The Klaxon wasn’t delivered that morning, and neither was the flyer for the Black Pug Eatery.
Standing on the front-door mat Lil rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand and flicked through the pile of junk mail once again.
Nedly stared anxiously at the papers. ‘Is it there?’
Lil gave him a tired look. ‘No, it hasn’t materialised since I last looked in this same pile a minute ago.’ She unleashed a massive yawn. ‘Sorry! I pulled an all-nighter to get my report typed up.’ She tapped her rucksack happily. ‘All ready for delivery.’ The report was addressed to PO Box 777, Peligan City, where all submissions and tip-offs to the Klaxon newsdesk were sent. Although no such post office box really exisited; Lil had checked.
Nedly wasn’t comforted. ‘If this morning’s edition hasn’t come, maybe something is wrong at the Klaxon HQ? Maybe something has happened!’ He gasped. ‘Did you remember to put the index file boxes back in the reading room?’
Lil gritted her teeth. ‘No, I forgot, but it can’t be that. It’s probably just been delivered to the wrong house.’ They exchanged a look of dread. Suddenly feeling more awake Lil searched through the junk mail again, more thoroughly and with a hint of panic. ‘Maybe there’s been a bust?’ Her eyes widened. ‘Do you think we were followed there? I mean, I’m usually so careful, but I was really focused on getting the background on the spooks for my report – maybe I wasn’t careful enough?
‘We should get to the library, see if something is going down. Maybe we can get a lift.’ She yelled up the stairs: ‘Mum? Mum? MUM?’ But Naomi wasn’t there.
The bus into town didn’t show up either. Lil and Nedly waited on the corner for thirty minutes and then started walking. The snow on the streets was so thick that it looked like a puffy reflection of the sky, the whiteness only broken up by the familiar grey of the buildings in between. Lil trudged doggedly onwards, dreading what they would find at the library but determined to see it anyway.
It wasn’t until they reached the small row of shops a couple of blocks away that Lil realised they hadn’t seen another person the whole morning. The compacted snow on the previously well-trodden paths was now mysteriously empty. She stopped and looked around. A face briefly appeared at a window only to be replaced by the swing of a curtain. Shop signs were unanimously turned to ‘closed’.
And then suddenly there was a lot of people. A crowd was gathered on the corner of Spooner Row, all looking dumbstruck and shaking their heads. Around them it looked like there had been a paper explosion: reams of newsprint bleeding grey ink were plastered onto windows and lamp posts; pages cartwheeled in the wind and became lodged in the snow.
Outside the newsagents a dispenser hung open, its glass-and-metal jaw dropping aghast, the lock jemmied off. Lil ran over to it and reached inside; a few papers remained, but it wasn’t the advert-padded Herald. This paper was smaller and thinner, a folded news pamphlet. Lil knew before she laid her hands on it that it was the Klaxon. For the first time in their history, they had done a bumper print run – a big story, hot off the press. Too important to just reach their handful of subscribers, this was a story they thought everyone should know and they had gone all out to tell them.
The headline yelled a single bold word into the silence.
HAUNTED?
An exposé by Marsha Quake
For weeks a dark cloud has hung over Peligan City. This is not the rain cloud we’re so familiar with. This is a cloud of menace and fear. Ordinary citizens have been kept in the dark while the city is held in the grip of a terrible foe. Within these pages we lay out the evidence highlighting the extent of the cover-up and an expert opinion from the man who helped us break the story, paranormal investigator Irving Starkey.
‘What?’ Lil looked up at Nedly, confused, her cheeks puffed out with incredulity.
Winter always hits Peligan City hard, but the Klaxon has been handed startling information that this time it’s not the snow that’s killing off our citizens, but something much more sinister.
Earlier this week the Herald boasted that homelessness in Peligan City was on the decline. For once they were right: there are fewer people on the streets now than there were a month ago. But the reason for the downturn? Those people are now all dead. The winter death toll in Peligan City has more than octupled lately, according to sources in the Peligan City Police Department, but what is the cause?
The official explanation is exposure, but we have been given access to documents in a body of evidence known as the ‘Fright File’, which contains the post-mortem reports for at least twenty deaths over the last month. The victims in the file were all ascertained to have died not from exposure but from sudden heart failure, and in all cases the victims’ hair had turned white and their expressions were frozen in terror.
One of the deaths has even been recorded on film. Leaked CCTV footage provides the most compelling evidence yet. The recording is from the multi-storey car park on the night of Governor Minos’s murder earlier this week. The footage is low quality but it captures the moment when Minos’s driver, Chris Manchurian, dies – you can’t see what he is seeing but you can see the effect it has on him. His hair literally turns white as he opens his mouth to scream – and then he freezes. Within seconds Manchurian is stone dead.
The question on everyone’s lips down at Klaxon HQ is: what did Manchurian see? What, or who, is stalking the streets of the city, frightening people to death?
Irving Starkey believes he knows. His theory is that Peligan City is under siege from dangerous spectres, ghosts that are invisible to the naked eye but are able to walk through walls, and terrify the life out of people.
There was an interview with Starkey on the next page, complete with a photograph of the man himself, looking into the middle distance in his hooded poncho, like a wacky revolutionary leader.
Does Starkey’s theory hold any weight? Have the dead risen from the grave to plague the living? It’s hard to swallow but the facts remain as follows:
There was a list of the recent deaths, their locations and headlines from the post-mortem reports, and what investigations, if any, had been carried out so far. It was a comprehensive piece with lots of convincing facts and figures that neither Lil nor Nedly read. They didn’t need to.
Lil felt the pavement tilt slightly below her feet. It was the story she thought could never be printed, the one that no one would have believed, here in black and white.
Her fingers numbed with cold, she started reading the editorial comment:
If Starkey’s theory is true, it may shed light on another mystery of our times: the increasing number of crimes perpetrated where no forensic evidence or witnesses of any kind have been found – crimes that for all intents and purposes look like murder by an invisible killer. More on this in our next edition.
If the city really is being plagued by spectres two questions remain: what do they want, and how can we stop them?
There are no answers at City Hall. Acting Mayor Gordian has declined to comment.
Lil and Nedly stood shoulder to shoulder as they read. Neither one spoke but when they had finished they turned slowly, like mirror images, to face each other, their eyes wide.
Lil raised the Klaxon to face height and under the cover of the small newsprint screen she hissed to Nedly, ‘They broke the story, the biggest one there’s ever been. I had that story and I sat on it and now Quake has the scoop.’
Nedly peered round the paper and shivered. ‘They know, all these people know the truth, about the ghosts. Look at their faces.’
Lil was too busy fuming. ‘At least it explains what happened to the Fright File. Monbatsu was right: it was stolen.’ She grimaced. ‘I bet that’s what Weasel handed Starkey at the Paranormal Society Meeting. The proof that his crackpot theory is true.’
She screwed up the article and kicked it at a bin. It missed and she had to go and retrieve it and drop it in properly. ‘I can’t believe I didn’t have the guts to go for the scoop earlier. I knew more about this story than anyone. It was my chance and I blew it.’ She kicked at a pile of snow, stubbing her toe on whatever hard metal object it had gathered around. ‘Ow!’ she whined painfully, and hung her head down, muttering, ‘I just can’t believe it!’
‘I don’t believe it either!’ The sudden interruption of a passing woman in a thick knitted bobble hat and muffler made Lil jump. ‘It’s put the wind up everyone. I mean, ghosts!’ She grinned incredulously. ‘Whatever will they say next?’ Then she looked down the road as if she felt something, a whisper on the back of her neck, the raising of goose pimples deep inside her wool coat, and the smile dropped from her face. She left them without a word.
Nedly looked after her in dismay. ‘I gave that lady the creeps.’
‘No you didn’t,’ Lil snorted. ‘She gave them to herself. Come on, let’s see what they’re up to.’
A knot of people had gathered on the roadside. They were watching a shop window full of TVs broadcasting a live newsfeed from City Hall. Nedly shook his head. ‘You go. I’m just making things worse.’
‘Get over yourself – you’re not that scary.’ She gave him a reassuring smile. ‘Come on!’
The crowd parted as Lil and Nedly drew near. People clutched their coats closer and looked fearfully at each other and then one by one they peeled away, leaving the two children standing alone.
Nedly frowned at Lil and she returned it with a helpless shrug. He was right – the atmosphere was thick with fear; a small scare caused a ripple, the ripple became a wave and soon the air around Peligan City was churning with it. A creak on the stair, a whisper of cold breath, and the ghostly presence of an unassuming eleven-year-old boy.
Acting Mayor Pam Gordian’s muffled voice could just be heard behind the glass, telling people that an irresponsible and illegal news pamphlet had been spreading stories and had caused a civil panic. She advised the public not to be alarmed, and maintained that City Hall had everything in hand.
‘Yeah right, they do!’ Lil took out a pencil and started twiddling it agitatedly. ‘I don’t get it. These ghosts have been haunting Peligan City for weeks – why are people only acting like this now?
‘They probably thought it was all in their heads before, but here it is in black and white. They’re being terrorised by invisible forces and no one knows how to stop them.’
Lil brightened. ‘We do.’ She tapped her pencil on the side of her nose with confidence. ‘Come on, let’s go to the library and have this out. This is all on Quake. She went to press without all the facts. We have to put them straight. If they knew one of the ghosts was on their side, then they wouldn’t be so afraid.’ She set off at a pace, crushing the snow underfoot.
Nedly called after her. ‘I don’t think this is the right time!’
Lil skidded to a halt as though a lightning bolt had struck her path, and whipped round. ‘What? You’re always saying that you want people to know about you.’
‘I did, but now I think I’d rather no one knew what I am.’
‘What you are?’ She walked back towards him. ‘Why are you talking like that? You’re a ghost too, but so what? You’re a good person, you’re brave and you save people – Abe, me, you even tried to save Leonard Owl, and you beat Mr Grip. Most people would have run a mile but you didn’t.’
Nedly looked away.
‘The Klaxon only has half the story. Come on, it’s up to us to put it right.’
‘Can’t we just go back home?
‘You’ve got as much right to be in this city as anyone.’
Nedly bent over like he had a stomach ache. ‘I just want to go home. I don’t want to scare anyone else.’
Lil locked him eye to eye. ‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself; we’ve got work to do. Now, I’m going to knock on a locked door, and I’m not going away until somebody opens it.’