MORNING.
First came breakfast, a hurried breakfast with Mum in the kitchen. Molly managed to hide the nervous shaking that had afflicted her since last night’s ghoul visitation. Mum was too preoccupied to notice Molly’s quivering; she sat sorting through a pile of receipts and old bank statements while spooning cornflakes into her mouth.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you – I’m volunteering for Mrs de Ville’s street-cleaning project,” said Molly, trying to keep the wobbles from her voice as she headed to the sink, where she began to scrub her bowl and spoon. “It starts this afternoon.”
Mum looked up. “Really? Good for you.”
Molly rinsed the suds from her bowl with jittery fingers and put it on the drying rack. “I’m just going out for a bit to get some air and read my book. Sunday morning stuff.”
She felt guilty for not telling Mum the truth about her plans. But Mum, as it happened, was hardly listening anyway. “Stay safe,” she muttered, frowning at her receipts. “Don’t daydream when crossing roads.”
“I won’t.”
“Good,” said Mum. “I worry.”
Outside, walking through Howlfair New Cemetery, Molly found the gravestone behind which she’d been accosted. But something was amiss. The red lettering was no longer there. There was no sign that a twelve-year-old girl had thrashed around on the soil while a demonic fiend had tormented her. No footprints. And no indication that a windstorm had blown through the cemetery.
Molly frowned. She had expected to find at least some trace of last night’s ghastliness.
She touched the gravestone – wincing at the memory of the ghoul – then rose and headed to Wetherill’s Weaponry Store.
The shop wasn’t open, it being a Sunday, but beyond the foggy window with its displays of old monster-slaying weapons, the lumbering shape of Mr Wetherill shifted. He lived above the shop and spent his Sundays sitting behind his counter, reading. Molly tapped on the door. Wetherill opened it with a frown, his long hair a state, his sideburns frizzy. He wiped his gold-tinted spectacles on his sleeve, put them back on and said in his gruff, untested morning voice: “It’s Sunday. Shop’s shut. Come back tomorrow.”
“I’m not here to shop,” blurted Molly, wedging the door with her foot. “Unless you’ve got any Lassiter’s Old Plague-Repellent Peppermint Cream Fudge, in which case I’ll take as much as I can buy with…” – she rummaged in her pocket – “one pound twenty-three. But mainly I’m here because I need to know the truth about ghouls.”
Wetherill scratched his neck. “The truth—”
Molly squeezed past the massive man, into the shop. “About ghouls, Mr Wetherill. I need to know if they’re real, how to kill them, and whether you have any proper weapons. I’m guessing something silver is best…”
“Ms Thompson…”
Unconsciously Molly plucked a plastic pistol from a shelf and pointed it at Mr Wetherill while she spoke. Mr Wetherill raised his hands, blushed, and lowered them. Molly babbled on, waving the pistol with great drama. “And don’t give me any baloney about not having real weapons because they’re illegal and this is a souvenir shop and blah, blah, blah. Everyone knows you’re one of the few people in this town who believes that the old stories about monsters are true. Everyone reckons you’ve got real weapons stashed somewhere in case the monsters ever return.”
Wetherill wiped his forehead and stood rubbing one mutton-chop sideburn with a shovel-like hand. “Everyone thinks all that about me?”
“Yes,” said Molly. “But nobody dares ask you about it, because you’re so huge and scary.”
Wetherill snorted. “If everyone’s so scared of me, why are you in here, Molly Thompson, threatening me with a plastic pistol?”
She coughed and put the gun back on the shelf.
“Last night a shape-shifting ghoul lured me into Howlfair New Cemetery.”
Wetherill made a face. “You what?”
“I know – it’s hard to believe, isn’t it?” said Molly. “But it’s true nonetheless. I’m almost certain that Benton Furlock set it on me. He must’ve set ghouls on Mrs Fullsway, too. Furlock did some kind of black magic that put me under his control, and he made me shimmy down a drainpipe. And that’s not all! There was a gravestone and—”
“Whoa there, girl,” said Wetherill, waving his hands. “Slow down. Did you say Benton Furlock?”
“That’s right! His posters say he wants to make Howlfair scary again, but he isn’t just talking about tourist attractions – he’s talking about terrorizing our town with real monsters! He’s got actual ghouls working for him, and they’ve been frightening people to death… He might even have threatened my dad with ghouls, and that’s why Dad looked so scared before he died…”
Wetherill shook his head. “Molly, your father had no enemies whatsoever in this town – and he was on perfectly civil terms with Benton Furlock.”
Molly flapped. “Well, something fishy’s going on around here, and I’m going to prove it.”
“You’re going to prove that Benton Furlock – a local do-gooder who’s trying to become mayor – is secretly an evil magician of some sort?”
“Yes!”
Wetherill spluttered dismissively. “It’s not much of a secret if he’d risk setting a ghoul on a twelve-year-old girl right outside the Excelsior Guesthouse.”
“He didn’t think I’d dare tell anyone!”
Suddenly Wetherill laughed, which Molly found extremely annoying. “You’re Molly Thompson! Holy mackerel, girl, everything you ever discover gets broadcast to the whole town.”
“Hey, listen to me, Mr Wetherill—”
“No – listen to me, young lady.” The shopkeeper frowned, stepping forward so that Molly was entirely in his shadow. “You are aware that Mr Furlock runs the Ghoul Tour at Loonchance Manor, and that he hires actors to play the ghouls?”
“’Course I am.”
“And is it not possible that the creature you met last night was an actor who’d been out drinking after his shift ended?”
“No, it is not possible, actually! The ghoul turned into my friend Lowry, and it could float, and then it flew away, and—”
“And if we went to the graveyard this minute, you could show me traces of all this supernatural ghoul activity?”
“’Course not! Ghouls don’t leave a trace! Why do you think Furlock’s using them to execute his evil plan?”
“What evil plan? To become mayor?”
“No – to raise monsters and—”
“So you’re alleging that Furlock has raised some monsters to help execute his evil plan to raise some monsters? And even though his magic monster-raising skills are a secret, he’s using them to attack twelve-year-old blabbermouths who are guaranteed to run straight into town and start talking about him? And he’s doing all this right before the election?”
“I saw it with my own eyes, Mr Wetherill!”
Mr Wetherill held up his hands. “Ms Thompson, what you described to me was obviously a dream. A very bad dream. Accompanied by sleepwalking.”
Gasping with frustration, Molly backed into a display of amulets. “I’ve never sleepwalked in my life.”
Advancing, Wetherill reached out and took something from Molly’s hair. “Tangletree spores. Couple of days old. Don’t you ever wash this curly mop?”
Molly blushed. “Of course! Not every day, ’cause it’s frizzy and I’d turn into a dandelion, but—”
“Well, you should definitely consider washing it after you go climbing in tangletrees. Some folks can have a terrible allergic reaction to the spores. They make you dizzy. The poison can linger in your system. The effects get progressively worse. Vertigo. Fevers. Blackouts. Hallucinations.”
Molly thought about how Gabriel had kept sniffing her hair. “But I haven’t been climbing any trees! I never climb trees! I…”
And then she remembered the tree she’d fallen through while fleeing Furlock’s dog. The spores she’d inhaled. Cripes – could Wetherill be right?
“Listen, Mr Wetherill, Benton Furlock is up to something evil. He came to the Excelsior and threatened me after he caught me hanging around the orphanage.”
“Threatened you specifically with ghouls?” said Wetherill, raising a brow.
“Well, no, but… Where are you going?”
Sighing, Wetherill trudged across the shop to the decommissioned butcher’s cold-cabinets that contained sweets. “Time for a mug of tea and a couple of slabs of peppermint cream fudge. I’m going to teach you something about ghouls, Molly Thompson. And something about our town.”