Dan and the Caverns of Bone

by Thomas Taylor

  ‘S’okay, Bri,’ I say. ‘You stick with me.’

  Baz narrows his piggy eyes at me. I present him with the back of my head.

  As we all make our way up the creaking, greasy stairs to the cheap rooms on the attic floor, Simon swoops about approvingly.

  ‘I’m very pleased you have decided to take on a case while we’re away, Daniel. The poor boy needs a friend.’

  ‘I only do ghosts, remember?’ I whisper. ‘I don’t mind standing up for him, but Bri’s not my client.’

  But then I can’t help thinking about that. You see, if there’s one thing I’ve learnt from helping the dead, it’s that it would have been much better if someone had helped them out when they were still alive. I mean, I’m not saying Brian will actually do anything desperate, but with someone as sensitive and picked-on as he is, you never know. So maybe Si’s got a point. Maybe I am on the case. And if he’s sharing my room, at least I can keep an eye on him.

  But when I see the room, I think I’ll be keeping more than just my eyes on him: it’s tiny!

  Bri doesn’t mind, though. He’s just glad to get in there and shut a door between him and Baz.

  Our room is higher up than all the others, at the top of a creaking iron spiral staircase. It’s actually in a turret of some kind, and gives a view out over Paris in all directions, across a jumble of rooftops, spires and domes.

  And suddenly I get a glimpse of what it is people mean when they rave about the place – the view is stunning.

  ‘La belle Paree!’ declares Simon in a torrent of ectoplasmic curlicues.

  Then something brushes past me, and I turn to see Bri squeezing onto one of the dinky fold-down beds. In a moment he’s got his pad out and is at his planes again. I sigh, but only so I don’t say something rude. Instead, I open the window and climb out onto the roof of the hotel.

  The sky above is leaden, but the setting sun pours beneath the cloud, picking out chimneys and the gold of monuments. I sit on a crooked stone gargoyle and inhale deeply, tasting the bready kitchen fumes and ripe carbon monoxide of ‘la belle Paree’, and for the first time, I’m daring to think this might turn out to be a holiday after all.

  And that’s when I notice I’m not alone.

  There’s someone on the roof of the building next door – a black-clad figure, with bleached blonde hair. Yup, you’ve guessed it – it’s the girl, the one with the knock-me-sideways eyes I saw in the street below. We look at each other for a moment, before she calls out to me.

  ‘Bonjour.’

  Oh, great!

  ‘Er… bon jewer?’ I say, and try not to touch my hair. I’m using the grin for all it’s worth. Don’t get me wrong, I like girls – really like them, actually – but, well, they’re girls, aren’t they? Complicated. And this one’s French!

  ‘You are English?’ she says, with a lovely accent, and I’m thinking my James Bond moment is already over, if it had even begun.

  ‘Wee. I mean, yes,’ I say. Then I add, ‘School trip,’ which is probably just about the dumbest thing I could say. But the way this girl looks at me with her big dark eyes makes it hard to think straight. So then I just take a deep breath, tell her my name and wait to see what happens next.

  What happens next is she jumps over onto my roof and sits down next to me. She really is dressed mostly in black, with a line of accessories that pretty much covers the entire blackness spectrum, especially against the shock of her white-blonde hair. Her nails are like beetle backs, her lips are smoked rosebuds, and her eyes… well, they’d give even Edward Scissorhands something uncomfortable to think about.

  ‘Salut, Dan,’ she says, holding out her hand. ‘My name is Lucifane.’

  ‘Bonjour, Lucifane,’ I say. ‘Er… is that your real name?’

  She turns the eyes on me, full beam.

  ‘Are you staying in the hotel, Dan? If yes, then we will be neighbours for a while. So, maybe we will also be friends?’

  I somehow manage to nod and keep the grin in place at the same time.

  ‘But I wonder if new friends should tell all of their secrets so quickly.’ And she looks away across the rooftops. ‘What do you think, Dan?’

  Oka-a-ay. I glance over at Si and see that he’s as baffled as I am. But, since being confused by girls is one of the things I do best, I just look out across Paris too, and wait for Lucifane to do something else. A paper aeroplane shoots out of the window behind us and loops the loop, before gliding away into the evening sky. Brian’s keeping busy then.

  ‘And I do ’ave a secret, Dan,’ says Luci eventually, and I guess that keeping quiet was the right thing to do after all. She looks back at me. ‘One that maybe I can only tell a stranger.’

  I return the look as best I can and arrange my eyebrows into the ‘?’ position. Even Si drifts in a little closer to hear what she’s about to say.

  I’m almost at melting point when she finally lowers her eyes. Then she leans in close till she’s breathing right into my ear and tells me in a whisper:

  ‘…I see dead people.’

  4

  Squatters’ Rites

  Now, I know what you’re thinking, ’cause as Lucifane gets up and darts back to her own roof – leaving her bombshell still ringing in my ears – I’m thinking it too. Is she for real? Si’s almost as surprised as I am.

  ‘Zooks, Daniel!’

  ‘Do you think she could actually see you?’ I ask my ghostly side-kick. To my knowledge no one but me has ever seen Simon. Well, not since he lost the duel that ended with a musket ball through his brain the best part of three hundred years ago, that is.

  ‘I didn’t notice her looking, I admit,’ says Si, ‘but we always knew there must be others who can do what you do, somewhere.’

  I shudder. It’s suddenly a bit cold.

  ‘What is it about me that attracts the strange people, Si?’

  ‘I couldn’t possibly comment, Master Dyer,’ says Si, from behind a cloud of swirling ectoplasm.

  I get up and adjust the coat. It’s getting dark, and almost time to eat. Another paper plane shoots from the window and soars into the sky, black like a bat against the setting sun. Time to collect Brian and head down to the hotel restaurant, to see if it’s true what they say about French cooking.

  And it turns out it isn’t. At least, not at the Hotel Cafards.

  I mean, do they eat caterpillars in France? Maybe not, but the gloop they scoop onto our plates could be anything. Anything, that is, except the haute cuisine we’d hoped for. And once again, it’s the girls who make the most fuss.

  But as I sit there, with Bri slurping it up beside me, it’s not the food I’m thinking of – it’s Lucifane.

  ‘Tis a fabulous thing, is it not?’ says Si, as I push my spoon around. Sometimes it’s like he can read my mind.

  ‘Is it?’ I mumble back. ‘I don’t know, Si. After all this time… well, it’s my thing, the dead people thing. I’m not actually sure I’m ready to share it.’

  ‘Zounds, Daniel! No one should be alone in this world, least of all you.’ And when I don’t respond, he adds with a spectral sigh, ‘We should at least try to find out more. After all, the young lady is only next door.’

  When the slop’s finished, we have a chance to visit the town before we turn in, so the whole school group troops out of the hotel behind Frenchy. Naturally, now we’re in Paris proper, he’s changed into a black polo neck and beret, and he’s embarrassingly eager to bonsoir everyone we pass.

  We’re staying in what is known as the Latin Quarter, though quite what’s so Latin about it beats me. It’s a bit rubbish actually, and chock full of tourists shouting at each other outside crowded cafés. And Simon’s right about Lucifane – I have to find out more. I make an excuse, give Brian the slip, and dodge back to the hotel.

  Back in my room I climb straight out the window and look over to the roof of Luci’s place. There’s no one there now, and it’s getting dark.

  I jump across.

  It doesn’t tak
e me long to find a skylight and ladder down into the building below, where I can hear a steady throb of music. I look both ways, give Si the thumbs up, and slide down.

  The music grows and thuds, and the rhythm surrounds me as I creep down a wide stone staircase with curly ironwork. Si says nothing – sometimes he knows not to bother. I’m trespassing, of course I am, but somehow the whole ‘I see dead people’ thing from earlier feels like an invitation. And the signs get even better when I reach the next flight of stairs, ’cause there’s something sitting there on the top step, grinning at me.

  It’s a human skull.

  With a lit candle flickering on top of it.

  And there are more, one every few steps, lighting the way down into the boom and jangle of what sounds like a party on the floor below. I pick up something from the floor. It appears to be a human finger bone.

  ‘This ain’t no dog biscuit,’ I say to Si.

  ‘Zooks!’ Simon says, his ectoplasm going very small as sudden doubt crosses his face. ‘Could this be what Lucifane meant about seeing dead people?’

  I say nothing. Well, there’s only one way to find out, isn’t there? I put the bone on the banister, adjust my lapels and stroll downstairs into a room full of dancing and sound.

  There are kids everywhere, mostly my own age or thereabouts, and what with all the styled hair and guy-liner, and the uncertain candle light, I can hardly tell who’s a boy and who’s a girl. Not that it really matters. I’m looking for one person in particular, and I’d know her anywhere.

  And I don’t have to look for long because there she is – Lucifane – lying on the back of an enormous sofa like a midnight panther waiting for her prey. Those oh-so-familiar eyes flash in the smoke and flicker, and she gives me a lazy wave. I wave back, and sense Si twitching beside me as he tries to work out if she can see him or not.

  As she uncurls herself and makes her way over, I look around, take in the view. It’s pretty awesome. There are skull candles everywhere, which somehow makes the dancing seem all the livelier, and maybe that’s the point. The atmosphere is thick with shadows, attitude, and – is that incense? The music’s great too, though I’ve never heard it before. And then I see something that really makes the eyebrows shoot up.

  On the arm of an ornate antique chair beside me is a pair of purple shades! Just lying there, like it was meant to be or something. And there’s a kid sitting in the chair, with half a dozen other pairs of coloured specs on his forehead, and more poking out of his pockets and round about. He sees me looking at the purple ones, and maybe it’s the surprise on my face, I don’t know, but he snaps his fingers and points at them.

  ‘He is saying you can ’ave them.’ Lucifane is at my side, though she has to shout to make herself heard. ‘He sells them to tourists. Take them – no one buys them anyway.’

  I put the glasses on and the world goes purple, just the way I like it. I nod at the kid in the chair. He shrugs.

  Then Lucifane is walking out of the room and I’m following her. We head down some more stairs, the music becoming a dull throb as we leave it behind. At the bottom is an enormous pillared hallway, with a chandelier like a floating iceberg, though it probably doesn’t work. Everything is in darkness here, and Luci passes me a skull candle. She lights one for herself and walks on, leaving me standing there like Hamlet.

  ‘Daniel, what is this place?’ Simon says.

  ‘Squat,’ I whisper in reply, the realisation suddenly hitting me. But, as ever, Si’s still a century or two behind me.

  ‘Squat? Why should I wish to squat, Daniel?’

  I ignore him. Lucifane has turned in the doorway of an enormous marble and gold tap kitchen and is looking at me. Right now, Si’s going to have to increase his vocabulary on his own.

  But just as I’m about to follow her in, I stop and look back down the hall. At the end of it is an ancient wooden door, a door that is not only bolted, but – the flickering candlelight shows – actually barricaded shut with a mass of antique furniture, bin bags and junk.

  ‘What’s that?’ I say.

  ‘The cellar,’ Lucifane replies, with an undecipherable look at the sealed door. Then she goes into the kitchen.

  ‘Oka-a-ay,’ I say. ‘You don’t want people in the cellar. But… why pile stuff against the door?’

  ‘Indeed,’ murmurs Si, at my side. ‘It is almost as if they want to keep something out.’

  Luci ignores the question.

  ‘We only ’ave herbal tea,’ she says instead, as she plugs a kettle into an extension lead that runs in through an open window. Somehow I just know it’s plugged into some forgotten socket in the hotel next door. Then she lights more candles, in jam jars this time, making shadows dance round the grotesquely fabulous luxury kitchen.

  ‘I never drink anything else,’ I lie. ‘Nice place you’ve got here.’

  ‘It is criminal for a house this size to be left empty,’ she says, slightly defensively. ‘So, we ’ave made it our refuge. A place for those who are different, who feel out of place. In English you have a word for what we ’ave turned this building into, a word we do not ’ave in French.’

  ‘Squat?’ I suggest, hoping Si is taking notes.

  ‘Yes, but…’ says Luci as she pours boiling water into two cups, filling the room with a spicy tang. She hands one to me. ‘The word I am thinking of is “home”.’

  Oh.

  I won’t lie – at that moment, with Luci beside me and the whole freaking awesomeness of the party upstairs, I actually wonder what would happen if I just stayed here and didn’t go back to the hotel at all. Or even London! After all, I practically own ‘being different’ and ‘feeling out of place’.

  But I pull myself together as Si coughs politely behind me. Before anything else happens, I have to get something straight.

  ‘I’ve never met anyone like you before,’ I say to Luci, but then, when that makes her start doing the eye thing again, I add quickly, ‘No, I mean, what you said earlier? About seeing dead people? Because, well… I’m the same. I see dead people too. Been doing it for years, got the doctor’s notes and everything.’ And then I jab my thumb at my spooky sidekick. ‘Luci, meet Simon.’

  Si steps clear into the candlelight then, and does his lowest and frilliest bow. The ectoplasm streaming from the hole in his head billows around, making him look like an eighteenth-century painting in a Baroque picture frame. It’s quite a show.

  ‘Enchanté, mademoiselle,’ he croons.

  And that’s when I notice we aren’t alone in the kitchen.

  Someone is standing in the corner furthest from the candles, and I can tell immediately it’s one of them. A dead person, I mean – a ghost. And this one is so wet-looking that it doesn’t take a genius to work out how he died. The ectoplasm pours off him like the water he obviously drowned in. He’s a kid about Luci’s age, but his face is a blank of anguish and despair between straight curtains of sodden spectral hair.

  ‘Is that one yours?’ I say to Lucifane, pointing at the teen spirit in the corner. Then I notice she still hasn’t responded to Si. In fact, she’s not looking at Si at all, just straight at me. And the look is getting darker by the second.

  ‘Er…’ I say, pointing to the ghost in the corner again. ‘Um…?’

  ‘Is it normal in England for new friends to laugh at each other?’ Luci says in a voice like ice, and I go ‘er’ and ‘um’ again, because frankly I don’t know what’s going on now. I look at Si for help, but he’s already swooped over to the other ghost. He’s back in a few seconds though, raising his arms helplessly.

  ‘He is one of the newly dead, Daniel, and still in a state of shock. The only thing I could get out of him were the words “Jojo la Mouche”. Their name is often the only thing the dead can say in the days just after decease, but that would be a strange name indeed.’

  I look back at Lucifane, and now I see her eyes are glistening. There are actual tears there, and girls + tears = warning bells in my experience. I need to stop go
ing ‘um’ and try to think of something more coherent to say. But all I can manage is…

  ‘Luci, who is Jojo la Mouche?’

  The kitchen is filled with the sound of shattering china as Lucifane’s teacup hits the tiles. Then my ears almost explode as her scream erupts, and Luci – the panther all over again – jumps at me.

  Oh, crapsticks!

  I don’t hang around to feel those fingernails.

  5

  ‘What Is It, That It Is?’

  When I climb back in through the hotel window, I’m breathing so heavily I’m lucky not to wake Brian. Well, so would you be too if you’d just run up four flights of stairs with a horde of angry French Goths on your tail.

  ‘What in Death’s name just happened, Si?’ I gasp. The teacup – amazingly still in my hand – is rattling wildly in its saucer. ‘She couldn’t see him, could she? She couldn’t see you!’

  ‘I fear we may have misunderstood the situation, Daniel.’

  ‘Misunderstood? When someone says they can “see dead people”, that sounds pretty clear to me!’

  ‘Ah, but only because you actually can.’ Si’s got his annoying I’ve-worked-it-all-out-now face on. ‘Consider it from Lucifane’s point of view. She was trying to tell you something, but never expected you to take what she said literally.’

  ‘Okay, Einstein’s Grandad,’ I forget to whisper. ‘What was she trying to tell me, then?’

  Brian rolls over and stretches. I hold my breath and put the teacup down. I could do without him waking up and asking where I’ve been.

  ‘Daniel,’ Si continues, ‘something terrible has happened next door, in the squit…’

  ‘Squat, Si, it’s a squat! The last thing I need right now is a squit.’

  ‘Very well, something terrible has happened in the squat. Somebody has recently died and his spirit is trapped, unable to pass on to the Hereafter. That someone – Jojo la Mouche – needs our help, and Lucifane clearly needs it too.’

  ‘Now stop right there, Si. I’ve got enough on with babysitting Brian here. I don’t need another job.’