lifted the visor above his mouth. “Poppycock!” he whined in a nasal voice. “It can’t be!”

  “Course I can see you,” Oscar said. “What’s going on?”

  “He can hear us too. What is going on?” the girl asked. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

  “Three,” Oscar said.

  Her frown deepened. “How’s he doing that?”

  She pointed her wooden hair dryer at Oscar and waved it around.

  The knight snorted in surprise. “I say!” There was a dial on the back of the device. Oscar could just see the needle swinging wildly about.

  “Look at those readings,” the girl said. “Truly exceptional concentrations of phantasma.”

  “What’s flantansma?”
Oscar asked.

  “Phantasma. Ghost essence, my boy,” the knight said.

  The girl was frowning. “And you’re bones so you shouldn’t have any of it.”

  “Bones?”

  The girl sighed. “This phantasmagraph thinks you’re a ghost. No bones. But you’re clearly living—bones. Easy enough to understand?”

  “No,” Oscar said. “It’s not.”

  “Try punching yourself in the head.”

  “What? No!”

  “Suit yourself.” The girl grinned and turned away.

  “Wait, please!” Oscar had so many questions they were burning in his mind. Why were they here? Why was he filled with ghost essence? Were he and his mum in danger?

  The girl tapped her foot with impatience. “Yes?”

  Oscar’s face twisted with the effort of understanding. “I think you’re ghosts, am I right?”

  “Correct. My name is Sally Cromarty, and this is my partner, Sir Cedric Bosanquet.”

  “Oscar Grimstone.”

  The knight gave a slight nod. “Remarkable.” He slipped back through the wall.

  “Why…why have you come to my house?”

  “Oscar, we are detectives employed by the Ministry of Ghosts.” Sally tapped the silver shield on her chest. The letters GLE were stamped into it. “Ghost Law Enforcement. We came out here to investigate a suspected case of illegal corpse animation—and what do we find? A glorious mess, that’s what. You won’t remember any of this. The only ones who need to worry are me and Cedric. Mess always means paperwork. Mounds of it.”

  The knight moaned.

  “I know, Cedric!” the girl snapped. “I say we do a quick sweep, then head back to the shop. We can send forensics and a wipe team later. They can deal with Grimbone.”

  “Grim-stone! And I don’t need dealing with!” Oscar didn’t like the sound of a wipe team.

  “Don’t worry. It’s quite standard procedure. They’ll just fix your memory. Perfectly painless and you won’t remember anything. Much better. You’ll see.”

  “But I don’t want you to fix my memory! I want to know what’s going on.”

  “That’s not going to happen, sir. This is ghost business, and you’re…Well, I’m not sure what you are, exactly.”

  “Right. That’s why you’ve got to help me! An embalming tank attacked me! Knives too.” Oscar almost mentioned his Curse but held back. What would they think of him if they knew he made things die?

  “You were attacked by a tank?”

  “Yes! It came alive. There was this strange mist.”

  The knight poked his head through the door. “Not a ghoul! I’ve detected no necromancy here. Only a powerful reanimation. Must have used a barrelful of phantas—”

  “I’m telling the truth. Stuff kept attacking me—and I think it was because of a ghost in a hat.”

  “What kind of hat?” Sally asked.

  “It was sort of a wide one. I didn’t get that good a look, though.”

  The girl was interested. He could tell by the way her eyes widened. The knight leaned closer, examining Oscar through a sort of fold-out telescope with knobs and dials all over it.

  “You didn’t get a look at his face?” Sally asked.

  “No, I couldn’t see. I think it was wearing something like a bandanna over its mouth as well….Please. You have to help us. The person could come back. Don’t you want to know what’s going on? If you wipe my memory, you will have lost a witness!”

  The knight jabbed the telescope at Oscar. “The young fellow’s right about that.”

  “I know, Cedric! Golly!” Sally said before muttering something under her breath. “But we can’t take him with us. It’s against the law.”

  “No! I mean…Yes, you have to take me!” Oscar pleaded. “Good idea.”

  Sally was peeling him apart with her gray eyes. It was impossible to tell what she was thinking. It was also quite frightening.

  “Well?” Oscar asked.

  “What a bleeding mess!” Sally snapped. “And no. Even if I wanted to, you can’t. You’re a fleshy, see.”

  She reached out to touch him. Her hand passed through his shoulder. Oscar felt a cold tingling where her fingers had brushed him.

  “Ghost things and living things don’t belong together. Where we’re going, you can’t come.” She turned to Cedric. “You finished in there?”

  The knight nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Smart work,” Sally said. “So. Goodbye, Oscar. I’d like you to know that all will be well. It will be as if this never happened.”

  She nodded briskly; then both ghosts floated away down the corridor and disappeared through the front door.

  Oscar clenched his fists as he stared after the two ghosts. He couldn’t believe they were leaving him like this, with so many questions. His eyes fell on the photograph of his father hanging on the wall.

  It was his favorite picture. The last one taken of his dad before the accident. Oscar was in it, playing with a toy car. His dad was grinning down at him. He looked very proud. And then Oscar had a remarkable thought. Maybe his dad was a ghost too.

  Could he find him? Speak to him? Oscar had imagined his dad’s voice in his head a million times—he’d love to hear it again, just once….

  Oscar burst out of the front door as fast as his crutch could carry him.

  The carriage was already turning around in the street. The two ghost detectives had climbed up into their seats.

  “Stop!” Oscar shouted, leaping in front of the carriage. The terrifying skeleton horses loomed over him.

  “Please don’t make a scene, sir,” Sally said.

  “But I want to know if I can talk to my dad! He could be a ghost too.”

  Sally seemed to look at him with a flicker of pity for a second. “No. Against the rules.”

  “I’m not moving.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  The knight flicked the reins, and the skeleton horses walked forward. Both of them snorted at Oscar as they marched right through him, sending a wave of ice through his body. Their translucent bones gleamed silvery green. Bits of withered flesh still clung to them here and there like badly chewed chicken drumsticks.

  Oscar tried grabbing the carriage to pull himself up, but his hand went straight through the wood, making it tingle.

  The carriage kept rolling off. The detectives’ legs passed through his shoulders and head. Now his chest was poking through the bed of the carriage, the boards flowing around him as if Oscar was a rock standing in a fast-flowing stream. “Stop!” he pleaded. He could just make out his feet through the transparent planks. The sheer oddness reminded him of before, when he’d turned invisible and fallen from Mr. Jenkinson’s grip.

  The carriage finished passing through him, and Oscar turned to watch his last chance to get some answers—to speak to his dad!—rolling faster and faster away down the street. The hope that had burned so brightly for a moment flickered out.

  He was so desperate that he almost didn’t notice the change that had come over him.

  Oscar looked down at his shimmering hands. They were see-through.

  So were his legs. His arms. His feet.

  For the second time that day, without quite knowing how he’d done it, Oscar Grimstone had become a ghost.

  “Hold up!”

  Oscar didn’t wait to wonder how it had happened. He was already running after the carriage, making no footprints in the mud. Around him, Oscar noticed that the houses and bushes and cars appeared dulled, like he was viewing them through sunglasses. But as everything darkened, the ghosts and their carriage sparkled brighter, like they were made of pure moonlight.

  Oscar pumped his ghost legs. Then he was floating, his wheeling feet only faintly brushing the ground.

  A huge grin spread on Oscar’s
face as he moved faster toward the carriage.

  His crutch had turned ghostly too, but now he didn’t need it because his legs were awesome! He dropped it in the road. The crutch snapped back to normal as soon it left his hand. It clattered on the asphalt.

  “Stop!” Oscar shouted, but the skeleton horses accelerated.

  That didn’t matter. He took three great, bounding strides and jumped straight into the back of the carriage.

  He landed with a thump on the same boards that had flowed about him seconds before. The two detectives were staring at him openmouthed.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Oscar said.

  “By Mortis’s beard!” Sally gasped.

  Cedric opened up the lower half of his visor. “Stab me with an otter! That’s mighty impressive.”

  “A human turning into a ghost?!” Sally yelled, grinning from ear to ear. “You’ve even frightened the horses.”

  “So can I come with you?” Oscar asked.

  The detectives glanced at each other. “Fine,” Sally said. “Got a few more questions myself.”

  “Thank you,” Oscar said. The thought suddenly crossed his mind that it might be quite dangerous, being taken to the world of the dead. “Er…I mean, if I’ll be back in time for breakfast? It’s just, my mum will worry if not.”

  “Certainly,” Sir Cedric said. “You have my word.”

  “Right, that’s settled.” Sally nodded. “You ready? Next stop, headquarters.”

  Sir Cedric shook the reins, and the carriage sped off down the road. There was no wind even though they were traveling fast. No sound either; but a mist soon spread out of nowhere. “Hold on!” Sally shouted. “You might not like this.”

  Almost at once, the mist was so thick that Oscar couldn’t see his hand in front of his face.

  The carriage drove on through the fog faster and faster. They’d left Marigold Street, the whole of Little Worthington in fact, far behind. Oscar knew this, even though he couldn’t say how he was sure. Dark spindly shapes whirled past them like huge grasping hands. Sir Cedric muttered something to Sally.