Dan and the Dead (2 page)

This must be where the bus comes in.

‘It's okay, Ems,' I say, sensing another wailing fit coming on. I wish I could put my arm round her, but you can only comfort a ghost with words.

‘Those photos.' Ems is whispering now. ‘If my mum had seen them… and my dad – I was his princess – it would have broken his heart.'

Sounds like it already has
, I think to myself, and there's actually a lump in my throat because of the stupid tragedy of it all, but there's no time for all that now.

‘Listen, here's what happens next, Ems. We need to know everything you know about this Bagport, so we can eliminate him.' I like saying that, ‘eliminate him', but I'm just thinking of turning him over to the police – there are enough ghosts about already. ‘But first, there's just the little matter of payment.'

Em's head snaps up and her eyes lock mine. Whoops! Bad timing, Dan.

‘What do you think I can give you?' Ems is not happy. In fact, she's flaming mad and her ghost's all fierce and flickery. ‘God, you're just like him! All you men are the same!'

‘Wait, Ems.' I'm holding my hands up like she has a gun or something. I need to make her feel strong again, so she'll listen. ‘It's not what you think.'

She's upright now, and her eyes are like the business end of a double-barrelled tank, but at least she's stopped shouting.

‘It's not what you think.' I say again. ‘Simon and me, we don't expect money or anything, we just need a little favour from you. We'll help you get even, and do our best to put Carl Bagport out of business for good. In return, before you move on to the Hereafter, I just need…'

And I tell her. It's the same deal I offer them all, and like the others she just stares at me in amazement. Then she laughs.

‘Is that even possible?'

I nod and smile back.

It looks like a done deal to me.

The thing about school is, even top paranormal investigators have to go there if they're only fourteen. You'd think Ems would understand this, but when I tell her that hunting down Bagport's going to have to wait till after Geography, History and a visit from a fireman, she's not best pleased.

She even trails me out of the house, moaning, despite Simon's best efforts to clear the decks for the
day. It's only when the school bus wheezes up that I lose her.

I suppose she's got a thing about buses now.

There's one good side to school though: there aren't any ghosts there. Simon sees to that. And anyway it's so new that no one's died there yet, despite the dodgy smells that hang around the canteen. So it's just the living at school, though, yeah, some of the teachers are dead boring. Especially Mr Harris. History Harris is so deathly dull he turns kids into zombies.

‘Today we shall discuss the Congress of Vienna and its long-term impact on Franco-German relations,' drones the Harris, and I tune out while I still can. I'm drawing skulls in my exercise book, thinking about poor Ems, when something makes me look up. A shape is looming. Why do shapes do that?

‘Pick a card,' creaks a voice I dread almost more than the Harris's, and there, standing in front of me, is the scraggy spirit of Mr Lugubrian, rigged out like Count Dracula in the get-up he died in. ‘Go on, boy,
pick one
!' And he leers at me through his whiskers, fanning a deck of enormous ghostly playing cards.

‘Buzz off,' I manage to hiss without drawing too much attention. ‘You know what Si'll do if he catches you here.'

‘Bah! I'm not scared of Bullet Brain,' says Mr Lugubrian, and he snaps the cards shut in a puff of ectoplasm. ‘But I am most displeased with you, boy. How dare you let that strumpet jump the queue? I demand you address my affairs first.'

‘Ems is no strumpet,' I say, making a mental note to ask Si what ‘strumpet' means, but it seems I spoke too loudly, because everyone turns to stare at me. The room is silent. The Harris pulls his specs down his nose and stares hardest of all.

‘Do you wish to say something about trumpets, Daniel, or are you talking to yourself again?'

Laughter ripples round the room and a ball of paper bounces off my head. Yup, I have a certain reputation.

‘No, sir.'

‘Then kindly shush.' The Harris's mouth is as tight as a cat's bum. ‘Now, class, turn to page 879…'

In the rustling that follows, I hiss at the ghost of the Victorian magician to get lost, but the old man knows he's got me cornered. Where the hell's Si?

‘They laughed at me too,' Lugubrian says, the purple bags under his eyes quivering. ‘Afterwards. They said I was nothing but a penny conjuror, a rabbit worrier, a… a…
vaudevillian
! Me! Just because that
last trick went awry. But I was Silas Lugubrian, Gentleman of Miracles! Lugubrian's “Head-in-his-hands” Illusion should have been the wonder of the age!' and he rolls his head at me.

Literally.

It's always the same thing with old Gubie. He died 130 years ago, performing a magic trick of his own invention in front of a live audience. It's a cage with a couple of spring-loaded blades at neck height, a cage you put over your head. Can you guess where this is going? Yup, that's right. Anyway, at least it was named well, the trick. Lugubrian's ‘Head-in-his-hands' Illusion did indeed leave Gubie's very own head in his very own hands. Along with a lot of his very own blood.

‘But you can help me, boy.' Lugubrian's getting into his stride now. He's stalking his invisible way round the classroom like a hunchbacked spider, one hand fixed behind his back, the other gesturing in the air, while his head bobs up and down on his shoulders. There are flashes of daylight where his neck should be. ‘You
must
help!'

‘No,' I manage to cough, and the Harris glances at me.

‘Dig up the apparatus!' Lugubrian turns on his heel
and delivers his words at me like he's back on stage. ‘Make the adjustments! Perform my trick for me, so that the name of Silas Lugubrian can live down the ages!'

And it would take ages to live down a name like that
, I think, but out loud I hiss, ‘Stop yabbering, you stupid old codger!' Only I shouldn't hiss this, should I? Because now everyone's staring at me again.

‘Daniel Dyer, on your feet!' shouts History Harris, and Mr Lugubrian, unseen by everyone but me, spreads his mouth into a hook-tooth grin. Me? All I can do is stand up.

‘Yabbering, am I?' The Harris is closing in like an elderly knight in corduroy armour. ‘
Old codger
, am I? How dare you?'

‘Sir, I wasn't talking to you, sir,' is the best I can do, because all I'm thinking is how I'd kill Simon if he wasn't already dead. Where is he?

‘Woooh!' go a load of voices around me, and ‘There's a ghost!' Even the Harris chuckles along. There are some things you just don't live down at school, and talking to people who aren't there's pretty high on the list.

‘All right, Daniel.' You can tell Mr Harris thinks he's got me. And this time, perhaps he has. ‘Before
I give you a month's detention, you have one last chance. Let's see if your invisible friends can help you answer a question about the Treaty of Vienna. When was it signed?'

Well, I haven't a clue, have I? But you can tell old Gubie has by the way his head somersaults. Then, with the hand that isn't always behind his back, he plucks his head off its stump and flings it, top hat and all, to where I stand sweating in front of Harris.

‘Spot of bother, boy?' the head croons in one ear. ‘Need old Silas to help you out?' it simpers in the other.

I shake my head very, very slightly. There's no way I'm sticking the old brain box in Lugubrian's death-trap apparatus just to avoid detention, but at the same time, I need to get out after school to help Ems.

The Harris leans closer. ‘Well?'

I'm in a pickle, though I won't lose my head over it. But what's Ems gonna say?

Lugubrian's grin presses closer and closer, his blood-filled eyes glowing red with glee.

‘Dig up the apparatus! Perform my trick at your wretched school show! I'll tell you the answer if you do…'

And that's when, finally, Simon arrives. He cries ‘Zooks!' when he spots what's going on.

I roll my eyes his way and give him one of my ‘where-in-Death's-name-have-you-been' looks. The Harris is about to start shouting when Simon speaks rapidly into my ear. Detention is heading my way, but thanks to Si I can now deflect it.

‘The Treaty of Vienna was signed on the 25th of March, 1815,' I shout out, repeating Simon's words. ‘Unless you mean the treaty of 1809. That was signed on the 14th of October. There are eight other treaties with that name. I can, er, probably tell you when they were signed too. If you like.'

The Harris is speechless. So is everyone else. Except Simon that is, who's yelling ‘Poltroon! Poxmonger!' at old Gubie and using the magician's own head to swat his crooked, black ghost-body as it runs here and there, trying to escape.

But only I can see that.

The bell goes then, and the other kids can't get out of the room fast enough. They laugh at me, sure, but enough strange stuff goes on when I'm in the room to make sure they only laugh from a safe distance. I stroll out of the class like I don't care. It's only when we're in the toilets that I really let rip at Simon.

‘I apologise.' He bows when he says this, so I think he probably means it. ‘But I thought it would save time if I spent the day following the scoundrel Bagport.'

Something about his voice makes me forget Lugubrian. Simon looks furious, and small angry clouds of ectoplasm are puffing out of the hole in his head like he's a steam train.

‘I found him,' says Si, ‘and it's not just Emeline. Bagport has dozens of young people in his employ, forced to commit crimes for him. He trades in misery, Daniel. We must act tonight!'

It's after school and getting dark, and I'm strolling along with Simon drifting beside me. Obviously I'm the only one who can see him. Ems hasn't reappeared yet, but it's only a matter of time. Meanwhile, Simon and me, we've got work to do.

I'm wearing my black leather coat. It's not a biker's one, it's an antique from the 70s, and very long. It wasn't me who Tippexed skulls all over it, honest. I also have purple-tinted sunglasses and a
china false eye on a chain round my neck. This isn't how I always dress, you understand, but it sure does help put the wind up my victims if I go a bit Gothic and creepy.

In my pocket there's a USB memory stick, but more about that soon.

We're in a pretty rough part of town, on our way to Bagport's club, but Simon's already checked the place out and he's as cool as a cucumber. About as cheerful as one too.

The thing about Simon is that he's like a cross between a butler on the one hand, and an all-out nut job on the other. One minute he's all, ‘Yes, sir. No, sir. Don't believe it's so, sir.' Then the next, something'll happen – like finding Lugubrian at my school – and he just blows up like a demon psycho from the inner circle of Hell.

Mostly though, it's the cucumber.

‘Zooks, Daniel! I can't believe how little has changed since my day,' he says, and I roll my purple eyes. ‘Thievery, poverty, the rich using their power to exploit the poor. What happened to Emeline has been happening in one form or another since biblical times.'

‘Blimey, Simon – cheer up, mate.'

I'm not in the mood for another one of his speeches.

‘Yours may be an age of wonders, Daniel, but the human condition is as miserable now as it ever was.'

‘All right, keep your wig on,' I say. I often say this because Simon actually has a wig on, one of those powdery jobs with a ponytail. Imagine going through eternity looking like that! ‘Let's stop moaning about it and do our bit to make the world a better place.'