Milrose Munce and the Den of Professional Help (16 page)

Harry, who had flattened himself against the ceiling above Milrose, whispered: “Yow!”

The incantation had been an exquisite success. The door was in shards. Loosten and his dread horde stared through it, aghast, and what they stared at was in fact ghastly. For barrelling down the corridor, with a truly unpleasant look in his eyes, was murderous Sledge.

“There’s our man,” whispered Harry from the ceiling. “Sledge. Terror of the Gridiron. Scourge of the Shower. Catastrophe of the Clubhouse.”

Arabella had done her task well (a task she had long dreamed of). And now, from somewhere deep in the throat of Indomitable Sledge, came the choked words: “Professional Help.”

Milrose prayed that Sledge would not deviate in his barrelling to note a small, sarcastic boy flattened against the wall.

“Professional Help,” grunted Great Sledge as he made his murderous way, hands held out before him in an attitude of strangulation, towards Magister Loosten.

“Excuse me, Sledge,” said Magister Loosten, but Sledge would not be stopped. “My dear Sledge, are you trying to provoke a detention?” But Sledge
would not be slowed. “Um,” Magister Loosten said, then spun in cowardice and squeezed past horned Fossilstiff through the door in the far wall. His robes became polyester and beige as he ran, and Sledge pursued with homicidal fury.

Heroic Sledge swatted Mort Natoor aside as if the assistant principal were a mere dung beetle. His pace would not waver, although Mrs. Ganneril clung to one of his huge legs and both Mordred and Fossilstiff to the other. For he was driven by vengeance.

“Sledge has never forgotten,” whispered Harry, “that it was Magister Loosten who sentenced him to the Dungeons of Professional Help. Works in our favour, doesn’t it.”

The guidance counsellor disappeared down the corridor, and Sledge barrelled bellowing in his wake.

“Now’s my chance,” said Harry. “Wish me luck. And get back to the Den before the floor deplodes.”

“Good luck,” said Milrose. For Harry had determined that now, having engineered this general pandemonium amongst the forces of evil, it would be possible for a ghost—the first ghost in a thousand Fridays—to set foot on the first floor.

I
T HAD BEEN ALMOST THREE DAYS SINCE THE BATTLE IN THE BASEMENT
. A
RABELLA AND
M
ILROSE PERCHED ON THE TOPMOST BUNK, CONFUSED AND WORRIED
. M
ILROSE HAD NOT WITNESSED ANYTHING AFTER THE ESCAPE OF
A
RCHIBALD
L
OOSTEN—HIS EXPLOSION WAS INDEED ABOUT TO UNHAPPEN, AND HE HAD RUSHED BACK TO CLIMB THE STEPLADDER WITH
A
RABELLA.

They’d heard no word from Harry. Had he managed to invade the first floor? (He had not intended much of an invasion: simply to race up the stairs to the second floor, with perhaps a couple of dead athletes. But merely passing through the first floor was, of course, a giant leap for ghostkind.)

Friday afternoon was ominously silent. All day Saturday they heard nothing. And now Sunday was
drawing to a close. On Monday, in a few short hours, they were destined to be cured.

“I don’t get it,” said Milrose. “The plan wasn’t
that
complex—all he had to do was get to the second floor. Then it’s easy. ‘A coalition of the willing,’ he called it—bring together dead guys from all three floors for a coordinated assault. I mean, surely he could get
some
of the ghosts to help out.”

“I can’t imagine my friends on the second floor would abandon us.”

“I can.” Milrose was busy imagining just that. “But the third floor’s reliable—they’re serious people—and Dave’s the guy who set all this in motion, right? And even if my friends somehow … declined, where’s Harry and his rotting jocks?”

As if in response to this, a familiar irritating voice descended from above.

“Munce? Munce, you there?” Harry’s voice came through the ceiling like a keyhole saw.

“Boy, are we glad to hear you!” said Milrose.

The dead jockey luxuriated in these rare words.

“You made it, Harry! How are things on the second floor?”

“Second floor. Yeah. Wow, these guys are bad poets.”

“No kidding. You have, uh, good news, right? You got past the ghost-free place … so you must have forces, like, arrayed?”

“Harold, why don’t you come down here and join us.”

“Um, I’ve kind of had my fill of the first floor.”

“Come on, guy. This isn’t the ordinary first floor. It’s the
Den of Professional Help!
Whole different ball o’ wax.”

“Yeah, well, from what I’ve gathered it’s even worse.”

The worn soles of riding boots nevertheless appeared in the ceiling, and Harry began to descend, inch by inch, until his U-impressed head at last popped out, graced with a nervous expression.

Milrose Munce—who had never really warmed to any basement dweller before—threw his arms around the stunted ghost in a genuine embrace. Harry—who for his part had never considered himself all that embraceable—was taken aback, simultaneously flattered and appalled. This, however, served to blunt the recognition that he was now occupying the terrible first floor.

“Good to see you semi-intact, Harry. Welcome to our humble, like, abode,” said Milrose.

“Er. Yeah. Cool place,” said Harry without tremendous conviction.

“Lovely to see you again, Harold. I’m so happy you survived. Or whatever it is that ghosts do.”

“Sure. Thanks.”

“So, what was it like?”

“Like running up a flight of stairs, actually.”

“Ah.”

“Only infinitely more horrible.”

“Yes.”

“In fact, more like wading through a swamp with scorpions nibbling at your heels.”

“I’m quite sure scorpions don’t nibble, Harold.”

“Okay, but you get the idea. Anyway, we made it. And now we’re gonna get down to business and win this thing.” He set what was left of his jaw. “We can’t just phone this one in. We’re aiming for
magnificence
here.” Hurled Harry was beginning to take on the air of a tiny commander—a sort of crushed Napoleon—and his annoying voice was surprisingly effective in this role. “Munce? Chick? I’m talking
memorable.
We do this right, and years from now they’ll be telling and retelling our story: in the teachers’ lounge, at morning assemblies, in the great showers of post-game athletics. This is it, friends. Vengeance! With a capital V! Honour! With a capital O!”

“Harry, you’re getting weirdly impressive.”

“You only get one chance on the fields of glory,” said Harry. “Okay, well, a couple, but I seriously messed up on the racetrack.” This memory subdued him for a moment.

“Ancient history.”

“Right. Right. And this time … this time I’m not gonna go it alone. This time I’ve got a
team.”

“Excellent! That’s what I wanted to hear. You, uh, got our special poet on board?”

“Sure do. Had to rough him up a bit.”

“Of course.”

“This Poisoned character. Any way of shutting his yap?”

“Can’t be done, I’m afraid. I’ve been trying for ages.”

“He read a three-hundred-page poem at me. No stopping him. It was godawful.”

“Ah.
The Flavour of Indigestion
?”

“That’s the one!”

“He’s been working hard. Used to be only seventy pages or so.”

“It
sucks.”

“Well, yes. So, he’s going to help out?”

“Unfortunately. Uh, Munce? What exactly do you need a poet for?”

“Secret weapon of mass destruction, Harry. I’ll let you in on the strategy when it’s time. But make sure he brings that manuscript. So, where do we stand now, victory-wise?”

“I like to think we stand on the razor’s edge, staring into the abyss.”

“Er, that’s good, right?”

“If you like that kind of thing. Question of attitude. We won that battle in the basement, far as I can tell, pretty decisively. But Loosten’s incantation managed to do a fair bit of damage. You can feel it
on the second floor: that scorpion/swamp feeling. He’s managed to make the rest of the school pretty hairy for us dead guys. And it’s one of those spells that keeps on working once it’s been spoken—gets worse by the hour.”

“Can’t you, maybe, smite it or something? Counterspell?”

“Who knows. Not my territory, that. I’m just working on getting you out of here before you get whacked.”

“I do wish you wouldn’t use that word, Harold.”

“Cured. Whatever.”

“Right. Okay. So, we’ve got our team. Now what?”

“Not a lot. Wait for us. But here’s the thing. There’s gonna be a lot of pressure on you to be, uh, cured before we get a chance to intervene. Just so you know.”

“Great.”

“And you can’t do that. It’s important. You can’t get whacked until we win this thing. Then you can feel free to get whacked all you want.”

“Noted.”

“That’s all.”

“Any, like, pointers? How to, you know, not get whacked?”

Arabella winced with great sensitivity.

“Sorry, can’t help. Anyway, I have to be off—gotta rally the troops. Dunno when precisely we’re going
to be able to come to your aid, but look for us on the morrow.”

“On the morrow? Where you channelling this sick stuff from, Harry?”

“He’s a poet,” said Arabella. “It is being breathed into him from the mysterious place.”

“Right,” said Harry, not pleased. “Catch you.”

And with that he floated up through the ceiling.

Harry’s martial confidence had lifted their spirits. Hope infused terror. The two spoke in excited tones for hours, and then Arabella decided that she could no longer sustain excitement (which was trying for her at the best of times).

“I am too tired to think about this anymore,” said Arabella. “Good night, Milrose.”

“Good night, fair and winsome nay wholesome maiden,” said Milrose, meaning to say “goodnight, Arabella.” (Words were once again beyond his immediate control.)

Arabella gave him an odd, but perhaps appreciative, look, and Milrose met this with misty, ridiculous eyes.

Monday arrived, fully accursed and ominous. It took a while before revealing its true nature, but yes: this looked to be a day that would move them inexorably in the direction of mutually inflicted death. Or worse.

The first part of the morning was deceptively innocuous: a harmless—if mindless—exercise designed to nudge Milrose and Arabella in the direction of normalcy. They were made to flip through magazines, and to discuss the celebrities encountered there with loud enthusiasm. Both felt they were pulling this off quite well.

“Isn’t that Brad fellow
rad
?” said Arabella, doing her very best impression of everybody she loathed.

Unfortunately, this exercise had simply been a warm-up, Massimo announced, for the one they were now to engage in—one that would go a long way towards improving their relations with each other and the world. Today, in order to make great leaps towards normalcy, they would do a particularly intensive exercise in trust.

“One moment,” he said, “while I retrieve the mace. Oh, and here are your blindfolds.”

All of Arabella’s irrational self-possession drained away. She had been doing such a fine job of banishing that medieval device from her mind. As Massimo fiddled with the mace closet, Arabella stared with terror at Milrose. She produced two whole tears, one from each eye, then bowed her head so that they raced each other down the sides of her nose to join pendulously at the tip. “I’m sorry, Milrose,” she whispered. The conjoined tear quivered, and then disengaged from her lovely nose to fall horribly upon the floor.

Milrose, who had never encountered anything like this degree of emotion in his den mate, came very close to weeping himself—and not in his traditional almost-but-not-really-sincere manner.

They stared at each other, with tenderness and dread. And then the ceiling opened above them.

Unseen by any of the three, who had no particular reason to be looking up, the door in the ceiling swung downward, and as Massimo turned back towards the couple, proudly bearing the mace, Hurled Harry descended heroically.

Milrose Munce saw him first. Arabella turned to see what had inspired Milrose with sudden glee, and Hurled Harry opened his arms, palms upwards, to indicate: “Fear not, fair chick, I am here.”

Massimo Natica, of course, saw nothing. For he had not been gifted with the ability to see the glorious dead.

In the wake of Hurled Harry, as if rappelling on invisible ropes, came the rest of the rotting SWAT team. Ghoul after ghoul. First in the vanguard was Third Degree Thor, a bruising Sledge wannabe who had long ago caught fire when he collided with a cheerleader twirling a fiery baton. Next came Desiccated Douglas, who had become lost during an orienteering championship in the desert. Third was Stuck Stu, master of self-combustion. And fourth,
much to the excitement of Milrose Munce, was that master of general combustion, that wizard in the matter of all things that could be made to fly into molten pieces: Deeply Damaged Dave. Dave winked at Milrose, and flexed a muscle.

Wafting down last, clearly terrified, was Poisoned Percy, clutching a manuscript.

Massimo Natica glanced at his watch. “Ah,” he said, placing the mace on the comfy sofa, “our exercise in trust will have to wait. It is time for lunch!”

Arabella sat gracefully on a chair, successfully preventing herself from fainting with relief.

Massimo removed the key from his pocket and unlocked the alarmingly modern lock, which this time made the unambiguous sound of sperm whales being slaughtered. He was passed the habitual tray by the beast with beastly arms. He closed and locked the door.

As Massimo carried the tray over to his famished Helpees, he was tailed by Stuck Stu, who had been an amateur thief before devoting himself to science. Stu quickly and deftly removed the chillingly modern key from the pocket of that swish suit.

As always, they sat in a little circle on the floor and helped themselves to lunch. The little circle was, however, somewhat larger today. The three athletes,
two science victims, and token poet gathered around as well, in various inspired positions.

Desiccated Douglas, a parched ghoul who looked much like an unwound mummy, laid himself out next to Massimo as if posing for a fashion magazine. Douglas sucked his cheeks in, just as he’d seen male models do in order to make themselves more attractive. Now, almost
anything
would have made Douglas more attractive, in that he could hardly get much worse, but this sucking in of cheeks was in fact the one thing capable of making Douglas even more repulsive. Considerably more repulsive. His skin had dried and tightened against his skull—not all that fetching at the best of times—and when he sucked in what was left of his cheeks, this dried skin stretched transparent, revealing all sorts of things you really didn’t want to see.