I just have time to think two thoughts:
1. Woo, I’m weightless! I’ve always wanted to know what that feels like. :-)
2. Shame I’ll be dead in, like, one second flat though. And I do mean flat. :-O
Then I’m tumbling to the floor of the lift again in a pile of limbs, Venn’s beard, Ned’s camera, Stacey’s mum, and Tim. There is a terrible, screaming sound all around, and the lift is juddering, slowing all the time. At about the point I expected to be smashed into atoms, the lift rattles to a halt. It gives a final shake and then smacks the ground with a rude, bone-jarring crash.
But we’re still alive.
‘What on earth happened?’ Venn says, staggering to his feet.
‘Emergency braking.’ Tim’s muffled voice comes up from somewhere beneath Ned. ‘The lift can’t just fall… cof.’
‘Did you…?’ Venn turns to Ned.
‘Yes, sir,’ says Ned, getting to his feet and turning the camera back onto Venn as if nearly falling to your death in a runaway lift is all part of a day’s work. ‘Camera’s still rolling.’
The lift doors slide open, and we stagger out. My legs feel like they’re made of marshmallow. Si rises up through the carpet at my feet in a cloud of hazy ectoplasm, his eyes still ratting round their sockets. I guess the force of the fall sent him ghosting down through the floors below. And that reminds me we’re only half way down the Shard right now – at the point where we had to change lifts going up.
‘Stacey!’
Stacey’s mum begins to wail. She’s still in the lift, jabbing at all the buttons.
‘Why won’t it go? I’ve got to go back for Stacey!’
‘It’s no good,’ Tim explains. ‘This lift is out of action now.’
‘But my Stacey is all alone!’
I glance at Si and he raises an eyebrow in reply. Stacey may be a lot of things right now, but one thing she is not is alone. The real question is: who, or what, is the ‘pretty lady’?
‘My dear woman,’ says Venn, placing his hand on Stacey’s mum’s shoulder, and motioning Ned to zoom in close. ‘I swear to you by all that is holy, in this world and the next, that I will find your daughter.’
Stacey’s mum stops hammering on the dead panel of the lift and turns a look of desperate hope on to Venn Specter.
‘Bring her to me! Please, just… bring her back safe.’ Then she bursts into sobs and buries her face in Venn’s bottle-green polo neck sweater. Venn holds her close and turns to the camera like a hero.
‘I promise you,’ he declares. ‘I will bring Stacey home.’
Televisual gold.
I want to be sick.
Tim leads Stacey’s mum – who is blowing trumpet sounds into a fistful of paper towels – to the downward lift. For a moment it looks like he’s going to try and make us join them, but in the end he just shakes his head and looks relieved when the doors close. The lift descends to safety.
I’m just straightening the lapels of my coat, when I notice that Venn is eyeing me up. He turns to Ned and makes a throat-cutting ‘time out’ gesture. Ned lowers the camera, the red light winking out.
‘You seem remarkably calm, kid, given what just happened up there,’ Venn says to me, his huge forehead furrowing.
I shrug. Well, I’ve been through worse, I guess.
‘But I wonder what did happen,’ he goes on. ‘Some kind of freak wind or something. There’s always a rational explanation. Not that I tell my viewers that, of course.’
I raise my eyebrows. He’s being very chummy all of a sudden.
‘You don’t actually believe in ghosts, do you?’ I say.
Venn chuckles. ‘Oh, right, and you do, I suppose? Of course there’s no such thing as ghosts. Only an idiot would believe in that old clap-trap.’
Clap-trap?
‘What if I could prove to you that ghosts exists?’ I say, glancing at Si. ‘What if I showed you a ghost? What would you say then?’
Venn laughs. Darkly. The chumminess vanishes completely as he steps closer.
‘Say? I wouldn’t say anything, boy. I’d be too busy filming it and sticking it up on YouTube with my name in big letters. Why should I waste my time saying anything to a nobody like you? You just don’t get it, do you, kid? Whether ghosts exist or not, I’ll still come out the winner. And do you know why?’
‘Er…’
Venn leans down over me. He’s eaten garlic recently.
‘Because I’m famous.’
Oh.
‘Whereas you…’ He wrinkles his nose in mock disgust. ‘You’re just… ordinary.’
‘If I’m so ordinary,’ I say, annoyed that this has all got so personal all of a sudden, ‘how did I know about the hamster?’
Venn shrugs.
‘Yes, that. Well, maybe you really did just get lucky. Frankly, kid, I’m disappointed. You know, for a moment down there I thought maybe you had seen something. But it turns out you’re no more interesting than any of the other dumb schmucks who watch my show. And now I’ve got you away from the crowd, you can just slink back to Nowheresville where you came from, and keep your mouth shut.’
‘But…’ I hold up my finger.
‘Leave it, kid,’ he says, turning his back on me. ‘You’ve had your fifteen minutes of fame. Now it’s time for the professionals to get busy. You can take the lift back down.’
And with this, Ned raises the camera again, and Venn goes on with the show.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, as you have seen, exciting and terrible events have taken place at the Shard. We have captured on film proof that a ghostly presence has taken control of the building. Not only that, it has seized an innocent little girl! But I am Venn Specter, and I am not so easily deterred. I will continue alone from here, armed with my jade ring and my long years of experience. I will uncover the secret at the heart of this affair, and save poor little Stacey from her terrible fate. So follow me, dear viewers, as I, Venn Specter, investigate further.’
And with a flourish, he turns on his heel and vanishes around a corner, Ned jogging along behind him.
‘A most unpleasant individual.’ Si snorts. ‘Would you like me to materialise in a cloud of dust motes and terrify him to the foundations of his soul?’
‘Nah,’ I say. ‘At least, not yet. But I’m not letting him get away from me that easily.’
I stroll off after Venn. But when I turn the corner, I stop when I see what’s there.
Which is precisely nothing.
Venn and Ned have gone. It’s like they’ve vanished into thin air.
‘What trickery is this?’ demands Si, at my side.
We turn around, staring at the blank walls and carpet of the corridor. Ahead there is nothing but the open door of the empty out-of-order lift.
‘There must be another door here?’ I say, tapping at various wall panels at random.
‘But Daniel, how does Venn Specter know of secret doors?’
‘He’s got a whole film crew behind him, remember? He’s probably studied plans of the building, and knows where all the emergency exits are. But if he thinks he can escape me, he’s mistaken. I’ve got something he hasn’t.’
‘Oh, and what, pray, is that?’
‘You, Si, you great numpty!’ I roll my eyes. ‘Now stop fiddling with your pony tail and get ghosting through these walls. We’ve got to find that hidden door.’
He does so, pushing his spectral head through the wall panels one by one, until he emerges with a puff of ectoplasm and a triumphant cry.
‘There are stairs behind this panel,’ he declares. ‘You were right. There is a secret door.’
I run my fingers around the panel, and tap on it. Nothing much happens, and there’s no sign that it can open at all, not even any visible hinges.
‘You know, Si, despite everything, I think things have just turned out pretty good for us.’
‘I admire your optimism.’ Si scowls at me. ‘But we have been attacked by something we cannot identify, you have almost died falling down the lift shaft, and that poor Stacey child is in the clutches of a power unlike any we have encountered before. I hardly see…’
Si trails off when he sees me lean on the panel. When my hand presses it in just the right place, there’s a click and the panel swings open.
In the flickering neon beyond we see the stairs.
‘I know all that, Si,’ I say. ‘But at the same time, we’ve just got exactly what we wanted all along.’
He looks confused.
‘We’re in the Shard, aren’t we? All alone. With no security guards, and no more cameras. And that’s just how I like it.’
‘Indeed we are.’ Si smiles his ghastliest smile and bows his frilliest bow. He flourishes his hand towards the open door. ‘Then after you, Master Dyer.’
I set my purple specs, and adjust my lapels. It’s time to do what I do best. It’s time to get down to business.
I stroll through the door.