Spectre Collectors: Rise of the Ghostfather! E-Book

Barry Hutchison

• Herausgeber: Nosy Crow
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Serie: Spectre Collectors
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 211

Beschreibung

In their third and final spooky adventure, Denzel and his friends face the biggest, baddest ghost of all: The Ghostfather. He's making a comeback, and he needs Denzel's help, whether he likes it or not! For readers who like their funny stories to be just a little bit spooky too... Look out for other titles in the Spectre Collectors series: Spectre Collectors: Too Ghoul for School, Spectre Collectors: A New York Nightmare!

Leseprobe

For Mia, Creator of Tabatha and Saku.

(But, just so we’re clear, no, you’re not getting paid.)

CHAPTER 1

Denzel Edgar hadn’t signed up for this.

OK, technically he had signed up for it when he’d agreed to join the Spectre Collectors, a centuries-old secret society dedicated to protecting Earth from supernatural threats. He’d known there’d be a certain amount of “ghost stuff” involved, since that was pretty much the whole point of the organisation. He just didn’t think it’d be anything like this.

Denzel sat on an uncomfortable plastic chair directly across a table from a large, semi-transparent man. The way the man was staring at him was making Denzel deeply uncomfortable. What was making him even more uncomfortable was the fact that the man was holding his detached head under one arm.

Wait. No. Not “man”. Denzel silently scolded himself. “Don’t think of them as men and women.” That’s what Boyle, one of the longer-serving Spectre Collectors had told him. “They’re not people, they’re ghosts.”

And yet, if you ignored the fact that he was holding his head under one arm and was partly see-through, the ghost across the table looked like a man. Denzel and his fellow new-start, Smithy, had become quite vocal on the subject of ghost rights since joining up. Granted, this was mostly because Smithy himself was a ghost, but whatever their motivation, the two friends felt it important that all ghosts be treated fairly.

Which, unfortunately, was why Denzel had ended up in here.

“Art thou going to say something?” asked the headless ghost on the other side of the table.

“Button it, punk!” spat Smithy. He was sitting beside Denzel, straddling a chair that he had turned the wrong way and chewing on a little wooden cocktail stick.

For some reason – Denzel wasn’t sure why – Smithy was wearing sunglasses, and a little cardboard badge he’d made for himself that read “Bad Cop.”

“I’m sorry?” asked the headless ghost. He was dressed in Elizabethan-era finery, with a large white frilly collar around his neck stump.

“You heard me,” Smithy growled. “Now, less of your lip or we’ll throw the book at you.”

Beneath the ghost’s arm, his head frowned. “Which book?”

This caught Smithy off guard. He shot Denzel a sideways glance.

“I don’t know yet,” he admitted, then he narrowed his eyes and glared at the ghost. “But a big one. Like a cookbook. Yeah, a big hardback cookbook full of cake recipes. Would you like that, punk?”

“Not really,” the ghost admitted.

Smithy slammed his hand on the table and jumped to his feet. “Answer the question!” he roared, his voice echoing around the room.

In the silence that followed, Denzel quietly cleared his throat. “Um, he did answer the question.”

“Did he?” asked Smithy. “Oh. Sorry, wasn’t listening. I was too busy thinking about cakes.” He sat down and nodded politely to Denzel. “Continue.”

Denzel smiled graciously, then flipped open a little notebook that sat on the table between him and the ghost.

“So, Mr… Um… Cassian De—”

“Do not speaketh my full name!” the ghost yelped.

Denzel jumped in fright at the sudden shout, then frowned. “Why not?”

The ghost shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Because names have power, and I’d prefer you not to use mine.” He smiled awkwardly. “Just ‘Cassian’ will be quite acceptable.”

Denzel scribbled a little note next to the ghost’s name, then continued.

“So, as you know, you were recently captured by the Spectre Collectors, having been caught in the act of…”

Denzel looked down at his notes. The words “Spectrothramorphic Transmogrification” were written there, but there was no chance of him getting through that without at least a week’s rehearsal.

“…being a ghost,” he finished.

“Guilty!” said Cassian’s head.

“So you admit it?” Smithy barked. He cracked his knuckles. “Shame. I wanted to beat it out of you.”

Denzel leaned back in his chair a little and whispered to Smithy. “We already knew he’d done it.”

“Did we?” Smithy whispered back. “When?”

“Since Samara and Boyle caught him,” Denzel continued.

“Oh. Right,” said Smithy. He leaned in a little closer. “Do you want me to beat him up anyway?”

Denzel shook his head. “No.”

Smithy wiped a hand across his forehead. “Phew. That’s a relief. He’s terrifying.”

He leaned in closer still. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he hasn’t got a head! I mean, how does that work? How is he speaking? How does he hear what we’re saying?”

Denzel flicked his gaze back to the ghost across the table. Cassian gave him a friendly little wave.

“His head’s under his arm,” Denzel pointed out.

“Is it?” said Smithy, much louder. He looked round at Cassian. “Ha! So it is! I didn’t notice. It’s right there!”

Denzel frowned. “How could you not have noticed?” he asked, then he sighed and shook his head. “Forget it. Doesn’t matter. The point is, Cassian, you were doing ghost stuff, and it’s our job to figure out if you’re a good ghost or a bad ghost.”

“Art thou serious?” asked Cassian. He glanced around at the drab little interview room he was being held in. Various enchantments and symbols had been scrawled on the walls to stop him escaping through one. “I was always under the impression that the Spectre Collectors were a ‘catch first, asketh no questions ever’ organisation. I assumed that my fate was already sealed.”

“It would’ve been, until we came along,” said Denzel. “We’ve convinced them that every ghost should be given a fair hearing.”

“But I wish we hadn’t!” Smithy spat, slamming his hand on the table again for good measure. “Scum like you, you make me sick.”

Cassian’s eyes slowly went from Smithy to Denzel. “Is he all right?”

Denzel smiled weakly. “Yeah. He wanted us to do Good Cop, Bad Cop. He’s the Bad Cop.”

“Don’t tell him!” Smithy protested. “You’ll ruin it.”

“You’re literally wearing a badge that says ‘Bad Cop’ on it,” Denzel pointed out.

Smithy opened his mouth to offer a counterargument but came up short. Denzel had a point there.

“OK, yes, I’m Bad Cop,” he admitted.

With a growl, Smithy reached across and took the notebook from the table. “Enough talk! Let’s get down to business. We’ve prepared some questions to help us figure out your true motives. Answer them honestly, and we’ll get along just fine. But lie to me, and I’ll break you. I will break you. Understood?”

Cassian nodded to confirm that he understood.

Smithy cleared his throat and read from the top page. “OK. Question One. Are you a good ghost?” 

“Yes,” said Cassian.

Smithy scribbled with the pencil.

“Question Two. Are you a bad ghost?”

“No,” said Cassian.

Smithy scribbled again.

“Right, then,” he said. He smiled broadly, his aggressive Bad Cop persona vanishing. “Great! That’s that settled.”

Cassian’s severed head blinked in surprise. “Is that it?”

“Yep,” said Smithy. “All done!”

“Unless there’s anything you want to add?” Denzel asked.

Cassian thought for a moment. “No. No, I think that’s everything.”

Smithy handed the notepad back to Denzel. As he took it, Denzel had a niggling suspicion that their questioning might not have been as probing as it possibly could have been, but this was their first ever interview, and they hadn’t really known what to expect. They had another interview lined up in the cell next door. Maybe he’d come up with some more questions before then.

“Well, since you don’t appear to be a threat to anyone, then you can leave,” Denzel said.

“I can?” gasped the headless ghost. “Oh, that’s wonderful news.”

“I just need to read this,” said Denzel, flipping to the next page of the notepad. He blushed a little, embarrassed by the formality of it all. Still, rules were rules.

“By the power vested in me as a member of the Cult of Sh’grath, also known as the Messengers of the Allwhere, also known as the Seventh Army of the Enlightened—”

“And so on and so forth,” added Smithy.

“And so on and so forth,” Denzel agreed, skipping the rest of the paragraph. “I, Denzel Edgar, pronounce you, Cassian Deploop, a free ghost.”

The final word had barely left Denzel’s lips when Cassian exploded. At least, that was how it felt at the time.

In reality, he didn’t explode. Technically, he turned inside out. Which, in many ways, was worse.

A bubbling green liquid erupted out through a hole in his neck, twisting and thrashing as it became a giant gooey blob. Teeth and eyes and snapping pincers all appeared in the slime. Three different mouths formed in the gelatinous folds, and all of them spoke at the same time.

“I warned you! I warned you not to say my name!” three distinct voices cried. “Now you leave me no choice but to destroy you!”

Neither Denzel nor Smithy had stood up yet. They were both so transfixed by the horrifying transformation happening in front of them that it hadn’t occurred to them to move.

That changed when the blobby Cassian-monster smashed a fist through the table, breaking it in two.

“Um, we should probably run,” said Denzel.

“I like that plan,” Smithy agreed.

Grabbing his friend by the hand, Smithy raced for the closest wall and threw them both towards it. Rather than slip through, they hit the wall with two short, solid thunks.

“Stupid enchantments,” Smithy grumbled, rubbing his forehead.

He and Denzel both turned to find Cassian now almost completely filling one half of the room.

“Ugh, he’s terrifying,” said Smithy, pressing his back against the wall.

“Yep,” Denzel agreed.

“It’s like someone crossed a bogey with a load of lions,” Smithy pointed out.

“Yep,” Denzel agreed again.

“Here, what would you rather, right? Be eaten by a giant bogey crossed with a load of lions, or eat a giant bogey crossed with a load of—”

Cassian wasn’t prepared to offer them the option. His gooey green body grew a set of kangaroo-like legs and launched him across the room, all his many mouths opening wide to reveal all his many, many teeth.

Denzel and Smithy both raised their fists, closed their eyes and began punching frantically at thin air. They were both swinging wildly when they heard a short, sudden hiss, which was followed almost immediately by an angry shout and a heavy thump.

Opening one eye each, Denzel and Smithy saw the Cassian-creature being pinned down in the middle of the room by what looked like an explosion of shaving foam. He writhed on the floor, but no matter how hard he struggled, he couldn’t pull himself free of the fizzing white foam.

The door to the interview room opened. Two Spectre Collectors entered – a boy in a blue and silver uniform, and a girl in a long, flowing red robe.

“Samara! Boyle!” Denzel gasped. “Thank God.”

“Don’t thank God, thank me,” said Boyle, the boy in the uniform. He pointed to the ceiling, where a small nozzle dripped a final few blobs of the foam on to Cassian. “That was my idea.”

“I made the foam,” Samara pointed out. “So it was a joint effort.”

“But I invented the delivery mechanism,” said Boyle. “So it was mostly me.”

Sneering, he nudged Cassian with the toe of his boot. A string of sticky green gloop stuck to it.

“Oh, and in case you were wondering?” Boyle said to the helpless ghost. “Freedom revoked. You’re totally going to the vault.”

Cassian’s many mouths sighed. “It’s a fair cop, I suppose.”

“There is no Fair Cop,” Smithy growled. “Only Bad Cop and Good Cop.”

He thought about this.

“Although, Good Cop is probably pretty fair, I suppose. Compared to Bad Cop, anyway.”

He turned to the others to ask their opinion, and saw Boyle glaring at him.

“Don’t you two have to be somewhere?” Boyle demanded.

Denzel took Smithy by the arm. “Uh, yes,” he said, sliding along the wall towards the door and shrinking under Boyle’s glare. “Come on, Smithy. That next ghost isn’t going to interview itself!”

CHAPTER 2

Denzel and Smithy stood by the door of Interview Room Two, Denzel’s hand resting on the handle.

“I don’t think we should do Good Cop, Bad Cop any more,” he said, not yet opening the door.

“I agree,” said Smithy.

This caught Denzel off guard. “Really? I mean, you do? I mean, great.”

“We should be Bad Cop and Worse Cop,” Smithy suggested. “You be a bit mean and aggressive, and I’ll set them on fire.”

Denzel stared blankly back at him.

“Not actual fire, obviously,” said Smithy.

“Oh. Good,” said Denzel, relieved.

“Ghost fire.”

“Right,” said Denzel.

“Which is worse.”

Part of Denzel was interested to know what made being set on ghost fire worse than being set on actual fire, but a much bigger part of him didn’t want to find out.

“Let’s just be ourselves,” Denzel suggested. “And we’ll see what happens.”

Smithy sucked in his bottom lip as he thought about this. “OK, but you be me and I’ll be you.”

“Or I could be me, and you could be you,” Denzel countered.

Smithy spat on his hand and held it out to Denzel. “Deal!”

They shook, then Denzel drew in a deep breath and opened the door to the interview room. Smithy went through first, and made it almost two whole steps before his entire world turned upside down and inside out, then spun in big looping circles around him.

“Uh…” he said. He said it for quite a long time, until he started to sound a bit like a broken robot.

His jaw had dropped open. His toes had curled up. His heart, which technically hadn’t beaten in centuries, thumped against the inside of his chest.

There, sitting behind the table, was a girl.

No, not just a girl. That wasn’t doing her justice. The girl, Smithy thought. The only girl in the whole wide world.

Sure, logically he knew that other girls probably existed, but right now he didn’t ever remember seeing one before. At least, not one like this.

She sat bright and upright in her chair with her hands neatly crossed on the table in front of her. She was mostly solid, with just a hint of something glittery and sparkling playing across her smooth skin, and had a crop of red hair that made her look like her head was on fire. Ghost fire, if he was being specific.

Her nose swooped down and curved upwards at the end, like a perfect tiny ski slope. Above it, her eyes twinkled with mischief. Below it, her mouth was curled into a little smile that Smithy wanted to frame on his bedroom wall and look at forever.

“But not in a creepy way,” he said aloud.

The girl and Denzel both looked confused.

“You what?” Denzel asked.

“Yes,” said Smithy, still gazing in wonder at the ghost girl in the chair.

Denzel nudged him in the back, breaking the spell. “Shift out of the way so I can get the door closed.”

Smithy stared at his legs in surprise, like he’d only just remembered he had them. They plodded him over to one of the two empty chairs while Denzel closed the door. It locked with a clunk, securing the room.

Denzel smiled politely at the ghost girl and took his seat. Smithy was standing behind his own chair, leaning on the backrest as if he might fall over at any moment.

“Smithy?” Denzel said.

“Hmm?” said Smithy, still not taking his eyes off the girl. She regarded him curiously with one eyebrow raised.

“Is he OK?” the girl asked.

“HAHAHAHAHA! YES!” said Smithy, much too loudly.

Denzel sighed. “It’s funny. I get asked that a lot.”

“HAHAHAHAHA! YES!” said Smithy again.

He sat down suddenly, throwing himself on to the plastic seat like a finalist in the Musical Chairs World Cup.

Denzel watched him from the corner of his eye for a moment, then opened his notepad. “OK. Sorry about that,” he began. “Tabitha?”

“Tabatha,” the girl corrected.

Denzel frowned. “That’s what I said.”

“With an A,” the girl explained.

Denzel’s lips moved silently. “Tabitha always has an A. It’s got two. Or have I been spelling it wrong?”

“HAHAHAHAHA! YES!” said Smithy, then he slapped himself across the face, looked momentarily surprised, and seemed to relax a little.

“T-A-B-A-T-H-A,” Tabatha spelled out. “Three As.”

“Ah. Right,” said Denzel. He made a note in his pad, then smiled encouragingly. “So, you’re probably wondering what’s happening right now?”

Tabatha shrugged. “I was captured by the Spectre Collectors. Normally, I’d be flung straight into Spectral Storage, but…”

She looked Denzel and Smithy up and down. “You two came along and started something new.”

She grinned broadly, showing off a mouth full of teeth that were just ever-so-slightly crooked, but which somehow made her even more perfect in Smithy’s eyes.

“You know about the Spectre Collectors?” Denzel asked. “About us, I mean? You know who we are?”

Tabatha shrugged. “Let’s just say this isn’t my first run-in with you guys.”

“Then how come you were roaming free?” Denzel wondered.

“Let’s also say I’m good at escaping.”

She leaned closer again. “Truth is, I’ve been keeping an eye on you. Your run-in with the director of this place, the thing with the shark and the Viking…”

“Wait,” said Smithy. “What shark and Viking?”

Denzel eyed him for a moment, trying to work out if he was being serious. “In New York,” he said. “The big ghost shark and ghost Viking we fought.”

“Who, us?” asked Smithy.

“Yes,” said Denzel.

Smithy continued to look blank.

“Have you been sniffing the memory dust?” Denzel asked. “We got recruited into the Spectre Collectors. We got sent to New York. A load of ghosts appeared, including a shark and a Viking. There was a big monkey.”

“It’s not ringing any bells,” Smithy said.

Denzel sighed. “We had a pizza.”

“Wait. Yes. Now I remember,” said Smithy. He nodded encouragingly. “Continue.”

“How do you know about all that stuff?” asked Denzel, turning back to Tabatha.

She shrugged and smiled at him. “I keep my ear to the ground,” she said. “I know a lot of things.”

Denzel got the impression she wasn’t about to explain further, so he flipped open his notebook, ready to start writing.

“OK, so. Question One. Are you a good ghost, Tabatha?”

“Sometimes,” Tabatha replied.

Denzel scribbled in the pad. “Are you a bad ghost?”

Tabatha’s eyes twinkled. “Sometimes. Though never on Tuesdays.”

Denzel stopped mid-scribble. “Why not Tuesdays?”

“On Tuesdays, I save the world,” Tabatha said, quite matter-of-factly.

Smithy stared in wonder. “What, every Tuesday?”

“Most Tuesdays,” Tabatha said. “And not always this world.”

“What do you save it from?” Smithy wondered.

Tabatha made a little weighing motion with her hands. “Depends on the Tuesday.”

Denzel had a horrible feeling this interview was already starting to get away from him. He looked down at his notes until he found what Tabatha was being charged with. Unfortunately, he couldn’t even begin to think about how to pronounce it. It started with ecto and ended with diaphantomism, but everything in between may as well have been a string of gibberish.

The good ghost/bad ghost questions hadn’t really helped figure out Tabatha’s motives. He had no choice. He’d have to dig deeper, and that meant going off-script.

“So,” Denzel said, his mind racing as he tried to come up with some more questions. “Ghosts.”

Tabatha and Smithy both looked at him. From their expressions, they were clearly expecting some sort of follow-up, but Denzel had already drawn a blank. He raised his eyebrows and stared expectantly at them.

“What about them?” asked Tabatha.

“Um, what do you think of them?” Denzel asked.

Tabatha’s eyes met Smithy’s. It was, Smithy thought, the greatest moment of his afterlife.

“Some of them are all right,” she said. “Some of them aren’t.”

“Why are you still asking her questions?” Smithy wondered. “You heard her, she saves the world every Tuesday! She’s obviously good.”

Denzel leaned in closer to his friend and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Yes, but she doesn’t really, does she? She’s just saying that.”

Something solid clonked Denzel on the head. He looked across the table to find Tabatha wielding a little walking cane with a shiny gold fist on the end. He rubbed his head where the knuckles had rapped him.

“It’s rude to whisper,” Tabatha said.

“Where did you get that from?” Denzel demanded.

Tabatha folded the cane in half, then squashed both ends together between her palms, vanishing it like a magician’s wand.

“Where did I get what?” she asked innocently. She leaned back in her chair. “And no, I’m not ‘just saying that’. I save the world every Tuesday. Fact.”

“How? From what? And why only Tuesdays?” Denzel demanded, still rubbing his head.

Tabatha counted on her fingers. “That varies. That also varies. And because Tuesdays are dangerous, obviously.” She snorted. “Everyone knows that.”

Denzel’s face made it very clear that he still wasn’t buying it. Tabatha sighed.

“OK, take last Tuesday,” she said, jabbing a thumb back over her shoulder as if that particular day was right behind her somewhere. “Remember when those Void Hippos trampled all over the timestream?”

Denzel and Smithy exchanged glances.

“No,” said Denzel.

Tabatha flashed them a beaming smile. “I rest my case,” she said, and something inside Smithy melted when she winked at him.

“She saved the timestream, Denzel!” Smithy yelped. “From Void Hippos!”

“What are Void Hippos?” Denzel asked.

“Does it matter? She stopped them!” Smithy continued. “We have to let her go!”

Denzel was less sure. “Let’s not rush into it,” he suggested. “We don’t know enough about her yet.”

From outside in the corridor, there came a thump and a roar.

“What’s that?” Tabatha asked.

“The guy next door,” Denzel explained. “We said his name and it turned him into a big monster.”

Tabatha nodded sagely. “Ah. Yeah, that can happen. They’re powerful things, names.”

The door to the interview room shook. A raised voice – Boyle’s, Denzel thought – shouted, “Stand down!” in quite an angry way.

Denzel and Smithy’s chairs creaked as they turned to look in the direction of the sound. That was why they were looking straight at the door when it exploded off its hinges and a blubbery lump of green goo forced its way inside, shrugging off a couple of Spectre Collectors who had jumped on to its back.

Its countless teeth bared when it saw Denzel. Four Hulk-like arms sprouted from its blobby body, the thick fingers balling into fists as the monster hurled itself at the boys.

“He is coming!” hissed a multitude of voices from the thing’s many mouths. “He is coming!”

Denzel tried to jump clear, but the Cassian-blob was too close, moving too fast. He cried out in panic as a slimy hand clamped down on the top of his head, and then all he could see were teeth as the monster lunged.

KER-SPLAT!

The creature exploded, and several hundred litres of green gunge splattered across Denzel, Smithy and the rest of the room. In that order.

For a moment, Denzel just stood there, frozen to the spot, his breath coming in deep, panicky gulps.

At last, he turned slowly to find Tabatha on her feet, her cane held in one hand. The forefinger of the little golden fist was extended. Denzel and Smithy both watched a curl of smoke rise from it, before the finger tucked back into the fist and a thumb raised instead.

“You’re welcome,” said Tabatha. She folded the cane up until it vanished, then sat down and nodded in the direction of Denzel’s slime-coated notepad. “Saved your life,” she said, her big, broad, beamer of a smile returning. “You might want to write that down.”

CHAPTER 3

“I don’t like it,” said Boyle. He, Samara and Denzel were in one of the underground complex’s security rooms, watching the camera feed from the interview room where Tabatha was being held. Smithy had stayed behind to “keep an eye on her”. He seemed to be taking this literally, as he’d done nothing but stare at her for the past six minutes, and showed no signs of stopping.

“To be fair, you don’t like anything,” Samara said. “And she did save Denzel.”

“I had it under control,” Boyle insisted.

“It didn’t feel very under control when that thing had my whole head in its hand,” Denzel pointed out.

“We would have stopped it,” said Boyle.

“What, before it had cracked Denzel’s skull open like an egg, or after?” asked Samara. She turned to Denzel, ignoring Boyle’s continued protests. “What did you say her name was?”

“Tabatha,” said Denzel. “With an A.”

“Tabitha always has an A,” said Boyle.

“T-A-B-A-T-H-A,” Denzel recited.

For some reason, this just seemed to annoy Boyle more. He tutted and shook his head, but said nothing.

“She said she saved the timestream from Void Hippos last Tuesday,” said Denzel.

He had been expecting them to laugh at that, so the serious glance they shared surprised him. “What?” he asked. “She didn’t, did she?”

“Hard to say,” said Samara. “Dangerous things.”