Dan and the Caverns of Bone (11 page)

And someone is pulling at me.

‘Get in, Dan. It's wet in the water.'

I look up and see Brian's ferrety silhouette against the combined ghost glow of Simon and Jojo right behind him. And I can't argue with his powers of observation – it
is
wet in the water. I reach into the boat and haul myself in, Bri tugging at me with the power of a very small Jack Russell. Luci is sitting at the front with a long-bladed paddle, propelling us gently. The torch is propped beside her.

‘Gngnk…' I manage to say from the freezing pool I've made at the bottom of the boat. ‘W-w-where are we?'

‘I do not know, I 'ave never been here,' Luci says, straining to see ahead. ‘But the only thing that matters is we 'ave escaped Death.' Then she turns and gives me a look that would stop a charging rhino and make it blush. ‘Thanks to you.'

I sit up and shake the hair. A small white fish falls out and lands in my lap. It looks up at me with bulbous, unseeing eyes before springing into the air and plopping over the side.

‘C…cool.' I pick up the coat from where Luci has dropped it, and slip it on. ‘S…Si, any great ideas in that leaky head of yours?'

‘For regaining the surface, you mean?' Si puffs ectoplasm from his bullet hole. ‘To escape the hellish confines of this nightmare deep? To feel, once more, the golden touch of the eternal sun?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Then no. But something of practical importance has occurred to me, Daniel, especially given the sounds emanating from behind us.'

Emanating? What sounds are emanating? I turn back but I can't see a thing beyond the spectral glow in the boat – the lake must be enormous. But I can hear rushing water behind. And…

‘Luci, stop paddling a moment. Bri, quit fidgeting. Listen!'

From behind, barely audible above the constant roar of the fast water that feeds the lake, there's a steady
swoosh sploosh
sound.

‘Si?'

‘Well, while we're all celebrating our escape from the clutches of Death,' my oh-so-helpful sidekick says, ‘it might be well to remember that there was a
second
boat.'

I look at Luci and she looks back. No one looks at Brian, but we both know what he's thinking from the frightened squeaks that break out.

I pick up the torch and shine its puny light into the dark behind. It's not enough to give more than the barest impression of what's there, but then again, it's surprising how little light you need to spot the Grim Reaper as he stands in a boat, propelling himself along with great sweeps of his scythe.

‘Dan,' says Luci, in a trembly voice. ‘What is that word you always say, when things are going badly?'

‘Er… crapsticks?' I suggest.

‘
Oui
. That is it.'

‘Let's take it as said, then, shall we? And row!'

Luci jumps forward again, and starts paddling like an Amazon warrior. There's a big pole in the bottom of the boat, and I grab that, shoving it in the water behind us, trying to propel us along the bottom of the lake.

Only there is no bottom to this lake. At least, none I can find.

‘Bri, use your hands,' I say. ‘Si, any chance you can blast us along with ghost power?'

‘Alas, no,' he says with a look of elegant regret,
as Brian's small splashes join our own efforts. ‘But I suggest you increase speed somehow. See, he gains on us!'

I look round and sure enough, it turns out that a scythe is an excellent paddle. And maybe Death sees me looking, I don't know, but at this moment a horrible, ringing laugh breaks out. It booms round the lake and the invisible cavern above.

‘Okay, Si – that's not the hotel porter, is it?'

‘I fear not.'

‘And the owners of the squat or South American bankers or whatever? It's not likely to be them either?'

‘Why would anyone wanting to drive out Luci and her friends terrorise the
whole
catacombs, Daniel?'

‘But, surely you don't think…?'

‘He comes with a strength and vigour that is scarcely human, his face is a mask of bone…'

‘But, Si,
you're
dead. And you didn't see the Grim Reaper when you copped it, did you?'

‘Well, no, but I did have a bullet expanding in my brain at the time. Perhaps I missed him.'

‘I can see something,' Luci calls. ‘Up ahead. It is another tunnel, another way out!'

I strain forward, and sure enough, there's a vast stone arch looming in the darkness ahead, below a bloom of sparkling stalactites that hang from the rock above.

I turn the pole in the water behind us, and force the front of the boat that way. With Luci still paddling we should be able to reach the arch before our deathly pursuer. And maybe that explains what happens next.

‘What's that noise?' says Brian

‘Bri, will you stop hearing noises!'

‘No, listen – it's like…'

But then the world explodes with a sound louder than any I could have imagined. A patch of inky water beside the boat flies into the air and sprays over us.

‘… a gun being cocked,' Brian finishes weakly.

And it's true. In the boat behind us, Death has thrown down his scythe and is taking aim with a very un-supernatural – but all the more deadly for that – shotgun.

‘Get down!' I shout, wondering how much protection the sides of this little boat will give. And I find out immediately as a second boom nearly bursts my eardrums. A chunk of boat vanishes from the
woodwork right beside my head, carrying my purple specs away with it.

‘Double barrelled,' I gasp, peering back through the hole. ‘Only two shots. He's re-loading!'

‘Then we 'ave no time to waste,' cries Luci, and she stands behind me. Before I can say or do anything, she takes up the paddle, swings it through 180 degrees of pure wronged-Goth anger, and lets go.

I've never seen a paddle look more like a weapon of vengeance in my life, but that's exactly how it appears as it swirls through the air. It hits Death square in the chest with a satisfying
thud
, knocking him off his feet. There's a
ploof
as the shotgun spins into the water. Then Luci follows through with a torrent of filthy-sounding French that even I'm glad I can't understand.

The ghost of Jojo lets out a whoop of spectral glee and dances crazily around his sister. She has never looked more like a panther than she does now.

‘One small problem,' Si points out, in his most infuriating voice.

I give him the eyebrow as I stand beside Luci.

‘We needed that paddle to move.'

We look back at the other boat and see Death stagger to his feet. The bony grin from the hood
suggests that he's realised the same thing. He picks up his scythe, letting out another peal of terrible laughter. With a great dig of the scythe into the water, he surges towards us.

‘Crapsteeks!' says Luci.

I grab the pole, and begin pushing for all I'm worth. And amazingly I can finally touch the bottom, so we ease forward in our desperate, slow-speed boat chase. But I'm not entirely concentrating on our predicament, not right now, because I've just noticed something.

I saw it as Death got back to his feet. But it's only now that I realise what it is.

‘If only I 'ad something else to throw!' Luci cries in exasperation, as she looks about the interior of the boat with the torch. ‘But there is nothing!'

But she's wrong. There
is
something we could throw. And what starts as an idea that her words bring into my head quickly becomes a notion that links everything together. And that becomes a plan.

‘Bri, have you got any paperclips in your pocket?'

‘Er…'

‘It's not a trick question, Bri!'

‘Er…' He rummages in his jeans. ‘Yes, a few, but…'

I drop the newspaper – the one I found in the catacombs last time and which is still rolled up dry in my coat pocket – on his lap.

‘Make a plane, Brian. Make the best paper aeroplane of your life.'

‘But…'

‘Dan?' Luci looks at me like she can't believe what I'm saying.

‘Oi, can't I get a little trust around here? I'm the expert on the scene, yeah? The kid who sees dead
people? And I'm telling you, Brian, to make like a sheep and
fold
!'

Brian squeaks, but as I dig the pole again and again into the water, I hear him tear off a sheet and start his furtive rustlings. I'm about to say something to hurry him along, when he beats me to it.

‘It's more of a dart than a true plane,' he explains, fixing a paperclip on the nose and holding it up. My mouth falls open. It's so astonishingly, blindingly complex that I can hardly believe he's made it so fast. ‘I added a fifth stabiliser along the spine, so that – '

‘We'll look at the graphs later!' I shout. ‘Just chuck it at old bony face!'

‘What?' say both Brian and Luci.

Death lets out another peal of inhuman laughter as he gains further. He's going to catch us. He waves his scythe in triumph.

‘Brian! Throw the freakin' plane!'

Bri gives me a wild look, but then turns in the boat anyway, getting ready to throw. I lean over to Si and whisper a quick instruction in his spectral ear.

Brian throws his plane.

And for someone who can make paper do foldy things I didn't think possible, it turns out Brian's pretty rubbish at the actual throwing part. In fact, by
the time Si manages to catch hold of it with his mind, the plane is almost in the water. But using the same telekinetic power that made Baz's jeans fall down on the train, Si sweeps Brian's plane high up into the air.

‘Crikey!' says Brian.

As we all watch, the plane zooms around the cavern at the very limit of sight, gaining speed as it goes. Even Death stops to look up, his hood falling back. What a shame only I can see Simon flying it in a blaze of spectacular ectoplasm. He takes the plane up in a glorious loop into the darkness above. When it reappears, it rockets downwards like a bolt from on high, straight at Death.

And into his right eye socket.

Death lets out a very human sound – ‘Aiii!' – and falls in a billow of black cloak and flailing arms.

This time he doesn't get up. We can all hear the moaning from the bottom of his boat. I look at Brian. His eyes are wide with astonishment.

‘Something tells me that really will be the greatest plane of your life, Bri.'

He stares up at me.

‘I…' he starts. Then his face changes. ‘I… I can hear something.'

‘Freakin' hell, Brian!'

‘No, so can I,' says Luci. ‘What is that?'

And there
is
a sound, a sound that's growing around us – a murmur that's becoming a roar. Then there's a glow, which flickers in the tunnel ahead, before turning into a torrent of light, making us all hold up our hands to our eyes.

A motor boat burst from the tunnel and speeds right past, spraying us with water and setting our little craft rocking like crazy.

‘
Arrêtez-vous!
' comes a cry from the dark, amplified through a megaphone.

It's the boys in
bleu
.

The police vessel turns sharply and slows, making ready to head back to us. But, by chance, this brings it right alongside the second boat. Where – in the blaze of the police spotlight – a figure in black sits up, his face a mask of death. And that mask is ripped off, as the person wearing it clutches at his right eye.

His left eye is already covered with a surgical eye patch.

The engine of the police boat cuts immediately.

‘But Daniel!' Si is at my side in a moment. ‘Who is that?'

‘
Le Commandant
Lavache!' Luci gasps. ‘But… but he is the 'ead of the
cataflics
.
He
is doing this?'

I adjust the coat. If I still had my specs, I'd correct them too.

‘Yeah, the guardian of the Empire of the Dead,' I say. ‘Spent so much time down here, he's gone native, I reckon. Fancied the job of Emperor himself.'

‘But how did you know?' Si is swirling around me impatiently. ‘
How
did you know who it was?'

‘When Luci knocked him down, I saw straight away it was someone in a mask. And someone I'd seen before too. Think about it, Si. What's the one thing you can't hide when you wear a skull mask? Your hooter. Especially when it looks like the front of a battleship. His nose stuck right out through the hole in the middle of the skull, all shiny with sweat.'

By now I'm punting us over to the police. Well, they're our ticket out of this place, aren't they? But I'm in no hurry. Besides, right now they're too busy being flabbergasted by the fact that their chief is the murdering psycho behind all the madness that's been going on down here recently to pay much attention to us.