by D. R. Martin
Then the moment arrived for the presentation of the Newshawk Awards. And Johnny felt almost as nervous as if he were being pursued by a regiment of Steppe Warriors.
“Every New Year’s Eve,” Carlton Cargill boomed into the microphone up on the bandstand, “we honor the Clarion contributors who’ve done the most to advance journalism. This year’s winners amazed the whole world and helped bring down a corrupt government. So, without further ado, I present the Zenith Clarion Newshawk Award for Reporting to Melanie Graphic.”
Even though she’d known about the award for weeks, Mel had a bad case of the jitters. Neither she nor Johnny enjoyed public speaking. Nonetheless, she climbed up to Mr. Cargill’s side and took the award, a miniature gold-plated typewriter.
The vast ballroom erupted in applause. Then a chant began: “Speech! Speech!” Mr. Cargill tugged the young etherist over to the microphone.
Mel straightened up her shoulders, set her jaw firmly, and narrowed her eyes with a look of steely determination.
“Evil things were afoot this past autumn, and the world had to know the truth. But what I did was only a small part of the effort. We were able to tell this story thanks to the courage of Mr. Cargill and Mrs. Throckmorton. We were able to fly halfway around the globe because of Zephyr Lines and our wonderful pilots, Danny Kailolu—”
When he saw Mel shoot a special smile right at Danny, Johnny grinned, too.
“—and my uncle, Louie Hofstedter. And I want to give special recognition to our radio operator, Miss Nina Bain.”
Johnny reached over and slapped Danny on the shoulder. The pilot blushed and shrugged an “Aw shucks” sort of shrug. Uncle Louie gave two thumbs up as Flo kissed him on the cheek. Then Johnny winked at Nina and offered her a crisp salute.
“But without Colonel Horace MacFarlane and the ghost troopers of the First Zenith Cavalry Brigrade,” Mel continued, “I would not be standing here and no one would know the true story. So, don’t thank me, thank them.”
As the applause faded, someone shouted, “You looked so good in your mustache, Miss Graphic. Where is it?”
Mel leaned toward the mic again. “In the trash can.”
The crowd roared with laughter.
Mr. Cargill took back the microphone. “Now it’s time to present the Newshawk Award for Photography to the young man who accompanied his sister on that dangerous expedition across the Greater Ocean. Johnny Graphic!”
Feeling his cheeks starting to burn, Johnny climbed up on the bandstand and accepted the little gold-plated press camera. Stepping up to the mic, he said the first thing that came into his head. “Holy maroley, everyone. Thanks!”
He started to turn away, when he thought of something else. He grabbed the microphone again.
“More than anything, I want to thank the chief, Mr. Cargill, for trusting a twelve-and-a-half-year-old to get the job done.”
* * *
“Ye-ouch!” Nina yelped.
“Sorry I stepped on you, Sparks,” Johnny mumbled as he clumsily fox-trotted her backward across the oak parquet dance floor. “Told ya so. I got two left feet.”
Nina managed a grin through her grimace. “That’s okay. Who cares about a broken toe, anyway?”
Not wanting to be a total party pooper, Johnny danced with Nina one more time and then with Dame Honoria once. He thought it a shame that only a few partiers could see Mel waltz around the circular dance floor with Colonel MacFarlane. The rest gazed in wonderment at the slender, black-haired girl in an emerald-green gown dancing the waltz exquisitely—all alone.
Over the course of the evening the ballroom had gotten quite warm. Johnny and Uncle Louie took off their tux jackets. Dame Honoria slipped off the ivory-colored jacket that she wore over her burgundy gown, revealing the Star of Gilbeyshire, which glittered dazzlingly on her ample bosom. Again and again, people stopped by the table to admire the giant gem.
Johnny found he couldn’t stop checking his pocket watch. The first minutes of the new year were close at hand—the deadline set out by Ozzie’s ultimatum. Johnny surveyed the big ballroom, looking for signs of imminent doom. He had no idea what those signs might be, but he hoped he would recognize them when he saw them.
Finally, midnight was only seconds away. The music stopped. Two waiters brought a huge clock up onto the stage. Everyone rose to their feet. A moment later the bandleader and his pert blonde singer counted down the final seconds of 1935 in unison, as revelers twirled noisemakers and tooted plastic horns.
“Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.”
The instant the second hand hit twelve, hundreds of voices screamed as one. “HAPPY NEW YEAR!”
The netting far above opened up and thousands of balloons began drifting down.
And nothing happened.
A slight, tiny, wonderful bit of relief crept through Johnny’s entire body. They had made it to midnight and no humongous explosion.
Zenith was safe.
Ozzie’s threat was just a big bunch of hot air, nothing more.
Johnny felt almost light-headed.
“Hey,” he said turning to Uncle Louie and Nina, “we’re still alive! How about that?”
Chapter 59
Never in a thousand years did Bao think she would see such a magnificent sight as this vast, beautiful chamber, full of people in splendid, colorful gowns and tunics. She’d never heard any kind of music like this, as she stood right in the midst of the players. Horns blared, pipes piped, drums pounded, and a woman sang words in a twittering birdsong.
Until just yesterday, Grandmother had said that Bao couldn’t come. But the little girl ghost begged and begged and begged. She promised to be good and not misbehave the way she had at the malt shop. Grandmother had been very cross about that and required Bao to stay in the house until told otherwise.
Melanie observed with a chuckle that Bao had been “grounded.” Whatever that meant, Bao didn’t think it was very funny. Still, she had behaved perfectly every minute of every day since Grandmother’s scolding.
Now looking out into the great chamber, Bao wished that somebody might dance with her—even though she had no idea how to do these dances. She hoped that Johnny might ask her. But she lost sight of him and the others.
She got her wish, though, when the ghost of a young man came up to her. Grinning and laughing, he stood two heads taller than her and wore a white suit of some kind.
“Miss,” he said, “you look like you’re not from around here. How’d you end up in Zenith?”
When Bao finished telling him her story, he shook his head in astonishment. “You are one well-travelled little spook, aren’t you? Well, on behalf of the ghost community of Zenith, I want to welcome you with a dance around the floor. Will you honor me?”
Bao was delighted and mortified. “But I don’t know how.”
“Easy enough to learn,” the young man said. “Let me take your hands.”
He clasped her right hand in his left, and her left in his right.
Bao’s eyes widened and she smiled shyly. And she could feel him, which meant that somehow the two of them had a connection.
“Now I’m the fellow, so I lead. You just watch my feet. I’ll move them in a pattern to the beat of one-two-three, one-two-three. And you just do the same thing, but backward.”
A few minutes later Bao and the young man—who said his name was Melvin—were waltzing around the circular dance floor. Bao stumbled a few times and got distracted when they danced right through the bodies of living people. But for a little mountain girl who’d never danced in her life or her death, she did reasonably well.
The mystery of their physical connection was solved as they danced. Melvin told how he had recently helped Colonel MacFarlane on the city-wide search for ghostly interlopers and strange technology. He and Bao were on the same side, both fighting for a good cause.
After saying goodbye to her new friend, Bao flew up to the great lamps hanging above the ballroom for a visit with the colone
l. He noted that she might hurt her face, grinning so hard. Her only reply was a burbling giggle. She had never felt gladder that she had decided not to go into the bomb.
Finally, Bao ended up back among the horn and pipe players, just about the time the music stopped. The man who had been leading the musicians waited while a big, round timepiece was brought up on the platform. He said something and everyone in the giant chamber went silent.
Then he and the woman singer started to speak, both at the same time.
“Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.”
Suddenly, hundreds of voices were screaming, “Happy New Year!”
From her perch on the bandstand, Bao could just barely see Grandmother sitting at a nearby table. The little ghost was eager to tell her about Melvin and how she had learned to dance the waltz.
Then Bao looked down from Grandmother’s face and saw the gigantic black jewel that dangled from her neck.
Bao had seen it once before, on that terrible island.
In the hands of the khan.
She hadn’t put two and two together until this very instant.
As gaily colored balloons began wafting down, Bao managed to scream, “The bomb! It’s the bomb!”
Almost at the same instant something horrible rose up through the platform directly in front of her.
A Steppe Warrior with bleeding, empty eye sockets!
Chapter 60
Wednesday, January 1, 1936
Zenith
“What was that?” Johnny asked, peering at the bandstand—though it was hard to see anything in between all the falling balloons. He and the others were back at the table.
“Wha’d you say, Johnny?” asked Mel, smiling and swaying dreamily, with Danny’s arm around her shoulder.
“Someone screamed, Sis. Sounded like Bao.” Johnny yanked his Zoom 4x5 from the backpack and got a firm grip on the leather strap. Just in case. But then he thought better of it. He’d already wrecked one camera. Instead, he stood and grabbed one of the party chairs and folded it flat. It would make a clumsy weapon, but a decent shield.
That’s when he saw what Bao was screaming about.
“Oh hell!” Johnny swore. “Not him again!”
Then it was Mel’s turn to see the empty-eyed wraith treading toward them, right through the falling balloons. She gasped as if she were having a heart attack and wiggled away from Danny.
Out of nowhere, Bao came flying like a rocket at the Steppe Warrior. But with a powerful slap of his hand he batted away the little girl ghost. Howling in pain, she skidded off beneath the bandstand.
Johnny gripped the folding chair tighter and walked around the table, heading for Burilgi. “Dame Honoria, Uncle Louie,” he shouted over his shoulder. “Steppe Warrior!”
Uncle Louie’s face suddenly registered furious comprehension. He picked up a chair, folded it, and got a good grip. “Now tell me where to swing this thing,” he growled, and tramped after his nephew.
“What’s going on?” sputtered Flo Zuckerberg.
“Just stay behind us, kiddo,” Uncle Louie commanded, “and maybe we’ll get through this alive.”
All the people near Johnny’s table were looking at him and Uncle Louie with notable anxiety—apprehension showing on their faces. Johnny knew it was futile to tell them to move to a safe distance. Because if things went badly in the next few moments, a safe distance was about fifty miles from Zenith.
Carlton Cargill took command in a way that only a big-time newspaper editor could do. “Ghost attack!” he bellowed. “Evacuate the ballroom!”
The festive first moments of 1936 quickly turned to unruly panic. Everyone was yelling and screaming.
People crushed toward the doors. Some were trampled and hurt and had to limp away. The blonde big band singer kicked off her high heels, hoisted her gown, jumped down from the bandstand, and darted away like a football halfback.
Mel, Johnny, Dame Honoria, and Uncle Louie faced the Steppe Warrior—who had stopped about fifteen feet in front of them, knee-deep in balloons. Two other Steppe Warriors appeared at his side, arrows nocked in their bows.
Out of the corner of his eye Johnny saw Bao pop up beside Dame Honoria and nudge her on the shoulder. The old woman started to scold the little wraith. “Not now,” she snapped as Bao floated up and jabbered desperately in her ear. Then Dame Honoria turned as white as a sheet.
“My heavens no!” she exclaimed, covering her giant jewel with her hand. She turned to Johnny, just to her right. “My diamond!” she whispered into his ear, her eyes wide with horror. “It is the bomb!”
The realization hit Johnny like a truckload of bricks. They had been searching for weeks for the blasted thing and it had been right under their noses all the time. In fact, in the bedroom right across the hallway from his!
“Kill the boy and girl!” hissed Burilgi.
The bowmen pulled back their bowstrings and aimed their arrows. But before they could shoot, the colonel and Sergeant Clegg came down on them like falcons, striking the bows right out of their hands and slamming into them. Johnny thought he could actually hear bones breaking.
The colonel and sergeant backed away, sabers drawn, ready to charge again. But the two ghost assassins launched themselves first, howling, twirling their swords. Blades clanging, the four ghost soldiers battled off around the curve of the ballroom.
Johnny started to say something, but Mel cut him off. “They’re never going to stop, Johnny,” she said, her voice trembling. “They’re never going to quit until they’ve blown themselves and us all to bits.”
Turning to Burilgi, Mel cried, “Don’t you understand? The bomb doesn’t end your misery. It only smashes you into little pieces. You stay in the ether, with all the horrible pain and no control—worse than before.”
“Lies,” the specter bellowed. “LIES!”
“It’s a waste of time to argue with him, Mel,” shouted Johnny. “Percy has brainwashed this stupid ghost warrior and he won’t be satisfied until he’s destroyed all of us!”
Chapter 61
Mel ignored Johnny’s entreaty. “Please believe me,” she begged the Steppe Warrior. “You’ve been deceived about the bomb. I’m telling you the truth.”
The Steppe Warrior grinned his skeletal grin and shook his head. “I should trust you instead of the khan?”
He paused for a second, then snapped his left hand open. Something flew out of it, fluttering next to him.
Johnny squinted hard. It was a miniature, one-armed Steppe Warrior. Only a few inches long.
Johnny remembered her from the fight in the upstairs hallway. Checheg.
He knew that ghosts could control their size, but he wasn’t sure what good a dinky little ghost like her could do in a fight. Why would she be so small?
Then a dreadful thought occurred.
What if she were the trigger! What if she had shrunk down small enough to squeeze into the great diamond and set off the explosion!
As if to confirm that horrible intuition, Checheg made a beeline straight at Dame Honoria and the Star of Gilbeyshire.
Bursting balloons under foot, Johnny bounded toward the tiny, flitting etheric figure.
The shrunken ghost of Checheg tried to dodge him. But too late.
Johnny swung his folding chair as hard as he could, as high as he could.
With a sickening thunk, he walloped the tiny wraith straight through the giant mural behind the bandstand.
Johnny’s momentary triumph was interrupted by a screeching voice that sounded like his sister. “Johnny, look out!”
He twirled to see the eyeless Steppe Warrior charging at him, curved blade upraised.
Johnny hefted the folded chair out in front of himself just in time to receive Burilgi’s first overhand strike.
The blow rattled Johnny right down to his toenails. Flakes of paint and chips of wood flew everywhere, and even his unetheristic friends shuddered to see the chair vibrating violently in thin air.
Johnny returned the favor by jamming the chair into the Steppe Warrior’s face—again and again in rapid succession. The assault bashed Burilgi’s nose flat and blocked his sword arm.
The empty-eyed specter backed away, intending another charge. What he didn’t count on was an attack from his left.
It came suddenly, shockingly.
Bao flew at him wielding a weapon that she had found nearby—an abandoned tenor saxophone. Swinging it with the unexpected form of a home run hitter, she smashed it into his left knee with every drop of energy that her little body possessed.
Burilgi rounded on Bao as she flitted away, only to be hit a glancing blow on the top of his head by Johnny and his folding chair. The impact made the Steppe Warrior’s leather helmet fly off his head.
Burilgi leapt high into the air and came down on the scurrying girl ghost. He kicked hard, connected with Bao’s head, and sent her scudding away—struck senseless. Then the Steppe Warrior climbed like a monkey up toward the ceiling, and dived at Johnny, his blade extended.
Johnny saw Burilgi coming. He tried to lift the battered chair up over his head, but it slipped out of his grasp, breaking several balloons with loud pops as it hit the floor.
He heard Mel shriek, “Above Johnny’s head. Now!”
Out of the corner of his eye Johnny saw Uncle Louie—a hammer thrower back in high school—grunt and heave one of the folding chairs. Johnny’s only thought came in a flash: hope it doesn’t break my skull.
The piece of party furniture made for an ungainly missile. But Uncle Louie was so strong that it covered the distance in just two seconds, in a flat, neat trajectory.