The Remarkable Secret of Aurelie Bonhoffen

by Deborah Abela

  ‘Ooooh!’ Rolo wailed into Bog’s face for good measure.

  ‘Ghosts?’ Mayor Bog pushed his sodden hair from his eyes and laughed. ‘I have met people who will do many things to get what they want, but pre tending they are ghosts is the most ridiculous –’

  ‘Oh, we’re not pretending,’ Aurelie said.

  Mayor Bog’s blankets swept from him and hovered in the air before dropping to the floor.

  ‘I … I … it’s …’ Bog shivered.

  ‘What you are planning to do to the pier?’ Rindolf asked.

  ‘I’m not planning to do anything to –’

  A row of books cascaded from a shelf.

  ‘There was something I forgot to tell you,’ Aurelie said. ‘My ghost friends here get very upset when they feel they’re being lied to.’

  Mayor Bog became indignant. ‘I’m not lying, I’m simply saying –’

  Two long curtains flung aside. The double windows flew open and a cold wind blustered into the room, followed by Frank’s wavering appearance.

  ‘How … where …?’ Mayor Bog gasped.

  ‘Watch what happens next.’ Rindolf sat on the edge of Bog’s bed. ‘It’s quite something.’

  Frank hovered over the mayor. He gave him a stare laced with sadness before lifting his shirt. ‘Someone seems to have given me this nasty gash.’

  Frank wheezed and staggered to one side and then another, threatening to fall on Bog. He groaned and gave a convincing, if not overdone, performance of a man dying in extraordinary pain while floating in midair. He fell across Bog’s bed without causing a ripple of movement. Rindolf and Rolo clapped.

  ‘It was a little exaggerated at the end,’ Aurelie said. ‘But you get the message.’

  Bog’s face had drained of all colour. ‘I don’t feel so well.’

  Aurelie approached the bed. ‘Mayor Bog, the pier’s our home. Why do you want to see it ruined?’

  ‘I don’t want it ruined.’ He hung his head. ‘Truly. And I never meant to hurt anyone, it’s just that … the pier is wanted by someone very powerful, and it’s he who …’

  ‘Yes?’

  Bog sighed. ‘He wants the pier … destroyed.’

  ‘Destroyed?’ Frank pulled the two halves of his body together and floated to his feet. ‘How?’

  ‘I … I don’t know.’

  ‘Please, Mr Bog?’ Aurelie pleaded.

  ‘I didn’t ask.’

  ‘Who’s going to do it?’ Rolo demanded.

  ‘A man called Cicero.’

  ‘Cicero who?’ Rindolf asked.

  ‘He didn’t say. I don’t even know if Cicero is his real name.’ Bog added desperately, ‘I warned him not to hurt anyone.’

  ‘Why would you agree to destroy the pier?’ Aurelie asked.

  ‘I don’t know anymore. First it was for money, then –’

  ‘Money?’ Rindolf tilted his head in confusion. ‘You would do this for money?’

  ‘No, not just money. There was position and promises and guarantees and … and …’

  ‘Who offered you these guarantees and promises?’ Rolo snarled.

  Bog paused and closed his eyes before quietly admitting, ‘Crook.’

  ‘Crook?’ Rolo turned to Rindolf. ‘The businessman who wanted to buy the pier.’

  ‘He said he was going to restore it,’ Bog said. ‘Make it better. Grander.’

  ‘And you believed him?’ Rindolf asked. ‘So he’ll have the pier whether we like it or not.’

  ‘I never meant … it was only because … I should have stopped this long before now,’ Bog muttered. ‘What are you going to do with me?’

  Rolo’s eyes narrowed. ‘What I’d like to do is send you to the deepest, darkest reaches of a bottomless, tormented eternity. But, as it happens, you’re much more useful to us here.’

  Mayor Bog brightened. ‘I’ll do anything. I promise. Anything you’d like.’

  ‘You bet you will, and for now that means coming with us,’ Rolo said.

  The group hurried outside, down the drive and into the narrow lane leading away from Bog’s house. When they got to the rise that overlooked the sea, Aurelie saw a small orange glow on the pier. ‘Fire,’ she whispered.

  Cold air burned into their lungs as they ran. Aurelie tore off her wig and hoisted her dress up to her knees. She sprinted after her uncles, her eyes fixed on the wisps of fire that rose from the centre of the pier. Bog followed, wheezing and stumbling.

  Rolo and Rindolf charged into the streets ahead, running through lampposts and parked cars, darting across the main street that fronted the pier, until they melted through the metal gates and tore inside.

  Aurelie arrived only minutes later. She took a key from around her neck and opened the lock. She flung the gates open. The cold wind from the sea shivered past as her feet raced across the wooden boardwalk. She stopped when she came to a small group of people trying to put out a fire that was quickly consuming Argus’s office.

  Frank called instructions to To and Fro and Amarella to lower buckets on a rope into the ocean, draw them up and run them to the fire.

  Lilliana had taken hessian sacks from the Funslide, dunked them in a barrel of water and was slapping them against the boards of the pier where burning embers had strayed. The fire tore into the sky, snarling and crackling high above them.

  Argus unwound the long, heavy fire hose. He and Rolo wrestled it across the boards and directed a stream of water onto the flames. Rindolf helped with the buckets while Aurelie ran to help Lilliana.

  ‘Don’t get too close to the fire,’ Lilliana cried over the hiss of the flames.

  The faint scream of a siren was only just heard through the din.

  The burning wood creaked and groaned. Steam drifted up from the boards around the office. The seared air and smoke caught in Aurelie’s throat as she plunged her sack into a barrel of water and slammed it down on the glowing embers.

  Bog stumbled to a stop and tried to gather his breath.

  ‘Mayor!’ Aurelie threw him a sack. ‘Hit this against any embers you see.’

  He lunged forward, grabbed it and drenched it with water.

  The flames licked higher into the air, throwing off bulging pillows of smoke.

  Suddenly, a loud crack, distinct from all the others, fractured the air. The boards beneath Aurelie began to sag. For a brief moment, all activity stopped.

  ‘Aurelie!’ Bog raced forward and wrenched her away from the towering blaze. He threw her to the floor, shielding her with his wet hessian sack as the boards around the office splintered and snapped.

  ‘Everyone stand back!’ Argus cried.

  Buckets were dropped in a rush to move away.

  Aurelie and Bog looked up to see the office lurch sideways like a tree being felled. There was a small moment when nothing else happened, until the boards beneath the building finally gave way and collapsed into the sea.

  A plume of smoke erupted through the jagged hole with a violent hiss.

  Amarella and Lilliana circled Aurelie and bundled her further from the fire. Along the pier, fire engines blazed towards them.

  Rolo stood beside his brother, his fists clenched. Both their faces were black with soot. It only took one look between them to know what would happen next.

  ‘Coming?’ Rolo asked.

  ‘Try and stop me.’

  The two uncles turned as the firemen jumped from their trucks and began hosing the last of the flames.

  ‘Hey!’ Frank called after them. ‘Wait for me. I’m not missing the grand finale.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  A Little Spooking

  ‘I’ve found him.’ Frank appeared in Rolo and Rindolf’s rowboat. ‘He’s over there.’

  The two brothers rowed faster, following the direction of Frank’s finger.

  Cicero’s boat was gliding slowly through the water after he’d stopped to take a drink from a small flask. He turned at the splashing of oars to see the rowboat sweep up beside him.

&nbs
p; ‘It’s a good evening for a row,’ Rolo said.

  Cicero looked away, grabbed his oars and continued to row.

  ‘Quiet and peaceful.’ Rindolf rowed to keep up. ‘Except for that noise from the pier fire.’

  Cicero grunted and focused on slamming the oars into the water.

  ‘Don’t suppose you know anything about it?’ Rolo asked. ‘The fire, I mean.’

  ‘Nothing at all,’ Cicero muttered through a twisted smile.

  ‘That’s not what we think.’

  Cicero flinched at the man in the floppy black hat now sitting beside him.

  ‘Where’d you come from? Get out of my boat.’

  ‘That’s not very friendly.’ Frank frowned and looked over his shoulder. ‘Do you think that’s friendly?’

  Cicero turned behind him where Hamish, Glenda, Master Dudley and Roberto were perched on the back of the boat.

  ‘No, no,’ they said in unison.

  ‘Most unfriendly if you ask me.’ Master Dudley crossed his arms.

  ‘Wha … What’s going on? Who are you? How’d you get here?’

  ‘We’re just a few ghosts out on a bit of a row. We do that, you know, us ghosts.’ Rosie floated in the air beside Cicero’s boat. ‘Oh, and we know you’re telling fibs about the pier.’

  ‘The pier? I’ve got nothing to do with the pier.’

  Frank held up the can of kerosene that lay at Cicero’s feet. ‘What’s this then?’

  ‘What do you want?’ Cicero snarled.

  ‘We were thinking something along the lines of haunting you for the rest of your days,’ Rosie said. ‘That’s fair, isn’t it? For what you did to the pier, I mean.’

  ‘Sounds fair to me,’ Rolo said.

  ‘It’s the least he can expect.’ Rindolf nodded.

  ‘Yeah, like this.’ Hamish floated up from the boat and transformed into a large ghoul with pointed teeth and flames leaping from his head.

  Cicero clutched the edge of the boat. ‘Get away from me!’

  ‘Or this.’ Glenda and Roberto sat before him as their skin crackled and withered away from their bones. They lunged at him as gnarled skeletons.

  ‘Aaah!’

  ‘Or we could –’ but before Frank could continue, Cicero dived from the boat in a frantic attempt to swim back to shore.

  ‘But we were just getting started,’ Frank cried after him. ‘We can do much better than that.’

  Cicero’s arms thrashed through the water.

  ‘Well done, everyone,’ Rolo said. ‘That should be enough to make sure he never does anything like this again.’

  ‘Ha!’ Frank cried into the night. ‘This hero business is great. I’ve never felt so alive!’

  It was a few hours later that the man who called himself Cicero sat at the bar of The Lucky Sailor. The bartender stared at his ashen face and watched as his trembling hands lifted another glass to his blue lips. ‘It was horrible, I tell you. They came for me.’

  The bartender had owned The Lucky Sailor for over fifty years and had been witness to brawls, betrayals and murders, but never, before now, had he seen a man so rattled in his senses.

  ‘They said they’d haunt me for the rest of my days. They rose into the sky, enormous they were, with teeth as big as swords.’ He looked behind him. ‘What was that? Was that them? Did you see them? It was them; I’m sure of it.’

  The bartender shook his head as Cicero scurried into a corner of the bar and hid in the shadows.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Early-morning Calls

  ‘Rufus!’ Aurelie jumped up from the tables outside the waffle stand where she sat with her family. ‘You’re just in time for breakfast.’ She held up a plate filled with a giant waffle.

  Bog stopped. Rufus saw his father’s face pale and his lips quiver. He grabbed his hand and steered him towards the stand.

  ‘Mayor Bog.’ Argus stood up and offered his hand. His shirt and face were smudged with soot and his rumpled manner was more rumpled than usual. ‘And you must be Rufus.’

  Rufus shook Argus’s outstretched hand and smiled, until he saw the burnt and gnarled hole in the boardwalk. ‘Will the pier be okay?’

  ‘Argus lost his office,’ Aurelie said, ‘but he’s already making plans to build a new one.’

  ‘And we thought we needed some pampering this morning, so it’s waffles all round. These ones are freshly made. I hope you’re both hungry.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think we should …’ Bog’s stomach rumbled at the sweet smell that wafted into his nose.

  Rolo laughed. ‘I’d say that means yes.’

  ‘Please sit down,’ Lilliana said.

  Aurelie shifted aside on her seat. ‘It’ll be a squish, but you can fit here near me.’

  As Bog and Rufus sat down, arms flew across a table crowded with pots of tea and hot chocolate, jars of jam, jugs of juice, maple syrup and cream. Two generously filled plates were quickly arranged.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Rufus whispered to Aurelie.

  ‘I’m fine.’ She smiled. ‘But I’m better now you’re here.’

  Rufus concentrated on cutting into his waffle to cover his reddening face.

  Bog snuck a look at the damaged pier. ‘I’m very sorry about the fire.’

  ‘Yes,’ Argus sighed. ‘It was quite a night, but the area is completely sealed off, and of course the public won’t be allowed anywhere near –’

  ‘I have no doubt that you will take care of the public, Mr Bonhoffen.’ He drew in a heavy breath. ‘By now you’ll know everything. I’m sorry that I –’

  ‘Your being here last night really helped,’ Argus said.

  ‘It takes courage to fight a fire like that,’ Lilliana added. ‘Not everyone would have done what you did.’

  ‘Aurelie says you pushed her out of the way only seconds before the collapse,’ Amarella said. ‘There isn’t enough we can say to thank you for that.’

  Lilliana’s eyes glistened. ‘Buildings you can rebuild, but this one …’ She stroked Aurelie’s cheek. ‘We can’t be without her.’

  ‘You saved my life, Mayor Bog,’ Aurelie said.

  ‘But I was the one who –’

  ‘No point denying it.’ Rolo waved a piece of waffle in front of Rufus. ‘Your dad’s a downright hero.’

  Rufus sat up taller and smiled.

  ‘Rolo’s right.’ Rindolf took a sip of his chocolate. ‘You should have seen him. He leapt to Aurelie’s rescue, wrenching her from certain danger without a thought for his own safety.’

  ‘You did, Dad?’ Rufus looked to his father.

  ‘Anyone would have done the same.’

  ‘Don’t believe a word of it,’ Lilliana said. ‘He’s a hero and that’s that.’

  ‘All we have to do now is plan what we do from here,’ Rindolf said.

  Bog sparked to life. ‘Hopefully my news will help you out there. Earlier this morning I called an emergency meeting of the council, and we have voted unanimously to give a substantial sum of money to the pier, not only to rebuild after the fire, but for a complete restoration of what is a valuable and cherished part of our town.’ He took a folded cheque from his jacket pocket. ‘Rufus tells me you have a special performance planned. To make sure that goes ahead – and on behalf of the Bog family – I would like to present you with this.’

  Nobody moved.

  ‘Do you accept?’ Bog asked.

  ‘Yes, we do.’ Aurelie took the cheque and handed it to Argus, whose eyes widened.

  ‘This will more than get us on the way. Thank you.’

  Bog’s shoulders relaxed and he allowed himself a small smile. ‘We have also decided that part of the council’s budget each year is to be spent on the pier’s upkeep so that it will be in this town’s future for many years to come. My assistant, Julius, once told me this would be a good idea, and I happen to think he was right.’ He stood up. ‘Now I must go.’

  ‘Won’t you stay and help us celebrate?’ Amarella asked.

  ‘Thank you but
I have an important matter that must be dealt with immediately.’

  ‘Dad, can I stay?’ asked Rufus.

  ‘Please?’ Aurelie pleaded.

  Bog smiled and ruffled Rufus’s hair. ‘I think that’s a fine idea.’

  Aurelie jumped from her seat. ‘Thank you, Mayor Bog. We’re going to make the pier better than it used to be, you watch.’ She flung her arms around him.

  Bog held his hands in the air, unsure of what to do with them, before drawing them down and patting her thick curls. ‘I have no doubt you will.’

  Bog turned away and strode into the sunshine with a smile and a step he hadn’t used for quite some time.

  ‘Well, that’s put quite a bright spin on events.’ Rolo dug into another mouthful of waffle. ‘I don’t think there’s anything that could make the day better.’

  ‘I know one thing.’ Aurelie looked into the distance. Everyone followed her gaze to a figure in a long coat walking towards them.

  ‘Valentina.’ Rolo let out a small gasp and dropped his fork. ‘I think I’m going to be sick.’

  ‘That’s not going to make a great impression,’ Aurelie said.

  ‘No,’ Rufus agreed. ‘Girls generally hate vomit.’

  Rindolf nudged his brother in the shoulder. ‘Well, what are you going to do, you great lump, just sit there?’

  ‘I … I … but …’

  ‘Actually, he doesn’t have to do anything,’ Lilliana said. ‘She’ll be here in a few seconds.’

  ‘Did you do this?’ Rolo hissed at Rindolf before he noticed Aurelie’s smile. ‘You did?’

  ‘Someone had to,’ Argus said.

  ‘It is about time, Rolo.’ Amarella kissed his ashen cheek.

  ‘I’d say about fifteen years overdue,’ Lilliana added.

  ‘Valentina.’ Argus stood up and opened his arms. ‘If you aren’t a pretty picture after a pretty ordinary night.’

  ‘I heard about the fire. I’m sorry.’

  ‘We’ll have everything fixed up in no time.’ Amarella gave her a hug. ‘Won’t we, Rolo?’

  Rindolf elbowed his stunned brother. ‘Welcome back, Valentina. Who would have thought you’d be even lovelier than when we saw you last?’