Johnny Graphic and the Etheric Bomb (14 page)

“Ozzie, how often need I tell you?” Dame Honoria snapped. “
Niceties
must be observed. That was always your weakness. Daddy said just that many times. You still blurt out whatever is on your mind. Telling that laborer he was a terrible, lazy fellow and sacking him on the spot.” Dame Honoria scowled. “I witnessed it. Made quite an impression on a ten-year-old girl.”

“Blighter
was
dreadfully quick with a machete,” the wraith said, gently scratching at his wound.

“Well, do try to be more cordial,” Dame Honoria pleaded for the hundredth time.

“Of course, ma’am,” said Ozzie. “May I inquire about your recent doings? I’ve heard that things have gone rather badly for the Gesellschaft.”

Dame Honoria turned her gaze back to the ocean and darkening sky for half a moment. “Yes, Ozzie. I intended to brief you with regard to the murders. We may need to institute new security measures.”

When she finished recounting her narrow escape from the Neuport assassin, Ozzie harumphed. “The incident ought not to have been such a close call.”

“I have great confidence,” Dame Honoria said, “that you and our other ghosts will keep me safe.”

Ozzie offered his employer an odd sort of smile. “You can count on us, Dame Honoria. You can count on us.”

* * *

A deep, dreamless slumber claimed Dame Honoria the very instant her head touched the pillow that night. Eight hours later, she came up out of the blackness to the brilliant light of a fine tropical morning.

She felt bracingly, wonderfully good. Rested, finally, after many days of aeroboats and trains and omnibuses and hotels. People who thought banging around the globe on flying boats was a glamorous occupation had clearly never been jammed into narrow, lumpy seats amid the din of roaring engines for days on end.

Dame Honoria pushed herself up from her bed, parted the insect netting, and hopped onto the rattan floor mat. She threw on her flowered silk robe and slipped on the old teak sandals that felt so comfortable under her feet. But instead of moving out into the hallway, she stood there stock-still.

She glanced at the clock on her dresser. “Peculiar, only a few minutes after eight.” She sniffed again. “I know I distinctly asked for
bubur ayam
at eight
.
”

There should have been an aroma of curry and chicken wafting up the stairs. Bubur ayam was her favorite island breakfast—thick rice porridge, shredded chicken with curry, fried green onion, and pomegranate.

Her ghost maid, Tala, should have been waiting outside her door—but was nowhere to be seen.

“Tala,” the great lady bellowed, “where are you?”

Something else was peculiar: the birds were not calling. It was weirdly silent outside.

Dame Honoria went slowly out into the hallway, past a painting of Wickenham, her estate back in Gilbeyshire, where Lydia Graphic had given birth to Johnny. The canvas was by the ghost artist Maria Ghelarducci, the Contessa di Altamonta—an old, old friend who had lately vanished from view.

Dame Honoria approached the top of the stairs and peered down them.

“Ming Ho?” she said, her sonorous voice slightly louder than usual. “Tala? Ming Ho? Ozzie?”

Not a peep came from below.

“Ozzie!” she shouted. “Tala!”

Again, no one answered.

“Chauncey!”

Almost right at her feet, the ghost novelist popped up through the hallway floor, his mutton-chop whiskers aquiver. The look on his face—the pure horror in his eyes—made her heart catch and fall.

“They’re here, Honoria!” he whispered. “I saw what they did to her. For heaven’s sake, run! Hide!
Save yourself!”

And before she could say a word, the ghost author shot through the ceiling and vanished without a by-your-leave. So much, she thought, for the courage of writers.

She trod deliberately down the stairs and peeked into the parlor and dining room. In the library the sturdy brown cardboard box containing the manuscript of
Beatrice Periwinkle
sat on her desk. She had a terrible intuition that it would be quite some time before she would again set to work on Sir Chauncey’s tale.

Dame Honoria turned on her heel, walked toward the back door that led to the kitchen shack, then stepped out into dappled sunlight beneath the palms. She saw some vague figures moving about in the bushes. Wraiths, by the way they blended into the greenery.

“Who are you?” she demanded. Of course, she had a strong suspicion.

None of them replied.

“What do you want?”

At that the phalanx of ghosts came forward, almost but not quite transparent in the tropical humidity. They had been short, bandy-legged men, with flat, hard faces and narrow eyes that were impossible to read. They wore wool or leather tunics. Each was crowned with a pointed leather helmet. A few held bows. Others gripped short swords. From somewhere out of sight came the muffled sounds of horses snuffling and tramping the sand.

The rank of Steppe Warriors parted and a remarkable specter strode through, no taller than the rest, but somehow more powerful and more dangerous. He regarded Dame Honoria with empty, bleeding eye sockets. He had one hand behind his back.

Another ghost emerged from the jungle and the warriors parted for him, as well.

Ozzie Eccleston!

For a few brief, hopeful seconds, Dame Honoria thought that he had come to rescue her. But then she read the expression on his face. Grinning and self-satisfied. The very picture of a traitor.

“What do you
want?”
the etherist asked, focusing her full attention on the eyeless Steppe Warrior.

With a flourish, the horse soldier revealed the object that he had been hiding behind his back: the head of a ghost, a young native woman.

Looking equally embarrassed and despondent, the beheaded maid blinked at her mistress and said, “So sorry, ma’am.”

“Oh, Tala,” Dame Honoria sighed.

Chapter 27

Thursday, October 24, 1935

Maholaihi, Orchid Isles

The Como Eagle landed in the Orchid Isles late in the afternoon, after the long flight from Silver City. Johnny, Mel, Nina, and Uncle Louie soon found themselves in another handsomely decorated hotel suite. When he wasn’t flying for Zephyr Lines, Danny lived in downtown Maholaihi, the island nation’s capital.

Right after breakfast the next morning, Danny drove Mel and Johnny to a sprawling stuccoed house in one of the mountainside suburbs. The home was surrounded by gorgeous flowering shrubs and palm trees. Another member of the Hausenhofer Gesellschaft had been murdered here and Mr. Cargill wanted a story about the despicable deed.

Lani Muldoon, the new widow, greeted them at the front door. She was a short woman, nearly as wide as she was tall, with the dark, round face of a native islander.

Two ghost servants had the most to say about the murder of B. K. Muldoon. They had seen Steppe Warriors float through the front door late one evening, as the master dozed in his easy chair in the living room. They had seen arrows fly across the room, briefly turning Mr. Muldoon into a human pincushion. The spectral assassins darted out of the house and disappeared.

Mel took copious notes and Johnny shot several pictures of Mrs. Muldoon.

Then the widow took them to her husband’s cramped office at the back of the house. Mel noticed almost immediately that his complete collection of
The Annals of the Hausenhofer Gesellschaft
was missing the number that contained a certain article by Mongke Eng—the same number missing from the libraries of other murdered Gesellschaft members.

As they were leaving, one of the ghost servants pulled Johnny aside. An old man with a bent back and stark white hair, he had on a kind of colored skirt pulled tightly around his skinny waist.

“Word among the spooks,” he told Johnny, “is that the night watchers chased those bloody Steppe Warriors right off the island. I even heard a rumor that they captured a couple of them.”

“Tell me,” Johnny asked, “what are the night watchers and how do we find them?”

The old man explained that the night watchers were primeval specters who had died on the island’s ancient battlefields. They protected the Orchid Isles from interlopers living and dead, having received their powers from a hundred generations of island shamans.

“But take care, young sir,” the ghost said ominously. “When you find a night watcher—or he finds you—don’t look him in the eye. If you do, you’ll become his slave forever.”

“Silly superstition, is what that is,” sniffed Mel, who had been listening in. “Now please tell us where to locate them.”

Though looking very uneasy about it, the old man did just that.

* * *

Even Danny seemed jittery about hiking into Awawa ’Ele’ele, the place the old ghost told them to go to. The name meant Black Valley.

“When I was little my granny warned me if I didn’t behave, the night watchers would come and take me,” Danny told Mel, Nina, and Johnny on their drive up into the backcountry. “And believe me, I behaved.”

Wow, thought Johnny, sitting in the back seat of Danny’s little sedan with Nina. If Danny was scared of them, then these specters must be pretty bad. But Mel was absolutely right to want to talk with them.

The car slowly climbed up a single-lane, dirt track on the north side of one of the island’s interior mountains. Thick, green vegetation crowded in on all sides. The shade was so heavy, it almost felt like night. Suddenly, the road ended in a muddy clearing in the middle of the jungle, with just enough room to get Danny’s car turned around. From here they had to hike a good two miles.

The undergrowth opened up as they entered Awawa ’Ele’ele, as if the plants were reluctant to flourish there. Everything looked stunted and deformed. But at least we can see something now, thought Johnny.

And, as he soon found out, something saw them, as well.

In a few winks of the eye, a troop of warrior wraiths surrounded the four hikers. Of course, Nina and Danny didn’t realize it, until Johnny and Mel grabbed them and pulled them in close.

Johnny sure wished the colonel and his boys had come, but Mrs. Muldoon’s servant had strongly advised against it. Seeing alien ghost soldiers, the night watchers would attack mercilessly.

These island specters were all
huge
, wearing the same kind of wraparound skirt that the ghost servant had on. Their faces and upper bodies were covered with black, swirling, snake-like tattoos. And they had bones stuck through their ears and noses.

Now was the moment when Mel and Johnny had to test that old wife’s tale.
Did looking into the eyes of night watchers actually enslave you to them?

Not so far, thought Johnny, as Mel began to speak.

“We’re peaceful visitors,” Mel said, her voice trembling slightly. “We’ve come because of your recent fight with the Steppe Warriors who killed a man down in the city below.”

The night watchers—as many as thirty of them—crowded in closer, maces and slings and Stone-Age axes in their hands. One of them, the fiercest looking of all, came right up to Mel and glared down at her. Johnny had never thought that tattoos could look dangerous, but now he was reconsidering that opinion.

“What do you want?” the ghost rumbled.

“It’s said that you captured one of the Steppe Warriors and that you hold his head,” answered Mel. “They’ve been killing my friends around the world, for many weeks. If you have a prisoner, I need to ask him some questions.”

“Why should we help you?” the night watcher responded. His voice sounded like a tall elm groaning in the wind.

Usually Mel could answer tough questions pretty quickly. But her answers often tended to be kind of namby-pamby—diplomatic and reasonable and boring. And Johnny figured that diplomatic and reasonable and boring wouldn’t be the kind of answer that tough guys like these would want to hear. So just as his sister was about to say something undoubtedly quite sensible, he leapt in.

“So that we may revenge ourselves upon them!” Johnny growled, as fiercely as a twelve-and-a-half-year-old boy could possibly growl. “So that we may destroy them and crush them to powder!”

Mel looked appalled and Nina flabbergasted.

But the fearsome night watcher actually smiled, showing filthy, crooked teeth. He nodded to two of his compatriots. And simultaneously they reached into the primitive bags hanging across their chests and withdrew three objects.

Three desperate-looking and suddenly screaming bodyless heads. Three decapitated Steppe Warriors, held up by their pigtails.

By the time Mel had finished interrogating them, she and Johnny had some answers.

And they didn’t like them one bit.

Chapter 28

Thursday, October 24, 1935

Old Number One

As Bao flew from Paloa Atoll to the second island with her friend Evvie, she was already beginning to have doubts about getting blown up. All her friend would talk about as they soared over the vast ocean was how excited he was that
finally
he would cease to exist altogether. “Oblivion sounds lovely, old girl, doesn’t it?” he said, as they zoomed along among a great flock of specters.

But Bao wasn’t so sure. Deep in her heart—which hadn’t beat in centuries—she had decided that she wasn’t quite ready to leave the earth for good. The little girl was nothing if not a hopeful ghost. Perhaps her lot in life—well, actually her lot in death—would improve some day.

So she found herself edging away as, one by one, the thousands of ghosts who had come to the second island entered into the tin hut from which none of them emerged. Including Evvie. Finally there were only a few ghosts left outside, wandering around the island. She saw the khan and some of the other humans come in and out of the tin hut, again and again, carrying objects and devices that she didn’t recognize.

And that is how she herself became one of the wandering wraiths. Nowhere to go, nothing to do. Until she decided to explore the many caves that wormed their ways through the island’s rock mountains. At least it was something to do.