Dan and the Shard of Ice

by Thomas Taylor

  ‘Grgnn…!’ I manage to say through teeth that feel welded shut from the electric shock. What I want to say is ‘hold your fire, I’m here to help’, but ‘grgnn’ will have to do for the moment.

  Si is hopping from one foot to the other, chewing his spectral finger nails, so there’ll be no chance of a translation from him.

  ‘Brbrgh…’ I add, getting up onto my shaking legs and somehow managing to stand. My tongue is starting to move again too. ‘Brbyuyu… hwelp… hwelp you. I can… help you.’

  The electrical girl flashes with a pulse of angry power and her eyes narrow.

  ‘Help me?’ she cries with a fizzing voice. ‘I have waited over four hundred years for help. None came. Now I will help myself.’

  She gestures towards me with one of her hands. I just have time to drop to the floor as a bolt of lightning connects the girl’s finger tips with the wall behind me in an explosion of heat and light. I see Simon caught in the attack. I have no idea what the relationship between ghosts and electricity is, but it can’t be anything good because Simon explodes in a puff of ectoplasm and is gone. Burning wood and chunks of shattered marble rain down all around me, and the air smells like a demon’s armpit.

  ‘Four hundred years?’ I say, peering over the seat of a rowing machine. My hair feels funny. I reach up and find it’s standing straight up from my head. ‘That is a long time to wait. So, er, something happened to you in sixteen hundred and, er, something, then?’

  Okay, as conversation openers go this is pretty rubbish, I know, but I’ve got to keep her talking. This might be my only chance to find out what this whole business is about. The girl is crossing the room towards me now, riding through the air on wings of lightning.

  ‘1603,’ the girl says in a voice like a shattering iceberg. ‘They cried “witch” then too.’ And she adds, in a sing-song tone, ‘Witch, witch, burn the witch!’

  The girl comes to a stop in the air above me. I look up and try my emergency grin, the one I reserve for moments of utter hopelessness. No, I don’t think it’ll make any difference either.

  ‘But I wasn’t a witch!’ the girl says, showering me with sparks. ‘Not a witch at all, but they burned me anyway, those men. Burned me to ashes. I wasn’t a witch, but oh, the irony. Look what I have become now!’

  And she begins to glow brighter and brighter, with a sound like a generator being turned up to max.

  I get ready for some sort of final bone-melting zap. Well, there’s not much else I can do, is there? But then, as suddenly they appeared, the arcs of power joining the girl to the national grid wink out. In a moment, the electricity shuts down entirely.

  The girl stares at her hands in fury, an ordinary ghost of faintly glowing ectoplasm and unearthly regret once again.

  ‘No!’ she cries. ‘Why does the power never last?’

  I don’t know if she’s expecting me to answer that or not, but before I can say anything, I’m being pelted with cushions, books, Christmas decorations, a coffee percolator – anything moveable that the poltergeist can get her spectral hands on. In a moment I’m completely covered.

  When I finally dig myself out from the burnt tinsel and ruin, she’s gone.

  And I’m all alone in the dark.

  10

  AND THE PRETTY LADY HAS A NAME

  I don’t know how long I sit there, trying to get my thoughts straight, and my hair flat again. It’s so dark I can hardly see my hands in front of my face. I reach into my pocket and pull out my ghost-shaped keyring torch.

  Okay, you can laugh, but right now I’m just glad I have it with me.

  In the small light from the torch, I see that the gym is in chaos, though I knew that already. What I’m not ready for is the fine layer of frost that is covering everything. The place is freezing! The foot spa with the wig in it is frozen solid, and my breath puffs out in white clouds as I take it all in.

  And I’m seriously baffled by all this. I know some ghosts can move small objects with their minds, because I’ve seen Si do it. I know that ghosts can interfere with electrical currents, as well as make the room temperature drop. But everything I’ve seen here so far goes way beyond those slight things. How can the ghost of a teenage girl, even one four hundred years old, have so much bump-in-the-night power?

  1603. That was what she said, wasn’t it? And burnt as a witch? I’ve really got to get on the internet.

  But when I reach the sleek desktop computer at the gym’s reception, it’s completely dead. I wouldn’t be surprised if every computer in the building was burnt out in the electrical attack.

  I go out through the main doors of the gym, and find myself in a corridor. Turning the torch onto the ceiling, I see that it’s made of panels. I need to get up to the next floor somehow, to try and get onto the stairs again, above the blockage. And if I can’t use the lift, I’m just going to have to go up directly through the ceiling.

  It’s as I’m dragging the receptionist’s swivel chair into the corridor that Simon reappears.

  Well, his head does at any rate. It appears in front of me looking startled and annoyed, trailing ectoplasm from his neck where the rest of his body should be.

  ‘Hi, Si,’ I say with a grin. ‘Pull yourself together.’

  ‘Ha ha.’ Si’s head grumps at me. ‘Thank you for your concern.’

  ‘Oh, I knew you’d be all right,’ I say. ‘After all, you’re dead already. What’s the worse that could happen?’

  ‘I could have been spread across half the city!’ Si snaps, as a pair of eighteenth-century buckled shoes appear on the ground at about the place where Si’s feet should be. ‘So when you’ve quite finished having fun at my expense, perhaps you’d like to explain what we’re going to do next. While I look for my legs.’

  ‘We’ve got to help her, Si,’ I say, climbing up onto the chair, and pushing up one of the ceiling tiles.

  ‘Well, of course we’ve got to get little Stacey down again, but – ’

  ‘I don’t just mean Stacey. The girl in the white dress – she’s so angry. She needs my help too.’

  ‘That’s very commendable,’ says Si, blinking in surprise, ‘but she died more than four hundred years ago. How can you possibly help her now? Some ghosts are beyond our help, Daniel, you know that.’

  ‘Yeah, I know, but this one has just destroyed a luxury gym in the biggest skyscraper in London. I’m not exactly sure we can just walk away.’

  ‘At least the authorities had the good sense to evacuate the building.’

  ‘And that’s another thing,’ I say, as I pull myself up into the hollow space inside the ceiling. ‘What about Venn Specter and his crony, Ned? They may be a pair of chumps, but they’re putting themselves right in the firing line. And they don’t even believe in ghosts! No, Si, however you look at it, someone has to defuse this situation before it really gets out of hand. And once again, it looks like that someone is going to be me.’

  ‘Ahem.’ Si gives his best butler’s cough.

  ‘I meant “us”, Si,’ I call back down from the hole in the ceiling. ‘Obviously, I meant “us”.’

  Simon sniffs.

  ‘Now make yourself useful,’ I say. ‘Ghost up into the level above and give me the all-clear. I don’t want to climb up into another electrical storm, do I?’

  ‘Indeed not, Master Dyer,’ says Si, and he drifts up through the ceiling. After a moment, his disembodied hand appears right in front of me, and gives the thumbs-up sign. I push at the floor panel above me, and shove it to one side. In a single bound, I leap up into the next level of the Shard, and crouch in the dark, listening out for trouble.

  Silence.

  Except for the sounds of a storm raging outside.

  I turn the torch onto my surroundings.

  ‘We’re in an apartment,’ I whisper, as I take in the sophisticated, open-plan space. I see a giant-screen television, and a leather sofa the size of a yacht. Beyond the floor to ceiling windows, flurries of white snowflakes are being picked out in
flashes of lightning from the sky above. The ‘pretty lady’ may have burnt out the wiring in the Shard, but it looks like she’s found another source of electrical power. I start throwing cushions off the sofa and rummaging in cupboards.

  ‘What are you doing, Daniel?’

  ‘We need to work out what to do next,’ I say, moving into a bedroom. ‘And for that, we need some answers.’

  ‘Well, I hardly think you’ll find them in there,’ he calls, in a disapproving voice, as I rummage through a drawer full of frilly underwear. ‘What are you looking for?’

  I dash back out and head for the kitchen, which is vast and gleaming, and… there! I find what I’m after. I pick it up and wave it at Si.

  ‘Ah, one of those miniature windows of wonder!’ He gives a gasp of joy and zooms over to me.

  ‘Almost, Si,’ I say. ‘It’s a tablet – a kind of mini computer – and if we’re lucky… yes! It’s still charged up.’

  I prop the tablet up on the marble worktop in the kitchen, and open a browser. The bar that indicates an internet connection is fluctuating wildly, but I manage to get online.

  I type a few words into the search field…

  WITCH+BURNT+LONDON+1603

  … and dab ‘return’.

  There’s a pause while the machine deals with the dodgy signal. Then results appear, a right mixed bag, and I start scrolling through them. I quickly realise it’ll take me hours to find anything relevant in this lot, if I can’t refine the search a bit more.

  ‘Si, have you any idea why this poltergeist – this “pretty lady” – can be so much more powerful than a normal ghost?’ I ask. ‘Could she be a real, you know…’ I spell out the word “witch” with my lips. ‘I mean, could this be actual magic she’s using?’

  Simon snorts.

  ‘Hardly, Daniel. There is no such thing as magic in the sense you mean. Everything we’ve seen her do so far is merely a magnification of the things all ghosts can do anyway.’

  ‘A magnification?’

  ‘Yes. As you know, all ghosts have a stronger presence in the place where they died. ’Tis possible that this presence could be further magnified in some way. For example, much has been written in the ancient texts of the spirit-boosting properties of crystals. Indeed, the Great Poojam of Kathmandu once wrote that…’

  I stare at Si. A lightbulb has just gone on in my head.

  ‘Si, what did you just say?’

  ‘About the Great Poojam?’

  ‘No! The bit about the “spirit-boosting crystals”.’

  ‘Well, ’tis said that placing a ring of crystals round the place a ghost died can strengthen its presence.’

  ‘Yes! And what was it you said when you first saw the Shard up close, Si? That it was like a…’

  Si’s wig almost leaps off his head as he remembers.

  ‘A monstrous great crystal!’

  ‘Exactly. So what if this is where the “pretty lady” died?’ I point down at the floor. ‘What if this whole glass building is her place?’

  ‘But Daniel, the Shard was only built a few years ago. How can she have died in it four hundred years in the past?’

  ‘Not in it, Si. Under it.’

  Si’s mouth falls open. It’s not a pretty sight.

  ‘Think about it,’ I go on. ‘This poor girl is burnt to a crisp four hundred years ago, and gets left behind as a ghost. Years pass and nothing much happens. We don’t even know she’s there. No electrical blasting or weird storms – nothing. Just an ordinary ghost. Then they go and build this whacking great crystalline building over the place where she died, and…’

  ‘… and suddenly we’re dealing with the most powerful ghostly presence we’ve ever known.’ Si punches the palm of his spectral hand. ‘’Zooks, Daniel! You’re right! So all we have to do is get her away from the building and she’ll be a normal ghost once again. If only the Great Poojam could have seen this…’

  I wave my hand to silence him, and dab more words into the search field:

  WITCH+BURNT+LONDON+SHARD+1603

  A few results appear, and the uppermost one seems immediately interesting. It’s the blog of a local historian with pebble glasses and a brightly-patterned pullover. I’m guessing this is normally a pretty lonely corner of the internet, but right now there’s nowhere else in cyberspace I’d rather be. I’m staring at a blog post about a young witch who was burnt in 1603, right slap bang in the middle of what would later be the building site of the Shard. I’m even staring at a scan of the original court proceedings, which state, in heavy old-fashioned writing, that the defendant was found guilty of ‘witchcrafte and strange comportmente’. Whatever that is. And there’s a name.

  ‘Mary Flaxen,’ I say aloud. ‘Her name is Mary.’

  ‘Yes, but Daniel,’ says Si, looking suddenly worried. ‘About the giant crystal theory – there’s something else you need to know…’

  But before he can finish, the words die on his blue lips. He stares right past my left ear. Slowly, he raises his finger to point behind me.

  I feel a chill run down my back. And I mean this literally – it’s like someone has just dropped an ice cube into my T-shirt. The screen of the iPad in my hands blooms with frost as the air temperature plummets.

  I turn round.

  11

  MARY FLAXEN

  ‘You called me,’ she says. ‘You know my name?’

  The ‘pretty lady’ is standing in the doorway to the apartment. I’m pleased to say that right now she isn’t crackling with energy and destroying the world around her just by looking at it. In fact, she looks just like an ordinary ghost, although there is a definite electrical charge in the atmosphere. I need to act fast if I’m going to keep things on a less-than-lethal level.

  ‘Er…’ I say, stepping back and raising my hands a little. ‘Hi, Mary.’

  ‘You can see me?’ she says, looking confused. ‘Even without the lightning power? No one has seen me like this for over four centuries. Who are you?’

  ‘I’m Dan. This is my associate, Simon.’ Si gives his frilliest bow. ‘And like I tried to say earlier, we’re here to help.’

  ‘And as I told you, I don’t need help from anyone.’ Her face darkens, and a couple of static sparks dance amongst the designer copper pots and pans hanging in the kitchen. ‘How did you find my name?’

  I hold up the tablet computer, wondering if I need to explain what it is to someone from the age of the quill pen and Shakespeare. But before I can speak, the tablet is tugged out of my hand by some unseen power, and floats over to Mary. It spins in front of her till she can see the screen. I remember that the transcript of her trial for witchcraft is still displayed there.

  Oops.

  With an angry gesture, Mary pulls a bright arc of power from the tablet’s battery. Then she lets it fall to the ground, where it clatters dead on the marble floor.

  ‘Everything in this time,’ she says, ‘has the spark of lightning in it.’

  ‘’Tis called “electricity”, miss,’ Si explains, stepping forward and putting on his best schoolteacher manner. ‘A most useful phenomenon, which…’

  Si’s voice is drowned out by a boom of thunder that roars around the building outside. Mary is glaring daggers at him.

  ‘Do not call me that!’

  ‘Call you what?’ Si looks confused.

  ‘Witch!’

  ‘But I… oh!’ Si snaps his mouth shut.

  ‘The little girl,’ I say quickly, steering the conversation away from witches, however they’re spelled. ‘Stacey. Why have you taken her?’

  ‘She is young,’ Mary declares, holding her head high. ‘Her body is healthy. It is what I require.’

  I exchange glances with Si.

  ‘Require? What do you require her body for?’

  ‘Fool!’ Mary flashes with power, sending the copper pans dancing on their hooks. ‘It is not complicated. My own body was destroyed by fire. Therefore I require a new one, I deserve a new one. The girl Stacey is my chance
to live again.’

  ‘But…’ I can’t believe what I’m hearing. ‘You can’t do that!’

  ‘You think you can stop me?’

  ‘No, I mean, you can’t do that! It’s not possible.’ I turn to my side-kick. ‘Er… is it, Si?’

  ‘Oh, it is theoretically possible,’ Si says, still in schoolteacher mode. ‘Given sufficient power, and…’

  ‘Si!’

  I’d kick him in the shins at this point, if he still had any solid enough to kick. He gets the hint, but just a little too late.

  ‘Oh, er… no, ’tis not possible, not possible at all,’ he says quickly, through a desperate grin. ‘It could never be done, not ever, so… er… don’t even try. At all. Um…’

  Mary gives a shriek of manic joy, and sends a playful arc of electricity skipping across the sofa, destroying it and filling the room with acrid smoke.

  ‘I knew it could be done!’ she cries. ‘And I have the power.’ She makes a motion as if to take off up through the ceiling.

  ‘No, wait!’ I shout. ‘You can’t do this to her! Stacey has done nothing wrong. She’s innocent.’

  Mary crackles.

  ‘Innocent! I too was innocent. And yet look what they did to me. Burnt for a witch!’

  ‘I’m really sorry that happened, Mary.’ I say. ‘It’s horrible what they did to you. I understand, but…’

  ‘You understand!’ There’s another boom of thunder, even louder than before, as a riot of lightning flickers beyond the windows. It’s so cold now that every surface in the apartment is growing ice crystals. ‘How can you possibly understand?’

  ‘Then tell me!’ I shout back, knowing that only by talking can I keep Mary here. If she leaves now, I’ll never catch her in time to stop her doing Death-knows-what to Stacey. ‘Talk to me. I’ve helped ghosts before. There must another way.’

  Mary stops crackling and sparking. She gives me a look of sudden sadness and despair.

  ‘You really want to understand what I have been through? You really want to know?’