Dan and the Caverns of Bone (8 page)

It's an ancient CD player.

I put the candle beside it and glance round. Luci is in the shadows, using her candle to light others, bringing some sense of life to this dead place.

So this is where the
cataphiles
come to party. There's even a blood-coloured disco ball hanging above the pillar. It reflects the dancing light from the candles like a galaxy of red stars.

‘I haven't been 'ere since it happened,' says Luci. ‘We were dancing as usual. We were happy, celebrating. Then…'

‘You saw the rat?'

‘I saw
him
!' And Luci points down in the darkness beyond the pillar. ‘I saw Death!'

I hold up the candle. Is that a further doorway, in a far wall?

I step forward but something gets caught up in my feet. It's a rolled-up newspaper.

I pick it up, and see that the date is just a few days before. It's a French newspaper, so that's about all I
can understand. I'm about to drop it when something catches my eye, and my glasses nearly leap off my face when I see what it is.

It's a photograph of the Grim Reaper. Or rather, a still from some black-and-white film. And there's a story attached. Even I can pick out the word
catacombes
in the first sentence.

‘Zooks, Daniel!' Simon gasps in my ear. He turns up his ghostlight and the article becomes easier to see. Though not, of course, easier to understand.

‘Luci, what does this say?'

She takes the paper from me, screwing her eyes to read in the light of her candle.

‘We are not the only ones. Other
cataphiles
'ave seen him too, word 'as got out.' She looks up at me. ‘A body 'as been found!'

‘A body?' I say. ‘You mean Jojo?'

‘No, it is someone else, a man. There are many who find their way down 'ere. He was murdered, it says, and someone else is missing too. This is proof, Dan. Now even the press are talking about Death beneath the city. You 'ave to believe it.'

‘Just because it's in a newspaper, doesn't make it real,' I say. Or rather snap, because I'm starting to get annoyed again. ‘And how do they know he was
murdered, this body they've found? It's pretty lethal strolling around down here. Maybe he just fell.'

Luci hands the paper back.

‘He was killed,' she says, putting her hands on her hips and meeting my gaze, ‘with a sharp metal blade. Like a curved sword.'

‘Or a scythe!' Simon whispers.

I roll the newspaper up, slip it into my coat pocket and say nothing.

Then, and I'm not sure why, I reach up and press ‘play' on the CD player. There's still a bit of oomph in the batteries and for a moment some of the cool sounds I heard the first night I was in the squat boom and jangle in the dark. The noise is a shock after our whispered conversation. Luci and Si both look appalled.

I'm about to switch it off and say something else when movement in the dark attracts my attention. There's someone there – a figure, emerging from the gloom, drifting above the ground. Trailing ectoplasm.

It's the ghost of Jojo.

I study him carefully. He's dripping with ghastly light as before but there's something a little more alert about him now, as if he's recovering his sense
of who and where he is. And one thing is certain – he likes the music.

So I switch it off.

Deafening silence follows, and behind that the babble of the underground river.

Jojo turns to me. He moves closer and closer, until he's right in front of me. He has Luci's nose, I can't help noticing.

‘Daniel,' whispers Si. ‘You must tell Lucifane.'

But I don't, not yet. Jojo looks like he wants to speak himself, but he's making gasping sounds, like he can't remember how to do it.

‘Go on, mate,' I say, as encouraging as I can be in the wrong language. ‘Just tell me what happened. What did you see?'

Jojo's ghostly face contorts with effort. He begins to form a word.

‘
C'ét…. C'était…
' he says, in a voice like wafting silk that I can barely hear.

‘He's here?' Luci cries, suddenly realizing and rushing to me. ‘Jojo?'

I hold up my hand, but it's too late – Jojo has stopped trying to speak. He turns towards his sister, and his face becomes anguished again. Lucifane holds her hand out, groping in the air.

‘Jojo?'

The ghost drifts towards her.

‘Lucifane…'

He holds his hand out to hers, and I see her flinch as the cold of it hits her. I'm about to intervene when Jojo opens his arms and engulfs Luci in a spectral hug that would, I'm sure, make even a snowman seem cuddly. Lucifane gasps, but stays where she is.

‘Jojo!' she cries out, and you can tell by her voice she's knows it's true. The candle falls from her hand and goes out in a tinkle of smashing jar.

Then, as quietly as he appeared, Jojo fades, the effort to communicate too much. In no time at all, he is gone, leaving nothing but a tumble of ectoplasm and a tearful smile on his sister's face.

‘I think it's time to go,' I say.

‘But we can't just leave him!'

‘I think that's exactly what he wants,' I start to explain, but I stop when I see that she's crying. For a moment I wonder about putting my arm round her. In fact, I've pretty much decided to give it a go, when something happens to snap us both out of our thoughts.

There's a sound.

The sound of steps, coming from somewhere
beyond the altar, from the dark where the candle won't reach. And the steps are getting closer.

‘Listen!' Luci grabs both my arms.

There's another sound now, a sort of scrunch POCK, scrunch POCK as someone makes their way on the gravel, tapping.

Tapping?

‘I saw a documentary once, yeah? About how some rats can be really, really big…' I start to say, but give up.

‘
C'est lui
…' Lucifane's voice is a hoarse whisper. ‘It's him!'

‘Si, quick!' I'm shouting now. ‘Light it up!' I point into the dark where the sounds are.

Simon lifts a trembling hand and points, throwing his ectoplasmic glow down the chamber. I was right, there is a doorway there. And as I watch, a figure steps into that doorway.

He is swathed in billowing black, and his hood is deep. There is a curve of white metal above him. He steps into the room with the sound of scraping bone. Si gasps in terror as his light flickers and goes out.

But not before I see the face that looks out of that hood.

It's the face of a skull.

Thinking back, I'm not quite sure how we got out of there. Simon vanished pretty instantaneously, so I don't suppose I ever had the chance to stand my ground anyway. Luci pulled me back, I do remember that, and somehow we both got across the chain over the river. And I remember
hearing the chain rattle furiously, just behind us, exactly as if someone big was coming across. But we were already running down the corridor, back past the skull letters.

ET IN ARCADIA EGO, eh? Well, maybe freaking so!

All I know for sure is we don't stop running till we're up the stairs and back in the squat. We fling the cellar door shut behind us, and Luci rams the bolt home. The others are all there, looking wild at our sudden appearance, and they start piling the rubbish back against the door in a frenzy of fear.

Then Luci puts her finger to her lips, and we all freeze. Everyone is listening. And after a moment, there's a sound. A rhythmic, throaty sound from the other side of the door.

Breathing.

Heavy
, rattling breathing.

And the tap, tap, tap of bone on stone.

As we all stare in horror, the door handle turns.

We watch it slowly rotate till the latch disengages. The door presses inwards but the bolt and the clutter hold it, and the handle falls back. We look at each other, uncertain, then…

SLAM!

Something hits the door with enormous force. A point of metal is suddenly visible, flashing in the candlelight, splitting the wood. Then it vanishes as the blade – or whatever it is – is yanked out. A sound like slow, bony feet grows distant until, eventually, silence returns.

I turn and look at Luci, and find she's already staring right at me, white as angels.

I adjust the specs.

‘Okay, maybe…' I say, still panting from the run, ‘maybe it's not a rat.'

‘But it's certainly
not
the Grim Reaper,' I say to Si.

We're sitting on the roof outside my room, and it's about one in the morning. Well,
I'm
sitting – Si is zooming around the tiny turret roof of my room, wringing his spectral hands and making the weather vane creak. We can't talk inside because of Brian, and we can't even think straight in the squat where terror has taken hold.

‘But, Daniel, you saw it too.' Si stops his swooping long enough to wail in anguish. ‘The scythe, the cloak, the empty pitiless eyes…'

‘Stop flapping and listen, Si!'

He drifts down to eye level, round-eyed but almost containing his ectoplasmic distress. That'll have to do.

‘Do you really think that Death, if he actually existed, would use a
real
scythe?' I say. ‘And what was that noise we heard behind the door, before the blade hit?'

‘The approach of the Destroyer, the sprightly tread of the Grim Harvester of Souls…'

‘It was breathing.
Breathing
, Si! Since when have walking skeletons got out of breath? Since when do they have lungs? And since when has anyone been able to
outrun
Death?'

Si opens his mouth to wail some more, but then snaps it shut as my words sink in.

‘Zooks, Daniel! You are right. But, mayhap…'

‘Mayhap nothing. Think about it. These kids live in a squat, so they're trespassing, yeah? And Luci said the owner of the house wants them to leave. So don't you think there could be a slightly less supernatural explanation for all this?'

‘Some manner of disguise?' I've got Si's interest now. ‘You mean, a mortal man, masquerading as the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse?'

‘Exactly.'

‘But, Daniel, people have
died
. In the newspaper it said there have been murders. This goes far beyond Luci and her friends at the squirt.'

‘That's all the more reason for us to do something about it. This isn't just a matter of helping Jojo move on, Si. I think we've got a nutter on our hands. A fullblown, suited-up psycho.'

Simon gives this some thought before speaking again.

‘Of course, I suspected something of the kind all along…'

‘Yeah, course you did.'

Simon puts his hands behind his back and averts his gaze. He seems to be back in freaky butler mode, but that's at least an improvement on the shrieking old maid impression he's been doing lately. I pull the newspaper from my pocket, and look at the article about Death again.

‘Shame I can't read this. Si, make yourself useful for once and give me the gist again.' I hold the story up for him. And that's when I see it.

I lower the paper.

‘Wait, I was just preparing the translation,' Simon says, but then he sees my face. ‘Ah! You have discovered something yourself?'

I turn the paper round and hold it up again, this time showing him the back. It's the puzzle page. I tap on one part of the page in particular.

‘A grid of lines? With numbers written within? Daniel, I do not see…'

‘No, you wouldn't,' I say. ‘But if you were a bit less behind the times, you'd know this was a sudoku puzzle. Don't ask me why, some people find numbers fun.' I roll the paper back up and pocket it again. ‘And, where have we seen one of those being filled in recently?'

‘The hostess of the Hotel Cafards?'

‘Bingo. Hole in one. The receptionist does the sudoku. And she didn't sound too friendly towards her next door neighbours, did she?'