Milrose, although hardly fond of the linebacker, was appalled to see Arabella’s dream so brutally realized. “Look what they’ve done to Sledge!”
“Actually, I did it,” said Harry.
“Oh.”
“Yeah. What do you think of the cage? Some of the dead jocks are crack welders—spend most of their time on muscle cars. Not much else to do.” He added with a touch of pride: “I designed it myself.”
“Swell.”
Sledge, on the other hand, clearly did not appreciate Harry’s designer cage. He roared, meaningfully, and fixed his blunt eyes on Harry’s crushed skull. As if he intended to crush it.
“Um, Harold?” asked Arabella politely. “Is there any reason why you have that handsome athlete in a cage?”
“Oh yeah. Sure is. Makes him angry, you see.”
“I do see.”
“And we want him good and angry. And he’s kind of dangerous, uncaged.”
“Also apparent.”
“So, when we get him seriously angry, and need him dangerous, we’ll let him out.”
“Thank you for the explanation.”
“No prob,” said Harry, gallantly. “So, uh, you got a name, chick?”
“Arabella Smith,” said Arabella.
“Your last name’s Smith?” said Milrose, suppressing a grand mal seizure.
“It is,” said Arabella, with a failed attempt at pride.
“Cool,” said Harry, who hadn’t the slightest sense of how earth-quivering this revelation truly was.
“Where are we, Harold?”
“Ah. Complicated matter, that. We’re in the basement, but … we’re between the wall.”
“Not so complicated,” said Milrose, trying to maintain his poise while reeling in the wake of Arabella’s casual name-drop. “Been there, done that.”
“Oh. Well, it’s new to me. I’ve never been between the wall. Your buddy Dave told me how to get here.”
“How is it again that you guys are in contact? What with all the floors between you and all?”
“Oh yeah. Inspired guy, that Dave. He has this burning-bush routine. You know the little clumps of fungus that grow in the shower?”
“Sadly, yes.”
“He makes them catch fire and speak. Great method of communication. Biblical, almost.”
“Love it. So, uh, I take it we’re here—between the basement wall—for a reason?”
“Oh yeah. Oh yeah.”
“Preferably a reason intimately connected to our glorious escape from the den?”
“That and better. Come with me. I’ll fill you in on the way.”
Milrose accompanied Hurled Harry down the oppressive corridor. Arabella had been left behind to manage Sledge. (Harry had read somewhere that vicious beasts could be rendered briefly docile by the presence of a chick.) The corridor was brighter than the place between the wall on the second floor, but just barely—and Milrose could not figure out where the light was coming from.
As they advanced, Harry lowered his repulsive voice, until he was whispering directly into the ear of Milrose Munce. Harry’s whisper had all the quiet grace of an industrial staple gun.
“Don’t want them overhearing. I mean, they’re horribly busy, so it’s not a huge issue.”
“Who’s ‘they,’ and what are they busy doing?”
“They are hideous warriors, brimming with ghost chemistry, fearless and unspeakably cruel. Their leader is a Dread Exorcist. And they are performing a Monstrous Exorcism.”
“Here? Now?”
“Of course! It’s Friday the twenty-second.”
“Ah. Thought that might be significant …”
“Friday the twenty-second is Exorcist’s Day. They give each other cards and flowers, but they also do their most evil stuff. In fact, it was one thousand Fridays ago today, on a twenty-second, that the Dread Exorcist first made war on the school.”
“How come I don’t know about this?”
“It’s not discussed. This was long before most of us died, and the few who were around back then won’t talk about it. Shameful defeat and all.”
“Drag.”
“I only learned about the whole business a couple of days ago, from Dave, and even he didn’t know anything about it until recently. Been doing research. Amazing guy, that Dave.”
“No kidding. Where does he find this stuff out?”
“Stumbled across a library between the wall on the third floor. Whole section devoted to the secret history of the school.”
“Now there’s a place I wanna hang out.”
Milrose could now see that the dim light in the corridor issued from tiny windows set into steel doors on either side. These doors looked as if they hadn’t been opened in decades; some were even overgrown with moss. What behind them could possibly be producing light? Were they libraries? Archives? Showers?
“A thousand Fridays ago, according to lore, the school engaged the services of this Vile Being. Quiet or he’ll hear you. Seems they’d been trying to rid the school of ghosts for some time.”
“What’s all this anti-ghost sentiment? It’s weird.”
“Has to do with the school image. They’re terrified that ghosts will make their way into the newspapers … or worse, into the official brochures. Bad for school rankings.”
“Ah.”
“So, they’d done their best, but the dead were fighting back. And the ghosts were winning. Man, I wish I could have seen it—according to Dave, they were doing some serious hardcore haunting: pencils screaming, textbooks moaning, blood dripping from the blackboards. Teachers were quitting by the boatload. The school nurse resigned!”
“Wow.”
“And so the staff hired an exorcist. A very good one. The best. He was expensive, but they received a grant from the city.”
“And this guy’s here, now? In the basement?”
“Shh. We’re getting close. He is wise amongst the wicked … very very strong. Managed to completely scour the first floor in time for an early lunch: dispatched the ghosts, one by one, and there were many. The goal, though—the reason he was hired—was to put a spell on the entire school. Render the whole building ghost-free for all time.”
“Didn’t pull that off, did he.”
“No. There were a couple of pretty serious ghost chemists on the second floor, back in the day. Not trivial dudes. And they smote him with a counterspell. He smote back. There was some mad smiting going on.”
“Excellent.”
“Finally, the dead guys succeeded in thwarting the Vile Being’s most ambitious spell. They contained it: bound it up in thick chains of ghost chemistry, and the curse was restricted to the first floor. He managed to make that floor inhospitable to ghosts, very unpleasant if you’re not alive, dead to the dead, but the chemists succeeded in rescuing the other floors from that fate.”
A tiny dull light now floated in the distance, in the centre of the corridor.
“Man, who are these ghost chemists? I’d love to meet them.”
“They’re gone. The Exorcist … liquidated them.”
“How do you liquidate a ghost? I mean, they’re already dead.”
“Horrible business. Don’t want to go into it. But let’s just say there are worse things than death. And the Dread Exorcist, in a final vicious blast, wasted the chemists who had thwarted his precious spell. As I say, this isn’t discussed. It’s a subject too terrifying even for most terrifying ghosts.”
The corridor had at last come to an end: it was blocked by a steel door with a peephole set into it, through which the bleak light shone.
“Silence!” said Harry, although he was the only one making noise. “It is being accomplished here, behind this door!”
“He’s there?”
“Yes! Dave figured out that it would be here, between the wall of the basement, that this walking terror would gather his minions. He is here, even now, doing unspeakable things. The unholy Archibald Loosten!”
“What?” said Milrose, in amu
sed disbelief. “Loosten? The guidance counsellor?”
“He is more than a guidance counsellor,” said Harry in a trembling whisper. “He is an exorcist. He is the exorcist. According to Dave, he is considered, in fact, the Mother of All Exorcists.”
“How about that,” said Milrose Munce. “Loosten. Who knew.”
Harry approached the window and put his eye to the oculus.
“Archibald Loosten,” mused Milrose. “Come on. How could this be? I mean, he wears a polyester suit.”
“It is a disguise. And look at him now: revealed!”
Harry stood back, and Milrose, apprehensive, peered through the peephole. There, standing in a room on the other side, was Archibald Loosten, wearing a polyester suit, with a matching tie.
“Behold him,” said Harry, “in his long flowing robes of satanic black, and breastplate of iron.”
“Sure, Harry.”
The guidance counsellor was addressing a small staff meeting.
“And lo,” said Harry, “those are his minions. Mort Natoor, the assistant principal. Mrs. Ganneril, the dreaded secretary. Jimmy Mordred, the geography teacher. And on his way”—Harry shuddered—“is the janitor.”
“The janitor? You mean old Fossilstiff is a turncoat? I like that guy.”
“He is evil incarnate.”
“Oh.”
Milrose, although he was increasingly fond of Harry, was having a difficult time granting his observations much weight. Sure looked like a sad bunch of educators to him.
Archibald Loosten suddenly raised his open hand, however, and began an incantation; his voice was so loud in the corridor that the steel door might have been no more than a paper screen. And—was this possible?—his polyester suit shimmered and turned black, and grew long and billowy, and his matching tie widened into a spiked iron breastplate.
“Gosh,” said Milrose.
Yes, things looked quite different now. Ganneril’s hands dripped blood. Mort Natoor bore a fiery globe. Jimmy Mordred threw back his head and howled like a banshee.
Milrose did not recognize the language of Loosten’s incantation. It was not the same as the one he had been memorizing; it sounded somehow uglier. He noted that Loosten’s words were becoming visible, much as Dave’s had, and were flying every which way. The most sinister ones seemed to be making their way through the ceiling.
“What is he doing?”
“Yeah, well. That’s the concern. According to Dave, now would be the perfect opportunity—since a thousand Fridays have passed—for the Exorcist to make another go at that ambitious school-wide curse. After a thousand weeks, counterspells get kind of flimsy, and Magister Loosten probably figures he can finish the business this time. The local ghost chemists aren’t quite as potent as they used to be.”
“Hey, Dave’s pretty fine,” said Milrose indignantly.
“Yeah, and you’re getting good, but many techniques have been lost. Loosten’s clearly feeling bold. And … I don’t want to think about what will happen to the dead if he succeeds.”
“He won’t. We won’t let him!”
“It’s crucial. It’s been bad enough, the last thousand weeks, what with being confined to three floors. And we’ve been cut off from the world of the living. Whenever we make friends with a live student, they … disappear.”
“Aha!” said Milrose, about to venture a hypothesis. But just then Loosten gestured with high drama, and a door on the far side of the room flew open. There, glowering, stood Fossilstiff the janitor. Milrose had never noticed the janitor’s horns before.
“Evidently,” said Harry, “there used to be pretty good relations between the living and the dead. But Dave has this theory: whenever they notice that a student can see us, they send ’em off to Professional Help.”
“Yerp. As always, the genius gets it right. Dave had us do some research, and yeah, good theory. He nailed it.”
“And the only one who’s ever returned from Professional Help is Sledge. Indestructible, I guess.”
Milrose noted, nervously, that Loosten’s incantation was growing in volume, and the flying words were growing claws, teeth, and the occasional moustache. He tried to remain casual. “But surely this works out nicely. I mean, once your friends are, uh, cured, doesn’t that mean they sort of … well, join your ranks? I mean, you still get to hang out.”
“Oh no. They don’t die.”
“Phew.”
“It’s worse.”
“Oh.”
“They get … removed. Erased. Annihilated. Same as what happened to those ghost chemists.”
“Uh …”
“We don’t talk about this.”
“Excuse me, but, according to our calculations, Arabella and I are scheduled for a cure on Monday.”
Harry had pulled Milrose from the door and was now peering through the peephole himself. He remained silent for a long time. “We must not fail.”
“Right. Okay. Let’s not.”
“The time has come. Magister Loosten’s in full swing. Here’s the plan …”
Milrose, who was not accustomed to responsibility of any sort, forced himself to concentrate. This was his moment. All of that study—whole hours of it—would come to naught if he were to falter now. He closed his eyes and began a complex incantation.
It was nerve-racking to incant within earshot of Archibald Loosten, who was clearly a virtuoso, but Milrose found his voice growing firm as the words proceeded in the proper order from his lips. Yes, he knew this stuff. He flattened himself against the wall beside the door, to remain unseen. As his words grew in volume, the door between him and the evil gathering grew increasingly transparent. Magister Loosten looked about wildly as he heard the rival incantation—and Milrose brought it to a magnificent, incoherent conclusion.
The explosion was prodigious.
Harry, who had flattened himself against the ceiling above Milrose, whispered: “Yow!”
The incantation had been an exquisite success. The door was in shards. Loosten and his dread horde stared through it, aghast, and what they stared at was in fact ghastly. For barrelling down the corridor, with a truly unpleasant look in his eyes, was murderous Sledge.
“There’s our man,” whispered Harry from the ceiling. “Sledge. Terror of the Gridiron. Scourge of the Shower. Catastrophe of the Clubhouse.”
Arabella had done her task well (a task she had long dreamed of). And now, from somewhere deep in the throat of Indomitable Sledge, came the choked words: “Professional Help.”
Milrose prayed that Sledge would not deviate in his barrelling to note a small, sarcastic boy flattened against the wall.
“Professional Help,” grunted Great Sledge as he made his murderous way, hands held out before him in an attitude of strangulation, towards Magister Loosten.
“Excuse me, Sledge,” said Magister Loosten, but Sledge would not be stopped. “My dear Sledge, are you trying to provoke a detention?” But Sledge would not be slowed. “Um,” Magister Loosten said, then spun in cowardice and squeezed past horned Fossilstiff through the door in the far wall. His robes became polyester and beige as he ran, and Sledge pursued with homicidal fury.
Heroic Sledge swatted Mort Natoor aside as if the assistant principal were a mere dung beetle. His pace would not waver, although Mrs. Ganneril clung to one of his huge legs and both Mordred and Fossilstiff to the other. For he was driven by vengeance.
“Sledge has never forgotten,” whispered Harry, “that it was Magister Loosten who sentenced him to the Dungeons of Professional Help. Works in our favour, doesn’t it.”
The guidance counsellor disappeared down the corridor, and Sledge barrelled bellowing in his wake.
“Now’s my chance,” said Harry. “Wish me luck. And get back to the Den before the floor deplodes.”
“Good luck,” said Milrose. For Harry had determined that now, having engineered this general pandemonium amongst the forces of evil, it would be possible for a ghost—the first ghost in a thousand Fridays—to set foot on
the first floor.
CHAPTER
NINE
IT HAD BEEN ALMOST THREE DAYS SINCE THE BATTLE IN THE BASEMENT. ARABELLA AND MILROSE PERCHED ON THE TOPMOST BUNK, CONFUSED AND WORRIED. MILROSE HAD NOT WITNESSED ANYTHING AFTER THE ESCAPE OF ARCHIBALD LOOSTEN—HIS EXPLOSION WAS INDEED ABOUT TO UNHAPPEN, AND HE HAD RUSHED BACK TO CLIMB THE STEPLADDER WITH ARABELLA.
They’d heard no word from Harry. Had he managed to invade the first floor? (He had not intended much of an invasion: simply to race up the stairs to the second floor, with perhaps a couple of dead athletes. But merely passing through the first floor was, of course, a giant leap for ghostkind.)
Friday afternoon was ominously silent. All day Saturday they heard nothing. And now Sunday was drawing to a close. On Monday, in a few short hours, they were destined to be cured.
“I don’t get it,” said Milrose. “The plan wasn’t that complex—all he had to do was get to the second floor. Then it’s easy. ‘A coalition of the willing,’ he called it—bring together dead guys from all three floors for a coordinated assault. I mean, surely he could get some of the ghosts to help out.”
“I can’t imagine my friends on the second floor would abandon us.”
“I can.” Milrose was busy imagining just that. “But the third floor’s reliable—they’re serious people—and Dave’s the guy who set all this in motion, right? And even if my friends somehow … declined, where’s Harry and his rotting jocks?”
As if in response to this, a familiar irritating voice descended from above.
“Munce? Munce, you there?” Harry’s voice came through the ceiling like a keyhole saw.
“Boy, are we glad to hear you!” said Milrose.
The dead jockey luxuriated in these rare words.
“You made it, Harry! How are things on the second floor?”
“Second floor. Yeah. Wow, these guys are bad poets.”
“No kidding. You have, uh, good news, right? You got past the ghost-free place … so you must have forces, like, arrayed?”
“Harold, why don’t you come down here and join us.”
“Um, I’ve kind of had my fill of the first floor.”
“Come on, guy. This isn’t the ordinary first floor. It’s the Den of Professional Help! Whole different ball o’ wax.”
Milrose Munce and the Den of Professional Help Page 12
