Demelza & the Spectre Detectors

by Holly Rivers

  ‘Will you stop being such a crosspatch?’ said Grandma Maeve to the skull with a chuckle. ‘I thought you’d be pleased to be out of that box and finally meetin’ your new owner.’

  Lord Balthazar harrumphed and Grandma Maeve put him on to the table next to the fire. ‘You see, Demelza,’ said Grandma Maeve, ‘occasionally when someone dies, their spectre gets stuck in their mortal body and they never make it to Inn Memoriam.’

  Demelza pondered this for a moment. ‘So that’s what Lord Balthazar is? The spectre of a dead lord, inhabiting his former skull?’

  ‘Exactly!’ said Grandma Maeve. ‘Every apprentice Spectre Detector has a Talking Head to keep them company while they prepare for summonings. I had one when I was your age too. Madame Babineux her name was. It can get a bit lonely at times down here, so it’s nice to ’ave someone to chat to while you work.’

  ‘Especially someone with an IQ of one hundred and fifty-six, no less,’ added Lord Balthazar. ‘I’m not just a pretty face, you know.’

  Grandma Maeve rolled her eyes and brought her voice down to a whisper. ‘He can be a bit of a grumpy grogs sometimes, but you’ll be glad to have him with you when you start taking clients on your own.’

  Demelza swallowed and looked to the floor. She’d heard of people having ‘skeletons in their closets’, but this brought a whole new meaning to the phrase.

  Suddenly everything felt painfully overwhelming. This world was a million miles away from the comfort of her inventing desk and her notebooks and her scientific apparatus. How she wished that she could just scuttle back up to the attic and delve into an encyclopaedia with a nice cheddar cheese and peanut butter sandwich.

  Grandma Maeve, obviously sensing her granddaughter’s worry, held out a hand. It was warm, soft. ‘Look, my darlin’, I know this probably feels a bit scary to you at the moment; after all, it’s not every day that you get given the hundred-year-old skull of an Edwardian English lord—’

  ‘Quite!’ interrupted Lord Balthazar. ‘Consider yourself lucky!’

  ‘But this ain’t a fairy tale we’re dealin’ with. This is life and death. And it ain’t always gonna be easy. Now, are you ready to carry on?’

  Demelza took a deep breath and nodded. It’s all in the name of scientific discovery, she told herself. It’s all in the name of science.

  Grandma Maeve reached into Demelza’s ghoulbox again. This time she pulled out a worn but clean apron, some candles, a copper crucible, a pocket copy of the Grimoire of the Dead and finally a plain skull-shaped mask fashioned from pale wood.

  She held the mask up to her face, and under the candlelight it was an eerie sight. ‘The more summonings you do, you get fancier and fancier masks. Once you’ve done one hundred summonings you get one made from copper, after two hundred that changes to bronze, and so on and so forth. You should see the ones our Spectral Sages wear! Beautiful, they is. Covered in feathers, bones, gemstones . . .’

  ‘Spectral Sages?’ replied Demelza, confused. ‘Who are they?’

  Grandma Maeve chuckled. ‘Sorry, m’dear, I keep forgetting that you’ve got a lot to catch up on. The Spectral Sages are the wise elders who run the Quietus. That’s the governing body of the spectre detecting world. We swear our allegiance to the Quietus, and in return the Spectral Sages give us any help we might need. You’ll become a member once you’ve finished your apprenticeship too.’

  The fire had begun to wane and Grandma Maeve picked up a pair of brass bellows. As she blew air into the fire’s depths, Demelza tried to organize all of the new information she’d just been given – Mask of Facelessness . . . the Quietus . . . Spectral Sages – there was so much to take in.

  When the fire had been stoked, Grandma Maeve picked up the pocket copy of the Grimoire of the Dead. She flicked through the pages, their golden edges fluttering like the wings of a moth. ‘Now,’ she said, propping it up on an ornate metal bookstand on the table. ‘Have a little listen to this chapter here, Demelza. Don’t worry, it ain’t as long-winded and boring as it sounds. Lord Balthazar, will you do the honours and read it out?’

  ‘With pleasure.’ The skull coughed as if clearing his throat for an after-dinner speech and began to read aloud:

  ‘The sacred statutes of spectre summoning.

  ‘One. A spectre may only be summoned as an act of true altruism and a Spectre Detector must never use their powers for personal gain or profit.

  ‘Two. Summonings can only take place between the hours of dusk and dawn.

  ‘Three. A summoning can only take place in a licensed summoning chamber or a location authorized by the Quietus.

  ‘Four. A spectre may spend no more than a total of three hours within the mortal world. It is a Spectre Detector’s duty to ensure their safe return to Inn Memoriam within this timeframe. Failure to do so will result in the spectre being trapped in the limbo between life and death for ever.

  ‘Five. A spectre can be summoned once, and once only.

  ‘Six. A Spectre Detector is responsible for the safety and wellbeing of both the mourner and the spectre at all times.

  ‘Seven. Apprentice Spectre Detectors may only practise under the strict supervision of their mentor.’

  Once he had finished, Lord Balthazar tipped forward as if taking a bow, nearly tumbling off the edge of the table.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Grandma Maeve, taking a seat in one of the armchairs by the fire and gesturing for Demelza to join her. ‘Now, I know that rules ain’t your favourite thing, Demelza, but these ones must be followed to the letter, you hear me?’ Her eyes darted to the scar on her hand and she quickly pulled down the sleeve of her cardigan. ‘Any fooling around or lapses in concentration can have horrible consequences. This process can be extremely dangerous, in more ways than one, if you don’t pay proper attention to what you’re doing at all times. You understand?’

  ‘Yes, Grandma,’ answered Demelza, and for some reason a chill shot down her spine like lightning. What sort of dangers did she mean? What kind of horrible consequences could there be?

  ‘Right, we’re nearly ready to start,’ said Grandma Maeve. ‘These last things I’m gonna show you are perhaps the most important things that a Spectre Detector owns.’

  ‘Apart from their Talking Head, of course!’ interjected Lord Balthazar.

  ‘Are you quite finished?’ said Grandma Maeve, rolling her eyes. She pulled herself up from the depths of her chair and stretched to the cabinet of jars and bottles above the fireplace. It was the one from which Demelza had seen her taking the minced blobfish brains the night before. She unlatched it and ran a finger along the bottom shelf. ‘These are the Ingredients of Awakening that help us to summon every spectre. Whether it be adult, child or animal.’

  ‘Animal?’ asked Demelza. ‘People want to bring back dead animals?’

  ‘Well, you’d be surprised at how attached people become to their pets, Demelza. Or perhaps you wouldn’t, what with Shiver and little Archimedes. Only last week I was asked to summon the spectre of a pet tortoise. And very pleased the owner was too to be able to see little Shellby once more. Wept with joy, she did!’

  Demelza stood up and looked at the cabinet. Every jar and bottle had a label, each one beautifully handwritten in dark purple ink. There was a decanter housing some kind of black herb known as Moon Parsley, and a hexagonal jar was filled with Dehydrated Frogspawn. A phial contained a viscid goo labelled Badger Bogies: Cold Pressed and another bore the words Indian Fire Water. Demelza’s eyes widened; she was used to combining phosphorus, sulphur and copper with her chemistry set, but Grandma’s set of ingredients was definitely a little more unusual. Badger bogies? Yuck!

  ‘For each summoning you choose three Ingredients of Awakening,’ explained Grandma Maeve. ‘Each related to the person whose spectre you want to communicate with.’ She flicked to another page in the Grimoire of Death, and pointed to a particular passage:

  The Three Ingredients of Awakening

  1. An item deriving from the deceased’s dec
ade of death.

  2. An item representing the trade, profession or interests of the deceased.

  3. An item belonging to the deceased themselves.

  ‘As you get more experienced, you’ll see how some ingredients are more suited to a spectre than others,’ said Grandma Maeve. ‘You just get a feel for it. But these are the basic requirements. You understand?’

  Demelza nodded, and as a thought suddenly occurred to her she jostled from foot to foot. If everything Grandma Maeve was saying was true, then . . .

  ‘I could meet my parents!’ she blurted out. ‘If I got hold of something belonging to Mum and Dad then I could summon their spectres!’

  Grandma Maeve shook her head and frowned. ‘Are you forgetting statute number one already? You can’t just summon the spectres of whoever you fancy willy-nilly. We work for the benefit of other people, never our own, OK?’

  Demelza felt a lump form in her throat – the hope of being able to see her mum and dad again was dashed completely.

  Grandma Maeve seemed equally as crestfallen. ‘I know it’s a hard thing to come to terms with, my darlin’. I want to see them myself, of course I do. I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve been tempted to break the rules and summon them . . .’ Grandma Maeve squeezed Demelza’s shoulder before clapping her hands together. ‘Now come on, you need to start preparing.’

  Demelza’s nose wrinkled. ‘Preparing for what?’

  ‘Well, your first summoning, of course! There’s no time like the present after all. Your client is arrivin’ in half an hour.’

  CHAPTER 11

  Summoning the Circus

  ‘But are you sure I’m ready to do a summoning, Grandma?’ asked Demelza as the pair stood boiling up water in the crucible ten minutes later. ‘I . . . I thought you were going to show me how to do it first!’

  ‘Like I said before, Demelza, a Spectre Detector’s powers are at their strongest during youth,’ replied Grandma Maeve. ‘There ain’t no reason why you won’t be able to perform this summonin’. And don’t worry, I’ll be here to guide you through it.’

  Demelza sighed. Grandma Maeve had shown her how to lay out her circle of skulls and tie the ribbon of her Mask of Facelessness in a good double knot, but she still wasn’t sure if she was ready to communicate with the dead quite so soon.

  ‘Who’s the spectre I’m going to summon?’ she asked.

  Grandma Maeve took a long wooden spoon and began to stir the crucible. ‘Well, it’s the late brother of a woman named Miss Carlotta Tombolini. His name is Giacomo, and the siblings come from a family of travelling circus performers. Miss Tombolini heard about my services through a bearded lady she met at a clowning conference last week, and decided to get in touch.’

  ‘I had a beard back in the day,’ interrupted Lord Balthazar, who was now sitting atop the hearthstone. ‘I didn’t like it at first . . . but then it grew on me!’ He guffawed at his own joke. ‘Get it? Grew on me! Grew on me!’

  Demelza shook her head and groaned. The talking skull was starting to get on her nerves.

  She let the steam from the crucible warm her face as she took in what Grandma Maeve had just said. So she was going to summon the spectre of a circus performer! She loved going to the big top – the lights, the tricks, the smell of popcorn, the freshly whipped candyfloss. But how had Giacomo died? she wondered. Maybe he’d been gobbled up by an escaped tiger, or squashed by one of the strong men!

  As if reading her granddaughter’s mind, Grandma Maeve quickly said, ‘Now remember, don’t go askin’ no personal questions to Miss Tombolini tonight, Demelza. No wisecracks, no jokes. And definitely don’t start chattin’ about your inventions, you hear me?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ replied Demelza, looking at the floor with a wry smile. ‘I’m the personification of sensitivity.’

  ‘I don’t even know what that means,’ replied Grandma Maeve. ‘But I doubt very much that you’re it, young lady. Oh, and one more thing, Demelza – when a spectre arrives through the crucible, they arrive in their birthday suit . . .’

  Demelza frowned. ‘In their what?’

  ‘In their . . .’ Grandma Maeve puffed out her cheeks. ‘They don’t have any clothes on! So just be courteous and I’ll hand them a gown to wear, OK?’

  Just then a tinkle of a bell sounded from the corner of the chamber. ‘Oh! That’ll be Miss Tombolini now,’ said Grandma Maeve, giving the crucible a final stir before pulling on her golden mask. She reached into her cardigan pocket and pulled out a thick envelope, which she handed to Demelza. Inside was a piece of parchment titled: Giacomo Tombolini – Spectography. ‘Now, here’s the information I have about her brother. Have a gander, then why don’t you see if you can find the first two Ingredients of Awakening we’re gonna need for his summoning, hmm? Don’t forget to put your mask on too.’

  Demelza nodded, and Grandma Maeve toddled up the ladder to the greenhouse.

  ‘I can do this,’ muttered Demelza, pulling on her own mask. The wood felt smooth against her skin and there was an earthy smell to it, as if she was breathing in the scent of an ancient forest.

  As she looked up at the glass cabinet above the fireplace she thought back to what Grandma Maeve had said about Ingredients of Awakening earlier on. ‘Right, I need to find an ingredient from the decade Mr Tombolini died, then something which represents his profession, trade or interests.’ She ran a finger down the spectography, searching for the information she needed. ‘Ah! Here we go . . . so he died three years ago . . . and his job title was . . . trapeze artist!’

  Demelza scoured through the various glass vessels on the shelves and within five minutes she’d returned to the workbench carrying a tall bottle of Bumble Bee Wee-Wee, which Grandma had collected a few years ago, and a phial of Powdered Chalk for Aerial Acrobatics. Choosing what she needed hadn’t been that different from choosing the right components for an invention really, albeit involving more weird animal fluids and fewer bolts and cogs!

  ‘I hope you’ve chosen your ingredients carefully,’ said Lord Balthazar, eyeing up the things that Demelza had put on the workbench. ‘You don’t want to go making any silly mistakes before you’ve even started.’

  ‘Well, maybe you’d like to fetch them for me?’ replied Demelza. ‘Oh no, you can’t, you don’t have any hands!’ She was really starting to feel annoyed by this smug skull. The thought of having to spend night after night in his company was a prospect worse than a run-in with the Smythe twins!

  Just then there was the sound of footsteps coming down the ladder from the greenhouse, and the door to the summoning chamber creaked open. Demelza turned and in came Grandma Maeve, followed by a tall, slender young woman. She was wearing a bright-red leotard spangled with stars, and her dark hair was styled into neat little pin-curls.

  ‘Here you go, Miss Tombolini, do take a seat,’ said Grandma Maeve, plumping up a cushion on the small settee before gesturing for Demelza to come over. ‘Now this ’ere is my apprentice, Demelza, who will be performin’ the summoning tonight. She’s in the process of trainin’, you see.’

  Remembering her manners, Demelza gave a small awkward wave. ‘Nice to meet you, Miss Tombolini. Would you like a cup of bumble bee wee? I-I-I mean, tea?’

  Grandma Maeve shot Demelza a stern glare. Oh dear, this was already going badly.

  ‘No, no, thank you,’ replied Miss Tombolini, taking her seat. As she took in the skulls and crucible, she clutched at her handbag tightly, clearly full of anticipation.

  ‘In which case,’ continued Grandma Maeve, ‘I think we should get started. Just to confirm, it’s the spectre of your late brother that we’re going to try and communicate with tonight, is that correct, Miss Tombolini?’

  ‘Please, call me Carlotta,’ replied the woman. ‘And yes, that’s right, it’s my brother, Giacomo. It’s been a few years now since he passed and I still miss him so much. We were double-trapeze partners, you see – The Death-Defying Tombolinis. One day Giacomo’s hand slip
ped from the bar and . . .’ She smiled sadly. ‘Well, he certainly failed to live up to our stage name, didn’t he?’

  Demelza gulped. What an awful thing to have happened.

  ‘When I heard about your services I jumped at the chance to speak with my brother again,’ continued Carlotta. ‘You see, I’m going to be opening my very own circus soon. It was a dream ever since Giacomo and I were children. I’d love to be able to tell him the good news.’

  ‘Wonderful!’ replied Grandma Maeve. ‘And congratulations. Mind you, I don’t know how you do all of that dangling around upside down in mid-air – I wouldn’t be able to keep my false teeth in.’ She clapped her hands together. ‘Now, before we start the summoning, Carlotta, did you remember to bring one of Giacomo’s personal possessions for us to use?’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ Carlotta replied. Her eyes began to twinkle, the desire to be reunited with her brother burning bright within them. She reached into her bag and brought out a pair of black-and-white polka-dot underpants. ‘These were his lucky pair. I know they didn’t bring him much good fortune in the end, but he never did a performance without them. Will they do? They have been washed . . .’

  ‘Perfect,’ said Grandma Maeve. She turned to her granddaughter. ‘And, Demelza, did you manage to find the other ingredients we need?’

  Demelza nodded proudly and pointed to the things on the workbench that she’d collated.

  ‘Mmm-hmm . . . very good . . . yes . . .’ muttered Grandma Maeve, nodding in approval as she inspected the things her granddaughter had picked. ‘Couldn’t have chosen better myself.’ She smiled and whispered in Demelza’s ear, ‘I knew you’d have a good nose for this!’

  For the next part of the process, Demelza followed Grandma Maeve’s lead, preparing everything she’d need for the summoning with the same meticulous care she’d give to one of her inventions.

  Before long she was standing at the crucible with her concoction bubbling away in front of her. As she caught a glimpse of her masked reflection in its copper surface, a prickle of nervous excitement shot up the back of her neck.