by Will Mabbitt
“No, when it was a real city. A working city. The greatest city of them all!”
Mabel looked at the ancient ruins.
“But that must have been thousands of years ago.”
“You still don’t get it, do you?”
Mabel looked confused. Then, as they turned starboard down a wide street, she saw something that chilled her blood.
Something very familiar.
Something she’d seen a hundred times before. On postcards, in films, on tea towels, and once with her own eyes on vacation with her parents.
It was Big Ben!
And then she understood.
The pirates took me through a porthole to the future! A future where hoomans no longer exist! cried Mabel Jones.
Jarvis grabbed her by the shoulders.
“It’s OK. We can get back. All the way back into the past. We just need the X.”
“But we don’t have all the bits!” cried Mabel Jones. “We never found Old Hoss’s piece. What are we going to do?”
“Don’t worry—we’ll think of something,” replied Jarvis.
And, before Mabel Jones could say anything else, the sound of Split’s bone leg on the wooden deck clopped behind them.
Jarvis turned around and raised his skull head in the air as far as it would go.
“BEHOLD!
THE BELL TOWER OF THE DEAD AWAITS US!”
CHAPTER 24
Ghostly Forms
The crew stood in silence as the ship gently floated farther into the city. Ancient buildings towered over them on both sides. All around were streets of ruined buildings shrouded in fog.
The Feroshus Maggot was following the course of the ancient streets. Once, thousands of shoppers would have navigated the busy pavements. Now, they belonged to the sea. A barnacled bus passed beneath the ship’s hull, a school of gray fish darting in and out of its broken windows.
Mabel turned to Jarvis.
“What happened?”
Jarvis shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve been trying to find out ever since I got here.”
Pelf tapped his pipe clean on the rail. “It’s as though we drift through the very streets of hell!”
Milton squealed in fright. “Gosh! What’s that?”
He pointed a shaking trotter to the top of a building, where a cat sat preening itself.
No ordinary cat. A ghostly cat made from the same mist that shrouded the city.
Pelf chewed his pipe thoughtfully. “That feline looks familiar.”
Captain Split trained his telescope on the creature.
“Aye. It’s Maurice!”
Mabel watched as the cat disappeared into the mist. “Maurice?”
“Maurice was once the ship’s cat on this very vessel,” explained Pelf. “He was drowned at sea. In a bag. Nine times. He was a nasty one, that cat. Many an honest pirate had felt his claws . . .”
Milton gulped and wrung his trotters together nervously.
“So it’s true that the souls of the wicked rest here in this city. Doomed never to move on to the next world.”
It certainly seemed to be true. As they drifted toward the bell tower, more and more ghostly faces appeared. At first animals, mostly pirates.
Then hoomans!
Ghoulish bankers looked down from the upper stories of a once-monumental corporate headquarters.
Spectral muggers looked up from the pavements on the seabed.
A line of dead-eyed businessmen still stood waiting for a morning coffee that would never be poured.
All watching.
The crew cowered together in a worried huddle on the deck. Only Split stayed firm.
“They can’t hurt us now!” He laughed into the mist and shouted, “You’ve had your chance for wickedness. It’s our turn now!”
Finally, grappling-lines were thrown from the ship and the Feroshus Maggot came to rest against the base of the bell tower.
They
had
reached
their
destination.
CHAPTER 25
The Bell Tower of the Dead
Mabel looked up at the sky. The comet was nearly out of sight. Its bright white glow was starting to disappear beyond the far horizon.
Time was running out, but entering the bell tower was not going to be easy. The original entrance was submerged some feet underwater, so a long plank was balanced from the ship to a salt-stained stone windowsill.
They went across it one by one.
Split went first, clutching a bundle with the pieces of X inside. His bone leg skidded on the plank, but his balance remained true. Smashing the window with his good leg, he climbed into the bell tower and out of sight.
Then Pelf crossed on his stomach. Inch by inch.
Milton skipped delicately along the plank on all four trotters.
For McMasters, it was an easy task once he’d been pointed in the right direction.
Old Sawbones took his time, pausing for courage in the middle. The plank creaked worryingly.
Mr. Clunes bounded across in leaps. With his last bound, a splintering noise could be heard from the plank.
“Where’s Omynus?” asked Mabel.
The loris’s face looked down from a window high above. In typical fashion, he’d crossed the plank unseen and unheard. He smiled shyly at Mabel.
“Quickly, quickly, snuglet.”
Now just Jarvis and Mabel were left. And the plank had a slight kink in it.
Jarvis looked at Mabel.
“After you. I’ll hold this end. It will be safer.”
“No. After you! I’ll hold it safe!”
They glared at each other.
Jarvis took a coin from his robe. “Let’s toss for it.”
Pelf’s head poked from the window. “You’d better hurry up, mateys. We’ve got trouble closing fast!”
As he spoke, the mist swirled aside to reveal the impressive hull of a golden galleon drifting silently toward them. And then came the sound of whips and shouting.
“Steady as she goes. Load muskets!”
A figure could be seen on the prow of the golden galleon. There was no mistaking that heroic pose, that hair blowing in the breeze, or that face—timelessly striking, as if carved from the hardwood of the handsome tree.
The count!
He had found a way around the Needles, though his armada was diminished for sure. Where before there were forty ships, now just ten sailed into sight between the towering buildings.
“Quick!”
Mabel and Jarvis looked at each other and ran across the plank together.
Halfway!
CREAAAK!
Almost there!
And suddenly they were falling hand in hand toward the sea. The leering faces of the long-since dead looked up from the seabed and prepared to welcome the unfortunate children to their watery graves.
But, just before they hit the water, Mabel felt a large hairy hand around hers and she was jerked upward.
MR.CLUNES!
Mabel held tightly to Jarvis’s hand, even though it felt like she was being torn in half.
Then, with an armpit-splitting jerk, Mr. Clunes pulled them both inside the bell tower.
“There’s no time for horseplay,” snarled Captain Split. “We’ve got to get to that bell!”
Up the dry and dusty steps they ran.
Up . . .
Up . . .
And up . . .
Finally the stairs opened out into a large chamber illuminated by four huge circular windows—the reverse side of the clockface! Around the room and rusted in place, huge cogs hung—the machinery that once turned the hands of the clockface. A giant bell was suspended in the middle of the room.
Milton clapped hi
s trotters together in excitement, then pointed to one of the windows.
“I say! Look, that clockface is missing an X! This must be the place!”
Split smiled. “And soon the treasure will be mine.” He looked at Mabel through wicked, smiling eyes. “And then we can go home. Where everything is lovely and safe and snug.”
Mabel frowned. Something about the way Split was talking made her feel uneasy.
Pelf looked around the room. “So where does the treasure appear? When do the jewels rain from the sky?”
Old Sawbones grinned. “When can I bathe in a blood-red puddle of rubies?”
Everyone looked at the captain.
“You fools!” growled Split. “The treasure is far more valuable than mere baubles and trinkets. The X is the key to an ancient machine built here in the dim and distant past by the fevered hooman rescued by my father from that rock.”
Split motioned to the workings of the bell tower.
“One night, long ago, with the comet in the sky, he rang the bell and opened a porthole that brought him from that ancient time to the present day!”
“It’s a time machine!” gasped Mabel.
Split laughed wickedly.
“Yes! A ship to voyage through the misty seas of time. But the foolish hooman had forgotten the comet. Its strange influence interfered with the machine. The bell opened a porthole through time, sure enough, but”—he bared his fangs in a deranged smile—“it also woke the dead souls that haunted this accursed city!”
Mabel blinked, and blinked again.
“The dead?”
Split laughed.
“The wicked dead! And they were grateful for their alarm call. For whoever wakes them becomes their commander. The general of an invincible army—for the dead cannot be killed again. But the hooman was puny-hearted, as hoomans often are. He was gripped by the frights, scared of what might be done with such power. And so he took the X from his machine and fled with it to the furthest, most remote rock he could find, where he thought it would be safe from the forces of evil . . .”
“And that’s where your father found him,” said Mabel.
“Exactly. And now the X is mine, and its treasure—an army of ghostly soldiers—will be at my command. And where do you think I plan to lead them, snuglet?”
Mabel gasped.
“Home!”
Split smiled.
“Aye. When the porthole is opened, I will lead them to your world. Imagine the possibilities! The hooman world is rich in treasures . . . treasures beyond the imaginations of us simple pirate folk.” Split’s one eye boggled at the thought. “When the bell tolls, it will signal the dawn of a new age: the age of Captain Split and his
invincible army of the
dead.”
Triumphantly, he thrust the clanking bundle of fragments into the air.
“Idryss Ebenezer Split: king of the past and the present! Crown prince of the future!”
CHAPTER 26
Raising Hell
Poor young nose-picking Mabel Jones. She had never asked to be a pirate. She had never even asked to be a hooman. But here she was. Standing between Captain Split and his wicked plan for world domination.
Split emptied his bundle onto the floor and began to assemble the bits of X.
Mabel looked at Jarvis.
He’s still one piece short!
Old Hoss’s riddle popped into her brain:
This be true, I be no liar,
In legend find your heart’s desire.
Limp North or South or West or East,
You’ll get no closer to my piece.
She knew the final piece was close. Wherever Split limped, he got no closer to it. But what was the legend the riddle spoke of?
Split held the X aloft. “It is complete!”
Old Sawbones looked puzzled. “I think there’s a bit missing, Cap’n!”
Split took the X apart and reassembled it.
Milton scratched his head. “It’s still not quite right, sir.”
Split growled a growl so hideous it made the crew shrink to the edges of the room.
“There’s one piece missing . . .”
His eyes flicked to each member of the crew. In turn they cowered before his gaze.
Finally he looked at Jarvis.
Then at Mabel.
Then at Jarvis again.
“We’ve been betrayed, mateys! That last fragment—the Psychopomp’s fare! Some trickery occurred, methinks! Some deep trickery . . .”
Jarvis’s hollow eye sockets met Split’s one-eyed glare. He said nothing.
Then Split pounced.
Faster than a smuggler’s wink, he was upon Jarvis, ripping savagely with his teeth and clawing with his back paw. He tossed the Psychopomp around until all that was left were scraps of cloth and a shattered skull.
But that was all!
No guts. No blood.
Mabel smiled. Jarvis must have snuck out of the back of his robes while no one was watching. He really was quite clever, for a boy.
Split stepped back from his victim, looking confused.
“There be nothing to that ghoul! Just a head! A most unsatisfactory kill, but still a kill nonetheless. And I’ve never killed a Psychopomp before!”
He marked a tally on his bone leg—in the very last space he had.
Pelf coughed and spat on the floor. He was looking out from a hole in the clockface.
“There’ll be more killing before the hour is out, I’ll wager. The count’s soldiers are coming in!”
Split snarled.
“I’ll not let that perfumed Prince of Priss steal what’s rightly mine. By fair means or foul, this bell will be rung!
“One . . .
“Two . . .
“Three . . .”
And he threw himself with all his might upon the huge bell.
CHAPTER 27
The Terrible Klank
CHAPTER 28
The Consequences of the Terrible Klank
Landlubbers will argue that the nicest sound in the world is the birdsong that heralds the first dawn of spring.
A worm would disagree.
Mothers may say the sweetest sound is the laughter of a newborn baby.
Aye, I know. ’Tis hard to warrant, for such a sound cuts through a pirate’s stomach and raises bile in the throat. I, for one, find it hard to even walk within earshot of a nursery without pausing to be sick on the pavement.
However, worm, mother, seafarer, or otherwise, you could not fail to agree that the most horrific sound in the world is the terrible klank emitted by the bell known as Big Ben when it is rung by force rather than the carefully calculated physics of its ancient machinery.
It is a sound that penetrates your skull and rattles your brain. A sound that makes your teeth shrink back into your gums. A sound so awful it is indeed enough to wake the dead.
Split glanced hungrily around.
“The porthole! The porthole! Has it opened?”
He looked outside. A smile crossed his lips.
“The dead are awakening! My army is assembling!”
Mabel peered out from a small window in the clockface.
This didn’t look like the obedient army of ghosts that Split was expecting.
Where before the ghosts had numbly watched the Feroshus Maggot drift up the sunken streets, now the mist swirled and twisted into angry forms.
First, animals in clothes—a band of ghostly pirates and criminals brandishing the weapons they’d held at the moment of their deaths.
Then hoomans. The wicked who had drowned when the city flooded—muggers, thugs, businessmen, and politicians. Then people from earlier days of the city: medieval knights on spectral steeds; Vikings swinging their mighty axes; ROMAN SOLDIERS
with rusting javelins.
All dead.
All wicked.
And all exceedingly angry at having been awoken by the terrible klank.
Pelf took a puff on his pipe.
“The bell tolled flat! The machine has misfired!” He looked at the captain. “There is no porthole been opened. You’ve doomed us all, for you have enraged the dead!”
And it was true.
From the windows of broken buildings the ghosts climbed, from the seabed they rose, until the ships of the count’s armada were swamped in the angry mist of specters.
The defenses of the warships were of no use against the dead. Cutlasses and musket balls passed through the ghostly forms. And yet those same forms seemed solid enough to the count’s monkey soldiers when spectral fingers gripped around their necks, throttling them; their ghostly weapons seemed sharp enough as they were cutting them down.
One by one, the count’s ships were overwhelmed. Where before the monkeys were trying to get into the tower to attack the pirates, now they were calling for help.
“Open the door!”
“Save us!”
But it was too late.
Soon only the count’s golden galleon remained afloat, an empty ghost ship, doomed to float forever in the Haunted Seventh Sea.
Then the souls of the wicked dead turned their eyes upward to those who had dared wake them from their fitful slumber. Slowly they drifted toward the tower . . .
Milton wept quietly into a silken handkerchief.
“Oh, Mother. Shall I never see you again? How I wish I could turn back time. Oh, for one last glimpse of my dear parents and sweet little Hambelina. She did nothing to deserve such a villainous, piratical sibling!”
Pelf sighed. “Aye, I never got to have that farm in the mountains either.” He blew out a cloud of mournful smoke.
