Dan and the Shard of Ice

by Thomas Taylor

  CONTENTS

  1The Guru of The Gutter

  2The Window of Wonders

  3Venn Specter Investigates

  4The Camera Never Lies (It Doesn’t Need To)

  5Televisual Gold

  6The View From The Shard

  7Going Down

  8A Quick Workout

  9How To Summon A Ghost

  10And The Pretty Lady Has A Name

  11Mary Flaxen

  12The Ghost Of Christmas Past

  13Venn Again

  14A Rubbish Plan

  15Trash Can-do

  16Contrary Mary

  17About Volts

  18Simon’s Secret

  For Kate Paice and Claire Jones, with thanks from me and the ghosts.

  1

  THE GURU OF THE GUTTER

  ‘But why must we see her, Daniel?’ Simon waves his arm, sending clouds of ectoplasm scudding about his head. ‘She is untrustworthy. The woman knows too much.’

  ‘Yeah, well, that’s precisely why we’re seeing her,’ I say, as we head further down the back alley. Wheelie bins and night shadows loom around us, and the lively sounds of the street fall behind. ‘If anyone knows about poltergeists, it’s Mrs Binns.’

  ‘So you would rather take the word of a simple vagrant over mine?’ Si looks appalled. ‘I, who am your guide in this world and the next, and your best friend?’

  I look at Si and take in his ragged eighteenth-century elegance, scraggy wig and skeletal features. Having a ghostly sidekick that only I can see is bad enough, but is he really the best friend I’ve got? Unfortunately, I’ve got a horrible feeling he might be.

  ‘So what if she’s a vagrant?’ I say, steering the conversation back towards Mrs Binns. ‘It’s not like you to be so sniffy about someone down on their luck, Si.’

  Si scowls at me, and puffs angry little clouds of ectoplasm out through the bullet hole in his head. I wonder, yet again, why he’s so reluctant to see the old lady. She’s helped us out before.

  ‘Just be wary of her, Daniel,’ he says eventually. ‘She has a way of looking into your very soul and spying all your secrets there.’

  ‘Secrets?’ I say. ‘What secrets do you have, Si?’

  Si looks away and folds his ghostly arms.

  ‘Let us just find the wretched woman and be gone from here,’ he snaps. ‘This place chills me to the core.’

  Well, he’s not wrong about that – we’ve gone deep into the alley now, and reached a dismal crossroads. Looking back, I can barely make out the glow of the streetlights and traffic behind me. Down the other three ways I can see nothing at all, and it’s unnaturally quiet for the centre of London. I put my hand in my pocket and pull out the thing that I’ve brought here.

  It’s a scrunched-up plastic bag.

  ‘I still don’t get how she does this,’ I say, ‘but here goes nothing…’

  I bunch the opening of the bag in my fist and blow it up like a balloon with one long puff. As I do so, I breathe my name into the bag, almost coughing up my tonsils in the process. Then I knot the inflated bag to keep it closed, place it on the floor at the exact centre of the junction, and step back.

  Nothing happens.

  ‘Alas, she is not to be found today.’ says Si, far too quickly. ‘Let us be away…’

  I raise my hand to stop him. There is the faintest of rustlings in the velvety silence. Before our eyes, the bag is being nudged by the ghost of a breeze, even though the air around me feels still as the grave.

  ‘Ssh, Si. Look!’

  The bag is moving now, tumbling slowly towards one of the alleyways. Then a contrary wind nudges it into the air, spinning it back the way it came. Soon it’s being tossed here and there, moving higher and higher, but always staying roughly above the place I put it. Yet still not a single breeze has reached me and Si. The bag rises further and further, and then…

  … it flashes away down the passage ahead of me, vanishing into the darkness as if caught in a hurricane.

  Everything is still again.

  Then I hear a creak from the alleyway ahead.

  This creak is followed by another, and then another. A few tendrils of greenish mist creep towards us, and I see something moving in the shadows. The creaking grows, setting my teeth on edge, and there’s a whispering, heaving sound. I step back – I can’t help it – and Si whimpers, his mouth pursed tighter than a cat’s bottom.

  ‘DAN DYER…’ shrieks a voice like the cry of a monstrous crow.

  The first thing I see is a rusted, four-wheeled contraption, bulging and teetering with knotted bundles of plastic bags. It’s a pram. Then, in a cloud of flies and baggy rustlings, an enormous gap-toothed woman with wild silver hair steps into the little winter light at the centre of the crossroads. Her eyes seem to gather that light into two dazzling points that bore right into me.

  ‘… hello, deary!’ she cries. ‘Have need of old Mrs Binns, have we? You remembered the call. I always said you were a bright boy.’

  ‘Er… hello, Mrs Binns,’ I manage to say. ‘Long time, no see.’

  ‘Too long!’ she shrieks in reply. ‘But I’ve been hearing about you, Danny boy – hearing the whisper of your doings in the bags. The business with the magician – I could have helped you there. And as for that palaver in Paris...’

  ‘How do you know about that?’ I say, before I remember not to.

  ‘Oh, I know it all, Dan, deary.’

  Mrs Binns narrows her eyes, and puts her hands on her hips with a riot of plasticky rustlings. Over her ragged clothes, she wears loops and loops of tied-up empty shopping bags, with more stuffed under a piece of string around her waist. On one foot she wears a lady’s shoe, on the other a turquoise wellington boot.

  ‘And I know that Mr La-di-da here’ – she points at Si – ‘keeps you away. He dun’t like me, he dun’t.’

  ‘Madam!’ Si puffs, and tries to look dignified. ‘I assure you, I do no such thing.’

  ‘Scared I’ll tell you more about him than he wants you to know.’

  ‘Madam…’

  ‘Scared you’ll find out what he’s been keeping from you all these years…’

  ‘No!’ Simon shouts. ‘I beseech you, say nothing to the boy!’

  ‘Huh?’ I say, turning to him. ‘Si, what’s she talking about?’

  Simon doesn’t look my way. He just stares at the old woman imploringly.

  ‘Ah, I dare say he’ll tell you in his own precious time.’ Mrs Binns dismisses Si with a wave of her chubby hand. ‘Anyway, that’s not why you came here today.’

  ‘Er…’ I already feel I’ve lost control of this conversation.

  ‘Nah, you want to know about the little poltygeist that’s got ’em all in a flap up at that there funny new building.’

  ‘Er… yeah.’ I say. ‘At the Shard. I’ve never dealt with a poltergeist before.’

  ‘And you wonder if you can deal with one now?’

  I shrug. That’s about the size of it. As usual, Mrs Binns is doing all the asking, as well as the answering.

  ‘There is a disturbance in the winds,’ says Mrs Binns, pulling an empty bag from her string belt and releasing it above her head with a flourish. It sweeps and tumbles in the frosty breeze, and Mrs Binns watches it intently, like an ancient soothsayer following the path of a swallow. ‘The dead are getting restless. Something is disturbing them, something that’s happening in that place.’ And she points towards the sky above the passageway behind her. I follow her finger.

  In the distance, I see the triangular peak of the Shard – London’s greatest skyscraper – glowing in the night. As if on cue, the flying bag sweeps off towards it and vanishes from sight.

  ‘What should I do, Mrs Binns?’ I sa
y.

  Mrs Binns looks at me and chuckles darkly. She pushes the pram toward me with an ominous creak.

  ‘Even the fullest bag is just a bag till you peek at what’s inside. Take one, deary. Maybe you’ll find what you’re looking for.’

  I glance at Si and he glances at me. Then we both turn to the mass of greasy carrier bags in the pram, which is now right under my nose. The buzzing of the bluebottle flies is repulsive, but not as much as the seething maggots and speckled brown slugs amongst the bags themselves. The old woman’s grin hardens.

  ‘Choose!’ she hisses. ‘And let Dame Fortune guide your hand.’

  I push my purple shades up my nose. I wonder if not choosing a stinky old bag counts as a valid choice, but somehow I know it doesn’t. Si is shaking his head, but it’s too late for that now.

  I plunge my arm into the rotten, stinking mass.

  Clammy.

  Cold and clammy, and wriggling.

  I force myself to move my hand about, and try not to retch at the smell that rises up to me. Something scuttles over my wrist.

  And up my sleeve!

  I close my fingers over a loop of plastic and pull. For a moment my arm stays where it is, and I feel panic. I pull back harder, struggling, pushing at the pram with my foot. With a sucking, slathering, smacking sound I think I will never forget, my arm comes free. At the end of my dripping sleeve, a maggoty old shopping bag hangs from my fist.

  ‘Have you chosen the bag?’ breathes the voice of Mrs Binns, and I force my eyes back onto her. Already she is receding into the winter dark of the alleyway she came from. The wheels of her pram creak as she pulls it with her. ‘Or has the bag chosen you?’

  ‘Mrs Binns!’ I can’t help shouting. ‘What does it mean? What should I do?’

  ‘Look in-si-d-e…’ comes her voice on the wind. ‘… i-n-s-i-d-e… t-h-e b-a-a-a-g…’

  But she is already gone.

  Was she even there? I look at the bag in my hand, and for a moment it feels as if I just wandered down this back alley and picked up someone’s stray piece of litter. But the look of terror on Si’s face says it all.

  What else can I do?

  I open the bag.

  2

  THE WINDOW OF WONDERS

  ‘Si, what was that about you keeping something from me?’

  We arrive back at my house, Simon and me, having walked home in silence. Well, I can hardly have a conversation with a ghost only I can see as I stroll through the streets of London, can I? But now we’re home – and my parents are out – I want some answers.

  ‘It would be better if you forgot what Mrs Binns said about that.’ Si is looking evasive. ‘She is an elderly person, given to fanciful ideas and no doubt bad indigestion…’

  ‘Oh, come off it, Si! You were desperate for her not to tell me something. So, what is it?’

  Si swoops about the living room, looking distressed. He seems to be wrestling with some great indecision. Then he drifts to a stop in front of the television.

  ‘You remember the first time we met, Daniel?’

  I nod. How could I forget? It was a few years ago now, and I was in a pretty dark place back then. Well, you would be too if you could see dead people and everyone thought you were mad. Si was the one who helped me get over that, put me back on my feet and got my head straight. He’s been looking out for me ever since, and helping me to help those ghosts too. I owe Simon more than I like to admit.

  ‘Yeah, I remember.’

  ‘And when we first started helping the spirits of the dead to reach the Hereafter, you asked me a question. Do you remember that too?’

  ‘Er… I think I asked if I could help you as well. Yeah, now I remember. I couldn’t understand why you didn’t want to reach the Hereafter yourself. You flapped your arms a lot and changed the subject. You do that a lot.’

  Si gives an apologetic bow.

  ‘In truth,’ he says, ‘there is something keeping me here, something I need to do. I just can’t tell you what it is yet.’

  ‘But why not?’

  ‘Please don’t ask me that, Daniel. I will tell you one day, that I can promise. But this is not that day.’

  ‘Si…’

  ‘No, Daniel. I apologise, but that is my final word on the matter.’

  And he bows again.

  I sigh and give up asking. It’s been a long day, and I’m not in the mood for more riddles, not when I haven’t even solved the mystery of Mrs Binns and her bags yet. I almost wish I hadn’t bothered going to her now. I walk into the kitchen to wash the stink off my hands.

  ‘Shall we get back to our main problem?’ says Si, following me. ‘The poltergeist?’

  ‘Yeah, that,’ I say. ‘Thing is, Si, maybe it shouldn’t be our problem at all. I mean, no one has actually asked for our help with it, have they? We wouldn’t know about it at all if the ghosts we meet didn’t keep going on about it.’

  ‘Daniel, every ghost we’ve met in the last two weeks has mentioned the poltergeist.’ Si looks serious. ‘It’s disturbing even the most restful spirits. Something big is going on. And you read about it on the netweb…’

  ‘On the internet, yeah.’ I correct him. Si still has trouble getting his twenty-first century lingo right. ‘Even the living have noticed. But when I tried to go to the Shard to see for myself, I couldn’t get in. It’s been closed to casual visitors. That’s why I went to Mrs Binns, to try to find out more. But all I got is a smelly old bag.’

  ‘In truth, she does reek a bit…’

  ‘No, Si – this smelly old bag.’

  And I point to where I dumped the carrier bag on the floor when I came in. I can smell its fishy stink from here.

  ‘And what was inside?’ says Si, raising a solicitous eyebrow. ‘You didn’t actually show me.’

  I glare back at him. I wonder about not telling him – that’d serve him right for holding out on me. Actually, though, I’m mostly just worried he’ll laugh at me for putting my trust in a mad old bin lady when he sees what’s inside. But I know I have to tell him. We’re a team, after all. I tip up the bag with my foot and the object slides out.

  ‘Oh,’ Si stares down at it. ‘And what is that?’

  ‘This,’ I say, picking it up, ‘is a copy of Wow TV. It’s a magazine that tells you what’s on radio and TV…’

  ‘The window of wonders!’ Si gasps with delight.

  ‘TV,’ I correct him. ‘Television. That was all that was in the bag – a tatty old magazine.’ I stump off back to the living room before he can start laughing at me, and plonk myself down in my dad’s favourite armchair.

  ‘Then I was right,’ Si says in his most annoying told-you-so voice as he swoops in behind me. ‘We should never have gone to that Binns woman.’

  I ignore him, and look at the copy of Wow TV in my hands. It’s fourteen years out of date and looks like it spent some of that time being a tramp’s pillow. An old TV guide. What can it mean?

  I see the remote control for the telly on the coffee table beside me. I’m just about to look at the magazine again when my eyes fix on the remote control. It’s wrapped in plastic – an annoying thing my dad does to keep dust and crumbs out of all the remotes. But it’s not just any plastic. It’s an old transparent supermarket carrier bag.

  The kind Mrs Binns loves so much.

  I pick up the remote and turn on the TV.

  On the screen the face of a man with a black goatee beard appears. He has a tall, wrinkled forehead and he looks out at us above his hands. His fingers are steepled together like a church roof, and he raises one eyebrow as if daring the viewer to challenge his superior intelligence. It’s not a very nice face.

  ‘Who is that?’ says Si, his eyes goggling as they always do when the TV is on. He’s obsessed with it.

  ‘I’m surprised you don’t recognise him.’ I say. ‘That’s Venn Specter. The “famous TV Psychic”.’

  Can you hear the sarcasm in my voice? Good.

  As we watch, the opening title sequ
ence of Venn’s show rolls across the screen. We see Venn Specter stalking through a spooky old house in his stupid bottle-green polo-neck jumper, detecting psychic phenomena and solving cheesy mysteries. He’s wearing his trademark jade ring pendant. He claims that when he looks through the ring – which he found in an ancient Chinese tomb – he can see ghosts.

  What a fake! I’ve seen enough of Venn Specter to know he’s just a clever fraud, fuelling his own desire for fame and fortune with the grief and credulity of others. I raise the remote to turn over.

  But then I’m wondering.

  Venn Specter Investigates is one of the most popular TV shows on at the moment. Is it just coincidence that it happened to be on right now? Or is Mrs Binns trying to tell me something? Despite everything, I stay on the channel and force myself to listen to Venn as he opens his terrible show.

  ‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen…’ he says, looking over his fingertips again, ‘… and ghosts!’

  The audience cheers and applauds. I grind my teeth.

  ‘Tonight you join us live in central London, where I have detected a powerful distortion in the karmic web of life and death.’

  I’m groaning now. The what? Give me a break.

  ‘Stay tuned as I investigate another mystery of the supernatural…’

  I roll my eyes, and point the remote to switch this rubbish off.

  ‘… at that most iconic of skyscrapers – the Shard!’

  I nearly drop the remote. I swear my purple specs almost spring off my nose.

  ‘The Shard!’ Si and I say at the same time.

  ‘But first, let us go to a member of the audience, to see how I may be of assistance this chill December night…’

  Venn drones on, taking a camera crew with him as he steps down to be with the people who have gathered to watch him. He holds out his hands and they reach to touch his fingertips. This is another of his trademarks – giving comforting messages from beyond the grave. It’s not long before he’s latched onto a tearful grey-haired lady who is clutching an old man’s flat cap in her hands. Any fool can guess that she’s just lost her husband, but Venn makes the deduction seem like a miracle. But I’m too excited to be disgusted. I raise the remote and press ‘mute’.