Dan and the Caverns of Bone (7 page)

But I ignore that.

‘Ghosts are one thing,' I say to the whole lot of them. ‘But Death? The Grim Reaper? That's bonkers!'

‘Bonkers?' says Luci. ‘What is “bonkers”?'

‘Er, you know – loopy, barmy, completely doolally. As in mad as a hatter, only madder.'

‘But I am not
mad
.' Luci flashes her dark eyes. ‘I know it is not “bonkers” because I
saw
him.'

I look at Si, and expect to see him rolling his eyes. After all, it's ridiculous. But the way he looks back isn't exactly reassuring.

‘Who knows, Daniel, what may lurk in the deep places of the world?'

‘Right, that's it,' I say, snatching the skull candle from Luci's hand. ‘I'm going down there. Because whatever it is that has you all spooked, it's certainly not Death. It's probably just a rat, or… er, two rats. Or something.'

For some reason, the kids don't sound reassured by this. But Luci silences them with her hand.

‘Tell me the truth,' she says to me. ‘'ave you really seen Jojo as… as a…?'

‘A ghost?' I say. And I nod. ‘I'm sorry, Luci. Is there running water down there somewhere?' I point into the doorway.

‘Oh,
mon dieu
!' Luci puts her hand to her mouth. ‘The river! You mean… drowned?'

I want to comfort her, tell her it's all okay, but this whole thing's as far from okay as it's possible to be.

‘I can still help him,' I say instead. ‘There's a reason why he's still here. I can find out what it is,
and set him free. And put an end to all this Death malarkey while I'm at it.'

‘No,' says Luci. ‘No, if you go down there on your own, you will not come back. Even without Death, it is dangerous. I am going with you.'

There's a burst of protesting French from her housemates – mostly involving the word
non
, which even I can understand – but Luci ignores them. She takes a candle in a jam jar from the Sunglasses Kid, steps into the empty black doorway and turns back to look at me. She's scared, but her eyes are challenging me to follow.

Something tells me I'm in for a very different guided tour to the one Frenchy gave earlier.

I turn for a bit of moral support from Si, but he doesn't look back. He's gone very thin and faint and is clutching his wig in his hands. It looks like he's staring at something
behind
me.

I hate it when he does that.

‘Si?' I say, my blood running cold at his expression. ‘Come on, buddy,
you
know there's no such thing as Death, surely?'

‘Mayhap, Daniel,' he says, his ectoplasm pooling on the floor beneath him like an embarrassing accident. ‘Mayhap. And yet…'

He lifts his trembling hand and points over my shoulder.

‘…how do you explain that?'

I revolve slowly. He's pointing not into the dark doorway but at the back of the cellar door. I follow his finger. There are deep slash marks in the wood, as if someone has attacked the door in a frenzy, attacked it with some kind of deadly metal implement. An axe perhaps, or a spade, or…

I swallow.

…a scythe?

I look down into the dark as Luci descends, and wish I had something a little less prehistoric than a skull candle to light the way. I glance back at the others. The Sunglasses Kid looks back at me and shakes his head. There's no confusion over what
that
means. I give them all my best here-goes-nothing look and pad down into the shadows after the girl.

The stairs go on for longer than I expected, and spiral slowly, so that by the time I turn to check
behind me, the doorway is out of sight. When I reach the bottom Lucifane is waiting there. She's clearly terrified, but trying hard not to show it. Si, on the other hand, is a gibbering wreck.

‘Daniel,' he dribbles, ‘perhaps I should stay above and watch over the others…'

‘Man up and pipe down,' I say. ‘You're not wussing out on me this time.'

‘But, Daniel, if Death himself is lurking below…'

‘Come off it! You saw those slash marks on the door, Si. Nothing supernatural about those. But I'm going to need some paranormal backup either way. If only to deal with Jojo.'

‘Are you really talking with the smoky man we saw upstairs?' comes Luci's quavery voice. The cellar of the house is cavernous around us, with a vaulted ceiling the candlelight hardly reaches. The cobwebs are big enough to catch a pterodactyl.

‘Somebody's got to.' I shrug. ‘So, Jojo – he was your boyfriend?'

Well, I'm only asking.

A mascara-loaded tear rolls down Luci's cheek and drops, leaving a perfect shadow of itself that even the best gothic makeup artist could never achieve.

‘He was my brother.'

I wasn't expecting that. I'm just wondering what to say next when she steps closer.

‘Dan?'

Eyebrow up.

‘If you see him again, you will tell me, won't you?'

Eyebrow down. I nod.

Lucifane turns then and walks decidedly into the dark, toward the back of the cellar. There I see tower upon tower of crusty old wine racks, though I'm guessing it's years since anyone actually kept any Chateau Mouthwash down here. She stops beside one that is slightly out of place and puts her candle down. She heaves at it until the whole rack has swung back. Beyond is a gap in the brickwork like a scar in the wall.

‘If you really want to understand,' says Lucifane, ‘I will 'ave to show you everything.'

I go through the gap in the wall first. Luci is so close behind me that we're leaning on each other for support as we pick our way down the narrow flight of steps. The candles aren't enough, so I ask Simon to turn his ghostlight up to max. He's still muttering things like ‘the bowels of the earth!' and ‘O, the
infernal underworld!' but at least he's coming with me.

When we reach the bottom we have to duck through a tiny hole. And I see in an instant that we're back in the catacombs.

‘You 'ave to know it is there,' says Luci, pointing at the nearly invisible hole behind us. ‘This is why it is secret.'

‘You mean the
cataflics
don't know about it?'

Luci holds up her candle and looks at me.

‘So, you 'ave 'eard of them? I am impressed.'

So am I. I never remember things like that.

‘The first to live in the squat,' she goes on, ‘found this way in years ago. We 'ave used it ever since. Until…'

But she doesn't finish. Instead she creeps forward into the dark. I quickly catch her up.

‘Luci, who owns the squat?' I've been wanting to ask this for ages. ‘I mean, the actual building. Surely they're trying to get you out?'

‘Some bank,' she says. ‘In South America. The police brought letters from them for a while, telling us to get out. But we ignored them. They do not want anyone to live there, they 'ave boarded it up to keep as an investment. It is disgusting. These
days Paris is just one big asset for bankers and businessmen.'

I say nothing. Politics is more Si's thing than mine. But I can't help wondering if these angry bankers, or whoever they are, might be doing more than just sending letters to the squat.

Then we reach a metal grill that blocks the way. I wonder what we'll do now, but I hear a squeak of rust and find that one of the bars just swings out. I climb through after Luci. When I look back through the bars I recognise where we are. It's the passageway I saw Jojo's ghost emerge from on my school visit.

Now we're walking through caverns I remember from earlier. It was all a bit spooky back then, but now, with nothing but candles and an ectoplasmic glow from Si, this place is pretty damn terrifying. Even for me.

Especially when the first skull looms out of the bone wall.

‘Look, something 'as changed,' says Lucifane, pointing to the pile of spilt bones Baz and I knocked down earlier.

‘Yeah?' I ask, as innocently as I can. ‘Er… where are we going again?'

Luci heads off down a side passage and once again we are up against a wall of bars that blocks it. She squeezes between two that are slightly bent, and I do the same, almost losing a button from the coat.

‘Now we 'ave left the public part of the catacombs,' says Luci. ‘We must be careful how we step – it is less certain underfoot.'

We turn another corner and enter a long curving corridor, the walls of which are made up of more skulls than ever, in some kind of odd formation. And I swear they're watching us. There's a weird sound too, like a continuous echoing rustle. And that's when I notice that the skulls in the wall are in the form of giant, deathly letters.

‘ET… IN…' I spell out as we go. ‘ARCADIA… EGO? What does that mean? My French is, er… a little rusty.'

‘It is not French,' says Lucifane. ‘It is Latin.' And she shrugs.

‘Si?' I say, looking at my sidekick. But if I'd hoped he'd be starting to pull himself together by now, I'm in for a disappointment. The sight of these words seems to have turned him into ghost jelly.

‘It means, “Even in paradise, I am there,”' he quivers.

‘Who's where? Come on, Si, quit dribbling and spit it out.'

‘Death!' He turns to me. ‘This phrase is used of Death. We must be gone from this place, Daniel! We are in the realm of the Great Destroyer himself, deep in the darkest depths of the earth, where nary a beam of the sun above can ever penetrate…'

But I'm off before I can hear any more of this tosh, because frankly, I'm getting a bit sick of all this. Hollywood would kill for an atmosphere like the one Si and Luci are creating, but I'm starting to smell something a bit fishy in all this. Like a herring, only redder.

As I approach the end of the passage, I finally recognize that weird babbling sound. It's running water, echoing back up the passageway. And then we're on the bank of a fast flowing and very pongy subterranean river.

It emerges from one slimy green brick archway and quickly vanishes into another. Two small boats have been dragged up one shore, secured with ropes. Spanning the river, forming the slightest of bridges to the passage beyond, are two lengths of chain, one at floor height, and another near my head.

Luci comes forward and stares down into the stinky flow. ‘Jojo?'

‘What were you doing on the other side?' I ask, hoping to take her mind off the watery fate of her brother. ‘What's over the bridge?'

Luci says nothing. She hangs the candle jar around her neck, grabs the upper chain, and then shimmies across in one cat-like motion. I glance at Si, and he gives an elegant shrug. Well, what choice do I have? I shimmy across after her.

I find myself in a vaulted cavern, even darker than Baz's armpit. Then I start to see things.

At first it just looks like rubbish scattered about, but then I see that there are cushions down here. And some of the snack boxes aren't empty, and is that a dead plant I see, with burnt out incense sticks
stuck in it? In the centre of the cavern something pale is looming, and I edge forward to scope it out. A thick, ornate stone pillar appears before me, about my shoulder height, carved with cavorting skeletons. And there's something on it.