Ghostcatcher Read online

  Babyface stuck out his bottom lip. Abe looked helplessly at Lil.

  ‘All right,’ said Lil. ‘But it’s going to be tight.’

  They all stood watching the pitch blackness under the line of the hill. After a couple of minutes Margaret pricked up her ears. Out on the hill the torchlight blinked.

  ‘OK,’ said Lil. ‘Nedly is in place and haunting.’

  They waited a few minutes more, breathing softly and listening to the sound of the rain dripping. Two headlights appeared in the drive, as the Ghostcatcher van swung round the asylum towards them, twin beams like arms reaching towards the city. The van kicked up mud and water as it sped down the drive, barely slowing at the gates for them to open ahead of it and then raced through and away up the lane. Abe, Lil and Babyface watched the back lights fade and then go out completely as it turned a bend. As one their eyes went to the summit where Minnie stood. Blink-blink – the second signal.

  Abe poked a thumb in the direction of the asylum. ‘Time to go.’

  Babyface gave a solemn nod and hoisted the bag up securely. The metal railing cast a striped pattern of shadows over his round face.

  Abe patted him strongly on the back. ‘We’ll be right behind you, kid.’

  Babyface turned to Margaret. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll look after you.’ And then he laid himself as flat as possible beside the fence to roll under it. Lil had to knead the rucksack past the railings and push him through like a roll of dough. He arrived on the other side coated with wet earth. Margaret shimmied under after him.

  Lil stood close by the fence. ‘Once you’ve sorted the alarm, you and Margaret come straight back here and find Minnie at the phone box. Stay with her until we find you, OK?’

  Babyface’s eyes darted between the deserted lane that led back to the orphanage and the ruined building ahead. ‘Just don’t be too long.’

  ‘No fear.’ Lil tried out a smile. ‘We’ll be in and out before you know it.’

  He crossed his fingers on both hands and held them up for Lil to see, then turned away and stumbled off into the wilderness with Margaret bounding alongside him. His hood fell down as he ran. As they reached the flower beds that were now filled with weeds, clouds drew across the moon like a curtain and the garden grew dark.

  Just once Lil caught sight of the pale orb of his head bobbing along the path and then it was swallowed up in the shadows of the old asylum.

  Abe and Lil stared out across the straggly lawn and then up at the gate, then back across the lawn.

  ‘What was that?’ Abe rushed his binoculars to his eyes one-handed. He stretched out his middle finger and inched the focus wheel. ‘I thought I saw something.’

  ‘Babyface?’

  ‘No, it was a light.

  ‘Maybe a fox?’

  ‘With a torch?’ He gave her a look and then went back to his binoculars, straining his eyes against the darkness.

  ‘Let’s have a go.’ Lil reached up for them and Abe gave a strangled yelp. ‘Sorry, I didn’t know you had tied them round your neck.’ She held her hand out. ‘Can I have the binoculars?’

  Abe shook his head stubbornly. ‘If there’s any looking to do, I’ll do it.’ He peered through them again. ‘Maybe it was a trick of the moon.’

  They moved closer to the railings. The rain was the fine sort that floated innocently in the air and soaked things. They watched the empty lawn in silence, their faces lit red by the bulbs over the gate.

  Abe muttered to himself and shook his head.

  ‘What did you say?’ said Lil.

  ‘I said why don’t you let me take care of it? I can bust EGON’s head by myself.’

  ‘No, you can’t; only Nedly can take him out of the game completely and I need to be there with him so – Abe!’ She gasped suddenly. His face had turned green. The lights had changed.

  There was a clunking sound and the gate lost power. ‘They did it!’ Lil almost laughed with relief.

  Tentatively Abe took hold of the wet metal bars of the gate and pushed.

  ‘We’re in.’

  Chapter 18

  Rorschach Research Facility

  The gate swung open so quickly that Abe had to chase it to stop it clanging against the railings. He waited while Lil crossed the threshold, then gently closed it behind them.

  ‘With any luck we’ll be out again before they get back but if not … hopefully they’ll assume it’s a malfunction – the wiring in the asylum can’t be up to much these days.’ He paused for a moment to give Lil a concerned eyeball. ‘Ready?’

  ‘Ready,’ she confirmed.

  Abe looked grimly out at the asylum and flexed his multi-purpose pliers. ‘All right, let’s go.’

  They crouch-ran from the lane and then across the long straggly lawn, the grass heavy with dew-like raindrops. Midway they linked up with the trampled route that Babyface and Margaret had taken. A soft bark sounded and the small figures of a boy and a dog emerged from the shadow of the asylum and began running towards them. Babyface looked exhilarated, his cheeks were red beneath the mud and his eyes shone.

  ‘We did it!’ he gasped.

  ‘Good work, kid,’ Abe said sternly, with one eye on the landscape.

  Babyface gulped breathlessly. ‘The door was open and the light was on so we knew straight away where it was. And there was a card stuck over the levers that said which ones deactivated things!’

  Abe and Lil exchanged glances. ‘Too easy.’

  Babyface frowned. ‘It was quite hard actually. It was dark and haunted and the grass was long and wet and difficult.’ He looked at Margaret for support. ‘If I hadn’t had Tuft with me for luck …’

  ‘Yeah,’ Lil said quickly. ‘You were really brave and you did it.’ She gave him a high-five.

  The breeze picked up and rippled the surface of the grass. Abe gave the white haze that was shining around the asylum a foreboding look. ‘I don’t like this.’

  ‘Me neither.’ Lil zipped up her mac. ‘But this is our only shot so we better take it.’

  He turned to her. ‘Look, I can handle it from here. You take Babyface and head back.’

  ‘No way –’ Lil began.

  ‘It could be a trap.’

  Lil gave him the Squint. ‘You take Babyface back if you’re so worried. I’ll find and destroy EGON with Nedly. I told you before: we can manage on our own.’

  ‘And I told you before: there’s no way I’m leaving you to do this alone.’

  ‘I won’t be alone. Nedly will be here in a minute.’

  Abe gave her a look. ‘We don’t have time to stand around here arguing about it.’

  Lil opened her mouth, closed it again and then said, ‘Agreed. Babyface, you and Margaret go and find Minnie in the phone box. Any trouble, call the number.’

  ‘What number?’

  ‘The Haunting Hotline – Minnie knows.’

  Lil pulled Babyface’s hood back up and hoisted his rucksack firmly onto his shoulders. ‘It’s a long way up the hill so be careful in the dark, and stay off the road.’

  ‘Margaret, sit,’ Abe instructed her. Margaret sat down and cocked her head, ready for action. ‘Find Minnie.’

  Babyface tightened his grip on the lead.

  ‘If anything happens, stick with the dog,’ Lil told him. ‘She’ll get you home safely.’

  The door to the outhouse in the west wing was wide open and lit up, just as Babyface had described it. Someone had left a paraffin lamp burning on the side and the warm yellow glow was almost inviting, but the outhouse didn’t look like it was used very much. Dead beetles and crumpled spiders littered the floor, rusty spades and garden forks were cobwebbed against the wall. So why was the lamp there?

  ‘Might as well have put out a welcome mat,’ Abe growled.

  They skirted the west wing of the ruins, following the white orb of light that stretched into the night. Past the ivy and thick stems of thorny rose bushes that were pulling at the asylum bricks, circling out like coils of razor wire. Lil cast a quick lo
ok over her shoulder. The gate was a long way off but it was still lit green and unlocked.

  The wind picked up, throwing rain in their faces. Lil shivered suddenly as a wave of dread washed over her. A sharp crackle split the air, and with a faint burning smell Nedly appeared mid-run, staggering forward as he tried to slow himself down.

  ‘Nedly?’ Abe asked the damp, black night.

  ‘He’s here.’ Lil breathed out her relief.

  ‘Phew!’ said Nedly as he came to a stop with the air of someone who had just broken the ribbon at the finishing line. He bent over for a minute with his hands on his hips and then circled back round to where they were standing. ‘I made it!’

  He grinned at Lil and Abe, then a shadow passed over his face as he looked up at the asylum looming above, dark and fractured by fire and he turned as grey as a moonlit cloud.

  Lil tried to snap him out of it, with a quick, ‘Hey! Everything go to plan?’ Nedly nodded distractedly. She made an ‘OK’ sign and held it up to Abe.

  Nedly shivered and looked about him. ‘Babyface made it then?’

  Lil kept her eyes on the murky woodland that hemmed the asylum grounds and tried to smile bravely. ‘So far, so good, but we have no time to waste. Ghostcatcher will catch up with Starkey eventually and when they do they will come right back here. We need to be long gone by then.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Abe and Nedly at the same time.

  ‘Here’s how we’ll play it,’ Abe continued. ‘You two wait back there in the outhouse, stay out of sight. I’m going to check out the facility. There might be a caretaker or security guard lurking around, so keep Nedly out of the way until I find EGON and confirm that the coast is clear.’

  Lil opened her mouth to argue but Abe cut in. ‘It’s Nedly they’re after,’ he warned her. ‘If anyone comes – make a run for it. Don’t wait for me. Promise?’

  Lil didn’t promise but she said, ‘Be careful.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me. I’ve been casing joints for years.’ They watched Abe crouch-run towards the cold light of the Research Facility and heard a gasp and a flump as he stumbled over one of the old flower beds.

  They stood just inside the outhouse, sheltered from the rain, waiting. After a minute Lil said, ‘I feel like we’re on stage with this light on us,’ and turned off the lamp. They let their eyes adjust to the gloom.

  A fox cried out in the woods. Lil took out a pencil and started chewing it. Her breath plumed out like steam, joining the mist in the air, and she shrugged her mac closer. Nedly was sending out a powerful case of the creeps. ‘So,’ she said conversationally. ‘How did it go down at the Nite Jar? Give me the details.’

  ‘It was good,’ Nedly started. ‘Starkey was great; his field-generating thing looked like a big speaker hooked up to a car battery. He strapped it onto the cart with some old rope and then pitched it so it gave off a signal a bit like mine. Yoshi and Velma kept watch and as soon as Ghostcatcher arrived Starkey sprang to action. Once they were fully out of the van and had their EMF readers going I had to keep really still while Starkey turned up his generator full blast. Once they had both locked on to him Velma gave the signal and he jumped onto your bike and started up the road. As soon as they started to follow I got out of there and came and found you.’ He gave her an encouraging smile. ‘Like clockwork.’

  ‘It was a crack team, just like Abe promised.’ Lil grinned back. ‘What did you do for the haunting part?’

  ‘A combination of moves I’d been working on. I shifted some things around on the tables as a warm-up, then I kicked a copy of the Herald and all the pages fell apart and went over the floor. Then I floated a ketchup bottle through the air,’ he added nonchalantly.

  Lil raised her eyebrows. ‘Impressive.’

  ‘Twice round the room. I kept away from the china and glass so I didn’t break anything if I dropped it. So I just used mustard bottles, serviettes, forks …’

  The fox cried again – at least, they hoped it was fox; it sounded lower than before.

  ‘… and tea towels,’ he continued shakily.

  Lil looked out into the darkness. The wet night carried the smell of old soot, and the presence of the asylum seemed huge, like a brick tsunami that had risen silently and hung frozen right behind them. Lil could feel it, but she couldn’t bring herself to look in case that broke the spell and brought the whole thing crashing down.

  Her leg started jigging nervously. ‘What’s keeping Abe so long?’ She flicked a glance at Nedly. His eyes had grown larger or his face had shrunk; either way his face was pinched-looking and his skin shone palely, like a pearl underwater. ‘There were three of them there, though, right?’

  ‘What?’ he whispered.

  ‘At the Nite Jar.’ Nedly frowned back at her, not understanding. ‘Because you said that they both locked on to Starkey’s generator. That’s two.’

  He thought for a moment. ‘Maybe the third one was behind them? I didn’t stick around.’

  ‘Right,’ said Lil, accidently chewing an inch of wood off the end of her pencil. She rolled it around a few times and then spat it into the grass. Her heart was thumping out a warning.

  ‘I think I should go and look for Abe. Otherwise we’re going to run out of time. You stay here.’

  ‘No way, what if you don’t come back either? I’m not staying here on my own.’ He shot a glance that was full of dread at the wall behind him. ‘Not here.’

  ‘No.’ Lil understood. ‘OK, we’ll go together.’

  No sooner had Lil’s shoe leather hit the grass than a phone started ringing. The sound cut through the eerie night like an alarm bell. She and Nedly looked at each other. ‘Is that the Haunting Hotline? Do you … do you think someone is calling in a tip? Or is it Minnie, phoning to warn us that Ghostcatcher are heading back?’

  Nedly shrugged anxiously. Lil’s heart was racing now. The phone trilled out again. We should try to find it,’ she whispered. ‘See who it is.’

  Neither moved. The phone rang a third time.

  And then it stopped.

  Chapter 19

  EGON

  The sudden silence that followed felt even more alarming than the sound of the phone ringing in the deserted grounds. Lil shot back into the shadows and gulped. ‘It didn’t ring for very long.’

  Nedly peered down the length of the west wing. ‘Did someone answer it?’

  ‘Abe must have,’ Lil said confidently, and then faltered. ‘But if that was Minnie on the Haunting Hotline –’

  ‘– it means Ghostcatcher are on their way back.’

  ‘And the decoy didn’t work.’ Lil stuck the pencil in her mouth and bit down on it hard. ‘And we’re almost out of time. Come on!’

  She started to run, skimming along beside the asylum wall. Nedly caught up with her at the corner, and as they rounded the side of the building the research facility came into view.

  Powerful floodlights encircled a colony of white domed tents, like giant glowing jellyfish, their surfaces billowing in the breeze. Thick cables snaked across the grass and into the tents and the background hum of a generator drowned out the patter of raindrops.

  Lil searched the scene for any signs of disturbance. ‘Where is Abe?’

  She looked back to the darkness that held the lawn, the fence and the woods behind them. She couldn’t even make out the hill with the phone box.

  ‘We should find him and go,’ said Nedly, looking jumpy.

  ‘Not until we’ve done what we came here for,’ said Lil as a feeling of dread started to grow in the pit of her stomach. ‘Quit giving me the creeps, Nedly; I’m trying to concentrate.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said miserably. ‘I just don’t like it here.’

  ‘I know,’ Lil replied. ‘So the sooner we take care of business and get out the better, right?’

  ‘Right,’ said Nedly, steeling himself for action. ‘I’ll go first.’

  ‘Wait!’ said Lil. ‘Not this time. If EGON is watching, then you might not be invisible. I’ll go f
irst.’

  The rain appeared white in the floodlights, a haze of water droplets falling through the dark around the tents. Lil stepped out towards them and then stopped. She could hear a strange pulsing sound like an electrical swell coming from the asylum and turned to locate it.

  The white glare struck the wall with the severity of lightning, creating shadows between the crumbling bricks and behind the broken glass of the windows. At the bottom of the wall was a set of tilted wooden trapdoors – an old coal bunker. A thick red cable was pinched between them.

  Lil’s shadow sharpened and shrank as she neared the building. She crouched before the bunker and the throbbing grew louder. ‘There’s something here!’ She took hold of one of the iron ring handles and felt the cold metal vibrating in her hands.

  The trapdoor opened with a creak. Lil leant over, peering into the cave-like room.

  ‘What is it?’ Nedly appeared suddenly behind her.

  Lil gasped, and let the door fall with a bang that echoed loudly.

  ‘Sorry,’ he winced.

  Lil took a deep breath, opened the trapdoor again and this time, with Nedly standing guard, she took a couple of steps down into the bunker.

  Inside was like a blue-lit grotto, cold, damp and smelling of fumes. A large cylindrical battery the size of a small car was suspended in the centre of the room between two huge brackets. Electric currents whiplashed across its surface and its sides were plastered with biohazard signs and warnings. Piles of shining black stones were heaped against each wall, glistening in the cold light.

  ‘It’s the tourmaline,’ whispered Nedly.

  Lil looked at the stones and then at a thick red pipeline that was connected to the front of the battery.

  ‘They’re powering EGON with this stuff, aren’t they?’ Her eyes gleamed electric blue. ‘So if we follow the pipeline, it should lead us right to its door.’

  ‘Do you think Abe discovered all this too?’ said Nedly.

  ‘Probably,’ said Lil.

  They followed the red cable on its path through the tents, stepping over wooden walkways that connected like extremely low bridges and hopscotching the smaller wires that hid in the grass, until she saw it disappear into a bell-shaped tent in the middle of the colony. ‘Pssst, Nedly,’ she whispered. ‘I think this is it.’