Dan and the Caverns of Bone

by Thomas Taylor

  ‘That was mad!’ pants Brian, emerging from the coat. ‘Can we just find your friend now and get out of here?’

  ‘You know, Bri,’ I say, flicking the torch back on, ‘I like that plan. Let’s do that.’

  15

  Styx and Stones

  ‘Luci!’ I whisper-shout at the bottom of my voice. ‘Luci, where are you?’

  ‘If we weren’t so far into this infernal place, I’d suggest turning back,’ wails Si. ‘As it is, I cannot even remember the way. We are trapped, Daniel. Lost!’

  I wish I could ignore him, but he’s right – I can’t remember the way either.

  ‘Luci!’

  ‘What’s that noise?’ says Brian

  ‘It’s me, trying to shout without making any noise,’ I answer.

  ‘No, that other noise. Listen.’

  We go quiet. And yes, there is something. Tinny and echoey, all at once.

  ‘Music?’ I ask.

  I turn the torch on Bri and he’s nodding.

  ‘It appears to be coming from there.’ Si points, and lights the way with his index finger.

  I know of only one place where we can find music down here.

  ‘Come on!’

  We run a little further and see the opening of another passage. The music is louder now, and there’s another sound too, one I’ve been straining to hear for some time: running water.

  We turn into the passage, but immediately I put up my hand for the others to stop. Far ahead, I see the faint ectoplasmic glow of a ghost, hovering in the air. And in that glow, someone is sitting huddled in a small paddle boat beneath the archway of the underground river. The portable CD player is in her lap.

  Luci.

  With the spirit of her brother watching over her.

  ‘Wait for me here,’ I whisper to Brian.

  ‘What, on my own?!’

  ‘Nah, Simon’ll keep you company.’ And ignoring Bri’s squeaks of protest, I walk slowly forward.

  ‘Luci?’ I say as I get nearer.

  She looks up.

  ‘Dan?’

  ‘Luci, you can’t stay here. Let’s go, yeah?’

  ‘I cannot just leave Jojo. He is still here, I can sense him. Why is he still here, Dan, if he… if he really…?’

  ‘He did,’ I say firmly. The sooner she accepts what happened to him, the better.

  I look over at the spirit of Jojo la Mouche. He looks back, and I can see he’s starting to get it together, to accept what’s happened to him too. He gives me a nod and gestures to his sister and I know exactly what he means.

  ‘He’s still here because of you,’ I say. I take off my coat and drape it over her shoulders. Well, it’s what you do in moments like this, isn’t it? When there’s a shivering girl?

  Then I sit down next to her and tell her properly.

  ‘He can’t rest easy, he can’t go on to the Hereafter while he thinks you’re in danger. But you’ll always be in danger down here while some madman is on the loose. The best thing you can do for Jojo is get back up to the squat and stay there till the police catch this nutter.’

  ‘Nutter? What is “nutter”?’

  ‘Psycho. Madman. Like a normal person, only insaner in the brainer.’

  ‘You really think it is just a person dressed up? I almost hoped…’

  ‘Trust me, Luci – I know it is. And I’m pretty sure I know who it is, too.’

  And I tell her my idea that the owners of Hotel Cafards are trying to drive Luci and her friends out of the squat with this whole sick stunt.

  ‘The porteur?’ She looks doubtful. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yup. Well, mostly sure. It sort of looks like it might be him, all things considered. I think. Um…’

  ‘I do not care who it is.’ Luci sets her head defiantly. ‘I just want Jojo to be at peace. I cannot leave him here, Dan, all alone.’

  All alone? I remember Brian and beckon him over from the shadows. Luci stands as he approaches, and brushes herself down. She looks good in the coat.

  ‘Luci, this is the rest of the rescue party: Simon, who you met before but can’t see because… well, we’ve been through all that… and this is Brian, expert in paper aircraft and, er, mathematics. You’re in safe hands now.’

  Luci says, ‘Salut,’ to Bri and Bri manages to squeak back. He’s goggling at her, and I’m not surprised – despite the circs, she’s as stunning as ever. In a sad but Gothically beautiful sort of way, that is. I mean, she’s the only person I’ve ever seen who looks good in run mascara. And as for her slightly upturned nose…

  Concentrate, Dan, concentrate.

  ‘Is it really true that the only way to help Jojo is for me to leave?’ She sniffs.

  I nod.

  ‘Then let us go,’ she says.

  I glance at the ghost of Jojo and see that he’s understood. His face seems to brighten and a spectral wind blows through him, drying away some of the wetness his drowning has left.

  ‘You should say goodbye now.’ I point to where Jojo’s ghost is. ‘When it happens, it can happen quite quickly.’

  Luci sniffs again but keeps her chin up. She turns to her brother and holds up her hand as she did before. He reaches out.

  ‘Um, what’s that noise?’ says Brian, at entirely the wrong moment.

  ‘You asked that one already,’ I say. ‘Music, then running water, then girl, remember? Get with the programme, Bri.’

  ‘No, that other noise. Listen.’

  I listen. And I hear it.

  Scrunch POCK, scrunch POCK…

  It’s the sound of someone walking on gravel and tapping the base of a long pole. It’s a sound we’ve heard before.

  ‘Zooks, Daniel!’ Si projects his ghost light down the corridor, away from the river – down the way we came. The sound gets louder and louder until…

  …we see him.

  Tall and hooded, he stands at the edge of our sight, robed in black and carrying a staff topped with a cruel steel blade. He stops and there’s a moment of terrifying silence before…

  POCK!

  …he stamps his scythe on the ground and lifts his head. Beneath the shadow of the hood a mouth of gleaming white teeth grins back at us, above a chin of yellowing bone.

  ‘Across the river,’ I somehow manage to say. ‘Quick!’

  ‘But we cannot.’ Luci clutches my arm. ‘The way through, beyond the party chamber, is blocked. The grilles have been locked by the police.’

  ‘You mean…?’

  ‘Yes. He is standing in the only way out!’

  I look back at the figure of Death. He lifts his scythe.

  Then he comes for us.

  I give the nearest of the two boats a kick. It hits the water, and the rope in my hand almost cuts my fingers off as I brace myself against the pull of the water.

  ‘Er, this is the bit where you get in!’ I shout, when I see they are all just staring at me in astonishment. Luci recovers first and jumps into the boat, making it rock like crazy.

  ‘This is insane!’ squeaks Brian.

  ‘No,’ I correct him, ‘that’s insane,’ and I nod my head in the direction of the deathly figure sweeping down on us. Death lets out a bellow of echoing, inhuman rage, and strikes the wall of the passage in his passing, slicing through ancient bone and raising a torrent of sparks.

  ‘Okay!’ says Brian.

  He jumps.

  Then the ghosts are there too, waiting above the boat to follow as we are whooshed away into the unknown. But there’s a problem. If I step forward to jump, the water will just pull the boat away at the same speed. And I don’t need Jojo’s ghost to remind me what could happen to yours truly if I land in this rushing black water.

  ‘Daniel! Jump!’ Si waves his wig at me, and the others call similar words.

  The extra weight is pulling the rope through my hands now, but the sound of another scything cut reminds me that I’ll be dead in a second or two anyway, so what have I got to lose? I look up and see that Death is upon me – his weapo
n is raised, he begins his swing…

  With an echoing cry of ‘Crapsticks!’, I jump.

  There’s a sensation of speed and sharpness and a CLANG as metal strikes the arch of the tunnel. I get a face full of brick fragments and I can’t see. I reach out and feel the edge of the boat, and grab it, just as my body hits the water. I fall back, shocked by the icy cold, but arms grab my clothes and somehow I don’t slip under.

  And so, like this – with me mostly not in the boat at all – we are taken by the current and swallowed whole by the clamouring darkness of the tunnel.

  16

  Lifeboat Or Deathboat?

  For a while everything is so mad that I don’t know what’s going on. The cold makes it hard to think straight, so I don’t even try, I just hold on as the boat buffets and spins in the current. But eventually, with the world in my head still turning, I risk opening one eye and find that everything else has stopped, that we’re out onto the calmer waters of some vast, subterranean lake.

  And someone is pulling at me.

  ‘Get in, Dan. It’s wet in the water.’

  I look up and see Brian’s ferrety silhouette against the combined ghost glow of Simon and Jojo right behind him. And I can’t argue with his powers of observation – it is wet in the water. I reach into the boat and haul myself in, Bri tugging at me with the power of a very small Jack Russell. Luci is sitting at the front with a long-bladed paddle, propelling us gently. The torch is propped beside her.

  ‘Gngnk…’ I manage to say from the freezing pool I’ve made at the bottom of the boat. ‘W-w-where are we?’

  ‘I do not know, I ’ave never been here,’ Luci says, straining to see ahead. ‘But the only thing that matters is we ’ave escaped Death.’ Then she turns and gives me a look that would stop a charging rhino and make it blush. ‘Thanks to you.’

  I sit up and shake the hair. A small white fish falls out and lands in my lap. It looks up at me with bulbous, unseeing eyes before springing into the air and plopping over the side.

  ‘C…cool.’ I pick up the coat from where Luci has dropped it, and slip it on. ‘S…Si, any great ideas in that leaky head of yours?’

  ‘For regaining the surface, you mean?’ Si puffs ectoplasm from his bullet hole. ‘To escape the hellish confines of this nightmare deep? To feel, once more, the golden touch of the eternal sun?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Then no. But something of practical importance has occurred to me, Daniel, especially given the sounds emanating from behind us.’

  Emanating? What sounds are emanating? I turn back but I can’t see a thing beyond the spectral glow in the boat – the lake must be enormous. But I can hear rushing water behind. And…

  ‘Luci, stop paddling a moment. Bri, quit fidgeting. Listen!’

  From behind, barely audible above the constant roar of the fast water that feeds the lake, there’s a steady swoosh sploosh sound.

  ‘Si?’

  ‘Well, while we’re all celebrating our escape from the clutches of Death,’ my oh-so-helpful sidekick says, ‘it might be well to remember that there was a second boat.’

  I look at Luci and she looks back. No one looks at Brian, but we both know what he’s thinking from the frightened squeaks that break out.

  I pick up the torch and shine its puny light into the dark behind. It’s not enough to give more than the barest impression of what’s there, but then again, it’s surprising how little light you need to spot the Grim Reaper as he stands in a boat, propelling himself along with great sweeps of his scythe.

  ‘Dan,’ says Luci, in a trembly voice. ‘What is that word you always say, when things are going badly?’

  ‘Er… crapsticks?’ I suggest.

  ‘Oui. That is it.’

  ‘Let’s take it as said, then, shall we? And row!’

  Luci jumps forward again, and starts paddling like an Amazon warrior. There’s a big pole in the bottom of the boat, and I grab that, shoving it in the water behind us, trying to propel us along the bottom of the lake.

  Only there is no bottom to this lake. At least, none I can find.

  ‘Bri, use your hands,’ I say. ‘Si, any chance you can blast us along with ghost power?’

  ‘Alas, no,’ he says with a look of elegant regret, as Brian’s small splashes join our own efforts. ‘But I suggest you increase speed somehow. See, he gains on us!’

  I look round and sure enough, it turns out that a scythe is an excellent paddle. And maybe Death sees me looking, I don’t know, but at this moment a horrible, ringing laugh breaks out. It booms round the lake and the invisible cavern above.

  ‘Okay, Si – that’s not the hotel porter, is it?’

  ‘I fear not.’

  ‘And the owners of the squat or South American bankers or whatever? It’s not likely to be them either?’

  ‘Why would anyone wanting to drive out Luci and her friends terrorise the whole catacombs, Daniel?’

  ‘But, surely you don’t think…?’

  ‘He comes with a strength and vigour that is scarcely human, his face is a mask of bone…’

  ‘But, Si, you’re dead. And you didn’t see the Grim Reaper when you copped it, did you?’

  ‘Well, no, but I did have a bullet expanding in my brain at the time. Perhaps I missed him.’

  ‘I can see something,’ Luci calls. ‘Up ahead. It is another tunnel, another way out!’

  I strain forward, and sure enough, there’s a vast stone arch looming in the darkness ahead, below a bloom of sparkling stalactites that hang from the rock above.

  I turn the pole in the water behind us, and force the front of the boat that way. With Luci still paddling we should be able to reach the arch before our deathly pursuer. And maybe that explains what happens next.

  ‘What’s that noise?’ says Brian

  ‘Bri, will you stop hearing noises!’

  ‘No, listen – it’s like…’

  But then the world explodes with a sound louder than any I could have imagined. A patch of inky water beside the boat flies into the air and sprays over us.

  ‘… a gun being cocked,’ Brian finishes weakly.

  And it’s true. In the boat behind us, Death has thrown down his scythe and is taking aim with a very un-supernatural – but all the more deadly for that – shotgun.

  ‘Get down!’ I shout, wondering how much protection the sides of this little boat will give. And I find out immediately as a second boom nearly bursts my eardrums. A chunk of boat vanishes from the woodwork right beside my head, carrying my purple specs away with it.

  ‘Double barrelled,’ I gasp, peering back through the hole. ‘Only two shots. He’s re-loading!’

  ‘Then we ’ave no time to waste,’ cries Luci, and she stands behind me. Before I can say or do anything, she takes up the paddle, swings it through 180 degrees of pure wronged-Goth anger, and lets go.

  I’ve never seen a paddle look more like a weapon of vengeance in my life, but that’s exactly how it appears as it swirls through the air. It hits Death square in the chest with a satisfying thud, knocking him off his feet. There’s a ploof as the shotgun spins into the water. Then Luci follows through with a torrent of filthy-sounding French that even I’m glad I can’t understand.

  The ghost of Jojo lets out a whoop of spectral glee and dances crazily around his sister. She has never looked more like a panther than she does now.

  ‘One small problem,’ Si points out, in his most infuriating voice.

  I give him the eyebrow as I stand beside Luci.

  ‘We needed that paddle to move.’

  We look back at the other boat and see Death stagger to his feet. The bony grin from the hood suggests that he’s realised the same thing. He picks up his scythe, letting out another peal of terrible laughter. With a great dig of the scythe into the water, he surges towards us.

  ‘Crapsteeks!’ says Luci.

  17

  The Light at the End of the Tunnel

  I grab the pole, and begin pushing fo
r all I’m worth. And amazingly I can finally touch the bottom, so we ease forward in our desperate, slow-speed boat chase. But I’m not entirely concentrating on our predicament, not right now, because I’ve just noticed something.

  I saw it as Death got back to his feet. But it’s only now that I realise what it is.

  ‘If only I ’ad something else to throw!’ Luci cries in exasperation, as she looks about the interior of the boat with the torch. ‘But there is nothing!’

  But she’s wrong. There is something we could throw. And what starts as an idea that her words bring into my head quickly becomes a notion that links everything together. And that becomes a plan.

  ‘Bri, have you got any paperclips in your pocket?’

  ‘Er…’

  ‘It’s not a trick question, Bri!’

  ‘Er…’ He rummages in his jeans. ‘Yes, a few, but…’

  I drop the newspaper – the one I found in the catacombs last time and which is still rolled up dry in my coat pocket – on his lap.

  ‘Make a plane, Brian. Make the best paper aeroplane of your life.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘Dan?’ Luci looks at me like she can’t believe what I’m saying.

  ‘Oi, can’t I get a little trust around here? I’m the expert on the scene, yeah? The kid who sees dead people? And I’m telling you, Brian, to make like a sheep and fold!’

  Brian squeaks, but as I dig the pole again and again into the water, I hear him tear off a sheet and start his furtive rustlings. I’m about to say something to hurry him along, when he beats me to it.

  ‘It’s more of a dart than a true plane,’ he explains, fixing a paperclip on the nose and holding it up. My mouth falls open. It’s so astonishingly, blindingly complex that I can hardly believe he’s made it so fast. ‘I added a fifth stabiliser along the spine, so that – ’

  ‘We’ll look at the graphs later!’ I shout. ‘Just chuck it at old bony face!’

  ‘What?’ say both Brian and Luci.

  Death lets out another peal of inhuman laughter as he gains further. He’s going to catch us. He waves his scythe in triumph.