‘Brian! Throw the freakin’ plane!’
Bri gives me a wild look, but then turns in the boat anyway, getting ready to throw. I lean over to Si and whisper a quick instruction in his spectral ear.
Brian throws his plane.
And for someone who can make paper do foldy things I didn’t think possible, it turns out Brian’s pretty rubbish at the actual throwing part. In fact, by the time Si manages to catch hold of it with his mind, the plane is almost in the water. But using the same telekinetic power that made Baz’s jeans fall down on the train, Si sweeps Brian’s plane high up into the air.
‘Crikey!’ says Brian.
As we all watch, the plane zooms around the cavern at the very limit of sight, gaining speed as it goes. Even Death stops to look up, his hood falling back. What a shame only I can see Simon flying it in a blaze of spectacular ectoplasm. He takes the plane up in a glorious loop into the darkness above. When it reappears, it rockets downwards like a bolt from on high, straight at Death.
And into his right eye socket.
Death lets out a very human sound – ‘Aiii!’ – and falls in a billow of black cloak and flailing arms.
This time he doesn’t get up. We can all hear the moaning from the bottom of his boat. I look at Brian. His eyes are wide with astonishment.
‘Something tells me that really will be the greatest plane of your life, Bri.’
He stares up at me.
‘I…’ he starts. Then his face changes. ‘I… I can hear something.’
‘Freakin’ hell, Brian!’
‘No, so can I,’ says Luci. ‘What is that?’
And there is a sound, a sound that’s growing around us – a murmur that’s becoming a roar. Then there’s a glow, which flickers in the tunnel ahead, before turning into a torrent of light, making us all hold up our hands to our eyes.
A motor boat burst from the tunnel and speeds right past, spraying us with water and setting our little craft rocking like crazy.
‘Arrêtez-vous!’ comes a cry from the dark, amplified through a megaphone.
It’s the boys in bleu.
The police vessel turns sharply and slows, making ready to head back to us. But, by chance, this brings it right alongside the second boat. Where – in the blaze of the police spotlight – a figure in black sits up, his face a mask of death. And that mask is ripped off, as the person wearing it clutches at his right eye.
His left eye is already covered with a surgical eye patch.
The engine of the police boat cuts immediately.
‘But Daniel!’ Si is at my side in a moment. ‘Who is that?’
‘Le Commandant Lavache!’ Luci gasps. ‘But… but he is the ’ead of the cataflics. He is doing this?’
I adjust the coat. If I still had my specs, I’d correct them too.
‘Yeah, the guardian of the Empire of the Dead,’ I say. ‘Spent so much time down here, he’s gone native, I reckon. Fancied the job of Emperor himself.’
‘But how did you know?’ Si is swirling around me impatiently. ‘How did you know who it was?’
‘When Luci knocked him down, I saw straight away it was someone in a mask. And someone I’d seen before too. Think about it, Si. What’s the one thing you can’t hide when you wear a skull mask? Your hooter. Especially when it looks like the front of a battleship. His nose stuck right out through the hole in the middle of the skull, all shiny with sweat.’
By now I’m punting us over to the police. Well, they’re our ticket out of this place, aren’t they? But I’m in no hurry. Besides, right now they’re too busy being flabbergasted by the fact that their chief is the murdering psycho behind all the madness that’s been going on down here recently to pay much attention to us.
Yet.
Jojo’s ghost makes a triumphant loop around his sister and his spectral glow becomes golden. I recognise the signs.
‘Luci, now it really is time to say goodbye to Jojo.’
He’s all around her and I’m about to point this out, but I can see from her face that she knows he’s there. Maybe she can’t see dead people, but she’s not without something of that gift.
She closes her eyes for a moment. When she opens them again she is looking right at me.
‘Thank you, Dan. Merci! Jojo is at peace now. I can feel it. And it’s all down to you.’
I give my best shrug, one the Sunglasses Kid would be proud of.
‘There’s just one little thing before he goes, though,’ I say. I hate this part, but I am in business, after all. ‘Sorry we didn’t get the chance to go over the small print before, but there is a tiny favour Jojo could do for me. Before he goes over to the Hereafter, that is. Let’s call it… my fee.’
Luci looks confused. I give her my best lopsided grin and explain.
She looks even more confused for a moment, but then she smiles – smiles brilliantly. And with the sun of that smile through the rain of her tears, her face is a rainbow of emotion. She steps over to me and nods, pushing a strand of loose hair from her face. I go a bit wobbly in the knee department, but manage to stay upright as her kiss lands on my lips.
And it is the exact polar opposite of crapsticks.
Is there a word for that? Not that I care. It’s my entire trip to Paris and everything that’s happened to me there, all rolled into one ear-tingling moment.
Then I have an overwhelming sense of Jojo being there too, just for a second. I go cold as he passes through me. By the time I open my eyes, he has gone.
Though not entirely.
As Luci steps back and gives me a shy glance, I know that one small part of her brother will remain on earth a while yet. And I have the chance to test that part straight away.
As the police pull their disgraced commander from his boat and slap the handcuffs on, he stops whimpering for a moment, turns his blind eyes up to his former colleagues and cries:
‘J’aurais pu réussir mon coup si ces gamins ne s’en étaient pas mélé!’
And I understand perfectly.
18
The Boy Who Cheated Death
Well, we’re soon being towed out through the tunnel and away. The police don’t really know how to handle us so we just stay in our boat and try to look innocent. Not easy when one of us is wearing a death’s head coat and the other looks like she’s about to audition for a Goth-rock musical about teenage vampires. But I don’t care. Luci’s holding my hand, and I just sit there feeling fuzzy.
There’s quite a reception at the end though. It’s clear the police have radioed through with the astonishing news about Lavache – there’s a whole crowd of uniforms waiting to clap him in irons. We’re not exactly treated warmly either, but hey, I’m used to that. There’s talk of having to make a statement and vague threats about trespass charges, but all that evaporates when we finally reach the surface and emerge into the daylight.
It seems the whole of Paris is waiting for us.
‘How did they hear about it?’ I wonder aloud, staring at the enormous crowd.
‘Mayhap through the pocket speaking boxes the policemen are carrying,’ says Si, in his old-fashioned way.
But however it happened, the press are waiting outside in a scrum of cameras and microphones. When Lavache is led out, still in his deathly robes, and with a young policeman following, carrying his scythe and skull mask, the world goes crazy with questions and flashbulbs.
‘Blimey, Si, look,’ I say. ‘There’s Frenchy and the others. We must’ve been reported missing or something. Phelps won’t be too pleased about that.’
‘Keep close to young Brian, Daniel. I see that thug Baz there too.’
And that’s when another idea occurs to me. Hey, it’s all go in the brain box today. Besides, the cries for information from the Press reach a fever pitch, and it would be impolite not to give it to them, wouldn’t it? I jump onto the roof of a nearby police car, and drag an astonished Brian up beside me. Before the coppers can object, I raise my hands for silence. And I get it.
> Then I start to speak.
It feels odd, talking in the fluent French that Jojo gave me in return for helping his sister. Like someone else’s mind is supplying the words that my own wants to say. And in a way, that’s exactly how it is.
First I tell the press about my outcast friends in the squat. I don’t give any names, but draw a vivid verbal pic of their need to put a roof over their heads in the face of intolerance, broken homes and absent overseas landlords. Someone in the crowd shouts, ‘Vive la France!’
Then I mention the catacombs, and the partying and how no one can blame a bunch of likeable misfits for making the most of the caverns beneath their feet, can they? Well, can they? When I get onto the appearance of Death himself in the catacombs and the sad fate of poor Jojo, you could hear a baguette drop. And that’s when I push Brian forward.
He’s the real hero, I declare. I tell of Brian’s bravery in deciding that something should be done to help the terrified young people in the squat. I wave my fist in the air when I explain how Brian single-handedly deduced who was behind the attacks and hatched the plan to stop him. I gush with gratitude at his generosity in letting me come along too.
When I get to the bit where Brian not only rescued the girl, but defeated Death with one of his amazing paper aeroplanes, there’s a gasp of such utter disbelief that I wonder if I’m overdoing it a bit. Fortunately, that very plane – preserved as Exhibit A in the hands of a wide-eyed policewoman – is held aloft on cue.
The clicking of cameras is almost deafening then.
I raise Brian’s hand and declare, in rousing French, that he is nothing less than the boy who cheated Death; the hero of the Paris underworld. Then I hop down, leaving him blinking in a renewed storm of photography.
Brian is every inch the terrified squirrel as he faces the crowd. Obviously he knows I’m lying, but I doubt anyone will listen to him now anyway. Once people get hold of a good story, the truth is the first thing to get trampled in the stampede. And there’s a mighty rush of people now. Brian finds himself hoisted into the air, his squeaks of protest ignored. Then the cheering starts.
‘That was very generous, Daniel,’ says Si, puffing his approval in little white clouds of ectoplasm.
‘Yeah, well, he needed a break,’ I reply, looking over to my classmates.
Baz is at the front, a look of leaden anger on his meaty mug, but he soon vanishes behind the others as they jostle with reporters to get near Brian, to share in his sudden celebrity. The girl called Tanya shouts ‘Juh swee don le meme class as him!’ as she grabs Brian’s sleeve and holds on. ‘Juh swee his girlfriend!’
Another storm of cameras.
‘I reckon he’s pretty bully-proof now, don’t you, Si?’ I say. ‘Besides, it’s not good for business if I’m in the spotlight, is it?’
‘Indeed not, Daniel,’ my ghostly sidekick replies. ‘But there is one light you cannot escape so easily. Look over there.’
I look over there. Luci has slipped to the edge of the crowd, easily distancing herself from the overwhelmed police. But she’s got her eyes turned up to max and she’s aiming them right at me.
I manage a not very cool wave, and wonder if I’ll ever find my inner James Bond.
Luci blows me a kiss. And I swear I can actually feel when it lands like an incoming missile.
Then she’s gone, vanishing into the urban shadow of a Paris side street.
I wish I had my purple specs right now.
‘All in all, a very satisfying outcome, Master Dyer,’ says Si then. ‘You not only rescued Jojo but you even managed to deal with your class bully in a most intelligent way.’
‘Eh?’
‘Oh, yes. When one cannot defeat one’s enemy by force, one acts to make him so irrelevant that he does not need defeating at all. You are learning, Daniel. You know, for a while I honestly thought you were going to try to fight him. With your fists!’
‘Yeah,’ I say, staring at my shoes. ‘Yeah, it’s just as well I didn’t try that, isn’t it?’
And I stroll back to join the rest of my class. Frenchy is standing there, his mouth opening and closing like a goldfish who doesn’t get that the fly’s on the other side of the glass.
‘How…?’ he splutters. ‘How did you…?’
‘Réussi à apprendre la langue française en quelques jours?’ I suggest, finishing his question for him. He nods in a twitchy, slightly mad way. Yes, it seems he really would like to know how I managed to learn French so fast. I look back at him. Then I give him my biggest, most Gallic shrug.
I think that says it all, don’t you?
And by the time we’re allowed back on the bus, Frenchy even manages to smile in my direction. I must remember to give him his grammar book back tomorrow.
As we take our seats once again in the flea-bitten bus – ready to be whisked back to the delights of the Hotel Cafards – Baz makes one last attempt to get at Brian. But it’s hopeless – he’s drowned out by the sea of kids. They deposit their new hero in the middle of the back seat, and cluster round. The girl called Tanya snuggles beside him, tearing pages out of a guide book of Paris and handing them round. Everyone wants to know how to make the plane that defeated Death, it seems. Brian’s going to have a late night tonight. And somehow I just know Baz’ll be making planes too, before the end of it.
And me? Well, I settle back into the leatherette and school bus fluff all on my own, and recede into the coat. Well, not all on my own, obviously. Simon is at my side, with a snaggletooth grin of spectral pride I’m glad only I can see.
But there are no prizes for guessing who I’m thinking about.
This is my last night in Paris. Tomorrow I have to say goodbye to Lucifane.
19
Last Mango in Paris
I hardly sleep that night. And not just because of the sound of music and partying that comes from one of the rooms below as our class celebrates their last night away and Brian’s awesomeness. It’s a party they somehow forgot to invite me to. I sleep a bit though, I must do, because when I open my eyes next I see that Bri is lying on top of his bed, a huge smile on his face. Like the squirrel who got the acorn.
I’m pleased for him.
It’s dark outside, but my watch says it won’t be for long, so I get up and pull on the coat. The corners are still a bit damp from wearing it over wet clothes, but I’m glad of it as I slip out through the window and into the predawn cold of a Paris morning.
I half expect to see her on the roof next door, but why should I? I must be going soft in the head.
‘Daniel?’
Simon is suddenly at my side, all ectoplasm and spectral concern.
‘Back to London today, Si. And all that.’
‘Indeed. But Paris isn’t so far. Certainly, it’s closer now than it ever was in my time. Though there’s no place like home, as they say.’
‘Yeah, they do,’ I agree. But I’m thinking of something Luci said the first time I visited the squat, about how she and her friends had turned an empty building into a home – a home for those who don’t fit in anywhere else.
I jump across and stroll over to the skylight. I’ve got the coat, I’ve got Si, I’ve got my pale and interesting looks – it’s everything I need to start again in a new city, isn’t it? Well, isn’t it?
I slide down the ladder.
The house is silent.
So silent that I know immediately it’s empty.
I crouch in the dark, straining my ears anyway. The sound of a distant police siren drifts in from far away. I stand and walk slowly down to the big room.
‘It’s quite a mess,’ says Si, swooping about. ‘It looks like they left in a hurry. But why? The Deathly stalker of the catacombs had been defeated, there was nothing more for them to fear. Why did they leave?’
I shrug – a small, British one this time.
I know why they’ve gone. Luci and her friends live below the radar, off the map. Under the ground. The press were bound to find them sooner or later, hungry
for more of the story I span last night. They could never live with that. After all I’d done to protect it, the squat was over anyway.
But there’s something I see – a glint in the ghostlight from Si.
It’s a pair of purple shades, on the arm of the big fancy chair.
I slip them on.
‘Daniel,’ says Si, at my side, ‘there’s nothing else for you here. Let us return to your home and your family. You will have other clients. The one thing the world is never short of is ghosts and their regrets.’
‘Yeah. But I think I’ll just take one last look at the catacombs, Si. You know, to see what I could have won.’
The cellar door is slightly open. I look around for a skull candle, but I don’t see one. In fact, all the bones that once decorated the squat have vanished completely. There is a candle in a jam jar, though, and a small box of matches.
I light up and walk down.
Nothing here has changed of course. The corridors of bone, the macabre sculptures – all as creepy as before. I walk through the public areas I now know so well, half expecting to be stopped by a policeman, but there’s no one at all. I squeeze between the bars as if they aren’t there.
There are no boats beside the river when I reach it, but there wouldn’t be, would there? I shimmy across the chain and creep into the party chamber. I’m sorry that I never got to see this place in full swing. I could tell Si that ghosts aren’t the only ones with regrets, but I can’t be bothered.
The chamber is almost unrecognisable. It has been cleaned entirely – the snack boxes, litter, candles and cushions are all gone. Even the huge glitter ball has been taken down. And something else is different too.
‘They put them all back,’ says Si, sweeping his light across the walls of bone. ‘All of them.’
And he’s right. All the skulls from the squat have been fixed back into the wall of the Party Cavern. But not just any old how. They have been arranged in giant letters, letters that spell out two words:
AU REVOIR.
Dan and the Caverns of Bone Page 8