For Tommy Donbavand, the toughest guy in all of Tough Town.
B. H.
Denzel Edgar was halfway through the Hall of Mirrors when he saw the ghost.
It was standing in front of a short, squat mirror, jumping up and down and flapping its arms at its sides like a chicken.
“Here, Denzel, check this out. What do I look like?” said Smithy. “I’ll give you a clue. Bu-buuck!”
Smithy was small, scrawny and generally a bit untidy. Those were the first things people noticed about him. What most people didn’t notice was that he’d been dead for the better part of five hundred years. Even Denzel had only discovered this fact quite recently, despite having been best mates with him for ages.
“Shh. Shut up,” Denzel whispered. He turned slowly, the beam of his torch reflecting strangely across the peeling walls and bare wooden floor. “We’re supposed to be looking for the … thing. The whatchamacallit?”
“Ghost?” said Smithy.
“Yes, but … Boyle called it something. It had a proper name.”
“Gavin?” Smithy guessed.
Denzel shone the torch in Smithy’s face, but Smithy didn’t flinch. “What? No! I mean like an official scientific name. Free-formed Vaporous… Oh, I don’t know.”
He looked down at the garish ring on his finger. The gemstone was supposed to light up when anything supernatural was nearby, but it was currently dark. That should have been comforting, but as Denzel knew for a fact there was at least one ghost in the room – currently strutting back and forth, pretending to be a flightless bird – the lifeless gem didn’t fill him with confidence.
The walkie-talkie on Denzel’s belt crackled into life, making him jump. He fumbled for the radio, almost dropped his torch, then briefly juggled them both for a few frantic seconds, as the voice of a gruff teenager spat from the tinny speaker.
“Denzel. Anything? Over.”
Denzel managed to stop juggling and found the “talk” button on the side of the radio’s plastic casing. “Uh. No. There’s just a load of mirrors.”
He released the button and waited for a reply. When none came, he thonked himself on the side of the head with the torch and pressed the button again. “Sorry. Over. Sorry, Boyle. I mean … over.”
“Keep looking,” said Boyle. “We’re definitely picking up Spectral Energy. What’s Smithy doing? Over.”
Denzel pressed the button and glanced over to where Smithy was checking himself out in another mirror. “Right now? A handstand,” said Denzel. “Over.”
“Ha! Think you can turn me upside down, do you? Not so clever now!” Smithy told the mirror, then he lost his balance and crashed, feet first, into it. The mirror fell in a din of smashing glass and Smithy sprang upright like a startled gazelle.
“What was that? Over,” Boyle demanded.
Denzel hesitated with his finger over the button. “Uh, nothing,” he said. “False alarm. Thought it was a ghost, but it wasn’t.”
“It was a goat,” said Smithy, leaning over to speak into the walkie-talkie. He winked at Denzel and gave him a thumbs-up.
Denzel mouthed at him to be quiet, then laughed falsely. “Haha. Not really. That would be … mad. But we’re OK here. Nothing to report, over.”
There was a lengthy pause from the other end, then: “Keep your eyes peeled. And if you see something, do not engage. Over and out.”
“Uh. OK. Bye,” Denzel said into the radio, then he clipped it back on to his belt.
Smithy waggled his eyebrows and grinned goofily. “I think he fell for the goat thing.”
Denzel sighed. It had been a week since he and Smithy had officially been made members of the Spectre Collectors – a top-secret organisation dedicated to protecting the world from supernatural threats – and neither of them was exactly getting the hang of it.
“It’s not really fair, is it?” he said.
“What’s not fair?”
“Well, I mean … Boyle and Samara are teamed up together. She can do magic; he’s got, like, all the guns in the world.”
Smithy frowned. “So?”
“So what have we got? A couple of torches, a walkie-talkie and a ring that’s cutting the circulation off in my finger.”
Smithy slipped an arm around Denzel’s shoulder and began to sing quietly in his ear while swaying from side to side. “You and me, we got each other, just a couple of pals in a creepy old circus.”
Denzel shrugged him away. “Get off,” he said, but he couldn’t stop himself smiling. “Anyway, it’s not a circus, it’s a creepy old fairground.”
“Is it? What’s the difference?” Smithy asked.
“Well, lots of things,” said Denzel. “You don’t get animals at a fairground.”
“There’s animals here,” said Smithy. “Look.”
He pointed his torch into one of the corners. The light reflected off a tiny pair of eyes. “See?”
“That’s a rat,” said Denzel, fighting the urge to run away screaming. “They don’t count.”
They pressed on through the Hall of Mirrors, catching misshapen reflections of themselves leering out of every rotten frame.
“That’s a point,” Denzel said, keeping his distance from the corner with the rat in it. “Can you get ghost animals?”
“Oh yeah, definitely,” said Smithy. “You can get ghost anything. Even inanimate objects. I saw a ghost lizard once.”
Denzel shot him a sideways glance. “A ghost lizard?”
“Yep. A chamelo, or something. It was in a pet shop. This kid touched it then – pchow – it disappeared.”
“Could it maybe have been a chameleon?”
Smithy clicked his fingers. “That was it! Pchow,” he said, waving his fingers mysteriously in front of Denzel’s face and whispering. “Disappeared.”
“You’ve literally just described all chameleons.”
“What? All chameleons are ghosts?”
“No,” said Denzel, then he decided it wasn’t worth the effort. “Forget it. Yeah, that is some spooky stuff, all right.”
“Oh, and I also saw someone get eaten by a ghost lion once,” said Smithy. He tapped himself on the side of the head. “But I’ve pretty much blocked that memory out. Onwards!”
He marched off towards the door at the far end of the hall, leaving Denzel to try to figure out if he was joking or not. It was hard to tell with Smithy. Denzel sometimes wondered if even Smithy himself knew, half the time.
They stepped out of the Hall of Mirrors and into the cool night breeze. Empty popcorn tubs fluttered across the overgrown grass like disappointing butterflies, their colourful print long since faded. The rusted metal of an old roller coaster creaked and groaned as the wind whistled between its legs and through its crumbling tracks.
“What about clowns?” asked Smithy.
“What about them?”
“Are they circuses or fairgrounds?”
“Circuses,” said Denzel.
“Good. I hate clowns,” said Smithy. “Oh! Here’s one. What would you rather – be trapped in a cage with a killer clown…”
“Right.”
“Or be trapped in a cage with a bear?”
“Well—”
“But,” continued Smithy, who wasn’t finished. “The bear is dressed like a clown, and the clown is dressed like a bear.”
Denzel frowned. “Who’s dressing bears up like clowns?”
Smithy shrugged. “I don’t know. The government.”
They set off towards the next building on the list Boyle had given them of places to check. Boyle himself would be over by the big wheel with Samara, which was where the actual ghost-sighting had taken place. Denzel reckoned he and Smithy had been sent to scope out the other places mainly to keep t
hem out of the way.
“So let me get this straight. The government has dressed a bear up like a clown…”
“And a clown up like a bear,” Smithy added.
“Right. And a clown up like a bear, and – for reasons unknown – is making me choose which one I want to be put in a cage with,” said Denzel. “And no matter which one I pick, they’re going to try to kill me.”
“Exactamundo,” said Smithy. “So which do you choose?”
Denzel kicked a decomposing soft toy that was tangled in the grass. Its head came off, spraying damp stuffing across the ground. “Clown dressed like a bear, probably,” he said.
“Interesting. How come?”
“Well, if I was a bear and someone dressed me like a clown, I’d be furious,” Denzel reasoned. “I wouldn’t stand a chance fighting that; it’d rip me to bits. But a clown in a bear suit is going to be quite clumsy, I reckon. If he’s got a big headpiece on, it’d make it hard for him to see, wouldn’t it? I could just push him over.”
Smithy nodded slowly. “OK. What if the bear was invisible and the clown could fly?”
“Shh,” Denzel hissed. “Did you hear that?”
“Yes. You did it right in my ear,” said Smithy.
“No, not me going ‘shh’. That noise.”
They both listened. The only sounds were the creaking and groaning of the fairground around them.
“I don’t hear anything,” said Smithy. “What sort of noise was it?”
“I don’t know,” said Denzel. “It was sort of a…”
“Ptwing?” Smithy guessed.
“No, like…”
“Barudda-dudda-dudda?”
“What is that supposed to be?” asked Denzel.
“What, ‘Barudda-dudda-dudda’? Just a noise,” said Smithy. “Why, was it like that?”
“No, it was more…”
A low moan drifted through the open archway of the building ahead of them, making all the hairs on Denzel’s neck stand on end.
“Like that,” he whispered.
The archway had been painted to look like a gaping mouth. Two red eyes leered out over the top of the arch, and above those, in faded lettering, were two little words that sent a chill tickling down Denzel’s spine.
Ghost Train.
Denzel held the walkie-talkie to his mouth and whispered into the microphone.
“Hey, Boyle. I think we might have found something. Over.”
There was a hiss of static from the other side, then an enormous severed head appeared floating in the air in front of him. Denzel and Smithy both grabbed each other and screamed in fright.
“Hey, guys!” Samara said, her semi-transparent giant face breaking into a smile.
Denzel groaned with a mixture of embarrassment and relief. He quickly released his grip on Smithy and brushed down the front of his black jumper. “Samara. You, uh, you startled us,” said Denzel.
“Really? Didn’t notice,” said Samara, clearly fighting the urge to laugh. “Anyway, Boyle’s a little busy at the moment.”
“Cool! Is he fighting a ghost?” asked Smithy, keen to hear every exciting detail.
“Uh, no. He stood on dog poo,” said Samara.
“Oh, well, thanks a lot for telling them,” said Boyle from somewhere in the background.
“What have you found?” Samara asked.
“Denzel heard a noise,” said Smithy.
Samara’s floating face frowned. “What sort of noise?”
“That’s what I asked,” said Smithy. “At first, I wondered if it was a sort of ‘ptwing’-type noise, but he said—”
The moaning came again, echoing from the darkened tunnel of the Ghost Train.
“It was like that,” said Denzel.
Samara shrugged. At least, Denzel guessed that’s why her head bobbed about the way it did, but as she had no visible shoulders it was difficult to be sure. “That? That’s nothing. Just the wind. Check it out though. No harm in having a look.”
“Unless it’s something horrible that kills us,” Smithy pointed out.
“Yeah,” agreed Samara. “But I’m, like, ninety per cent sure it won’t be.”
Another moan rang out. “Well, maybe eighty-five.”
“Oh, come on, not again! Seriously, why can’t people just pick it up?” Boyle cried. Samara’s floating head turned, as if looking back over one of her missing shoulders. “I’d better go. Keep us posted.”
The head popped like a bubble. Denzel puffed out his cheeks. “Well, that was reassuring.”
Smithy peered into the tunnel. It was like gazing down the throat of a giant dragon. The flaking paintwork made the monstrous face look even worse, as if it had a terrible contagious skin condition just waiting to be passed on.
“Should we go in then?” he asked.
“We could,” said Denzel. “Or we could just wait out here and pretend we did.”
Smithy nodded slowly. “What would you rather, right? Go in there, or have Samara and Boyle find out you’re a big chicken?”
Denzel weighed the two options up. It didn’t take long. Creepy dark tunnel or not, there was no contest really.
“Fine,” he said, striding towards the gaping maw of the Ghost Train. “But if I get horribly killed, you’re totally getting haunted.”
Denzel’s torchlight cut a thin line through the darkness as he shuffled along the Ghost Train’s tracks. Smithy stuck close behind him, jumping at every creak of the rotten floor.
“You’re pretty nervous for someone who’s already dead,” Denzel whispered.
“No I’m not,” Smithy protested. “I’m just … guarding the rear.”
“Right,” said Denzel. He glanced down to his shoulder, where Smithy’s hand was gripping his jumper. “It’s just you seem to be using me as a human shield.”
“Well, can you blame me?” Smithy whispered. “Look at this place!”
He swept his own torch across the wooden walls. It picked out six severed heads, two big spiders and a plastic skeleton with an arm missing.
“This is the worst place in the world!” Smithy hissed.
Strangely enough, now they were inside, Denzel was far less scared than he’d been when they were standing outside. It was the plastic skeleton that had done it. It had reminded him of every other Ghost Train he’d ever been on, where the shocks were boring, the effects were naff and the scariest part of the whole thing was the ticket price.
“It’s all fake, relax,” said Denzel. “Samara was right. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“Oh?” Smithy squeaked. “Then why’s your finger glowing?”
Denzel raised his hand. The ring on his finger pulsed an ominous shade of purple.
A cold breeze drifted along the dark passageway, and Denzel’s breath became a series of fluffy purple-tinged clouds.
Denzel swallowed and tightened his grip on his torch. “It’s still probably nothing,” he said, although he wasn’t sure who he was trying to convince. “The ring must just be picking you up.”
“It hasn’t picked me up before,” Smithy pointed out.
“Yeah, but you haven’t been holding on to me and crying before.”
“I’m not crying,” Smithy protested. “Not yet, anyway. But I’m not ruling it out.”
“Let’s keep going,” Denzel said. “We can’t be far from the end.”
A deep, rumbling moan vibrated the walls of the tunnel, making the plastic skeleton flap and jangle around.
“Or we could turn around and run as fast as we can,” Denzel squeaked. “I’m happy either way.”
The moan rose in pitch, becoming an ear-splitting screech, like claws being dragged down a blackboard. Denzel and Smithy exchanged a glance, both nodded at the same time, then spun on the spot and plunged back the way they’d come.
A few paces in, they were met by a low, guttural growl. A bright white light began to strobe, revealing the silhouette of something large, hairy and eye-wateringly terrifying. The ring on Denzel’s finger b
lazed red, reflecting off the monster’s grey head – the only part of its body not covered in coarse hair – and its dozens of shark-like teeth.
Denzel made a noise. It wasn’t a noise he was particularly proud of – a sort of yelping “Bleaurmwa!” that rose from his toes – but it burst from his mouth all on its own, and he felt that, given the circumstances, it was perfectly understandable.
“This way!” cried Smithy.
Denzel was pulled towards the closest wall. He threw up his hands to protect himself, but then passed right through the wood and stumbled into another corridor on the other side.
“Nice ghost skills,” he panted.
“Thanks,” said Smithy. “What was that thing?”
“I don’t know!” said Denzel. “Some kind of, like, shark-headed … monkey thing.”
Smithy wrinkled his nose. “Monkey? You think? I’d have said bear.”
Denzel flashed his torch across the walls. They were in a different part of the ride now. A filthy old sheet dangled from the ceiling, three black circles representing its ghostly face. An old cuckoo clock hung on one wall, a little rubber bat dangling limply from the open doors.
“I could be wrong,” said Smithy. “But I reckon we’re still in the Ghost Train.”
“Oh, you think?” whispered Denzel.
His torch flickered and he had to thump the side a few times to steady the beam. Mind you, even without the torch, the light from Denzel’s ring was more than bright enough to see by. It shone with a blazing swirl of oranges and reds that danced across the walls like sunlight reflecting off rippling water.
Another sound hissed along the passageway towards them. Denzel held his breath. “Did you hear that?”
“What now?” Smithy croaked.
“Sort of a … whooshing. Like a lot of people whispering or—”
“A million tiny wings all flapping at the same time?” said Smithy.
“Yeah,” said Denzel. “Yeah, I suppose it…”
He saw Smithy illuminated by the ring’s glow. He stood with his back to Denzel, pointing along the tunnel. Denzel raised his torch just as hundreds of black bats flooded the passageway, chittering and screeching as they battered off the walls and bounced against the ceiling.
A New York Nightmare! Page 1