Colm & the Ghost's Revenge (7 page)

T
hey were some of the roughest, toughest, meanest men who had ever existed. Men with gold teeth and stubble sharp enough to cut glass. Men who ate with their fingers and considered a punch in the jaw to be a friendly greeting. Men who would sell their own mothers for the right price, even if that price was a Choc Ice and half a pack of cigarettes. The sort of people your parents warn you to stay well away from.

Mercenaries.

Dirty, low-down mercenaries. Thirteen faces, each uglier and more frightening than the last. Every one of the men had spent at least some of his life in prison; most for incidents involving broken teeth and shattered bones, some for crimes too horrible to even consider. And Jean-Paul Camus, the Sorbonne-educated man-about-town, had spent the last year and a half of his life working with them. Leading them. The stress had been unrelenting. It had given him a stomach ulcer that had been around for so long now he'd given it a name.

He called it Fred.

Camus pulled the collar of his waxed coat up around his ears. It didn't help. The coat was built to withstand the rain, but it was no match for this atrocious weather. He hadn't been warm in days and the wind was blowing a gale, even though none of the weather forecasts had predicted it. It was so windy that he could have sworn he'd seen a small dog spinning through the air only minutes previously.

But it wasn't the weather that was really bothering him, it was his location. A Gothic graveyard in deepest Transylvania. The crumbling headstones, the gargoyles at the broken-down entrance gates, the strange cries cutting through the darkness – the whole thing gave him the creeps and he wished he was anywhere other than where he was at the moment. He couldn't let the men know that, of course. The little bit of authority he had over them depended upon him remaining cool and calm in any situation.

The nasty and violent moneygrabbers from ten different countries stood around impatiently, waiting to be told what to do. They were on the verge of mutiny. The money he'd been given to pay them was good, exceptionally generous in fact, but they hadn't had a proper day off in months. The work had been exhausting and the last thing any of them wanted was to be stuck here at four in the morning in weather like this.

‘Time to get to work,' Camus said.

The job they were undertaking was supposed to have been completed during daylight hours – it was safer that way – but they'd attracted the suspicions of the Romanian police once too often since they'd arrived in the country and they couldn't afford to do it again. That meant toiling under the cover of darkness to avoid detection. The only problem was that working in the night also meant that it was very likely that some of them were going to be killed. Not that the men knew this. It was something Camus had kept to himself.

He scratched his arm. It had been itching for days. He glanced at the tattoo – a skull inside a diamond. The Sign of Lazarus. The remnant of youthful folly when he had run wild and joined a gang purely because he thought it'd make him cool and tough. Instead it was what had led him here tonight to this godforsaken place. He regretted ever becoming associated with that loathsome group. The tattoo had begun to leak tiny pinpricks of blood in the last few hours. It meant he was close. It had done the same when they had uncovered Attila the Hun's burial site in Istria, but there they had managed to bribe any snoopers and the uncovering had gone smoothly. This one felt different, as if they were teetering on the edge of a precipice and it was only a matter of time before they toppled over into the abyss.

Spending some of the best years of your life looking for coffins wasn't what he considered a useful way to pass the time. He had tried to get out of it, as he was a weasel by nature, but he had been advised to do as he was ordered. Two others had turned the job down before he was offered it. They were both dead now. Very dead, in fact. Dead enough to have different body parts buried on different continents from what he'd heard.

He climbed onto the back of the four-wheel-drive truck and handed out the shovels. He issued all the men with headlamps so that they could see what they were working on, then instructed two of the stronger ones to remove the most important piece of equipment from the back of the truck – a bulky lamp. A powerful spotlight that produced high-intensity UV light. The men struggled under its weight. Their knees trembled and their feet sank into the marshy ground.

‘What we want light for?' Alexander, a huge Russian, asked.

‘In case your headlamps fail,' Camus replied, hoping that everyone was too tired to see through the flimsy explanation.

‘Why not flashlights as back up?'

Thank you, Alexander, you nosy Muscovite, he thought. He needed a distraction and quickly before the others started asking questions too. He slipped his mobile phone from his pocket and held it above his head.

‘I have been talking to my colleague and he has authorised me to pay you double if you get the work done in two hours.'

That should focus their minds. Some of the men grunted, others accepted the news with solemn faces. But the possibility of earning extra money enticed them. They were mercenaries after all. They automatically moved into their pre-arranged positions on a piece of wasteland just beyond the graves and tombs. Each had their own space, a metre radius in which to dig.

‘I not heard phone ring,' Alexander said.

What was it with this guy and his questions? Should he try sarcasm or intimidation to shut him up? Intimidation probably wouldn't work. The man was tough. He had callouses the size of bumblebees on his hands. And he probably wouldn't understand sarcasm.

‘If Alexander doesn't get to work within the next thirty seconds then none of you gets paid,' Camus said.

The filthy looks from the others were enough to make anyone's blood run cold and Alexander was no exception.

‘I work, I work,' he said, giving in.

Camus consulted the map one last time. Even with the headlamp it was hard to see it clearly. The light glared against the laminate covering he used to keep it waterproof. Rivulets of rainwater ran across the surface.

It looked liked they were at the right spot.

‘Dig,' he shouted, just as a fork of lightning crackled across the night sky. If that's a sign, it's not a good one, Camus told himself. The combination of the rain and electricity in the air, the lamps and the graveyard setting, put him in mind of the end of the world. That's what it felt like to Jean-Paul Camus. The end of the world.

The men got to work. They eased their shovels into the soft ground, pushing down on the blades with hob-nailed boots. Their shovels sliced through the earth as Camus lit the first of the many cigarettes he would smoke while the men laboured.

They had been digging for over an hour and the lashing rain had finally ceased when one of the men cried out.

‘What is it?' Camus asked excitedly. The man was standing up to his shoulders in the hole he'd dug. Muddy water swirled around his knees. The others stopped what they were doing, watching, their faces set to grim.

‘I've hit something,' said the man.

‘Could be rock,' someone said.

Or it could be what we're looking for, Camus thought with a mixture of excitement and dread. ‘Get him out of there.'

A couple of the men helped the digger climb out. Camus slid down the bank sending chunks of earth splashing down. He plunged his hand into the water. Earth, rock and … metal.

‘Get the buckets and clear this water out,' he roared.

After a couple of minutes the hole was almost water-free. Camus took out a pocket-sized LED torch and shone it on the area that had been cleared away. A tiny piece of faded brass peeped out from the clogged earth. Could this be it? After all the months of searching? He could feel his heart pounding, his blood pressure rising. Stay calm, he told himself. In control. Don't let the men know there's anything amiss.

‘Five minute break. Smoke your cigarettes.'

He called over the only two non-smokers, men who hated the idea of poisoning their own lungs, which was slightly ironic for one of them since he was known as Igor the Poisoner, and instructed them to follow him. Camus noticed with annoyance that Alexander the Nosy was ambling over, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips.

‘Help me get the lamp up and running,' Camus said to Igor.

‘What is lamp for?' Alexander asked.

‘I already answered that,' Camus snapped.

Alexander really didn't want to let the lamp question go, did he? His face had an eerie glow, bathed as it was in the flickering flame of his lighter, as the first tendrils of smoke rose from the tip of his cigarette. Camus had had enough of the Russian. He nodded at Gillespie and Sweenz, two of the larger and more obedient employees. They nodded back. As signals go it was unsophisticated, but it worked. They each grabbed one of Alexander's arms and, despite his fierce struggles, within a minute he was subdued and his arms were tied behind his back with plastic cable ties.

‘Why you do this?' he roared.

‘You'll see,' Camus said with a smirk.

Gillespie duct-taped Alexander's mouth to quieten his incessant prattle as Igor the Poisoner and his companion moved a generator onto the tailgate of the truck and cranked it into life. It spat out smoke and droplets of strong-smelling fuel as it rattled around, whirring noisily. Camus plugged the lamp into the generator, but didn't switch it on.

‘You know what to do,' he said, when the men had finished their cigarettes. Some of the mercenaries looked at him through narrowed eyes. He knew what they were thinking. They didn't trust him. His cover story had been that he was an archaeologist in search of an ancient skeleton, but he knew that none of them really believed that. He didn't want to think about what might happen if any of them even suspected the truth. He'd have to watch his back. His front as well. This was going to be a tricky night.

Another half-hour's work in cramped conditions and they had uncovered the jewel-encrusted brass coffin. It was muddied and the shine had long since gone from it, but it could be restored to its original lustre. Not that Camus cared.

‘How much is it worth?' someone asked.

‘Whatever you can get for it. The coffin is yours. I only want the bones inside.'

He could see the glint of greed in the men's eyes. They were calculating what the bones inside the coffin must be worth if he was willing to give away the jewels with hardly a second thought. He knew that some of them were weighing up the pros and cons of killing him and stealing whatever lay within. Would they risk it before it had even been opened? He'd better not give them the chance.

‘Bring it up,' he commanded.

They tied lengths of rope around every handle, then hauled it up until it sat on the wet ground.

And what waited within the coffin awoke.

I
t was after midnight when Colm woke up, feeling hungry. The house was silent. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he wandered downstairs in his pyjamas. The ones he really hated. It wasn't that he had anything against pyjamas as such; I mean they're just the things you wear in bed. But these were different. How? Well, for one thing they were girl's pyjamas. Silky pink things with little red love hearts dotted all around. His mother said she'd picked them up by mistake when she was in Dunnes. Colm wasn't sure he believed her. Sometimes he got the feeling that she would have preferred it if he was a girl. She said she'd return them to the shop, but she never had and now he was forced to wear them when his other pairs were in the laundry. If anyone ever saw him wearing them he thought that he'd have to emigrate immediately or else face a lifetime of humiliation.

He stumbled into the kitchen and flicked on the light. He wondered if his mother was home from her night out. He hadn't heard her come in. He wasn't exactly scared of being in the house by himself, but he didn't feel good about it either, not since that night in the Red House Hotel. What seemed normal during the day always seemed to take on a more menacing aspect after midnight. The stillness was almost eerie and the moonlight streaming through the kitchen window only added to his unease.

The moment of anxiousness ended when his stomach began to rumble. He took three packets of cereal from the press and poured some from each box into a bowl, then splashed on the milk. Half of it ended up in a pool on the floor. Must mop that up in a minute, he thought, as he began to crunch his way through what he liked to call a Cereal Bomb. The clock on the wall said it was ten to one. Without warning, the memory of his behaviour at the party hit him again and he cringed. He shut his eyes, but it wasn't enough to block out what had happened.

His train of thought was broken when he heard a noise upstairs.

At first he didn't think anything of it. It was probably just a window blowing open in the wind. Except it wasn't a windy night. Then he heard a grunt. Windows didn't grunt. Someone was trying to break into the house. There had been three burglaries in his estate already this year. And now his house was going to be the fourth.

Colm felt the slow crawling sensation he hated. The general who led the bad feeling brigade marched his troops down into the pit of his stomach. Calm down, he told himself. It's probably just your imagination. But he didn't believe that. His father said that bad luck always comes in threes. After the run-in with the wheelie bin and the disaster of the party, he'd already had two. Was this the third? Yep, looks like it, he thought, as whoever was climbing in through the bathroom window landed with a soft thud on the tiled floor.

His mind began to race. He had to get out of here. He put the cereal bowl on the table and had started to move towards the front door when he remembered he was still in his pyjamas. If he ran outside to raise the alarm then all the neighbours would see him and they'd never let him forget it. His life was enough of a joke as it was. On the other hand, if he stayed where he was the burglar might cause him serious injury. Humiliation or hospital? Before he had the chance to decide which he preferred, the decision was made for him. The burglar was coming down the stairs, blocking Colm's route to the front door.

He looked around the kitchen frantically. There was nowhere to hide. He thought about crawling under the table, but that was probably the first place the burglar would look. If it was a burglar. What if it was someone connected to the rat-faced man? Someone looking for revenge. He gulped. Twice. He needed a weapon. Something he could use to defend himself.

He had a choice of a dirty saucepan or the sweeping brush. He grabbed the saucepan. What now? If he pressed himself right up against the wall beside the door, then, when the intruder came into the kitchen, he wouldn't see Colm. Not at first anyway. Colm would have the element of surprise. Then he'd whack the man from behind with the saucepan. He lifted it above his head, getting it into prime whacking position, and took a step towards the door, flinching as he saw movement in the corner of his eye. Then he realised it was his own reflection he had seen.

The patio door! What was wrong with him? He could have escaped that way. But it was too late. The intruder was on the second last stair. Colm could just make out the toe of his trainers. At least that meant it wasn't some kind of supernatural entity. They rarely wore Nike.

He had to get into position. But as he took another step forward his foot slipped on the wet floor. The spilled milk, Colm thought as he flew into the air and landed on his back with a horrible cracking thump. A second later the burglar stepped into the kitchen.

You are without doubt the most useless boy in the history of the world, Colm said to himself as he waited to meet his fate.