“ ’Ere, look at this chap. ’E’s makin’ fer the corner ’ouse, and ’e looks in a right state.”
Everybody turned to see what Reggie was referring to, then gazed in silence as they watched the tearful spectre in the snazzy jacket make his way across the turf that had replaced dozens of houses, lifting chubby hands to hide his face and blubbering more volubly as he approached the lonely edifice that loomed there on the other side of Scarletwell. Presumably able to see despite his ectoplasmic tears and pudgy fingers, the Dead Dead Gang stared as the ghost made a sudden detour in a semi-circle from the straight path that he’d previously been following.
“That’ll be the scarlet well that he’s avoiding. ’E don’t want to fall through a few ’undred years of dirt and find ’imself splashin’ about in bloody-lookin’ dye.”
In grunts and nods, the rest of the dead children quietly concurred with Reggie’s explanation. Only big John actually spoke up.
“You know, I think I know him. I think that’s my uncle. I’ve not seen him since I passed on, and I never dreamed that he’d end up as a rough sleeper, but I’m sure that’s him. I wonder what he’s got to feel so down upon himself about?”
“Why don’t yer ask ’im?”
This was Phyllis, standing at John’s side with her truculent features picked out in the dark in silvery needlepoint. The tall good-looking boy, who Reggie somehow managed to resent, envy and like tremendously at the same time, peered off into the gloom towards the sobbing snappy dresser and declined, shaking his head.
“I wizn’t really close to him back when we were alive. Nothing he’d done, just something in his manner that I never cottoned to. Besides, he looks like he’s got enough on his plate already. When someone’s roaring their eyes out like that, generally all they want wiz to be left alone.”
Still covering his tear-stained face, the chequered wraith slid over Scarletwell towards the doorstep of the street’s single remaining house. Wiping one garish sleeve across his dark-ringed eyes the plump man hesitated for a moment on the threshold, and then melted into the closed front door and was gone.
And when they looked round, so was Michael Warren.
“Oh my giddy aunt, ’e’s run orf! Quick, which way’s ’e gone?”
Reggie was mildly startled at how panicked Phyllis sounded. She was turning round in anxious circles, squinting anxiously into the silvered darkness for some sign of the absconded toddler. Settling his bowler hat to what he thought was a more sympathetic angle, he did his gruff best to reassure her.
“Don’t worry, Phyll. ’E’ll soon be back, and even if ’e’s not, it’s not our business. Everybody says ’e’s going back to life soon, anyway. Why not let all that take care of itself? Then we can just get on with scrumping Puck’s Hats from the madhouses, and our adventuring and everything. What about Bill’s plan to dig a big ’ole all the way down to the Stone Age, so that we can capture a ghost woolly-elephant and tame it for a pet?”
Phyllis just stared at him as if appalled by his stupidity. Reggie adjusted his hat to a more defensive slant as she replied in an explosive shower of double-exposed spirit-spit.
“ ’Ave you gone orf yer ’ead? You ’eard what Mrs. Gibbs an’ old Black Charley said about the builders and their punch-up! And there’s all this to-do with the Vernalls and the Porthimoth di Norhan that we ’aven’t sorted ayt yet! You goo and catch mammoths if yer like, but I’m not gunna be in the Third Borough’s bad books, not if I can ’elp it!”
With that, Phyllis turned and raced towards the gated lower Scarletwell Street entrance of Greyfriars flats, which was about the only place that Michael Warren could have disappeared into while they weren’t looking, rabbit-scarf and pictures of herself trailing behind her in a string of grimy flags. The other members of the Dead Dead Gang stared after her for a stunned instant, shocked as much by Phyllis’s bold reference to the Third Borough — Reggie hardly dared to even think the name — as they were by her desperate flight. Gathering themselves up from their gaping stupor they rushed after her, a clattering mob of four, twelve, sixteen, eighty phantom children pouring down the brief and narrow passage leading to the inner courtyard of Greyfriars, pushing their smoky substance through the black iron railings of a gate that had been there for only a few years and thus provided no impediment. Hot on the multiplying heels of Phyllis Painter they burst out into the lower level of a large two-tier concrete enclosure ringed by silent 1930s flats, where everybody paused to take stock of their suddenly alarming situation.
From the gilt-trimmed shadows of the upper courtyard came the frightened cries of cats and dogs, who were no fools when it came to detecting ghostly presences, and the cross shouting of their human owners, who quite clearly were. Along with his deceased companions, Reggie peered into the gloom of the split-level quadrangle. Down at the lower end where they were, half-dead vegetation rustled on a small patch of neglected ground originally intended as a modest arbour. Up three granite steps, on the top deck of the communal yard, a single pair of lady’s tights dangled forgotten from the washing line and brick dustbin-enclosures guarded black bags, split and spilling the unfathomable prolapsed waste of the twenty-first century, the slimy plastic trays and rinds of unfamiliar fruit. Of Michael Warren there was not the slightest trace.
Seeming to summon fresh resolve out of adversity, a steely and determined look came into Phyllis’s pale eyes.
“Right. ’E’ll ’ave either ’eaded up the ’ill and over Lower Crorse Street to the maisonettes, or ’e’ll ’ave cut along the bottom ’ere and come ayt into Bath Street. We’ll split up in two groups so we’ve got a better chance of findin’ ’im. Marjorie, you and John and me wizzle search through the maisonettes. And as fer you two …”
Phyllis turned a somewhat frosty gaze on Bill and Reggie.
“You two can search Bath Street and Moat Place and all round there … or yer can goo and look fer woolly elephants, fer all I care. Now, ’urry up and piss orf, or there’s no tellin’ ’ow far away the little nuisance might ’ave got.”
With that, Phyllis and John and Marjorie swirled up the stone steps and away into the tinfoil glitter of the Greyfriars darkness, leaving Bill and Reggie on the murky path that cut across the courtyard’s lower reaches from Bath Street to Scarletwell. Bill laughed, the laugh of a much older and much lewder individual, despite the little boy’s high voice.
“The dirty old tart. She just wants to be off in the dark with Johnski, and she’s letting poor old Drowned Marge tag along for cover. So, it looks like it’s just you and me then, Reggie me old mucker. Where d’yer fancy lookin’ first?”