Knightley spun and brought up her blaster. Or, at least, she tried to.
“Looking for this?” asked Tabatha, holding up the weapon. She twirled it around her finger a few times like a cowboy, then presented it back to Knightley, handle first. Tabatha smiled, showing off her uneven teeth. “Like I said, just a misunderstanding.”
She tapped the cane gently on top of Knightley’s head, said, “Boop!” in a high-pitched voice, then took a seat in one of the chairs arranged around the table. Knightley stared at her gun in disbelief, saying nothing.
“Now then,” Tabatha began, resting her elbows on the table and steepling her fingers in front of her. “What’s all this about?”
Smithy was floating several centimetres above the ground, his eyes practically transforming into little love hearts. With a sigh, Denzel caught him by the sleeve and gently tugged him down to Earth again.
“It’s funny you should ask,” Denzel said. “I was wondering the same thing.”
Boyle gestured for everyone to sit. Smithy hurried to sit in the chair closest to Tabatha, and Denzel sat in the next one along. Knightley and Rasmus both looked awkward for a few moments, then sat back down in their own seats again.
With a gesture, Boyle indicated a screen mounted on the wall. A series of cryptic symbols were displayed on it. They seemed to have been carved into a chunk of stone, and Denzel had no idea what any of them meant.
“Any idea what that is?” Boyle asked.
Smithy’s hand shot up. “A big telly,” he said.
Boyle held his gaze for quite a long time. “No,” he eventually said with a heavy sigh. “It’s not a big telly.”
“It is,” Smithy insisted. “It must be at least fifty inches.”
The remote control, which Boyle was holding, went crack in his grip.
“I think what Boyle’s asking,” said Samara, jumping in before her partner could start shouting. “Is if you know what’s on the big telly?”
Smith’s hand went up again. “Dust?” he guessed.
“No…” said Samara, as patiently as possible
“Is it writing?” asked Denzel, before Smithy could say more.
“Obviously, it’s writing,” said Rasmus. He leaned closer and lowered his head a fraction, as if peering at the screen over the top of a pair of glasses. “Ancient Sumarian, unless I’m very much mistaken. Which I rarely am.”
Samara tried not to show her annoyance. “Right. It’s Ancient Sumarian. Dates from around eight thousand BC. But that’s not the interesting thing.”
Denzel was relieved that this wasn’t the interesting thing, mostly because as things went it wasn’t very interesting. The writing just looked like a few squiggly lines, as far as he was concerned, and he didn’t see what it had to do with … well, anything at all.
“It was found in Scotland,” said Samara.
Across the table, Rasmus, Knightley and Tabatha all reacted in surprise. Smithy, who didn’t want to be left out, gasped loudly.
“Scotland!” he said. He shook his head and puffed out his cheeks in amazement. “Scotland, Scotland, Scotland.”
Everyone sat staring at him as he adopted a terrible Scottish accent and began reciting words at random. “Och! Hoots! Haggis! Um… Kilts!”
He ran out of Scottish things to say then. “That’s me done,” he said. “Continue.”
Samara began to speak. “So—”
“Bagpipes!” Smithy announced.
Samara watched him to make sure he was really finished this time, then continued.
“So I know what you’re all wondering,” she said.
“When’s lunch?” Denzel quipped, then he wilted under the weight of the Spectre Collectors’ stares. “Kidding!” he added weakly.
Samara rolled her eyes. “You’re wondering how Ancient Sumerian text from eight thousand years before the birth of Christ ended up in Scotland.”
“That’s definitely the other thing I was wondering,” Denzel said, even though it definitely wasn’t. “How did that happen?”
“We don’t know,” Boyle said. “It doesn’t make sense. And yet, it’s there.”
Knightley, who had still seemed to be in a state of shock ever since the “boop” incident, shot Boyle a narrow-eyed glare. “Where is it?”
Smithy’s hand went up. “On the telly,” he said. He pointed. “See?”
Knightley didn’t bother trying to hide her contempt. “I meant, where was the image captured? Where is the writing?”
Smithy raised a hand again. Knightley cut him off before he could speak. “If you’re going to say Scotland, I will shoot you. One and only warning.”
Smithy lowered his hand and smiled sheepishly at Tabatha. “She’s actually very fond of me.”
“I’m not,” Knightley said.
“She is,” Smithy insisted. He lowered his voice to a whisper and leaned in close to the ghost girl. “But it’s a secret.”
Tabatha regarded him in silence for a few moments. “You are a strange little person,” she told him, then that big smile of hers lit up the room. “I like you.”
Smithy’s head flopped down and hit the table with a thunk. He lay there, unmoving, a goofy grin plastered across his face.
“Aaaanyway,” said Samara, continuing. “The text was found in a cave in the Highlands. Now, the where may be interesting, but it’s the what that’ll blow your mind.”
She gestured to the screen. “It took a while, but we translated it. Boyle.”
Boyle tapped a couple of buttons on his remote control and the still image became moving footage. As they all watched, the squiggles squirmed around, all but one turning into neatly carved letters.
Denzel’s chair creaked as he leaned forward. His heart somehow managed to leap into his throat and sink down into his stomach at the same time.
The words on screen were ones he knew well. Lately, it seemed that he was hearing them everywhere he went. And now, there they were, carved in an ancient dead language on a wall somewhere in Scotland. It was a message, and he somehow knew that despite being eight thousand years old, the message was meant for him.
Denzel’s voice came as a shaky croak as he read the words aloud.
“He is coming.”
A silence fell across the room. It was eventually broken by Smithy suddenly sitting upright and saying, “She likes me,” as a long, happy sigh.
“What does that last one mean?” Denzel asked, pointing to the only symbol that hadn’t been translated. As he squinted, it sort of looked like an upside-down skull. Something about it made something unpleasant stir deep down in his stomach.
“We don’t know,” Samara admitted. “It’s cropped up in Sumerian text for thousands of years, but we’ve never been able to translate it.”
Beside him, Tabatha leaned forward in her chair, her brow furrowed as she stared at the symbol.
“Do you know what it means?” Denzel asked her.
Tabatha blinked in surprise. “Hmm? Oh, no,” she said, leaning back. “Never seen it before in my afterlife.”
Denzel nodded slowly. Hopefully the symbol meant something nice, but he seriously doubted it. He looked from Samara to Boyle and back again.
“So what happens now?” he asked.
“Marriage, probably,” said Smithy. He smiled at Tabatha, whose eyes were wide with worry.
“I meant about ‘He is coming’,” Denzel said, looking at the others. “What happens now?”
Boyle straightened, standing to attention. “Now, we go to Scotland.”
Denzel had never been to Scotland before. Not that he could remember, anyway. In fact, he’d never even really thought about the place much, other than to maintain a sort of low-level knowledge that it existed. He remembered his dads explaining that it was so far north you had to drive past all the motorway signs that said “The North” and then just keep going.
It was so far north, they said, that “The North” was south. Denzel hadn’t really understood that at the time. And, now that h
e was actually standing in Scotland, he still didn’t. This was mostly because they hadn’t spent several hours driving, and had instead spent one minute and eleven seconds travelling through some sort of magic tunnel that Samara had magicked up.
Afterwards, Denzel had described the trip as “an interesting experience”. By which he meant he had spent the first forty seconds crying, and then vomited twice. He was hopeful that on the way home he could convince everyone to let him take the bus.
They stood on a hill now – Denzel, Smithy, Samara, Boyle and Tabatha – gazing down at a lush green glen below. It stretched out for what seemed like fifty miles of trees and rivers and fields, before meeting a range of mountains rising up at the other side.
“Pretty amazing, isn’t it?” said Samara.
Boyle gave a disinterested grunt and busied himself with a handheld scanning device. He’d been pushing buttons and tapping the screen for a good hour now, but if it had told him anything, he wasn’t sharing it.
Smithy and Denzel had clambered up on to a boulder to get a better look at the scenery below. As they stood taking it all in, Smithy gave Denzel a nudge. “Here, Denzel, look.”
He pointed off into the middle distance.
“Sheep.”
Denzel followed his finger, then nodded. “Yep. That’s a sheep, all right.”
Smithy nudged him again. “Look! Look!” His finger moved a tiny distance to the right. “Another sheep.”
Denzel smiled as patiently as possible. “Sure is.”
“Oh! Oh! Denzel!” said Smithy, nudging him yet again. “Another sheep.”
“That’s a big rock,” said Denzel.
Smithy’s eyes widened, a big rock apparently even more exciting to him than a boring old sheep.
“No way!” he gasped. Wheeling around, he addressed the others. “Guys! You’re not going to believe this! There’s a big rock!”
Samara and Boyle, who now knew Smithy well enough to completely ignore most of what he said, completely ignored what he’d said.
Tabatha, to Smithy’s delight, took an interest and followed his trembling finger all the way to the curved white stone. “Meh. I’ve seen bigger,” she said.
Smithy’s jaw dropped. “That’s impossible!”
“What are you talking about?” Denzel asked. “It’s not even that big. It’s just a rock.”
“That’s the biggest rock anyone’s ever seen,” Smithy insisted. “Fact.”
“What about that one?” asked Tabatha. She pointed to the boulder that Smithy and Denzel were standing on. It was the size of a small elephant.
“Oh,” said Smithy, after a while. “Right.”
He turned to face front again. “Still. Nice, isn’t it? Scotland?”
Denzel nodded. It was nice. It was beautiful.
“Bit wet though,” he remarked.
“Oh God, yeah,” said Smithy. “Bit wet.”
They both looked up into the relentless drizzle that had been soaking them to the skin for the past twenty minutes. They had barely been in Scotland for an hour, and had already encountered four different types of rain, each one worse than the one before.
To start with, Samara had conjured up a shimmering magical shield that hung above them like an umbrella, but then a big gust of wind had come along and blown it away, and Boyle had been forced to chase it down and shoot it before anyone saw it.
Not that there was anyone around to see much of anything. Denzel had an uninterrupted view for miles in every direction, and there wasn’t a road or building to be seen, much less any people.
If he’d been asked to describe Scotland in three words, Denzel would’ve said, “Beautiful, empty and wet.” If he’d been asked to describe it in five words, he’d have said “wet” again twice.
Seriously, did it ever stop raining?
Denzel was about to ask Samara if she could conjure up some sunshine when Boyle’s device gave out a series of urgent-sounding bleeps.
“What is that thing?” asked Tabatha, standing on her tiptoes to get a better look at the gadget. Boyle glowered at her, then turned away, shielding it with his body so she couldn’t see it.
“I’m getting Spectral Energy readings,” said Boyle. “Faint, but they’re there.”
Smithy and Tabatha both raised their hands.
“No, it’s not you two,” Boyle spat. “I’m not an idiot.” He shot Samara a sideways glance. “Why have we even brought her along, anyway? We don’t know anything about her.”
Samara shrugged. “Like you said, she’s too dangerous to leave wandering around the place. This way, we can keep an eye on her.”
Above them, the relentless drizzle became a punishing downpour. Denzel pulled his jacket up over his head and shot Boyle a pleading look.
“So, this Spectral Energy you found,” he said, shouting to make himself heard above the roaring of the rain. “I don’t suppose it’s somewhere warm and dry?”
“Somehow, this is actually worse,” Denzel whispered. His voice hissed back to him off the uneven stone walls of a narrow tunnel that led from a cave down into the hillside.
The rain couldn’t reach down here, but a cold wind whistled after them, as if urging them to go deeper. Denzel picked his way carefully through the gloom, tripping every few steps on some rocky outcrop, or sliding on loose gravel. Smithy clung closely to him, while Tabatha walked ahead, as sure-footed as a goat.
Boyle took the lead up front, two torches on his shoulders cutting cones of light through the darkness. Samara followed behind Denzel and Smithy, her fingers dancing as she conjured a shimmering blue glow that painted the walls around them.
“Anything?” Samara called to the front.
Boyle consulted his gizmo. “Trace readings. Not a lot.”
Tabatha skipped between a couple of rocks and looked around at the narrow walls. “This place seems familiar,” she said.
Smithy tensed. “It’s not going to be full of Void Hippos, is it?”
Tabatha shook her head. “No, it’s… I dunno. It just reminds me of something.”
“A scary cave?” Denzel guessed.
“Dying,” said Smithy, after a moment.
Tabatha slowed to look back at him. “Huh?”
“It reminds me of dying,” Smithy said. “When I died, there was a tunnel I think I was supposed to follow.” He wrinkled his nose. “I didn’t much like the look of it, so I went somewhere else.”
“You went somewhere else?” said Denzel. “Where?”
Smithy tried to remember. “Blackpool, I think.”
“You died and went to Blackpool?”
Smithy nodded. “They’ve got donkeys,” he said, as if this was the only explanation anyone would need.
“You’re right,” said Tabatha.
“I know I am. You can ride them along the beach,” Smithy replied.
Tabatha shook her head. “No, not about the donkeys. I mean about the dying thing. That’s what it reminds me of.” She took another look around them. “The tunnel. You’re right.”
They walked on, Boyle checking his gadgets as he led the way.
“How did you two end up with these guys?” Tabatha asked, gesturing to the Spectre Collectors.
“I thought you knew?” said Denzel.
“Some of it. Not all,” Tabatha replied. “Humour me.”
“I saw a ghost,” Denzel explained. “In my living room. They turned up and caught it.”
“And then a load of rubbish came out of a bin and tried to grab him,” Smithy added.
“So they recruited us,” said Denzel. “Well, mostly me.”
“And he wanted to leave, so their boss did something to Denzel’s parents to make them forget he’d ever existed. Right, Denzel?”
Denzel’s jaw tightened. His voice, when it came, was a thin croak. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s right.”
“You people made his parents forget him?” Tabatha gasped. “That’s pretty horrible.”
“It wasn’t us,” Samara protested. “We wouldn
’t do that. We tried to help fix it but, well…”
“They couldn’t,” said Denzel.
“No,” said Samara, smiling sadly back at him. “We couldn’t.”
Denzel shrugged. “And so here we are.”
“That’s quite a story,” said Tabatha. “Sorry for your loss.”
They plodded on in silence for a while, Boyle leading them downward into the dark.
“Speaking of loss, how did you die?” asked Denzel. “If you don’t mind me asking?”
Tabatha raised her head proudly. “Stopping a bank robbery.”
“Whoa! Seriously?” Smithy gasped.
“Yeah. Actually, it was a double bank robbery. I won’t bore you with the details,” Tabatha said. “Pretty heroic, though, if I do say so myself. What about you, Smithy? How did you bite the big one?”
“Diarrhoea, mostly,” said Smithy.
“Oh,” said Tabatha.
“And then I coughed myself inside out.”
“Right,” said Tabatha. “That’s … impressive.”
Smithy bowed. “I thank you.”
“Everyone shut up,” Boyle commanded.
Denzel dropped his voice to a whisper. “Have you found something?” he asked, peering into the darkness beyond where Boyle’s torchlight ended.
“No,” Boyle replied. “I just don’t want to listen to you any more. You’re all annoying me.”
He stopped abruptly. “Wait. Hold up.”
The device in his hand buzzed urgently.
“What does that noise mean?” Smithy asked. “Is that a good noise? It doesn’t sound like a good noise.”
“Spectral Energy spike,” said Boyle.
At the rear of the line, the fine hairs on the back of Samara’s neck stood on end. “I’m getting it too,” she said. “I think there’s something down here with—”
Before she could finish, a blurry white shape emerged from the wall, slammed into her and whisked her straight through the opposite wall.
“Everyone down!” Boyle barked, spinning and raising his rifle. The gadget he was carrying screeched out an alarm as another white shape exploded up from the floor beneath him.
Rise of the Ghostfather Page 3
