Ghost and Bone Page 4

  “We never make mistakes, sir,” Helen said, as if this was obvious.

  “Perish the thought!” Bob exclaimed. “There hasn’t been a mistake for ten thousand years. Not on this ship. Not on our watch. You’re ready for the Other Side, my lad, and the Chiron will take you.”

  Now they were carrying him up the gangway itself. The bone ship—the Chiron—loomed just ahead. Oscar didn’t like the look of it at all. He reached into his pocket, hoping there was something—anything—in there that he could use to escape.

  His hands found his phone. For a glorious micro instant, he was comforted by the thought of calling his mum—but that joy was just as quickly snuffed out by the bleak realization that his mum was fifty miles away and had probably forgotten to charge her phone, and even if she hadn’t, she’d never believe what was going on.

  How would he explain it? Oscar also had grave doubts about whether a ghost phone would have reception.

  He was almost at the top of the ramp now. There was no way out. This was it. He was going to the Other Side.

  How is this happening to me? I’m not dead. It gave Oscar an idea. He closed his eyes and changed back into human form, and the next thing he knew the skeleton hands lost their grip on him and he was falling through the air.

  It was a long drop to the river. The water was cold when Oscar hit it. He plunged deep, and came up in a panic, terrified that he would be trapped under the horrible ghost ship. He saw that the living world had regained its color. The other side of the river had reappeared as well. His bad leg hurt. He tried to kick with his good leg, but the cold dark water was sucking him down.

  Oscar was not a strong swimmer at the best of times, so it was a solid piece of luck that he just managed to grab hold of a slime-covered rope and drag himself toward a set of stairs leading down into the water.

  An old man was sprawled on the stairs.

  “Therza wet cat!” he wheezed as Oscar crawled out of the water, choking and spluttering. “Whatchu night swimming for? Didchu wanna drink? Herhher!”

  Oscar was cold and wet—and he didn’t feel like being laughed at.

  He knew what he needed to do. He thought of his dad: he imagined his smile, what it would be like to see it in real life. Hope coursed through Oscar like blazing fire, and he turned back into a ghost.

  The man screamed in terror and ran off into the night.

  As soon as he stepped back into the ghost world, the Chiron and the ghostly lines were back. The river had carried him about two hundred yards downstream. He turned to see the Chiron in the distance. There was some kind of commotion still going on back on the gangway—it looked like the officer was shouting at Bob and Helen through his megaphone, but there weren’t any ghosts nearby. He’d gotten away!

  Oscar was even more pleased when he realized that he was also warm and dry again. Apparently, ghosts can’t get wet.

  His comfort was short-lived.

  “Oscar Grimstone!” Sally’s voice roared out of the darkness. “Hold it right there!”

  Oscar started running again along the riverbank, away from the Chiron. He zipped past ordinary people and ghosts. The ghosts gawked at him as he ran past in such a hurry, but none of them tried to stop him.

  Sally was not giving up. Each time he looked back she was still there, but maybe just a little bit farther away. There was a grimness in her face that told him she wasn’t going to give up this chase easily.

  Ahead he saw a grand flickering building towering up beside the river. The building looked busy, with a steady stream of ghosts bustling through its wide doors. Above them, a British flag hung limp from its flagpole. There wasn’t much wind in the land of the dead.

  Oscar checked behind again. Sally was pretty far back now, only just in sight.

  This might be his chance. Oscar ran straight for the doors.

  “No running,” snapped a security guard as Oscar burst through into an enormous vaulted hall.

  Oscar slowed to a brisk walk as he looked for a place to hide. He allowed himself a smile. Hiding wasn’t going to be hard, not in this madhouse.

  Dozens of desks and cubicles dotted about the hall, and lines of ghosts wound in every direction, crossing and tangling with one another like a crazy spiderweb. Every now and then the room echoed with a heavy chunk as an official stamp hammered down on a document. The lines moved very slowly. Oscar supposed the dead had the time to be patient.

  It was only when Oscar passed a sign that said Ghost Visas that he stopped. Maybe this was where he could find out where his father was now.

  “Can I help you, citizen? Direct you somewhere?” A gray-faced official in a pin-striped suit slipped up through the floor, right beside him.

  Oscar jumped.

  “Are you here for a visa?”

  “Yes,” Oscar said. “Yes. A visa. That’s right.”

  “Very good,” the official said quickly. “Haunting visas over there in lines five, nine, and seventeen. Watching briefs in the far corner. If you’re here for a military pass, then you’ll need to go to the fourth floor. Ministry recruitment is on the twenty-seven hundred and ninety-second floor. Elevator’s broken.”

  “Thank you,” Oscar said, trying to shuffle around so the official was between him and the door—in case Sally barged in at any moment “And if we wanted to trace a ghost? Where would we go?”

  “That would be in the Directory on three hundred and thirteen. They are next to the kindergarten.”

  “Three hundred and thirteen.” Oscar nodded. “Right, then. I’d best be getting along.”

  “Where’s your spirit guide, young man?”

  “Spirit guide?” Oscar said. “Oh, I left him—”

  “Left him! This is most irregular. Oh dear…”

  The official snapped a walkie-talkie out of his sleeve and began mumbling rapidly into it. “We’ve got an incident. Code Tango Werewolf. Foyer, by the chancery line. I repeat, Code Tango Werewolf!”

  He smiled thinly at Oscar. “If you’ll just wait with me…”

  Oscar got ready to run again.

  “Don’t even think about it, Oscar,” Sally snapped. She was striding across the hall toward him, holding up her silver badge. “We’ll take it from here,” she said to the official.

  “But this is not your jurisdiction, little girl!” The official puffed up in his pin-striped suit like a frog. “Regulations clearly state that—”

  “Little girl!” Sally said through gritted teeth, clearly in no mood for this. “Do you know what this badge is?”

  The official suddenly realized who he was dealing with. He gulped.

  “If you don’t step aside, buffoon, I’ll slap you with regulations that’ll make you wish you’d never died. In triplicate!”

  “Ghouls!” the official murmured as he quickly got out of Sally’s way. “Of course, Officer, take him if you must!”

  Sally grabbed hold of Oscar and dragged him toward the door. Her grip felt even stronger than the skeleton sailors’.

  “Did you see his face?” Sally snorted.

  Oscar couldn’t believe it. Her whole body was shaking with laughter.

  “You’re not mad?” he asked.

  “Mad?” Sally said, smiling. “Of course not. You’re amazing. I can’t even fathom how much trouble you’ve caused. I count three major incidents in one night, three minors, and a potential rolling breach as well. How do you switch back and forth like that?”

  They walked together out of the building. Sally was still chuckling.

  “Please don’t take me home,” Oscar pleaded. “Please don’t wipe my memory. I need to find out what’s going on. I need to find my dad.”

  “That’s the thing.” Sally grinned. “You don’t have to worry about that from me. If I had you wiped, Oscar, I’d have to explain to someone how I was responsible for letting
you cause this mess. And that would be the end of me. I’d be filling in forms for the next millennium. Besides, you’re the most interesting thing that’s happened round here for a long time.”

  She gave Oscar another one of her wide grins. No one ever smiled at Oscar like that, and certainly not a girl his own age.

  To his surprise, Oscar found himself smiling back. It made his face feel strange. He grinned again, feeling the rusty muscles move beneath his skin.

  “What are you so happy about?” Sally asked.

  “I work better here,” Oscar said. “And it’s great.”

  “Then we better get going.” Sally let go of his arm and set off into the city, striding away from the river.

  “Where are we going?”

  “I’m going to find out what you are, Oscar Grimstone.”

  Sally hurried Oscar through the streets. She knew loads of cunning shortcuts, plotting a course through the winding maze of ghost buildings crammed between the office blocks and banks of the city of London.

  “How do you remember where to go?” Oscar asked, getting a headache from all the twists and turns.

  Sally grinned back at him. “If you’ve lived in a city for more than a hundred years, you learn your way around, right?” She led him through a muddy medieval square full of smoky stone forges, broken up with a few crooked wooden shop fronts.

  She glanced at a pocket watch. “Oops. Better get a move on!”

  Around them, Oscar realized the square was sort of…stretching. And narrowing. The buildings on either side squeezed inward, and the end began to curve away ahead of them. Sally broke into a run, and Oscar didn’t need asking twice. Together, they raced down the stretching, bending street, and out the other side, into a wide Georgian-era avenue.

  “What just happened?” Oscar panted.

  “Hmmm?” Sally was casually dusting herself down. She glanced back at the moving street, sliding off down the road. “Oh, that. Well, streets in this city have been built over and replaced a lot through history. They have to take it in turns. Smith’s Courtyard was destroyed in the Peasant’s Revolt and became Crescent Street. Takes you all the way to Victoria. But we don’t want to go there, obviously.” Oscar blinked. She patted him on the back.

  Next, they walked through the swivel doors of a towering glass skyscraper, except Oscar found himself in the walled garden of a Tudor estate. Around him, Oscar could still faintly make out the skyscraper’s interior, dark against the shimmering ghost world. A few silhouettes of the living flitted by. As he walked through the figures, he picked up a few thoughts—incredibly boring ones, mostly about “stocks” and “business targets.”

  Oscar was trying not to lose his head entirely.

  They exited the walled garden onto Oxford Street, and soon wound up in St. James’s Park. The trees hunched dark and gloomy in the early morning light.

  “What are we doing in a park?”

  Sally grinned and pointed. “Going there. That’s where I work. We might be able to track down your dad there. I need to draw up a new investigation.”

  Right in the middle of the park’s lake, a ghost tower rose out of the water. It was straight from a horror movie, covered in gargoyles and sinister robed statues. Green gas lamps flickered on either side of an enormous sign that read Ghost Law Enforcement.

  Lots of ghost policemen were bustling about. Most were arriving on floating carriages pulled by skeletal horses like the one Sir Cedric had driven. Others were in hovercrafts or on motorbikes—one policeman was even riding a giant woolly elephant.

  Oscar had to ask. “Is that a mammoth?”

  “Bernard? He works with Riot Squad. I heard that there was a bit of trouble earlier at a jousting match.”

  “Right.” Oscar scanned the rest of the vehicles. “Where does it all come from?”

  Sally rolled her eyes and gave a sigh. “Well, I think Bernard had some unfinished business with some cavemen who ate him, so he stuck around to get them back when they became ghosts. I hear he was recruited personally by Mr. Mortis. He was a lot more hands-on back then, because there were fewer deaths to deal with. The other police gear is supplied by the Department of Contraptions. Their mechanics begin to think outside the box after working for a few hundred years.”

  A few police ghosts were escorting ghosts in handcuffs into the building. Sally frowned at the crowd.

  “Main door’s busy,” she said. “Let’s try somewhere a bit quieter. I wonder what’s going on?” She headed off toward a side entrance.

  “Why’d that ghost call you a ghoul back there?” Oscar asked as they casually strolled across the lake. Their feet didn’t leave ripples in the water.

  “You ask a lot of questions, don’t you?” said Sally. “It’s a nickname. For police officers, but it kind of became official.”

  “Ah, right, that makes sense.”

  “Yeah, best be glad I’m not a real ghoul.” Sally’s grin slipped. “Actual ghouls like to capture ghosts and feed on their phantasma—kinda like ghost vampires. If you get drained too much, you become constantly hungry. They mostly live on the outskirts, in the cave district. Not a nice area. I wouldn’t go there.”

  Oscar gulped.

  “Evening, Bert,” said Sally as they pushed through a side door into a room full of heavy old-fashioned furniture.

  A fat, balding ghost was lounging with his feet up on a desk. He snorted and nearly fell out of his chair.

  “Evenin’, Sally,” he said. “You caught me napping again. Who’s this?”

  Sally shrugged. “Oh, just an old friend of mine.” She gave Oscar a little nudge to make sure he didn’t say anything. Oscar wondered why she was lying.

  “That’s fine,” Bert said. “But he’d better empty his pockets in the tray. Rules are rules.”

  “What? Don’t embarrass me, Bert. Can’t you let him off? We’re just popping in for a moment.”

  Bert shook his head. “HQ’s on lockdown. There’s orders, down from the tippety-top. Some kind of situation going on. Just pop your things in that tray there, lad. Won’t take a moment.”

  Oscar began to empty his pockets—a few coins, his wallet, his phone, and a little book of sudoku. But the moment the coins left his fingers, all of them turned real and fell right through the ghost tray that Bert was holding.

  The coins fell right through the floor as well. There was a soft splash. Oscar managed to grab on to the rest of his stuff just in time to stop it disappearing as well.

  Bert’s smile vanished. He glared at Sally.

  “That coin turned real!” He sounded genuinely shocked. “What game you trying to pull? What’s this?”

  “It’s…it’s nothing,” said Sally. “Heh! Just an accident.”

  “That’s no accident. That’s odd.” Bert ran over to the wall and pressed a big red button. An alarm started ringing, painfully loud.

  “You’re in a heap of trouble, Sally Cromarty. You shouldn’t have tried to pull a fast one on Bert Higgins.”

  A whole squad of police ghosts burst into the room on the double. They grabbed Oscar and Sally and marched them off to a small, windowless room. The police ghosts locked the heavy door behind them.

  “I’m sorry,” Oscar said, sitting down at the small table.

  “No. I’m sorry,” Sally said. “Should have known better than to bring you here.”

  There were lots of comings and goings outside, and frantic, whispered conversations, but no one came into the room for a long time.

  Sally borrowed Oscar’s book of sudoku. She paged through it, frowning.

  “What is this exactly?” she said eventually. “Are you meant to do this for fun?”

  “It’s like…codes,” Oscar said. He’d sniffed a whiff of mockery in her voice. “See…I like puzzles.”

  “That’s good,” Sally said, “because you
are one.”

  Still no one came. To pass the time, Oscar started to read the faded notices pinned to the board on the wall: various messages about recycling, a note about a collection for Sergeant Fred Bogrum’s leaving present before he departed for the Other Side, and a sign-up sheet for the Ghoul cricket team.

  Before Oscar could put his name down, the door slammed open. A tall ghost in a long black evening gown strode into the room. She was gripping a cigarette in a long holster between her teeth. Dramatic swirls of hair were piled high on her head.

  Sally instantly leapt her to her feet and saluted.

  Oscar was too shocked to move. The newcomer would have been a beautiful woman—if half her skin wasn’t missing. Beneath chunks of flesh and strings of muscle, white bone gleamed as if it had been oiled.

  “So, Mr. Grimstone!” She looked Oscar up and down. Only a few yellowing scraps of tendon held one of her beady eyes in place. Oscar felt like shriveling up into a ball. “What are we to do with you?”

  “I—” Oscar began.

  “Don’t speak unless I tell you to, Grimstone! My name is Lady Margaret Banks. I am the head of the GLE—and you have caused me an enormous amount of trouble—as have you, young lady.”

  Lady Margaret glared ferociously at Sally. Smoke leaked from her skull as she took a deep drag on her cigarette. Sally didn’t flinch.

  “I’ve already interrogated your partner, Sir Cedric. I know what happened. I know what you did. Thank Mortis he had the sense to report it. We’ve dispatched two teams of memory wipers to Fleet Street and Victoria Embankment. We’ve narrowly avoided three major breaches. Lucky for you.”

  She spoke in quick snapped sentences between ferocious drags on her cigarette. The smoke filled the room and caught in the back of Oscar’s throat—a sweet, deathly stink, like rotting flowers and cloves.

  “Get your phone,” she instructed Oscar. “Then drop it.”

  Lady Margaret watched with narrowed eyes as Oscar did what he was told. As usual the phone turned real the moment it left his fingers. Oscar made sure to catch it again so it didn’t fall through the building to the lake below.