Colm & the Ghost's Revenge (5 page)

T
he man they called The Ghost had slipped into Ireland unnoticed several days ago, ever the master of disguise. He lit up a cigarillo and took a long drag, exhaling a series of smoke rings, then rubbed the palm of his left hand over his newly shaven head. It felt odd, being hairless. He watched from a hill high above the car park as the men struggled to move the wooden boxes into the building. Men who had never seen him. Men who didn't even know they were working for him. If they did they might have been more concerned for their health, for everyone in the criminal underworld had heard the horrible tales of what became of the men who worked for The Ghost. But they would still have done their jobs. Those who refused suffered an even worse fate.

‘You always were a loner.'

If The Ghost was surprised by the voice of his dead brother, his face didn't show it. He turned his head slightly to get a look at the rat-faced man. He wasn't much to look at, just a shell now. A rotten shell.

‘I know what you're thinking – am I real?' the rat-faced man said.

‘You never knew what I was thinking, not when you were alive and certainly not now that you're dead,' The Ghost said in his smooth, velvety voice.

‘You'd be surprised at what I know.' The rat-faced man surveyed the scene below. ‘I know that you're taking revenge for my unfortunate death.'

‘Your foolish death.'

‘I was tricked,' the rat-faced man said, irked. ‘That fat little child threw the Lazarus Key into my mouth and the creature took me.'

‘If I were you I wouldn't admit to anyone I'd been tricked by a child,' said The Ghost, crushing the butt of his cigarillo beneath the sole of his brown leather boot. ‘And I wouldn't be so certain that revenge was my only aim.'

‘I know that. I know a lot more now. You see things more clearly when you're dead.'

‘How interesting,' The Ghost said wearily.

‘You're not just seeking revenge. You're trying to save yourself too. You're dying.'

‘We're all dying.' The Ghost almost smiled. Almost. He didn't like any display of emotion. That was for the weak. And The Ghost wasn't weak. He never had been. He had vanquished every foe. Except one. Death. The rat-faced man was right about that. He was dying. He had only weeks left. Unless his plan succeeded.

‘You're going to try the Abbatage ritual. Make yourself immortal. Yet you never showed any interest in the keys before, any interest in immortality.'

The Ghost didn't say a word.

‘But you can't do the ritual. You need the three keys. Two have been missing for hundreds of years and the one I swallowed was destroyed.'

‘Was it?'

The rat-faced man seemed confused for a moment. Then it dawned on him.

‘No!'

His spectral hands lifted his shirt and revealed his belly. His white belly with a long red scar. ‘You cut me open and took the key.'

‘What's left of it.'

‘You desecrated your own brother's body?'

‘By saving myself I will also avenge your death,' said The Ghost.

‘But you need the participant to be willing,' said the rat-faced man, still staring at the jagged scar.

‘He will be willing,' said The Ghost. ‘I will have the keys soon and he will do what I say. He will save me whether he wants to or not.'

The only reason the proprietor of the Scimbleshanks Bed & Breakfast was still alive was because she reminded McGrue of his mother. If it hadn't been for that unremarkable fact, in that all grey-haired old ladies look the same to the casual observer, she'd have been as dead as a dodo, a dinosaur or any dead thing you'd care to think of. When he'd arrived the previous evening, the first thing that had annoyed him was that the proprietor wasn't actually named Scimbleshanks, which was a terrible disappointment. Unbeknownst to him, the name had been chosen as pure whimsy after a literary festival reading of a T. S. Eliot poem. The second thing that annoyed him was when she refused to accept that his name was McGrue.

‘What kind of name is that?' the woman had asked.

She was filling in the little registration card which wasn't necessary, but was a habit she'd got into when she'd run her own hotel, and this woman was someone who never broke a habit she'd formed.

‘
My
name,' McGrue said gruffly.

‘Hmmmph. What's your Christian name then?'

McGrue wasn't a Christian, but he presumed she meant his first name.

‘Don't have one.'

The woman had snorted in disbelief. ‘Don't be stupid. Everyone has a Christian name. What is it?'

McGrue did have a first name, but it had been thirty years since anyone had last used it. To be honest, there were moments when he couldn't even remember it himself. Even his mother called him McGrue.

He kept his temper. It wasn't easy.

‘Just put down McGrue,' he said.

‘So your name is McGrue McGrue,' the woman muttered, writing it down on the little card she used on such occasions. ‘Americans,' she muttered under her breath, thinking that her strange new guest wouldn't hear her.

He did hear her. He had better hearing than anyone he'd ever met and was quite proud of the fact. The woman led him up the floral carpeted stairs and into the hideously decorated room that would serve as his base for the night.

‘Breakfast is from eight to ten. If you're out late then take off your shoes when you come in. Don't want you waking the house,' she said, handing him a key.

‘What about dinner?'

‘It's a bed and breakfast. The clue's in the title,' the woman replied sharply before softening a little. ‘You can get something to eat in Snook's, the pub in the village.'

He grunted his thanks as she left, then locked the door. He hefted his suitcase onto the bed and unzipped it. All it contained was a change of clothes, a cardboard folder, a selection of weapons and a photo of his mother.

McGrue loved his mother more than he loved life itself, although since he wasn't a huge fan of being alive, that wasn't saying much. However, it was true to say that he adored her. She was the one who had made him what he was – the best bounty hunter in the country. She had told him to quit school when he was fourteen. She had bought him his very first gun, made him get his first tattoo and paid for his Krav Maga self-defence lessons.

He had been a bounty hunter in California for twenty-two years and was considered the best in the business, both by himself and others. He was married to the job. He had been married to a woman once, but his wife had left him after either five or six years. McGrue was never quite sure which it was, as he hadn't been home for six months when he'd found out she'd left him, and since she hadn't dated the note she'd left – which had read, ‘I hate you. Don't look for me because you won't find me. Goodbye' – he wasn't sure how long she'd been gone.

He had found her, working as a waitress in a dingy bar in Cleveland, Ohio. She looked shocked when she arrived at a table to find her husband sitting there, but all he said was: ‘Don't tell the best bounty hunter in the business that he can't find you. It took me seventeen hours and twenty-four minutes, honey.' Then he'd walked out the door and never seen her again.

He had retired six months ago, but then he found his mother was unable to take care of herself any longer and he wasn't very good domestically. He'd made the decision to put her in a nursing home. Not just any old home either, the most expensive one in the country. After three months his savings had been spent, so he decided to take some freelance work. It paid better, especially when you worked for criminals. It didn't sit easy with him, working for the people who he'd once spent all his time trying to put in jail, but he did it for his mother. This new job was something unexpected though. The pay was exceptional for one thing. It'd pay for three years in the nursing home. All he had to do was find some people in a small country.

McGrue swept his greasy hair into a ponytail, then opened up the cardboard folder that The Ghost had sent to him. A sheaf of A4 papers with descriptions and details of their day-to-day lives. It was more thorough than any file he'd ever been given. It even told him what their favourite breakfast cereals were. At the back of the papers were two photos. One was of a young, slightly tubby child of twelve whose name was Colm. The other was of an older child, the boy's cousin. His name was Michael.

All McGrue had to do was grab them and deliver them to a specified location if the other people who were tracking them failed. Do that and his mother's lodgings would be secure for the next thirty-six months. He wasn't too happy about the idea of delivering children into the clutches of a man who had to be up to no good, but what happened to them after he had done his job wasn't his problem, he reasoned, dismissing any feelings of guilt that might have been bubbling under the surface. No, it was just another job to be done. A conscience wasn't something you needed as a bounty hunter – he'd leave the agonising about right and wrong to priests and philosophers. However, he hoped that when he found them they wouldn't put up a fight. He didn't want to hurt them, but if he needed to then he would. He wouldn't hesitate for a second.

N
umber 64 Sea View Crescent was the second to last house in a narrow cul de sac that afforded a view of the sea only to those with access to an extension ladder and a pair of binoculars. Even though it was on the far side of the green, Ziggy's house was almost identical to Colm's: an uninspiring, faded-yellow, semi-detached home with a narrow strip of grass in the front. All the houses on the estate – and there were hundreds – were yellow and practically indistinguishable from one another, which made it difficult for any visitors to find the house they were looking for, especially since local vandals had taken to twisting the road signs until they pointed in the wrong direction. Pizza delivery men and women could often be seen driving aimlessly around the roads of the Riverwood estate with a haunted look in their eyes and rapidly cooling pizzas in the back of their cars.

Colm stood on the doorstep, a present under his arm, his finger poised above the silver doorbell. He'd been there for ten minutes wondering whether or not he should press it. If he did, then that'd be it, he'd be spending the next few hours in Ziggy's lair. It wasn't that he hated Ziggy or anything. Hate was far too strong a word. They didn't get along. Nothing wrong with that. People have different personalities. We can't all be friends.

Actually, he thought, changing his mind, I do hate him. Quite a lot.

He could see the party through the frosted glass of the front door. Kids running up and down the stairs, shouting wildly. Knowing he'd regret it later, he finally pressed the doorbell. Ziggy's face appeared at the glass almost instantly. He was the kind of person who was easily recognisable even when his face was slightly blurred.

‘Who is it?' he called out in his fake American accent.

I can see you, Ziggy, you can see me, and even if you couldn't, all you would have to do is open the door and have a look, is what Colm thought. But all he said was, ‘It's me. Colm.'

Ziggy sighed loudly. Colm was the last person he wanted to see. He'd only wanted cool people to come to his party and Colm wasn't cool. Neither was Ziggy for that matter, but he believed he was and that was enough for him.

‘Muuum, that stoopid kid from across the green is at the door. Why did you invite him?' he yelled.

Nothing like a warm welcome, eh? The door swung open. Ziggy was still dressed in his surfer uniform. His hair was shaved at the sides and what remained was gelled into a diagonal mohawk. He could have been an escapee from a Nickelodeon sitcom. He looked at Colm like he was something he'd stepped in.

‘Hey,' he said without enthusiasm.

Great, Colm thought. He's doing his teenage rebel thing. Did he even realise that rebels don't have birthday parties hosted by their mammies? What a jerk.

A boy of four or five who looked like a miniature version of Ziggy ran towards Colm waving a silver baseball bat in the air. Without warning, he took a wild swing, cracking the aluminium bat right against Colm's shin.

‘Holy sh–' Colm began, then bit his lip. The pain was excruciating. He hobbled around trying to walk it off. He wondered if it would be bad manners to give the kid a kick when his leg had recovered. Probably.

‘That's my brother, George,' Ziggy said. ‘You can leave the present on the hall table.'

He ran upstairs. Back to where the party was going on. Colm rubbed his leg furiously. Man alive, it really stung. He turned up the leg of his jeans and examined the injury. A huge red welt was beginning to form. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted George preparing for another swing, a smirk playing on his pink lips.

That kid's properly mental, Colm thought. He dodged to his left as the bat arced towards his exposed shin, missing it by centimetres. It smacked off the front door, leaving a dent in the PVC.

George burst into tears when he saw that his mission had failed and that the new party-goer wasn't lying on the floor screaming in agony as he'd hoped. It was so unfair.

‘Waaaaaah,' he cried and legged it into the kitchen as quickly as his spindly little pins would carry him. His mother emerged moments later, marching furiously towards Colm.

‘What did you do to George?' she asked.

‘N-n-nothing,' Colm said.

She leaned in until they were almost nose to nose.

‘He's only five you know. What sort of boy picks on someone who's only five?'

‘I didn't pick on …'

She put her arm around George's shoulders. ‘The poor child is terrified. Look at his little face.'

George didn't look terrified. He stuck out his tongue.

‘I've a good mind to call your mother and ask her to take you home right this second,' she spluttered.

Please do, Colm thought. He'd only been here for ninety seconds or so and already it was the worst birthday party he'd ever attended.

‘Well?' said Ziggy's mother.

Colm looked at her. She seemed to be waiting for him to say something.

‘I'm waiting for your apology,' she said.

Apologise? No way, he thought. She glared at him. He tried glaring back at her, but found that when it came to glaring he really wasn't very good at it. He noticed that her make-up was heavily piled on and while her face was dark and had an unnatural brown tinge to it, her neck was porcelain white.

‘Sorry,' he muttered.

‘Hmmpph,' Ziggy's mother replied and disappeared back into the kitchen.

‘You stink like smelly poo,' George said, and ran off to join her.

George's baseball bat attack was the high point of the party for Colm. He spent the rest of the time being ignored by all the guests, most of whom he knew from school or the estate.

He ended up in a corner of the kitchen eating bowl after bowl of the tasteless nachos no one else wanted to touch while Ziggy's grandmother sat beside him telling him her life story. She was a nice lady, but it wasn't as if she'd spent her life trekking to the North Pole or living with gorillas; she'd worked in a shop for forty-seven years and had never been on an aeroplane.

When the food had been demolished and everyone had half-heartedly sung Happy Birthday (Iano replacing the standard words with rude ones) Ziggy's mother got to her feet.

‘Right, everyone. Into the living room for a game of charades.'

There was a chorus of disapproval.

‘Muuum. We're not playing charades,' Ziggy wailed. Colm had to admit that Ziggy had got this wailing thing down pat.

‘What's wrong with charades? I used to love that game when I was young.'

‘Back in the 1800s,' somebody whispered.

‘What do you want to play so, Jonathan?' she asked, using Ziggy's real name, which sounded odd because even the teachers didn't use it any more.

‘Anything that involves you leaving us alone,' he replied.

‘OK, love. You lot get out while Granny and me clear up.'

The fourteen party-goers squeezed into the small living room – some on the couch, others on the arms and seats of the leather chairs. Those who weren't quick enough to find a perch ended up on the floor. Colm was one of them. When they'd all settled down, Ziggy lit a large white candle and placed it in the centre of the coffee table, then switched off the main light. The candle's flame flickered. A girl giggled nervously.

‘What are we going to do?' she asked.

‘We're going to tell ghost stories,' Ziggy replied.