Haunters (9780545502542)

by Taylor, Thomas

  “No one was ever hurt by a ghost,” Grinn declared, half hysterically. He advanced again toward Eddie.

  “Bleedin’ spooks! I’m sick of it! Mr. Adam was bad enough, but you lot … walking through walls, staring, floating … tricks! Just a bunch of smoke and nothing, that’s all. But I’ll get the boy, and when Mr. Adam comes back, I’ll be rich, and then I’ll retire to some place where there’s no war, no coppers, and no BLEEDIN’ GHOSTS!”

  Petra flew back to David. There was nothing they could do to stop Grinn. By now Eddie had pushed Kat up onto the roof and was dragging himself after her. Grinn lunged forward, and David felt sick with powerlessness as the gangster grabbed Eddie’s ankle, sending the stool flying. Suddenly being a dreamwalker was the worst thing in the world.

  “Eddie, kick him!”

  David didn’t need to say this; Eddie was lashing out with all his strength, and Grinn was forced to let go. David saw Petra slip up through the beams of the roof and he followed her, rising out into the night. Kat was there, pulling Eddie up onto the roof tiles. Down below he could hear Grinn snatch the stool back up and bang it down on the floor beneath the hole.

  “Where’s the angel?” Kat cried to him. “I thought you said you were powerful. Help us!”

  David didn’t know what to say.

  “We can help by showing you the safest way,” Petra told them. “Keep calm and move carefully.”

  Grinn’s head appeared through the hole as Kat and Eddie stumbled away from it.

  “Get back here, you little bleeder!”

  “This way!” David called, and without thinking he took to the air, heading for the roof of the building next door.

  It was exhilarating! Even in all the stress, he was thrilled. Looking back, he saw Kat pulling Eddie along, and saw that Eddie was dragging one ankle. David flew on, right out into the space between the buildings. He had a moment of vertigo at the sight of the deep shadows in the side passage five floors below before he dropped down onto the neighboring roof. I can fly, he thought.

  Then he remembered that Eddie and Kat couldn’t.

  The gap between the buildings was well over five feet, maybe nearer ten. Eddie and Kat stumbled to a stop at the edge. Behind them, the silhouette of Charlie Grinn heaved itself onto the roof and stood up straight. He took his knife from his clenched teeth and walked slowly in their direction.

  “Go on, kid!” he shouted. “Jump! Make my job easier.”

  Kat jumped first. As she stepped back and then ran at the gap, David was impressed by her courage. She leaped at the very last moment, her skirts raised and her trailing foot pushing down hard against the edge of the guttering. She hit the other roof with a crash, one leg hanging over into the void. David crouched beside her, powerless to do anything but encourage her to her feet. She’d hurt herself, but she didn’t complain, she just looked back and called to Eddie.

  “Come on, it’s not far. Eddie, jump!”

  Eddie stepped back. He adjusted his glasses and glanced at the top of the broken iron ladder he’d climbed when he first came to the theater. It was clear he’d rather not jump at all, but go down that way. David followed his gaze downward, and was dismayed to see that someone was actually coming up the ladder from the street. Could it be one of Grinn’s men? They’d scared off a few, but how many more would the gang boss have brought with him? Grinn himself was getting closer, but Eddie was still just standing there.

  “Eddie!” Kat and David were both shouting now.

  Eddie threw a last wistful look at the ladder and then took off his glasses. He stuffed them in his inside pocket, along with his rolled-up notebook. Grinn was just a few paces away when he began his run up.

  Eddie jumped.

  He hit the edge of the neighboring roof with a hard clatter, the edges of the tiles digging into his stomach. His lungs emptied themselves in a single ouf of escaping air, and he clutched at the tiles in desperation. One of them came away, and Eddie fell back. Kat grabbed his coat and heaved. Somewhere far below the tile hit the ground and shattered.

  Grinn reached the edge of the roof, panting furiously and just a couple of feet away from where Eddie was struggling. He looked at the knife in his hand, clearly considering whether or not to throw it. David couldn’t imagine what crazy calculations must have been going on in the man’s head by then, but there was nothing he could do but watch in horror as Grinn came to a decision, raised the knife past the right side of his head, and flung it straight at Eddie.

  The knife struck Eddie, and he cried out. Kat heaved one last time and dragged him onto the roof, with the knife still sticking out near his collar.

  “Kat, take it out!” David shouted. “Oh, God, take it out!”

  Kat grabbed the handle and pulled the blade clear, her eyes wide at the sight of it in her hand and of Eddie’s blood running onto her fingers.

  “It’s done!” cried Grinn, dancing up and down on the very edge of the roof. “Ha ha — done! Mr. Adam, it’s been seen to.”

  “Adam is gone for good,” Petra said. She was standing behind Grinn. The gangster turned around.

  “Go on, girlie, push me off,” he sneered. “That’s what you’d like, isn’t it? But you can’t. It’s like you’re not even here. Bleedin’ spooks! Go on, clear off, and don’t forget the Utherwise boy’s ghost on your way. Ha ha!”

  “Not dead yet,” said Eddie, sitting up and wincing back at Grinn. “Thick coat.”

  David could have cheered. Eddie had obviously been hurt, but not as badly as Grinn had thought. The gangster yelled in rage and got ready to jump across.

  “Stop!” Petra called out, swooping around in front of him. “You’ll never make it. You are risking your life for nothing. Adam is finished. You can let the boy go, Charlie Grinn. Whatever Adam promised you has disappeared with him. It’s over.”

  Petra’s voice was hard and she was staring into Grinn’s eyes with great intensity, bringing all the power of her will to bear. Grinn even hesitated, but not for long.

  “Mr. Adam’s vanished before,” he said, “but he always comes back. And I’ll have something for him when he does, even if I have to strangle the life out of that scrawny weasel with my bare hands.”

  He moved back to take a run at the gap. But before he started, a voice called up from the iron ladder.

  “Wait, boss, I’ll get ’im.”

  “Who’s that?” Grinn said. “Tater? Is that you?”

  Grinn swept right through Petra and strode back to the edge to look down into the gloom, eager to see one of his men.

  “Got a shooter?”

  “Yeah, I’ll get ’im,” called the voice. “Give me a hand up, boss!”

  The shape of an arm appeared at the top of the ladder. Grinn reached down, his teeth gleaming in the dark. David’s heart sank. On the roof, with Eddie injured, there was nowhere to hide from a man with a gun.

  Then Grinn gave a shout.

  David saw the gangster struggle in the dark. Then he staggered, toppled over the edge and vanished from view. For a second there was a cry, before the night was filled with a dull bone-breaking thud from the cobbles of the side street below.

  “Ha!” said a voice, and a boy climbed to the top of the ladder. “He had that coming and no mistake.”

  “Tom!” Kat cried with relief.

  As the three non-dreamwalkers slumped onto the tiles and struggled to get their breath back, David and Petra crouched beside them. Even in the dark it was clear to David that all three had been hurt, and Eddie was bleeding steadily despite Kat’s attempts to staunch the wound. She was working at his shoulder with the hem of her dress, but kept glancing at her brother with something like awe.

  “You killed him,” she kept saying. “Dead! You pulled him off the roof!”

  “Friend of yours, was he?” said Tomkin in a thick voice, making him sound like he’d taken a recent beating. “What do you care? Chucking knives at you, wasn’t he? A nasty one, that Grinn was, and I know more about it than you, believe me.
A lot more. Charlie Grinn never let anyone go.”

  “I don’t think I could have done it.” Kat was still shaking her head, despite the sense in her brother’s word. “You killed him, Tom. Dead!”

  “You’re all I’ve got left, ain’t you?” said Tomkin, stroking his sister’s head with a burst of furious affection. “I’ll kill anyone who tries to hurt you.”

  “Tomkin, where did you come from?” Eddie winced as he spoke — Kat was pressing his shoulder very hard.

  Tomkin turned a cold stare onto Eddie.

  “We was fine till you showed up. Then suddenly we’ve got the likes of Grinn in the attic, and worse still. You and me’re gonna have a long talk about ghosts, Eddie Utherwise. Right before you clear off for good, that is. No hard feelings, you understand, I just want you out of mine and Kat’s lives before you bring any more trouble our way. Got it?”

  “Don’t be a numbskull, Tom,” Kat said. “Just tell us where you’ve been?”

  “They nabbed me, didn’t they?” said Tomkin. “Long story — tell you later. Anyhow, I was in a motor outside the theater. That Grinn made ’em bring me in case I was lying.”

  “Lying?” Kat stared at her brother. “No, Tom, you didn’t … you told them where to find Eddie?”

  Tomkin hung his head for a moment.

  “Yeah, all right, I did. But I had someone’s boot on me face at the time, didn’t I? Like I said, you don’t know what that Grinn was like. I’m sorry I squealed, but I had to say something so I could get back to you.”

  Kat reached out and gripped her brother’s knee.

  “How did you get out of the car?” Eddie asked, apparently not noticing Tomkin’s hostility toward him.

  “It was that one,” said Tomkin after a moment, pointing to Petra. “She dropped down through the blinkin’ roof! Scared the living daylights out of the two heavies guarding me. Me too, if I’m honest. Some sort of trick, I suppose,” he added, calling over to Petra, “though how it’s done I’ve no idea.”

  “No trick,” said Eddie, glancing at the two dreamwalkers. “Not in the way you mean, Tomkin. This is David, the ghost I told you about, and his friend.”

  “It’s best if you don’t know my name,” said Petra. “I don’t want to be mysterious, but there are things you mustn’t know about us.”

  “But we owe him something,” David protested. “Eddie, I mean. We can’t just vanish and leave him without an explanation.”

  “No!” Eddie cried, only partly out of pain. “You can’t! David, tell me what you are. What you are really?”

  “Yeah, I’d quite like the answer to that too,” said Tomkin.

  “I’m sorry,” said Petra, “but that’s precisely what we can’t tell you.”

  However, when she saw the miserable look on Eddie’s face, she continued. “Listen, Eddie, you are being hunted by someone who wants you dead — that should be clear to you now. Why this is and exactly what David and I are, you will have to figure out on your own, but I promise that you will understand one day. You could say it’s your destiny to understand.”

  “Where’re you from?” said Tomkin, eyeing Petra with suspicion. “You sound German to me.”

  As if to illustrate Tomkin’s worst thoughts, air-raid sirens started sounding all around the city. They echoed through the streets, mingling with the clamor of people hurrying for the shelters. Searchlights had already begun raking their beams across the sky, as night and another wave of warplanes closed on London.

  “All I can tell you,” said Petra eventually, “is that I have nothing to do with the people who are about to bomb this city.”

  There was an awkward silence, and David could see that Petra would have loved to say more.

  “I dunno,” said Tomkin eventually. Already they could hear the far-off stop-start drone of aircraft and the thump of a distant anti-aircraft gun. “British, German … I’m still trying to get my head around the fact that I’m talking to a ghost! I must be losing my mind.”

  “It is against the rules to tell you more,” said Petra. “Just don’t give up hope for the future, Tomkin, that’s all.”

  “I will discover your secret one day,” said Eddie, and with such vehemence that everyone looked at him in surprise. “Perhaps you have already said too much. There’s only one way you could sound so optimistic about the future. Am I right?”

  Petra glanced at David, then replied, “How is your shoulder? Can you move?”

  “Nothing in my past explains why someone would want to kill me,” said Eddie, ignoring the question and pulling his notebook from his pocket, “so maybe the reason lies in my future. Such things are said to be impossible, but then ghosts are meant to be impossible too.”

  “I think the shock’s gone to your head, mate,” said Tomkin, tapping his forehead. “The sooner you get back to Castle Creepy or wherever you’ve come from, the better, I’d say.”

  “Yes,” said David. “Eddie, we have to get you away from here. There might still be some of Grinn’s men around.”

  “Where’s the angel?” said Kat. “I felt safer when she was here.”

  “Angel!” Tomkin tried to laugh, but it sounded hollow. “Whatever happened to common sense? Anyway, yeah, Grinn’s got half the gangs of London looking for you, Eddie, so Mr. and Mrs. Ghost here are right that you’d better move on. Been nice knowin’ you.”

  “Eddie, when we asked earlier if you could drive,” David said, “it sounded like you were saying yes. Is that right?”

  Eddie glared at him but said nothing.

  “Tomkin, do you think the keys will still be in the car you came in?” said Petra. “Eddie needs to get out of the city, and fast.”

  “There’s ways to start a car without keys,” said Tomkin, tapping his nose. “And if it means getting rid of Eddie all the faster, then I’ll even drive the car myself.”

  A roar of sound washed over the little group on the rooftop as a firebomb erupted. It was south toward the river but the closest explosion yet, and it lit the sky with a spike of yellow light. The noise of the sirens was mixed now with the jangle of fire engines.

  “Eddie, you have to move,” Petra said. “Can you stand?”

  Eddie struggled to his feet, but toppled back down, landing heavily on his knees.

  “He’s still bleeding.” Kat sounded worried. “I don’t see how he can jump back to the theater, let alone climb down to the street, and we can’t carry him. Tom, we’ll have to fetch help. The firemen could bring him down.”

  “What?” Tomkin look incredulous. “Don’t you think firemen have enough to do without mollycoddling the likes of him? Look, I’m sick of all this. All I care about is getting you to a shelter, Kat. I’m done with Lord Creepy.”

  “We can’t leave him,” Kat said, as a shriek in the air ended with another explosion, this time just a few streets away. “We’ll get help for Eddie, and then we’ll go to the shelter, all right? I promise.”

  Tomkin swore. Then he turned to Eddie.

  “You got your claws into my sister, right enough. But this is the last thing we’ll do for you.” And he grabbed his sister’s hand. Together they ran to the edge of the roof. Without hesitation they jumped back across to the theater, their silhouettes briefly highlighted by yet another explosion.

  David grinned as he watched them go. He made a mental note to look Kat and Tomkin up in the Archive when he got back to Unsleep House. Perhaps they were even still alive in his own time, old and wrinkly somewhere. He could drop by and chat about all this over tea and crumpets.

  Then he remembered this was something he’d never be able to do with Eddie.

  He looked back at the boy who would become his grandfather. Eddie had managed to get to his feet and was hobbling away from them, toward the edge of the roof. Beyond him the skyline to the south was ablaze, but Eddie hardly seemed concerned.

  Petra came to stand beside David.

  “I got Misty to check on the way here,” she said. “This building was never hit during the war.
Eddie is as safe here on the roof as he will be anywhere, at least from the bombing. But we should stay with him until Kat and Tomkin bring help. And you should say good-bye now, David. There might not be time later.”

  David said nothing. He’d guessed that some sort of final farewell was approaching, that this might be the last time he and his grandfather were together. He walked over to join him at the edge. For a moment they both watched the devastation that was being wrought on London. Even though David knew that for him this destruction was historic — a past event in the city he lived in — he found it hard not to think of the people who lived here now. How must it feel to belong to this time, to face terror raining from the sky every night without the comfort of future knowledge a time-traveler has? He couldn’t even begin to imagine. He turned to Eddie.

  “How’s your shoulder?”

  “Ache in my scapula, right side,” Eddie said, “and a hole in my coat. That man Grinn should have jumped. This knife is not designed for throwing.”

  David looked down at Eddie’s hands and saw in the gloom that he was holding Grinn’s switchblade, apparently unconcerned at the sight of his own blood. David shook his head. The boy who would one day be his grandfather could be really strange at times.

  “David, you have to tell me.” Eddie turned to him. “What kind of ghost are you? You talk of rules. That suggests organization. Do you work for some kind of agency?”

  David had to laugh. “Eddie, you don’t need me to tell you anything. You’ll have worked it all out by breakfast.”

  “I’ll keep asking you,” Eddie said, not laughing back. “Whenever we meet. I’ll get to the truth somehow.”

  “After this I don’t think I’ll be allowed to visit you again. I think you’ve seen all the ghosts you’re supposed to.”

  The fearful sounds of the air raid grew around them. A black cat crept along the guttering.

  “I’m sorry I doubted you,” Eddie said.

  “None of that matters now,” said David. “This is good-bye.” He looked back to make sure that Petra wasn’t in earshot, then leaned in close. “But promise me one thing, will you? If you ever have a son, tell him to spend a bit more time with his own children.”