The Underground City(6)

“Boooo!” Neil’s heart pounded and he gave the most enormous start.

“Scared of ghosties, Neil!” crowed Graham Flint as his mates burst out laughing.

Miss Mackenzie turned and at the sight of Neil’s white face, beckoned to Graham who sauntered idly up to her.

“Do you wish to stay here and take the tour with the rest of the class, Graham?” she asked.

“Yes, please, Miss.”

“Then we’ll have no more … silly behaviour,” she said sternly. “Honestly,” she said to the tour guide, who had introduced himself as Stan, “I sometimes despair of this class!”

Stan, dressed for the part in a black velvet coat, knee breeches, a ruffled shirt and buckled shoes, had already raised covert giggles and sly nudges from Graham Flint’s little gang and was on the alert for trouble. On the plump side, he had an engaging grin and looked kindly at Neil. “They all try it on,” he said, comfortingly. “Don’t let it worry you, laddie. If there are any ghosts here I’ll eat my hat, I promise you!”

Two or three ghosts, who had been hovering angrily around Graham Flint, creased up at this remark and Neil gave a sickly smile. It was just as well, he reckoned, that Stan wasn’t wearing a hat.

“You’re not looking very well, Neil,” Miss Mackenzie frowned, looking at him searchingly. “You can wait upstairs if you want. It’s really quite airless down here,” she added with a shiver. “To tell you the truth I feel a bit strange myself.”

As two perfectly horrible ghosts were standing at her elbow, Neil wasn’t at all surprised that she felt a bit strange. They looked reasonably solid for ghosts but as they had just drifted through a brick wall he knew they were, as Kitor had said, spirits of the dead. The two men were dressed like Stan, in old-fashioned coats and breeches, but many of the others that were drifting in and out wore rags fit only for scarecrows. There were women, too, he noticed. Some were quite respectably dressed but many were thin hags that hugged tattered shawls round their skinny frames, their faces drawn and grey. It was their eyes that frightened Neil the most, however, for they weren’t proper eyes but black holes that had no depth.

Neil gulped and shook his head. “I’ll be all right, Miss Mackenzie,” he assured her.

Stan gathered them together and led them through a passage into the next house. As they followed him, Neil was glad that Miss Mackenzie had stayed beside him for there seemed to be more ghosts than ever drifting round the rooms and just as he was quite sure that they had come to see what he looked like, he also knew that he was the only one who could see them.



The first indication Neil had that the ghosts were on his side was when a hefty ghost gave Graham Flint an equally hefty push that knocked him into a wall.

“Who did that?” he yelled. “Miss Mackenzie! Somebody pushed me!”

Miss Mackenzie looked round. “But Graham,” she said, “the only people near you are your … er … best friends …”

This was very obviously true, even to Graham. He glowered at them accusingly. “Which one of you was it?” he demanded furiously.

“It wasn’t me!” they all chorused together.

Miss Mackenzie’s lips twisted as she hid a smile. “The standard response!” she said to Stan, who was standing beside her, looking puzzled. Now, Stan, who had in his time, taken many school groups round the Close, had immediately written Graham down as a troublemaker and had been keeping a wary eye on him in case he tried to nick any of the exhibits. It so happened that he had been looking in Graham’s direction when he had thumped against the wall and was quite ready to swear that nobody had pushed him.

Nerves tingling and senses suddenly alert, Stan continued taking them round but it wasn’t long before he realized that this tour was definitely something else. There was nothing he could put his finger on, for the kids looked perfectly normal and attentive; he just knew within himself that something weird was going on. He looked round apprehensively, visited by the oddest notion that somehow they’d travelled back in time; even the set displays seemed to owe more to the seventeenth century than the present day.

By this time, Neil had discovered that the ghosts were cold. He’d noticed it when he’d walked through one by mistake and then felt a fool as he’d muttered “sorry.” Although he was quite sure that no one else could see them, there was no doubt, he thought, that they were affecting the atmosphere of the place. Stan was no longer as bright and cheery as he had been when they’d started and without being consciously aware of it, the class had drawn together in a tight-knit group as though they could sense the spirits drifting around them.