“You could’ve just told me you didn’t want to wear that shirt,” Oscar’s mum said. “It wasn’t cheap, you know.”
“I’m telling you the truth, Mum! The…the…” Oscar flailed an arm at Mr. Jenkinson. “Everything attacked when I was putting it on! I had to rip it off. It was this poltergeist! He had a hat, and I think he was controlling the mist!”
It was bad enough that everything was back to normal. Mr. Jenkinson was lying on the slab with his hands neatly folded over his chest, like there had never been a magical mist that seeped out of him. Even his makeup hadn’t smudged—although Oscar was pretty sure his hair used to be parted on the other side.
All the other objects in the room had returned to where they were meant to be, as if they hadn’t tried to murder Oscar.
He wasn’t that sure, though. In fact, Oscar was worried he was losing his mind. He glared at the hose, trying to figure out how it came alive. He almost wanted it to rise again just to prove he wasn’t lying.
“Oh, Oscar…,” she sighed, chucking scraps of shirt in the bin. “Come on….Let’s go to the kitchen. Have a cup of tea. You’ll feel better.”
His mum’s solution to every crisis was tea. Oscar suspected that if a crazed man-eating lion charged her, her first thought would be to ask if it wanted one lump of sugar or two. She took four this time, which meant she probably thought the apocalypse was coming.
“What are people going to say, Osk? Running about town like a naked maniac! You looked completely crazy. That gossipy butcher will have a nice story to tell, and you can be sure that he’ll tell everyone.”
“People aren’t interested in me, Mum.”
“It matters, Osk. Who’s going to bring their dead granny here if they think we’re the sort of people who buy sausages half-naked! Undertaking is the most serious business there is.”
“I’m sorry,” Oscar said.
“No! I’m sorry. It’s not right for a boy to spend all summer with dead people. Especially if he’s…” His mum stopped herself. She took a deep glug of tea.
“If he’s what?” Oscar said.
“I was…I was just going to say…” She sipped her tea again. She didn’t want to meet his eye.
“Let me guess. You wanted to say ‘especially if he’s already odd.’ ”
His mum didn’t look up.
“Why don’t you just say it? Maybe I am. But so what? I can’t change, Mum.”
Mrs. Grimstone smiled sadly. “I don’t want you to change, Osk. You know I didn’t mean that. It’s just after the accident the doctors said I had to watch out for signs. It was an awful bump you took.”
“But, Mum! I’M. NOT. SEEING. THINGS!”
Oscar had never shouted at his mum like that. His mom’s knuckles went white as she gripped her cup in front of her, like a shield. Then she spoke quietly and fast. “Love, I think you should go and see a doctor. A proper one. They’ll help you—and it’ll get you out of the house….”
Oscar hadn’t drunk a sip of his tea, but he stormed up to his bedroom.
It was almost midnight before Oscar calmed down. He hadn’t left his room and had missed dinner, even though he was hungry and the sausages smelled delicious. He lay in his bed staring into the dark.
His mum thought he was going crazy.
There was nothing wrong with him. His head was fine. Well, maybe his neck was still aching a bit where the tank had nailed him. But that was just the proof he needed to know he hadn’t imagined it all.
And it definitely wasn’t anything to do with the accident either. His leg had been shattered in five places in the car crash that killed his dad, but there was no damage to his brain. Anyway, that was years ago, when he was a baby. He’d never seen anything like that mist in all his life.
Actually, Oscar thought, that isn’t true. The dead clown fish and the poisoned grass were real and weird, not to mention all the dead flowers….
Maybe it’s good she didn’t believe me, Oscar told himself. Suddenly, he felt relieved. She didn’t know about the other stuff. Which was good.
This was the scariest thought. What if it was all his fault? What if his Curse had made the corpse come alive? Maybe it was all linked.
It was too horrible to think about—and that was just the problem. Oscar realized that he hadn’t really been thinking properly at all. He’d been ignoring everything, hoping it was going to go away. And now it seemed to be getting worse.
What if it got really bad?
What if he hugged his mum and she died?
The thought was interrupted by a sudden chill of icy dread running down his spine. It was exactly the same feeling he’d had in the morgue, as Mr. Jenkinson attacked. Oscar’s heart thudded as the tingling cold crept through his body.
He remembered the shimmering figure in the hat that he’d seen standing outside his house. The ghost.
Maybe that thing had come back?
The curtains in his room fluttered gently. He switched on his lamp and limped across the room to shut the window. His fingers reached for the curtain, and slowly, he inched them open.
Marigold Street looked as normal as ever. Sleepy houses, parked cars, neatly trimmed hedges.
Across the road, Gary Stevens, Oscar’s nemesis and neighbor, was walking his dog. His new dog. The other one had died recently. Gary had blamed Oscar even though he had nothing to do with it.
The new dog seemed to have spotted something. It was tugging at its leash and growling.
Oscar just had time to wonder why, when he was blinded by a bright flash of light.
When he could see again, a shimmering green carriage was rolling down the road, drawn by two rake-thin horses. The carriage lurched up onto the pavement. It was heading right for Gary!
“Watch ou—”
The cry caught in Oscar’s throat as he saw the carriage roll right through Gary and his dog, which barked madly. Gary didn’t appear to have noticed at all. The carriage continued, rattling through cars and lampposts as if they weren’t there.
“What’s going on?” Oscar murmured.
The carriage drew to a sharp halt outside Oscar’s house.
The dread froze inside him.
Oscar stopped breathing. As he looked down, he realized the horses weren’t just thin. They were actually skeletons, with flickering ghost bodies.
This was bad.
Maybe the ghost had come back to finish the job? Oscar imagined the dead bodies slowly sitting up in the morgue, standing, and with blind eyes climbing the stairs to murder his mother in her bed.
Oscar turned for the door to warn her, just as two ghostly figures jumped down from the cart. The first pulled an apple and a carrot from her pocket.
Oscar blinked. This wasn’t what he was expecting.
The girl ghost gave the snacks to the horses.
Oscar blinked again.
She was a girl about Oscar’s age, dressed in very old-fashioned lacy clothes. She wasn’t a skeleton, although she shimmered just like the horses. She pulled an object from her belt and squinted at it.
The other figure was tall and thin. Oscar couldn’t tell if he was a skeleton or not because he was completely encased inside a full suit of plate armor.
Both of them wore little silver shields on their chests like sheriff badges. As they walked closer, Oscar saw the thing in the girl’s hand. It looked like a wooden hair dryer. She was shaking it, as if it wasn’t working.
The knight gave the hair dryer a whack with his metal fist. That seemed to do the trick because the girl held it up and pointed it at Oscar’s house. She muttered something under her breath.
Carefully, Oscar bent down to the opening in the window to hear what she was saying.
“Heaps of phantasma coming from here…” The girl’s voice. “Illegal use of poltergeisting including corpse animation…Fifth-level breach at least.”
The knight’s reply was muffled under his visor.
“Right! It’s a very powerful signal. Haunt me sideways! And I thought the Monday shift was supposed to be quiet.”
Shifts? Signals? What are they talking about? Quickly Oscar’s fear slipped away as a fierce curiosity surged up in its place. He had to find out what was going on.
The two figures walked right up to Oscar’s front door and stepped through it.
Oscar crept across his bedroom and peeked out into the hallway. The house was dark. There was no sign of the two visitors. He couldn’t hear anything except for the rasping snores of his mum from along the corridor.
He grabbed his crutch and snuck down the stairs.
His heart was hammering like a piston by the time he reached the mortuary door. He still couldn’t hear anything. The two figures (if they were in there) were moving silently.
He put his ear to the wood.
“Good gracious!” That was the girl’s voice.
Oscar froze.
“I’m picking up a very strong source of phantasma! This is incredible! Look at the dial. It’s whizzing!”
The knight grunted something.
“Not from in here, though. It’s…”
Before Oscar had time to react, the two ghosts stepped through the wall, almost on top of him.
“…out there,” the girl finished.
It was hard to say who was more surprised. They all goggled at one another. The two ghosts were easier to notice close-up, even though they were still see-through. The girl was dressed in Victorian clothes: long skirt, hat, high collar. She had a young face but old, watchful eyes. The knight had a mean-looking sword strapped to his belt. His hand was on the pommel.
“Cedric. I reckon he can see us!” the girl said.
The knight lifted the visor above his mouth. “Poppycock!” he whined in a nasal voice. “It can’t be!”
“Course I can see you,” Oscar said. “What’s going on?”
“He can hear us too. What is going on?” the girl asked. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Three,” Oscar said.
Her frown deepened. “How’s he doing that?”
She pointed her wooden hair dryer at Oscar and waved it around.
The knight snorted in surprise. “I say!” There was a dial on the back of the device. Oscar could just see the needle swinging wildly about.
“Look at those readings,” the girl said. “Truly exceptional concentrations of phantasma.”
“What’s flantansma?” Oscar asked.
“Phantasma. Ghost essence, my boy,” the knight said.
The girl was frowning. “And you’re bones so you shouldn’t have any of it.”
“Bones?”
The girl sighed. “This phantasmagraph thinks you’re a ghost. No bones. But you’re clearly living—bones. Easy enough to understand?”
“No,” Oscar said. “It’s not.”
“Try punching yourself in the head.”
“What? No!”
“Suit yourself.” The girl grinned and turned away.
“Wait, please!” Oscar had so many questions they were burning in his mind. Why were they here? Why was he filled with ghost essence? Were he and his mum in danger?
The girl tapped her foot with impatience. “Yes?”
Oscar’s face twisted with the effort of understanding. “I think you’re ghosts, am I right?”
“Correct. My name is Sally Cromarty, and this is my partner, Sir Cedric Bosanquet.”
“Oscar Grimstone.”
The knight gave a slight nod. “Remarkable.” He slipped back through the wall.
“Why…why have you come to my house?”
“Oscar, we are detectives employed by the Ministry of Ghosts.” Sally tapped the silver shield on her chest. The letters GLE were stamped into it. “Ghost Law Enforcement. We came out here to investigate a suspected case of illegal corpse animation—and what do we find? A glorious mess, that’s what. You won’t remember any of this. The only ones who need to worry are me and Cedric. Mess always means paperwork. Mounds of it.”
The knight moaned.
“I know, Cedric!” the girl snapped. “I say we do a quick sweep, then head back to the shop. We can send forensics and a wipe team later. They can deal with Grimbone.”
“Grim-stone! And I don’t need dealing with!” Oscar didn’t like the sound of a wipe team.
“Don’t worry. It’s quite standard procedure. They’ll just fix your memory. Perfectly painless and you won’t remember anything. Much better. You’ll see.”
“But I don’t want you to fix my memory! I want to know what’s going on.”
“That’s not going to happen, sir. This is ghost business, and you’re…Well, I’m not sure what you are, exactly.”
“Right. That’s why you’ve got to help me! An embalming tank attacked me! Knives too.” Oscar almost mentioned his Curse but held back. What would they think of him if they knew he made things die?
“You were attacked by a tank?”
“Yes! It came alive. There was this strange mist.”
The knight poked his head through the door. “Not a ghoul! I’ve detected no necromancy here. Only a powerful reanimation. Must have used a barrelful of phantas—”
“I’m telling the truth. Stuff kept attacking me—and I think it was because of a ghost in a hat.”
“What kind of hat?” Sally asked.
“It was sort of a wide one. I didn’t get that good a look, though.”
The girl was interested. He could tell by the way her eyes widened. The knight leaned closer, examining Oscar through a sort of fold-out telescope with knobs and dials all over it.
“You didn’t get a look at his face?” Sally asked.
“No, I couldn’t see. I think it was wearing something like a bandanna over its mouth as well….Please. You have to help us. The person could come back. Don’t you want to know what’s going on? If you wipe my memory, you will have lost a witness!”
The knight jabbed the telescope at Oscar. “The young fellow’s right about that.”
“I know, Cedric! Golly!” Sally said before muttering something under her breath. “But we can’t take him with us. It’s against the law.”
“No! I mean…Yes, you have to take me!” Oscar pleaded. “Good idea.”
Sally was peeling him apart with her gray eyes. It was impossible to tell what she was thinking. It was also quite frightening.
“Well?” Oscar asked.
“What a bleeding mess!” Sally snapped. “And no. Even if I wanted to, you can’t. You’re a fleshy, see.”
She reached out to touch him. Her hand passed through his shoulder. Oscar felt a cold tingling where her fingers had brushed him.
“Ghost things and living things don’t belong together. Where we’re going, you can’t come.” She turned to Cedric. “You finished in there?”
The knight nodded. “Yeah.”
“Smart work,” Sally said. “So. Goodbye, Oscar. I’d like you to know that all will be well. It will be as if this never happened.”
She nodded briskly; then both ghosts floated away down the corridor and disappeared through the front door.