Ghostcatcher Read online

  Nedly stood, as unmoving as if he was carved of marble. His bony arms hung defeated at his side; he let his head drop down and then, very slowly, took a small step forward. Lil breathed out a sigh of relief; Yossarian’s eyebrows went up in delight. He grinned at Nedly, like a father welcoming home his prodigal son.

  Lil swivelled another few centimetres to her left. She was right alongside EGON now.

  ‘Good choice,’ Yossarian said, his eyes on Nedly as he shuffled closer. ‘Excellent choice. That’s right, just a bit nearer. EGON can take care of everything. I’ve already preprogrammed the formula.’ He sighed happily and gave himself a hug. ‘I knew you’d see it my way, in the end.’

  Now! thought Lil, and Nedly suddenly ran at EGON, like a nocked arrow against a bowstring he stretched the lines of green light as he put everything he had into reaching the metallic shell. Lil pushed up with her toes, rocking backwards until the chair was on two legs and then leant left and let the whole show fall to the side. She landed with a bumpf on the spongy canvas floor. The Projected Entrapment Matrix grew thin as it expanded at the point that Nedly was trying to break through, and as if it sensed the danger EGON let out a high metallic whine.

  Yossarian ducked, gave Nedly a look of bitter disappointment and roughly twisted one of EGON’s dials to the max. The grid snapped back into shape, repelling Nedly into the centre of the room with an agonising groan.

  ‘Now that was silly,’ Yossarian chastised him. ‘This equipment is very delicate. I hope you’re not having second thoughts. I’m so looking forward to us working together.’

  As Nedly struggled back onto his feet, he glanced over to the card table in the corner and saw what Yossarian had not yet seen. Lil had vanished. Nedly pulled himself up, until he was standing as tall as he could and took a deep breath.

  From somewhere across the grounds a sharp, familiar bark sounded.

  Yossarian couldn’t see the slight glow that had risen in Nedly’s skin, or the pulsing light that travelled towards his hands. He did notice the sharp increase in EM energy. ‘What’s this?’ He tapped the screen. ‘Where are you generating that energy from?’

  He tutted and pressed some more buttons. ‘Is it you …?’ The last word fell away as he stared at the place where Lil had been. He leapt to his feet and just had time to say ‘Where –?’ and then, with lightning speed, Margaret hurled herself through the tent flap and slid to a halt on the canvas floor.

  She cast a quick worried glance up at Nedly and then turned up her hackles full blast, growling at Yossarian and baring every one of her small while teeth.

  Yossarian peeled off an espadrille and tried to swat her away with it. ‘Lil!’ Nedly yelled. ‘Whatever you’re going to do, do it now!’

  Behind EGON Lil grabbed the thick red power cable and with all the strength she had in her almost dead hands, she braced her feet against the metallic shell and pulled.

  It didn’t budge.

  Lil heaved again, gritting her teeth as hard as she could, and yanked it. The cable held fast.

  A hulking bulge appeared in the silk wall of the tent. The bulge rolled sideways, grew a fist, which thrashed at the fabric, and then there was a tearing sound and the wall was rent apart with the edge of a pair of multi-use pliers.

  Abe stumbled through it, blinking in the green light. Lil nearly swallowed the gag. He looked like he had gone fifteen rounds with a shrubbery: he was covered in mud, his hat was gone and so was one shoe; he had lost the sleeves of his mac and his tie was swivelled round to hang over his shoulder. Lil had never been so pleased to see him.

  ‘Not so fast,’ Abe slurred slowly, swinging his fist wildly at the air and then choking as the binoculars hula-hooped round his neck by their strap. They landed with a hard thump on his back and he swung round to answer the blow with one of his own.

  Yossarian darted away from him, scowling. ‘How did you wake up? Stay away from me – this is a very delicate operation – the wrong button here and it’s goodnight, Deadly Nedly.’

  Abe had untangled the binoculars and was holding them by the strap. ‘I’ll give you the wrong button.’ He tried to grab for Yossarian’s shirt but he was too far away to reach it and he swiped thin air, blinking in confusion.

  ‘You’re leaving me with no choice,’ Yossarian insisted. ‘If I can’t have control over the Final Ghost, I’ll make sure no one can!’

  With a ‘Murrgghhh!’ Lil tugged on the powerline with everything she had.

  Yossarian reached for the switch. ‘We could have made a good team,’ he told the shadow of Nedly.

  ‘NOOO!’ yelled Abe, lurching for Yossarian but missing him by a good two metres. Momentum carried him stumbling behind EGON where he tried to hop to avoid Lil, got his foot caught on some kind of cable and went crashing to the floor.

  Yossarian snorted and flicked the switch.

  The green laser grid faltered and then it went out.

  Yossarian looked at EGON, dumbfounded, and flicked the switch again a couple of times. Nothing happened.

  Abe Mandrel knew a lucky break when he got one. He shook his head to clear it and whirled round to face Yossarian, swinging his binoculars like an Olympic hammer.

  ‘What’s going on –?’ Yossarian peered round the side of the machine to see Lil glaring triumphantly back at him, the unplugged cable in one hand, and then, with a whoosh, Nedly caught him with a powerful blow, a bolt of spectral energy that lifted and spun him right off the ground. Yossarian landed, still twirling, straight into the path of Abe’s binoculars. They poleaxed him right between the eyes. A surprised expression crossed his face and then he crumpled like a tissue-paper flower in the rain.

  In the silence that followed, Lil, Abe and Nedly all held their breath. Only Margaret’s panting could be heard above the rain. After a moment, when the threat of impending danger felt like it really had subsided, Abe dusted off the palm of his good hand on the leg of his muddy trousers, and held out his Swiss Army hand letter-opener to Lil, who used it to saw through the sash that bound her hands. She unwound it and spat out the peach cravat. Her mouth felt as dry as a stale bread roll.

  Nedly was slumped against EGON, looking shaken. ‘Are you OK?’ Lil asked him. ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘I’m OK. I think. Just a bit tuckered out.’ He smiled back at her bleakly.

  ‘Are you OK?’ she asked Abe as together they pulled the unconscious Yossarian to his feet, dragged him to the camp bed and folded him into a seated position. He was slumped forward but his neck hung back and his mouth was open.

  Abe sighed heavily and rubbed his collar. ‘I’ve been better. This chump tried to knock me out with some kind of potion; he stabbed me in the neck with a needle full of it as soon as I poked my head round the door.

  ‘I don’t know how long I was out, but not for as long as he hoped; that so-called scientist must have underestimated how much body fat I have.

  ‘I came to when Margaret stuck her wet nose in my eyes.’ He paused to give Margaret’s head fur a grateful rub and noticed that his mac was missing its sleeves. ‘I suppose I must have stumbled around a bit trying to find you.

  ‘Now, we don’t have time for any more heroics tonight,’ he growled. ‘The rest of Ghostcatcher could be back at any minute. Nedly,’ he addressed a random spot in the tent. ‘You better split now, get a head start before they turn the fence back on.’

  ‘But what about EGON?’ Nedly protested. ‘Shouldn’t I try to –’

  ‘Don’t sweat it,’ said Lil. ‘We’ll find another way. Just beat it for now, get away from here.’

  He hesitated for a moment then gave her a quick smile and a nod, backed towards the flap and, with Margaret at his side, he ran.

  Abe surveyed the tent. ‘OK, grab your bag. This doesn’t look good for us.’ He nodded at Yossarian. ‘We need to get some distance between us and the crime scene.’ He held out his hand.

  Lil didn’t take it. ‘Abe, we have to take EGON out now; this may be our only chance to stop him. Otherwise
this was all for nothing. We’ll never get back in again.’

  ‘You go.’ Abe dropped his chin. ‘I’ll take care of EGON.’

  Lil shook her head. ‘We’ll do it together.’

  They both stood staring at the impenetrable metallic shell. Lil flexed her fingers into a fist, picked up one of the folding chairs and broke it over EGON with a clang that reverberated through her teeth.

  Abe winced at the sound. ‘They’ll hear us.’

  Lil gave EGON a hard stare and shrugged. ‘Let them come. If they’re here with us, then they’re not chasing Nedly.’

  Abe nodded. ‘All right, tough guy.’ He squared up to EGON. ‘Let’s see what you’ve got.’ He heaved up the operator chair left-handed and hurled it like a shotput into EGON’s screen. A thin white crack appeared across the black surface. Abe gave Lil a grim smile. ‘A start, but this is going to take some time.’

  Lil rolled up her sleeves, Abe took off what was left of his coat and they got to work. After a few minutes they were battering him in perfect harmony, alternating blows like two woodcutters trying to take down a giant tree.

  They laboured until every piece of furniture in the tent, except for the camp bed with Yossarian on it, had been smashed to pieces – but EGON had barely a mark.

  Lil snatched up Gallows’ hardback tome and threw it angrily at EGON’s control panel. It simply bounced off. ‘There must be a way to destroy it!’ she yelled in frustration.

  ‘There is,’ replied a calm voice.

  Magdalena Virgil stood in the mouth of the tent, frowning darkly.

  ‘Professor Virgil –’ Lil began, her Cryptic Eyebrow raised. ‘We meet again.’

  Virgil surveyed the mess with thinly pursed lips. ‘I’m sure there’s a perfectly good explanation as to why you’re here.’

  Abe nodded in agreement. His eyes searched the tent. There was a good explanation, but where had he left it?

  ‘You two have been popping up all over the place. So I shouldn’t really be surprised to find you here trying to destroy a piece of pioneering scientific equipment, behind a state-of-the-art security fence, in a top-secret research facility.’

  She strode over to Yossarian, whose head still looked skyward, his mouth catching flies, prised apart his eyelids and then turned back to Lil. ‘What happened to him?’

  Lil offered up a grim smile and kept schtum.

  ‘Let me take a guess. He was trying to stop you.’

  It was one interpretation.

  ‘Why?’ she asked Abe.

  It was Lil who answered. ‘Because we don’t want you to catch the Final Ghost, because he’s got as much right to live in this city as any of us do.’ She paused. ‘But you know that, right? You know all about him.’

  ‘No,’ Virgil began slowly. ‘I can’t say we’ve –’ She faltered. ‘Look, Ghostcatcher has been contracted and commissioned by Acting Mayor Gordian to contain and dispose of the Final Ghost. Whatever and whoever that is, that’s our job.’

  Lil folded her arms. ‘You don’t always have to do what you’re told. Not if you know it’s wrong.’

  ‘It’s not always easy to tell what’s right –’

  ‘But sometimes it is.’ Lil gave her the Squint. ‘Everything you’ve seen over the last few weeks – do you really think the ghost is a threat? You have all the evidence, make a decision on the facts; you’re a scientist, aren’t you?’

  Abe set his jaw and conjured up some of the old steel into his bleary eyes. ‘But know this, if you do decide to continue to hunt this kid out of the city, even after all he’s done to try to save it, you’ll have to go through me. If I have to spend the rest of my life standing in your way, that’s where I’ll be.’

  Lil planted herself beside him. ‘That goes for me too.’

  Virgil blew out her cheeks and sighed. There was a long moment of silence, and then she nodded as if to herself. Holding up one hand to show she meant no harm she plugged EGON in and flipped the switch. She laid her hand on the small metal circle that was cut into the surface and pushed it gently. A drawer popped out. Inside was a cartridge wrapped in circuitry.

  ‘This is EGON’s brain. It’s where it stores the information on what the city looks like, what a ghost is and the energy levels that suggest electromagnetic activity, or hauntings. It took us weeks to calibrate it. If this was destroyed EGON would be useless, for a while at least.’

  Lil reached out for it but Virgil didn’t let go.

  ‘If you’re wrong, people could die. That ghost has a lot of power.’

  Lil held on tightly. ‘With all the power he has he’s only ever used it for good. Could you say the same thing?’

  Virgil flinched. ‘I’m a scientist. I don’t get involved in politics.’

  ‘You’re already involved,’ Lil told her. ‘We all are.’

  Virgil’s gaze softened; she almost smiled. She let go of the cartridge. ‘You must have a lot of faith in him.’

  ‘We’re friends,’ Lil told her. ‘We have a lot of faith in each other.’

  Abe nudged Lil with his elbow. ‘I think that’s what he might need right now, a friend. Leave this with me, kid. I’ll take it from here. You go.’ He swung his tie back straight, shuffled the knot towards his collar and tried to look reliable. He added gruffly, ‘I won’t let you down.’

  Lil pressed the cartridge firmly into Abe’s multi-purpose pliers and then took hold of his other hand and held on for a moment. ‘I know.’

  Lil made it to the phone box, drenched in sweat and mizzle. Minnie, Babyface and Margaret were in there waiting. Minnie opened the door and Lil bundled in, Babyface squashed himself into the corner to make room.

  Minnie stopped her gum-chewing to say: ‘You made it!’ She squinted back down the lane. ‘Where’s Abe?’

  Lil bent down to rub Margaret’s head. ‘He’s still there, talking things through with Ghostcatcher.’

  Babyface frowned. ‘Does he need a rescue?’

  Lil smiled distractedly at him. ‘Not this time. Abe can handle it.’

  The little boy looked over the almost non-existent space around Lil. ‘Where’s Nedly? Is he safe? Is he here?’

  ‘No,’ said Lil. ‘I mean, yes, he’s safe, for now.’ She looked out across the black fields towards the city. ‘But I don’t know where he is, so I’m going to find him.’

  Chapter 23

  This Bitter Earth

  Even in the very early hours of morning, downtown Peligan City did not sleep. The centre was still a circus of gold casino buildings, glittering billboard advertisements and cascading electronic tunes. Taxis crawled along bumper to bumper, horns blaring in a never-ending chain of headlights.

  It was a storm of colour and noise and Lil was in the eye of it. Small but bright in her signature yellow rain mac she stood alone beneath the skyscrapers that stretched up beyond the lights like bare trees in a dark and impenetrable forest.

  Lil was thinking hard. She could call Nedly to her – she had done it before, she realised, without meaning to. She had called him all the way back from wherever Grip had taken him; he had followed her voice like the sound of bells. Just a few words and he would be there. Maybe she wouldn’t even have to say them; maybe she could just think them?

  But that would be against his will and now she knew better. She was going to find him the hard way, whatever it took. As EGON had been dismantled – for now at least – she was the only person who could.

  Squinting through the rain she tried to imagine where he would run to. It was hard to be alone in Peligan City, where there were people on every corner, under every bridge and behind every door. Where could you go to get some space?

  Above her one building dominated the sky, stretching up like a glass-fronted behemoth; it darkly reflected the dazzle of the casinos that surrounded it. Lil let her gaze rise over its slippery carapace until she was looking skyward and a fat drop of rain hit her in the eye.

  On the rooftop of City Hall, Nedly sat on the edge of a plinth upon which stood a s
tone statue of a huge winged lion with massive paws and a mane frozen in mid-flow. Its enormous stone face was tilted down to look out across the city.

  From far away he heard the puff and shunt of a train in the distance. It sounded just like breath or, more exactly, like someone out of breath. The sound grew louder and closer until it felt like it was right behind him. Slowly Nedly turned round and a sweaty figure in a yellow mac flumped down at his side.

  His jaw dropped open. ‘How did you get up here?’

  Lil held a finger up while she fought to regain her breath, and then wheezed, ‘It was tough. I’ve been climbing for almost an hour. I didn’t think I was going to make it along that ledge.’

  ‘What! You could have fallen off!’ Nedly’s eyes were the size of saucers.

  ‘I’m kidding. I took the fire-escape stairs – all of them,’ she added grimly.

  Nedly hung his head. ‘I just wanted to be on my own for a bit.’

  ‘I know. I just wanted to pop up for a minute and let you know I was about, if you changed your mind about being on your own, I mean.’

  He gave her a small smile.

  Huddled under the chest of the stone lion they watched the rain pour down, falling past them like dashes, blurring the lines of the buildings below. Lil put up her hood and hooked one arm round the lion’s sturdy leg so she could lean forward and look over the city.

  From so high above you couldn’t see the rubbish or the dirt; even the air smelt cleaner. Peligan City looked like a cluster of man-made stalagmites, a crystal garden of black shapes and scattered jewels with car headlights roving like fireflies and the Kowpye River cutting through it all like a satin ribbon.