Johnny Graphic and the Etheric Bomb

by D. R. Martin

  Ozzie Eccleston!

  For a few brief, hopeful seconds, Dame Honoria thought that he had come to rescue her. But then she read the expression on his face. Grinning and self-satisfied. The very picture of a traitor.

  “What do you want?” the etherist asked, focusing her full attention on the eyeless Steppe Warrior.

  With a flourish, the horse soldier revealed the object that he had been hiding behind his back: the head of a ghost, a young native woman.

  Looking equally embarrassed and despondent, the beheaded maid blinked at her mistress and said, “So sorry, ma’am.”

  “Oh, Tala,” Dame Honoria sighed.

  Chapter 27

  Thursday, October 24, 1935

  Maholaihi, Orchid Isles

  The Como Eagle landed in the Orchid Isles late in the afternoon, after the long flight from Silver City. Johnny, Mel, Nina, and Uncle Louie soon found themselves in another handsomely decorated hotel suite. When he wasn’t flying for Zephyr Lines, Danny lived in downtown Maholaihi, the island nation’s capital.

  Right after breakfast the next morning, Danny drove Mel and Johnny to a sprawling stuccoed house in one of the mountainside suburbs. The home was surrounded by gorgeous flowering shrubs and palm trees. Another member of the Hausenhofer Gesellschaft had been murdered here and Mr. Cargill wanted a story about the despicable deed.

  Lani Muldoon, the new widow, greeted them at the front door. She was a short woman, nearly as wide as she was tall, with the dark, round face of a native islander.

  Two ghost servants had the most to say about the murder of B. K. Muldoon. They had seen Steppe Warriors float through the front door late one evening, as the master dozed in his easy chair in the living room. They had seen arrows fly across the room, briefly turning Mr. Muldoon into a human pincushion. The spectral assassins darted out of the house and disappeared.

  Mel took copious notes and Johnny shot several pictures of Mrs. Muldoon.

  Then the widow took them to her husband’s cramped office at the back of the house. Mel noticed almost immediately that his complete collection of The Annals of the Hausenhofer Gesellschaft was missing the number that contained a certain article by Mongke Eng—the same number missing from the libraries of other murdered Gesellschaft members.

  As they were leaving, one of the ghost servants pulled Johnny aside. An old man with a bent back and stark white hair, he had on a kind of colored skirt pulled tightly around his skinny waist.

  “Word among the spooks,” he told Johnny, “is that the night watchers chased those bloody Steppe Warriors right off the island. I even heard a rumor that they captured a couple of them.”

  “Tell me,” Johnny asked, “what are the night watchers and how do we find them?”

  The old man explained that the night watchers were primeval specters who had died on the island’s ancient battlefields. They protected the Orchid Isles from interlopers living and dead, having received their powers from a hundred generations of island shamans.

  “But take care, young sir,” the ghost said ominously. “When you find a night watcher—or he finds you—don’t look him in the eye. If you do, you’ll become his slave forever.”

  “Silly superstition, is what that is,” sniffed Mel, who had been listening in. “Now please tell us where to locate them.”

  Though looking very uneasy about it, the old man did just that.

  * * *

  Even Danny seemed jittery about hiking into Awawa ’Ele’ele, the place the old ghost told them to go to. The name meant Black Valley.

  “When I was little my granny warned me if I didn’t behave, the night watchers would come and take me,” Danny told Mel, Nina, and Johnny on their drive up into the backcountry. “And believe me, I behaved.”

  Wow, thought Johnny, sitting in the back seat of Danny’s little sedan with Nina. If Danny was scared of them, then these specters must be pretty bad. But Mel was absolutely right to want to talk with them.

  The car slowly climbed up a single-lane, dirt track on the north side of one of the island’s interior mountains. Thick, green vegetation crowded in on all sides. The shade was so heavy, it almost felt like night. Suddenly, the road ended in a muddy clearing in the middle of the jungle, with just enough room to get Danny’s car turned around. From here they had to hike a good two miles.

  The undergrowth opened up as they entered Awawa ’Ele’ele, as if the plants were reluctant to flourish there. Everything looked stunted and deformed. But at least we can see something now, thought Johnny.

  And, as he soon found out, something saw them, as well.

  In a few winks of the eye, a troop of warrior wraiths surrounded the four hikers. Of course, Nina and Danny didn’t realize it, until Johnny and Mel grabbed them and pulled them in close.

  Johnny sure wished the colonel and his boys had come, but Mrs. Muldoon’s servant had strongly advised against it. Seeing alien ghost soldiers, the night watchers would attack mercilessly.

  These island specters were all huge, wearing the same kind of wraparound skirt that the ghost servant had on. Their faces and upper bodies were covered with black, swirling, snake-like tattoos. And they had bones stuck through their ears and noses.

  Now was the moment when Mel and Johnny had to test that old wife’s tale. Did looking into the eyes of night watchers actually enslave you to them?

  Not so far, thought Johnny, as Mel began to speak.

  “We’re peaceful visitors,” Mel said, her voice trembling slightly. “We’ve come because of your recent fight with the Steppe Warriors who killed a man down in the city below.”

  The night watchers—as many as thirty of them—crowded in closer, maces and slings and Stone-Age axes in their hands. One of them, the fiercest looking of all, came right up to Mel and glared down at her. Johnny had never thought that tattoos could look dangerous, but now he was reconsidering that opinion.

  “What do you want?” the ghost rumbled.

  “It’s said that you captured one of the Steppe Warriors and that you hold his head,” answered Mel. “They’ve been killing my friends around the world, for many weeks. If you have a prisoner, I need to ask him some questions.”

  “Why should we help you?” the night watcher responded. His voice sounded like a tall elm groaning in the wind.

  Usually Mel could answer tough questions pretty quickly. But her answers often tended to be kind of namby-pamby—diplomatic and reasonable and boring. And Johnny figured that diplomatic and reasonable and boring wouldn’t be the kind of answer that tough guys like these would want to hear. So just as his sister was about to say something undoubtedly quite sensible, he leapt in.

  “So that we may revenge ourselves upon them!” Johnny growled, as fiercely as a twelve-and-a-half-year-old boy could possibly growl. “So that we may destroy them and crush them to powder!”

  Mel looked appalled and Nina flabbergasted.

  But the fearsome night watcher actually smiled, showing filthy, crooked teeth. He nodded to two of his compatriots. And simultaneously they reached into the primitive bags hanging across their chests and withdrew three objects.

  Three desperate-looking and suddenly screaming bodyless heads. Three decapitated Steppe Warriors, held up by their pigtails.

  By the time Mel had finished interrogating them, she and Johnny had some answers.

  And they didn’t like them one bit.

  Chapter 28

  Thursday, October 24, 1935

  Old Number One

  As Bao flew from Paloa Atoll to the second island with her friend Evvie, she was already beginning to have doubts about getting blown up. All her friend would talk about as they soared over the vast ocean was how excited he was that finally he would cease to exist altogether. “Oblivion sounds lovely, old girl, doesn’t it?” he said, as they zoomed along among a great flock of specters.

  But Bao wasn’t so sure. Deep in her heart—which hadn’t beat in centuries—she had decided that she wasn’t quite ready to leave the earth for good. T
he little girl was nothing if not a hopeful ghost. Perhaps her lot in life—well, actually her lot in death—would improve some day.

  So she found herself edging away as, one by one, the thousands of ghosts who had come to the second island entered into the tin hut from which none of them emerged. Including Evvie. Finally there were only a few ghosts left outside, wandering around the island. She saw the khan and some of the other humans come in and out of the tin hut, again and again, carrying objects and devices that she didn’t recognize.

  And that is how she herself became one of the wandering wraiths. Nowhere to go, nothing to do. Until she decided to explore the many caves that wormed their ways through the island’s rock mountains. At least it was something to do.

  One morning she had been strolling through a stone formation and came into a black tunnel lit only by her gentle green glow. At that moment the futility of this whole adventure struck her like a blow. To come all this way! To make a new friend! And to lose him so soon! To be all alone again!

  Bao squatted down on her haunches and started to sob and sniffle and rub out tears that didn’t exist.

  Then, from out of nowhere, came a voice. A living person’s voice. An old woman’s voice.

  “Hullo? Who’s there?”

  Bao whimpered in reply.

  “Can you see me? Can you see the light?”

  Bao didn’t say anything, but sniffled again.

  “Come out please. I won’t hurt you, you know. If you’re lost I can help you.”

  The voice came from the front of the tunnel, somewhere around a bend in the stone passage. Bao very nearly nipped into the pink rock. Because living people who could see her had never talked to her, had always seemed afraid of her. She could no longer stand the horrified looks on their faces when they came upon her. But this time she stayed.

  She could hear the shuffle of heavy feet coming her way. Then a dim orange light flickered around the bend in the tunnel and there she was. An old woman in a gaudy, dirty gown of some kind, her mousy hair grimy and tangled. She had a long, gloomy face and dark circles under her eyes.

  “I don’t know what to do, Grandmother,” Bao blurted out as she stood up.

  The old woman edged closer and held her lamp up to the little ghost. “My dear, what’s your name?”

  “Bao.”

  “And I’m called Dame Honoria,” the old woman said. “Little one, how did you come to be here?”

  “I came with my friend Evvie from the first island. We flew over the water.”

  “What do you mean, ‘first island’?”

  “Where they made the first bomb.”

  The old woman’s face looked shocked, baffled. “What kind of bomb?”

  “A bomb with ghosts inside it,” Bao answered. “The thing that truly kills them.”

  The old woman seemed as if she had suddenly been transported somewhere else, her mind apparently churning—as though Bao weren’t even there. After a moment, she returned her attention to the little girl ghost. “My dear, did they explode the first bomb?”

  For the first time since she became a ghost, Bao felt a connection with a living human. She felt that, somehow, she could trust this person.

  “I do not know, Grandmother,” said Bao. “They brought us here, for the second bomb. I thought I wanted to go into the bomb, to truly die. But I was afraid to. My friend Evvie went into it, and I miss him.”

  Bao wobbled closer, gazing up—her chin quivering. The old woman was by no means tall, but she towered over the diminutive specter.

  Bao tried to take the old woman’s hand, but her fingers passed right through the living flesh and bones—as if through fog. The girl winced and began to cry again, as a profound sadness filled every part of her.

  “I want…”

  Sob.

  “…to hold…”

  Sniff.

  “…your hand…”

  Sigh.

  “…Grandmother…”

  Sob.

  “…but I cannot.”

  Bao didn’t need to, but she dragged her sleeve across her nose—just as a real little girl with a real runny nose would do.

  “You can hold my hand, if you are willing to work,” said Dame Honoria. “Are you afraid of working?”

  Bao vigorously shook her head. “When I was alive I carried water. I helped with the food.”

  “Will you help me, then?”

  “Yes, Grandmother,” Bao said, “I will. I will help you.”

  The old woman reached down and took the little ghost’s hand, gripping it as a real hand grips a real hand.

  That warm, solid flesh felt wonderful—the most wonderful thing Bao had known in many a long century.

  She threw herself at Dame Honoria, hugging her tightly, as best she could—being so small in relation to the old woman’s fat stomach.

  Chapter 29

  Monday, October 28, 1935

  Old Number One

  Ozzie grasped Dame Honoria firmly by the left elbow as they crunched up the old shell road, past corrugated tin buildings in various states of decrepitude. Four spectral guards trudged behind the unhappy couple, swords drawn—as if the famous suffragist might scamper off into the jungle. Her scampering days, she regretted, were far behind her.

  As they marched along, Dame Honoria ominously noted that the profusion of ghosts that had greeted her arrival on Old Number One was no longer profuse. A handful of wraiths were mooning about, looking typically ghostly and gloomy. But most of those thousands of specters had vanished. Now she understood why.

  When she had discovered Bao in the tunnel, and heard the little ghost’s story, all the pieces began to click into place. Will and Lydia Graphic, along with Mongke Eng, had come up with a theory of etheric power—how ghosts’ “bodies” might be converted into energy in the physical realm. She knew that the three of them had worked on this theory purely as an intellectual exercise, as scientists often do.

  Still, it could explain why Mongke Eng died with a spear in his chest. Why the others were killed. Someone is trying to build an etheric bomb, and they’re murdering outsiders who might understand the science. But why then, Dame Honoria wondered, am I still alive and kicking? Couldn’t they simply have done me in back on Gorton Island?

  “So the etheric bomb exists, then, Ozzie?” she asked offhandedly, as they passed under some palms that arched over the road.

  “Absolutely, of course it—”

  Ozzie instantly looked mortified, and muttered a profanity. “Just shut up, you miserable old cow,” he snapped. “You’re to be told nothing until the khan himself informs you.”

  “I’m to see the khan then,” sniffed Dame Honoria. “How grand.”

  Ozzie looked as if he wanted to slap her.

  What a horrendous situation, thought Dame Honoria. Ozzie had confirmed the little girl ghost’s story. The bomb existed. Apparently, more than one. But how in the world could she, a captive old woman, throw a wrench in the works? How could she prevent this horror from proceeding?

  And to think that this morning had started off so encouragingly, with the unexpected appearance of one of her red-leather suitcases on the cave floor near her cot. She hadn’t even had a chance to unpack it back on Gorton Island before Ozzie and his friends had hustled her off to Old Number One.

  When she had popped the suitcase open this morning, all her things were there. Her Gorton’s toothpaste and toothbrush. Her Gorton’s aspirin and iodine. Her Gorton’s vanishing cream and makeup. Her unmentionables. Even her necklace with the big black diamond, cozy in its pigskin case.

  At least Ozzie had done her one good deed.

  Another ten minutes of sweaty trudging brought them up to the general offices of her father’s failed cassava operation. It was a long, low structure built of weathered teak logs, with a canted metal roof that provided ample shade. It showed decades of abandonment in its broken windows, rotted front staircase, and sagging foundation. Out in front of it, more Steppe Warriors and other unsavory-looki
ng wraiths were lounging about.

  “In you go,” Ozzie commanded.

  Dame Honoria carefully picked her way up the staircase. Once inside, amid the rotting walls and dank aroma of decay, she experienced a rush of memories. The days she’d spent in here as a young girl came flooding back. Running up and down the hallways. Dragooning favorite employees to come and play tea party with her. Or hide and seek. Or dollhouse. Happy days.

  “Remember where the old man’s office was?” asked Ozzie.

  “Of course I know where Papa’s office was. I’m not off to the races quite yet, Ozzie.”

  Dame Honoria sniffed and took a crisp left at the first turning in the main hallway. The floor was filthy with years of grime, guano, and the bones of small animals. Still, some of the old paintings remained on the walls—hanging at odd angles, moldering, but yet viewable. Scenes from the estate in Gilbeyshire. Papa’s favorite race horse. The old portrait of a young Honoria, gripping her Sweet Sally doll like grim death.

  Passing one of the doors, she heard odd groaning sounds. Before Ozzie could stop her, she pushed it open and briefly saw two men and a woman—not ghosts, but alive—lying on the filthy floor, bound and gagged. They were wearing white laboratory coats. Three pairs of desperate eyes widened when they saw her.

  Ozzie dragged Dame Honoria aside and slammed the door shut. He herded her down the hallway, toward the last door on the left.

  “Who are those people?” she snapped. “And why are they being held like that?”

  Ozzie steered Dame Honoria forward. “Into Papa’s office with you.”

  He gave her a mighty shove and in she staggered, barely avoiding a tumble. The door slammed shut behind her.

  For a brief moment her outrage ebbed away. For here was another dear memory—her father’s handsome old desk. It had been made from the ash timbers of a whaler that wrecked up on Old Number One’s rocky northern shore. If I get out of this alive, she thought, I shall come back and reclaim this desk and—

  The door to the adjoining room creaked open, and a trim young woman in khaki safari clothes came in. Not a ghost, but a living person. Her face was a perfect oval and her hair, gathered on top in a bun, was the lightest and purest of blondes. She had bright green eyes and an oval face with a flawless complexion. Pretty in a way. She looks oddly familiar, thought Dame Honoria, though I’m dashed if I can recall from where. Is she the khan?