by Sophie Green
‘Hmmm,’ Gallows said.
‘So now I’m asking myself, am I safe? What if one of these spooks decides it would be fun to mess with me?’
Gallows looked critically at Hench. ‘It is true that ever since Grip came back he’s been a little difficult. If he wasn’t so terrifyingly effective, perhaps I’d snuff him out for good.’
Hench muttered, ‘You wouldn’t like him so much if he was in here with you, giving you the creeps all the time.’
‘Wouldn’t I?’ Gallows’ eyes seemed to shrink back further into his skull. ‘You underestimate me, Hench. I won’t be in here for ever. All good things must come to an end and then I shall take over the task you are so obviously struggling with, of ministering extremely simple instructions. And, in the meantime, if you were to perish in an unfortunate accident I would just replace you with any number of other individuals I have at my disposal.’ Gallows let his eyes drift upwards, past the dank brick ceiling and through the floors to the cells where the other prisoners were still sleeping. ‘Mr Grip is, of course, the master of fear; he enjoys frightening people.’ Gallows looked at Hench imperiously. ‘He can sense your weakness, and so he exploits it. Conversely Mr Grip has nothing but respect for me. He was trapped in that decrepit old body, rotting away in that cell and now he’s free. Well, in a manner of speaking.’
He brought his eyes back to bore into Hench’s. ‘I hold all the strings. The only person who is irreplaceable is me.’
Chapter 19
The Stolen File
Snow had fallen heavily overnight and wrapped the frozen city like a shroud.
At the soft knock at her door, Lil flopped quickly back under the covers, bundling the pillow over her head at the same time.
‘Lil?’ Her mother pushed the door open a crack and peered through. ‘I thought you had work this morning. Do you need a lift in?’ She stood there a moment, waiting. ‘Or I could pick you up afterwards?’ There was no reply from the bedclothes. She sat down next to the tense lump of duvet and rested her hand on it. ‘Are you OK in there?’
There was a muffled, ‘M’OK.’
‘All right, well, I’ll see you later.’ Naomi left her hand on the duvet. If it hadn’t been for the slight pressure Lil would have thought she was alone again, but the silence was heavy, and full of the stillness of two people holding their breath. Then the mattress sprang back and her mother left the room, quietly closing the door behind her.
As soon as Lil heard the Datsun splutter into life she jumped out of bed and ran down to the airing cupboard to fetch Nedly.
Fifteen minutes later they were ready to leave. Lil paused at the front door; for the first time since she had subscribed, she contemplated not taking the menu from the Black Pug Eatery off the mat, but old habits die hard. As she jammed it into her backpack, her hand brushed against something else she had stashed in there. Her fingers hovered by the folder and then ran along the red elastic that bound it shut. Maybe there would be a clue inside, definitely a story; it wouldn’t have been at the Klaxon HQ otherwise.
Nedly peered over her shoulder.
‘Ready?’ he asked, his eyes searching for a sign that she was OK, back to the old Lil. It wasn’t there, not yet.
Lil nodded. ‘Ready.’ She threw on her yellow raincoat and a scarf and then began the long cycle ride into work, with Nedly perched on the handlebars.
Lil pounded the pedals, her wheels spinning, throwing up slush as she sped down Angel Lane. Despite the freezing air buffeting her face she managed to force out snatches of conversation in between breaths.
‘Let everyone else get spooked by the Haunted article; we’ve got a job to do. We have to stop these ghosts, just like you stopped Mr Grip; take them out, one by one. If we can separate them, it should be easier.’
Nedly didn’t reply.
Lil continued, ‘I mean, if we can break it down into tasks, then it might seem more manageable. I’m not underestimating the problem.’ She freewheeled round the corner, and then stood up to push along Shoe Lane, her mac streaming behind her like a yellow cape. ‘We’ve still got to work out how to get into the prison, but I might have got my hands on something that will help with that.’ She skidded to a halt at the traffic lights and then glared at the stop sign, squeezing the brake levers on and off while she waited.
‘I’m not sure what the situation is with visiting the Secure Wing anyway, especially with the lockdown in place, but there must be another way in.’ She hung a right and then started out on the final stretch, pedalling hard until she reached the road at the back of the Nite Jar.
As she coasted to a stop in front of the diner’s backyard Nedly slipped lightly off the handlebars. ‘But you could still get in; you could just pass through the walls, couldn’t you?’
Nedly didn’t reply. He walked a few paces along the pavement, leaving no trace in the freshly laid snow, then stood with his back to Lil.
She parked her bike up against the bins by the kitchen window, and called out to him. ‘Are you coming?’ Nedly didn’t move. Lil retraced her steps, and dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘I’d come with you if I could. I know it’s a lot to ask. But you’re the only one who can do it.’ He didn’t turn round. ‘Nedly?’
When he finally spoke it was in a quiet voice: ‘I never beat Grip.’
Lil huffed out a breath. ‘Yeah, you did.’ She thumped her gloved hands together a few times to warm them. ‘At the battle of Yang Guang Heights, you said –’
‘No, I didn’t.’ He turned to face her now. ‘I just never denied it.’
Lil stopped clapping her hands and left them there, in mid-air, like she was carrying a small invisible box.
Nedly stepped towards her, his eyes dark and hollow. ‘I thought I’d beaten him, but then, after he snatched me back, we both ended up, I don’t know where, somewhere quiet. I just remember lots of streets, no lights, no noise. I ran away and he came after me; I could hear his footsteps getting louder.’ Nedly seemed to flicker slightly and Lil could see the pattern of the fence behind him emerging through his sweatshirt.
‘It seemed like we had been running for ever, but then we heard this tiny bell ring out, and Grip stumbled. I carried on running, didn’t look back until I had got to the other end of the street, but when I did I saw that Grip couldn’t resist the sound; it was summoning him against his will, pulling him back, and he was snarling and scratching at the air.’
Lil, remembering the face from the newspaper story felt her skin crawl, and she shuddered.
Nedly continued, ‘But he couldn’t stop himself; the bell called him and he had to go. He skidded backwards like he was being pulled on an invisible string. He got further and further away until he was gone and I was alone.’
Nedly had faded so much now that Lil could only just hear his voice, only just see his lips moving. ‘That was the last time I saw him.’
‘So Mr Grip …?’
‘I think Gallows called him back. I think Mr Grip is still out there somewhere.’
Lil didn’t look at him; she didn’t want her eyes to betray her. She suddenly felt very cold and very sick.
‘What do we do now?’ Nedly whispered, staring at the toes of his trainers.
Lil’s thoughts were whirling. If Nedly had beaten Mr Grip, who was without doubt the worst of the bunch, he could beat any of them. But he hadn’t beaten Grip. Maybe he couldn’t or maybe he was just too scared to try, but either way her plan, which was already shaky, was crumbling at the foundations.
‘I’ll think of something,’ she said briskly. ‘We’re not done yet.’
As soon as Lil had stepped through the door of the Nite Jar Velma had said, ‘We didn’t think you’d come in today. With everything that’s going on. You know you don’t have to stay, if you’d feel safer at home?’
But Lil had shrugged. ‘Is it all right if I stick around? I’d rather keep busy. You don’t have to pay me or anything. It’s just there’s no one at home so …’
‘Stay as long as yo
u like.’
They didn’t have any customers so Yoshi put on the radio and he and Velma sat at one of the booths and listened to old episodes of The Edie and Oliver Show, interspersed with the same public announcement broadcast: a counter statement from the acting mayor reassuring people that ‘the clean-up of Peligan City would continue. On all fronts,’ she had added ominously.
A City Hall employee came by and dropped off a bundle of leaflets – Velma pinned one up by the counter, next to the phone.
HAUNTING HOTLINE!
If you experience any of the following: a strong sensation of unease, sudden drop in temperature, unexplained noises and/or electrical disturbances, please call this number with your exact location immediately.
Underneath was a free phone number. The type was bold and in bright red ink and underneath in very small print it said:
Haunting Hotline is an initiative of Peligan City Hall. In the case of a genuine emergency there is no charge for this service.
Nedly frowned at it. ‘What do you think would happen if you called the number?’
‘Probably nothing.’ Lil shrugged. ‘I’d be surprised if anyone answered it. And even if they did, what could they do? Send in Irving Starkey?’ She smirked at the idea.
By eleven o’clock the only things to wash up were their own breakfast plates and a few pots. Alone in the kitchen with Nedly, Lil sat on a high stool at the sink, absent-mindedly cleaning the egg off a pan by stirring the soapy water with a wooden spoon, while reading the morning edition of the Klaxon. Nedly perched nearby, on the counter beside the draining board.
There was a follow-up on the Fright File story, including a centre-page spread naming the confirmed victims. There were even photographs of the dead before they had fallen on hard times. Delilah’s picture was a publicity shot taken from when she was a nightclub singer. She had a flower in her hair and glossy lipstick and she was smiling at something to the side of the photographer, or maybe she was just smiling to herself because she’d made it. She couldn’t have known then what the future would hold.
Lil brooded on the picture. There were twenty other names on the list. Twenty people had died on the streets over the last couple of months. But only the high-profile deaths – Silverman, Ping and Minos – had made the papers.
There was also a map of the city with a cross for every location where the bodies had been found, and question marks for the bodies of the recent unusual deaths, including those assigned to the mysterious Firebug Killer.
‘They’ve made the connection,’ said Lil approvingly. She took out a pencil and joined the dots herself. ‘If you just look at the crosses they’re almost all over this side of town. Typical.’
Lil searched for Randall Collar’s name but it only featured on a small update on the epidemic at the prison, berating Gordian for letting it go on unchecked and without proper medical support.
‘They’re not kidding,’ she said. ‘If they’d done something about it when the fake epidemic first broke out, then Gallows wouldn’t have been able to form his deadly gang in the first place.’ She laid the pamphlet on the drainer and gave the welded-on egg a really good scrub. ‘Someone’s got to stop that guy.’
‘What guy?’ Velma walked in and tipped the dregs out of two dirty cups, adding them to the bowl.
Lil’s ears reddened. ‘Yoshi, he burnt all the egg on the pan. See?’ She held the pan in front of Velma’s face and used the distraction to swipe the Klaxon from the drainer.
Velma smiled. ‘I’ll have a word with the management.’
Lil quickly washed up the cups and left them to dry. ‘Can I have my break now?’
Velma looked at the three plates, two pots, coffee cups and slice that Lil had washed up in the two hours she had been there already and smiled. ‘All right, but then you’re mopping the floors. May as well get this place shipshape in case we ever get another customer.’
Lil picked up a waffle, hot off the grill, wrapped it in a paper serviette and took it out the back, under the corrugated iron lean-to where the industrial-sized bin was kept. She climbed up to sit on the lid and Nedly sat awkwardly beside her. Lil checked over her shoulder and then pulled the file out of her rucksack.
‘Take a look at this. I happen to have come by some information on the prison.’ She showed him the file.
Nedly moved closer. ‘Where did you get it?’
‘It was just lying around, in the Klaxon HQ.’
‘You stole it?’
‘I borrowed it.’
‘Did you tell anyone you were borrowing it?’
Lil looked scandalised. ‘I had just found out that everything I knew about my mother was a smoke screen, created to mask her true identity, and that she is really a hot-shot reporter working undercover for the Klaxon, the paper I’ve always wanted to write for, so … no.’ She shrugged. ‘I didn’t ask. I thought maybe she owed me.’
She bent the file back to flatten it and then opened it between them. Inside were ten grainy blown-up photographs, all taken in low light and through bars. Lil flipped them over. On the back of each one was written ‘Fellgate Prison, Secure Wing for the Criminally Insane’ with the same date and number.
‘Surveillance pictures,’ whispered Lil reverentially. ‘The Klaxon must have got someone on the inside.’
It was a sequence. Most of the pictures showed men in grey-striped prison uniforms, standing or sitting around in their cells, their faces and limbs blurred with movement. One showed a smudged profile of a tall man in a white coat with curly hair, a thick beard and spectacles. Cornelius Gallows in his ‘Dr Lankin’ disguise. In the next shot he was turned to look at something just out of frame and his mouth was open, as though he was speaking. Even pixelated in low resolution, his eyes appeared cold and empty of feeling.
The next picture showed another person beside him. This person wasn’t wearing the prison outfit – he was dressed in a long, hooded black raincoat and he was offering Gallows what looked like a laundry bag.
In the final picture both men were looking directly at the camera – they must have spotted the photographer – and for the first time Lil could see the face behind the hood. It was heavy and potato-shaped with a dark shadow covering the jaw. She grabbed the photo so quickly that she practically screwed it up in her fist. ‘Nedly, look here!’
She attempted to flatten it again, angled it at the weak daylight and fetched her magnifying glass out of her rucksack. ‘Does he look familiar to you?’
Nedly leant in to study the picture more closely. ‘It’s the new owner of the doll hospital.’
They stared at each other for a moment, trying to work out what that meant. Lil took the first guess: ‘So they’re working together? Partners in crime?’
Nedly pointed to the laundry bag that the man was holding. ‘What do you think is in there?’
Lil stared at it. ‘Food, maybe? Or clothes?’
‘So, he’s taking Gallows supplies so he can hole up in the Needle for as long as it takes for him to execute all the prisoners and turn them into spooks?’
‘That’s how he’s doing it. And then once he’s done he can move on to his real target.’ Lil pointed her finger out over the rooftops to the black-glass skyscraper; even through the snow City Hall glinted like a jet monolith. ‘I bet he thinks if Gordian can’t get this haunting under control, then only one person can.’
Nedly gulped. ‘Me?’
‘Gallows.’ Lil’s eyes softened. ‘It’s only a matter of time before he makes his play for City Hall.’
‘So, what can Gordian do?’
Lil shrugged. She pulled a pencil out of her back pocket and started chewing on the end of it. ‘Gallows’ spooks are too scary and there are too many for us to beat and I don’t think either of us are clever enough to outwit an evil genius. There has to be another way.’
She looked down at the photograph, tapping it with her pencil. ‘He’s the weak link, Nedly. He’s not locked away safely; he’s here in the old town.’ She pointed t
he lead tip at the new owner of the doll hospital and then her eyes grew wide. ‘And what does he have plenty of that Gallows could use?’
‘Aftershave?’
Lil puffed out her cheeks. ‘Seriously?’
Nedly looked completely lost.
‘Toys!’ She gave him a triumphant grin. ‘Remember what you said – when Mr Grip was chasing you, it was the bells that called him back. He must have some kind of object that he’s bound to, just like Leonard Owl did. Gallows sewed those little bells on Wool so he could use him to control Owl’s ghost, Mr Glimmer, and Owl was able to free himself by destroying Wool in the fire. Remember?’
Nedly nodded.
‘If he’s used the same technique with the ghosts from the Needle, then we won’t need to defeat them, Nedly; we just have to destroy whatever object he has bound them to.’ Lil pulled that morning’s Klaxon out of her back pocket and opened it again at the map. She tapped a spot in the centre of the old town, where the most crosses orbited. The corner of Bead Street and Spooner row. ‘What’s here?’
‘The picture house?’
Lil shook her head. ‘On the other side of the road.’ She turned the map round and Nedly cocked his head at it and then grimaced. ‘The doll hospital.’
‘I’ll bet that’s where Gallows is keeping them. Hidden amongst all the other toys.’
‘Oh!’ Nedly realised with a shudder.
Lil continued. ‘You said the toymaker complained that there was something strange going on there at the doll hospital.’ She bit her lip. ‘If my theory is correct, she might be in danger.’
Nedly tried to follow her chain of thought. ‘So you think that the spooks have been bound to toys and they’re being kept at the doll hospital?’
‘It’s the perfect hiding place. No one would look twice.’
‘But why wouldn’t he just keep them close by at the prison?’