“Denzel?”
The voice drifted down from somewhere above. Denzel tried to open his eyes but he was too tired. Was he asleep? Had his alarm gone off? What time was it?
Oh, no. He was dead, wasn’t he? That was it. He’d drowned.
“Denzel!”
So why was someone shouting at him? And who kept pressing down on his chest? He wished they’d stop. That last one had almost forced his lungs out through his nose.
Denzel coughed, sneezed, gasped and spluttered at the same time, ejecting a not insignificant amount of water out through his mouth and nose. He tried to sit up but clonked heads with Arnold. The gym owner was leaning over him, the heels of his hands pressed against the middle of Denzel’s chest.
Weinberg and Martinez stood above him, both looking worried. As soon as it was clear that Denzel wasn’t dead, Smithy barged Arnold aside, sending the old man sprawling on to the tiles.
“Denzel! You’re alive!” Smithy cried.
“Am I?” said Denzel, unable to hide his surprise.
“Yes! I mean … I think so,” said Smithy. He looked up at Weinberg. She nodded.
“Good to have you back with us,” she said.
“What happened?” asked Martinez.
Denzel’s head dropped back, hitting the tiles with a clunk. He tried to remember. What had happened?
“There was whispering,” he said. “And then the water.”
Everyone looked at the water, then back to Denzel. “What about the water?” asked Weinberg.
What about it? He couldn’t be sure. He’d been in the water, he remembered that much.
But why? Not by choice, surely?
He sat up suddenly.
“There’s something in the water!” His voice boomed around the room, making everyone jump. Denzel scrambled to his feet as everything came flooding back. He remembered the tendrils around his throat, the chlorine in his eyes and the water in his lungs.
And he remembered the shape – enormous and ominous, scything through the water towards him.
“You’re right, there is! Look!” yelped Smithy. He pointed to the surface of the pool, where a solitary sticking plaster bobbed around on the gently lapping waves.
Denzel shook his head. “No, it was something … horrible.”
“That’s pretty horrible, to be fair,” said Smithy.
“No, but it was huge,” Denzel insisted. “I think it might have been a sea monster.”
Weinberg sidled closer to the edge and leaned over. “Well, it’s not there now.”
Denzel shook his head. “But it was there. I saw it! You’ve got to believe me.”
“Hey, we do believe you,” said Weinberg. “Come on, think about who you’re talking to here. We’ll pretty much believe anything.”
Martinez gave the wall another lick. Denzel recoiled again. “Seriously, every time you do that it probably takes ten years off your life.”
“Nothing,” said Martinez, flicking his tongue in and out of his mouth. “The Spectral Energy is gone.”
“Gone?” said Weinberg. “How can it be gone? It should linger for days. Months, even!”
“I know,” said Martinez. “But it’s gone.”
“Hey, what’s going on?” demanded Arnold. He was getting back to his feet and looking far less dazed than he had a moment ago. “What are you kids doing in here?”
He looked at Denzel, and at the water dripping from the bottom of his trouser legs. “Were you swimming? Did you go swimming in my pool?”
“Relax,” said Martinez. He reached into a pouch that was hooked on to the gold-coloured rope he wore as a belt. When his hand came back out, there was a sprinkling of glittering dust in his palm. Memory dust, Denzel knew. One good sniff and Arnold would forget this whole encounter.
Martinez blew on the dust. Arnold blinked rapidly as it swirled around his head, then up through his nostrils.
His face became slack, his eyes became glazed and the Spectre Collectors agreed that it was probably time to leave.
They were back in the Empire State Building, going down in the lift when Denzel remembered the little plastic soldiers. In the rush to answer the call, Martinez hadn’t spotted them scattered and broken behind the table, but once they got back he was bound to see them.
Maybe he’d think there’d been a break-in, Denzel thought. Although quite why someone would break into the underground lair of a secret ghost-hunting society solely to destroy some toy soldiers, Denzel wasn’t sure.
“You all right?” said Smithy.
Denzel blinked. “What? Um, yeah.”
“It’s just you look a bit strange,” said Smithy.
Denzel looked down at himself. He’d got changed in the back of the van while the others waited outside, and all that had been available was a jumble of spare Vulteron and Oberon uniform pieces. He now wore a green robe over blue and silver camo-pattern trousers, which were held up by shiny gold rope. The robe was too big, the trousers were too small and he hadn’t even been able to get his feet into the boots.
“Yeah. I noticed,” Denzel said.
“No, I meant your face,” said Smithy. “You look a bit … guilty.”
“No, I don’t,” said Denzel.
“You do. Doesn’t he?”
Weinberg and Martinez both turned and checked out Denzel’s face. He tried to make it look as normal as possible, but only succeeded in contorting it into a sort of weird grimace that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a gargoyle.
“He does a bit,” Weinberg said.
“Looks more like he’s constipated to me,” said Martinez. “You constipated, Denzel?”
“No!”
“Long flights can do that to you,” Martinez continued.
“I’m not constipated!” Denzel insisted. He gestured to Smithy. “He’s right, it’s guilt!”
Denzel’s eyes widened briefly, then he quickly bit his lip.
“I knew it!” said Smithy. He nudged Denzel with his elbow. “What you feeling guilty about?”
Denzel laughed nervously. “Um…” The lift jolted to a stop. “It’s funny you should ask…”
The doors opened with a ping. Martinez was the first to step out into the basement. He took three paces, then stopped suddenly, as if his feet had been glued to the floor.
Denzel leaned out and looked past him, to where all the tiny figures lay broken on the floor.
“I, uh, may have accidentally dropped the pizza boxes on all your little guys.”
Martinez didn’t respond. He just stood there, completely stock still, his eyes fixed on the carnage.
“Oh, boy,” Weinberg said. She held her arm out, stopping Denzel and Smithy getting any closer to her partner. “Hey, Joe. You OK?”
“My army,” Martinez whispered. “He broke my army.”
“It was an accident,” Denzel told him.
“You broke my army! Do you have any idea how long it took me to build and paint them all?”
“Forty minutes?” Smithy guessed. Denzel shot him a look and hurriedly shook his head. “Ten years?” said Smithy, having another go. “I don’t know. Is it a trick question?”
Denzel stepped past Weinberg’s arm and approached Martinez. “Look, uh, Joe, I’m really sorry,” he began, but then something crunched under his foot and Martinez let out a high-pitched groan.
His arms flew out in a sudden flurry of activity. The air around him scorched with lines of glowing colour. He mumbled something under his breath and a plume of smoke rose from his feet.
For a moment Denzel thought Martinez had caught fire. He was about to jump on the Oberon’s back and wrestle him to the floor when, with a faint whoosh that made Denzel’s ears pop, Martinez vanished into thin air.
“Oh, great,” said Smithy. “You killed him. You upset him so much he exploded.”
“What? No! I didn’t kill him,” said Denzel. “Did I?”
Weinberg shook her head. She and Smithy stepped out of the lift doorway, letting the doors close
over behind them. “No, he’s not dead. He’s just gone to his room.”
Denzel looked around the basement. “His room?”
“Floor below,” Weinberg explained. “We both have rooms there. We tried to find a couple that you guys could use but, well, time hasn’t exactly been kind to the place, and we didn’t get much notice you were coming.”
She squatted beside the broken figures and picked up a mangled skeleton.
“It was an accident,” Denzel said.
“Yeah. I know,” said Weinberg. “And he knows it too. It’s just that his mom gave him these, and she’s … she’s not around any more.”
“Oh God,” Denzel groaned, letting his head fall into his hands. “Seriously?”
“He’ll get over it,” said Weinberg. “You know, eventually. When he’s, like, a hundred.”
She started to pick up the figures, then stopped. “You know what, it’s late,” she said. “We can get this in the morning. You guys should probably get some rest.”
Denzel nodded. “Yeah. I’m pretty tired. Smithy?”
“Yes!” said Smithy, grinning broadly. “I’m dead beat.”
“Right,” said Denzel.
“You know, because I’m dead.”
“Gotcha.”
“As in, a ghost.”
“Yes. I get it,” said Denzel. He turned to Weinberg. “So, uh, if we don’t have rooms, where are we going to sleep?”
Weinberg spent a few seconds searching through some piles of junk on an old metal shelving unit, then tossed Denzel and Smithy a rolled-up sleeping bag each. She gestured to the room where they’d eaten the pizza. “Knock yourself out.”
Then, with a smile and a little salute, she called the lift, stepped inside and the doors slid closed between them.
Smithy unrolled his sleeping bag with a single flick. The material was caked with dried mud, and frayed around the edges. Something rolled out and hit the floor. It was a dead cockroach.
“This is going to be fun, isn’t it?” said Smithy.
“Yeah.” Denzel sighed, tucking his sleeping bag under his arm. “Terrific.”
Two hours later Denzel lay curled up in his sleeping bag on the hard vinyl floor, trying to get comfortable on a pillow he’d made from a rolled-up Oberon robe.
“Denzel.”
Denzel groaned. “What?”
“You awake?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
There was silence for a few seconds. Denzel heard Smithy shuffle around in his sleeping bag.
“It’s just, you sound awake.”
“What is it, Smithy?” Denzel asked. “It’s four o’clock in the morning.”
It wasn’t four o’clock in the morning, actually. Or, it might have been. Denzel had no idea. It certainly felt like four o’clock in the morning though, and that was the main thing.
“What would you rather, right?”
Denzel let out a sob.
“Have a little screen in one eye so you were always watching a complete stranger go about their life. You know, just watching them do stuff all day. Eat their dinner, go for a poo – everything.”
Denzel let out another sob. He hoped Smithy might take the hint. No such luck.
“Or not have that, but know someone was always watching you in a little screen in their eye instead?”
Denzel brought his knees closer to his chest and hugged his makeshift pillow tighter. He shouldn’t answer. He didn’t want to answer. But he knew Smithy wouldn’t shut up until he did.
“First one,” he said. “And I’d wear an eye patch.”
Silence fell. The room was in near total darkness, aside from the faint red glow that King Kong’s gemstone emitted. Under any normal circumstances, Denzel would have been pretty excited about sharing a bedroom with the most famous (and arguably only) giant gorilla in the world. Right now, though, he was too tired to even think about it.
“Think we could play baseball tomorrow?” Smithy asked.
“Maybe,” Denzel said, without opening his eyes.
“OK, here’s another one for you…”
Denzel groaned and rolled on to his back. “No! I don’t want to hear it! We need to get to sleep.”
“I don’t,” said Smithy.
Denzel rubbed his eyes and frowned. “What?”
“I don’t sleep. I can keep talking all night,” Smithy said. Denzel saw him turn and grin in the half-light. “Cool, eh?”
“Maybe you can, but I can’t,” Denzel reminded him. “I really need to sleep, Smithy. So, please, just for once…”
The rest of the sentence was lost as Denzel’s eyes closed and, bathed in the light of an imprisoned giant gorilla monster, he finally drifted off to sleep.
Denzel awoke with a start. The memory of a nightmare reared up like a monster from the deep, but then quickly retreated, leaving him with just a vague sense of dread.
“What time is it?” he mumbled, addressing the question to the world in general. He looked at his watch, but he hadn’t adjusted it to the right time yet, so it didn’t help at all.
He was shuffling out of his sleeping bag when he noticed that Smithy was gone. A thin line of light seeped in through the gap under the door, and Denzel thought he could hear voices out there. Martinez, maybe. Smithy, definitely.
The memory of the crushed soldiers leapt back to the forefront of Denzel’s half-asleep brain, immediately snapping him all the way awake.
“What have you done?”
That was definitely Martinez’s voice.
“Oh no, what now?” Denzel groaned. He finished clambering out of his sleeping bag, then limped towards the door, nursing a pain in his lower back. The floor had been even less comfortable that it had looked, and it had looked very uncomfortable.
Denzel nudged open the door to find Smithy sitting at the table. Martinez towered over him, eyes wide, mouth hanging open in surprise.
Between them, all lined up as if ready for an inspection, was an army of undead soldiers.
“I got bored,” said Smithy. “I found your glue and paint, and thought I’d try putting some of your guys back together.”
Martinez picked up one of the figures – a tiny skeleton with a crossbow – and examined it closely. “You can’t even see where it was broken.”
He picked up another few of the figures, and scrutinised them closely. “I thought I’d never be able to fix them.”
“Nah, it wasn’t that difficult,” said Smithy. “I mean, I had to shrink down to sort a few of them out, but other than that, it was easy.”
“Right, right,” said Martinez, still transfixed by his good-as-new figures.
“Wait,” said Denzel, stepping fully into the room. “Shrink down? What do you mean?”
“Morning, sleepyhead!” said Smithy.
“Yeah, morning. Shrink down? You can shrink down?”
Smithy nodded.
“Since when?”
Smithy’s lips moved silently for a moment. He counted quickly on his fingers. “Since eighteen seventy-one,” he said. “Well, no, probably since before then, but I found out in eighteen seventy-one. I could hardly believe it. You should’ve seen my face. Shocked, it was. And tiny. Mostly tiny.”
“You never mentioned it before.”
“You never asked,” said Smithy.
“Why would I ask?” Denzel replied. “I just pretty much assume that people can’t change size. What else can you do?”
“Well,” said Smithy, rolling the word around in his mouth. “I don’t need to sleep.”
Denzel picked a lump of gunk from the corner of his eyes and yawned. “Yeah. That one I do know about.”
“Thank you,” said Martinez. The sincerity of it took both Smithy and Denzel by surprise. The Oberon reached a hand across the table to Smithy. For the first time since they’d arrived, he didn’t look completely terrified of being close to Smithy. “I mean it. Thanks.”
“No problem,” said Smithy, shaking his hand. “You’ve got an impressi
ve infantry, although – if you don’t mind me saying – you could do with beefing up your archers and mounted division.”
Martinez’s eyes widened again. “You know about Battlefist?”
Smithy snorted. “Please. I practically invented Battlefist,” he said, then he immediately retracted that statement. “OK, that’s not even a little bit true, but me and a couple of other ghosts used to play it back in the eighties. I was pretty good at it, if I say so myself.”
He shrugged. “OK, that’s not even a little bit true either, but I know all the rules. Well, most of them. Well, some of them. Well, I know there’s some dice involved, and something about a goblin.”
He smiled hopefully. “Why, fancy a game?”
Martinez hesitated, biting his lip. But then he pulled the other chair out from under the table. “Don’t mind if I do,” he said.
Before they could get any further, the lift door opened. Weinberg emerged. She had an assault rifle that wasn’t unlike the one Boyle lugged around with him back home, but this one had a variety of extra bits added on, almost as an afterthought.
She wore a helmet on her head, with a little camera or viewscreen or something positioned over her right eye, and the way she moved suggested she meant business.
“Martinez,” she said, her voice sombre and serious. “We’ve got a problem.”
“Is it that smell in the bathroom?” asked Martinez, shuffling a deck of square cards. “I’ve asked the plumber to come back on Tuesday.”
“No. A ghost problem.”
Martinez stopped shuffling. His chair creaked as he turned to look at his partner. “What, seriously? Another one?”
“Yup. At the docks,” said Weinberg. “Denzel, Smithy, I want you with us.”
Smithy jumped to his feet and saluted. “Aye aye, cap’n.”
“Uh, sure,” said Denzel. “I mean, I should probably go to the toilet first.”
“No time. Go when we’re there,” said Weinberg. She looked him up and down. “But I would probably put on some pants if I were you.”
Denzel blushed and pulled his T-shirt down to cover his boxer shorts. “He he. OK,” he said, backing towards the kitchen-cum-bedroom-cum-King-Kong-storage area. “Sounds like a plan!”
A New York Nightmare! Page 6