Brutus, Dooley and I watched him stoically. This meant war.
THE END
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Excerpt from Ghost of Girlband Past (Ghosts of London 5)
Prologue
London Borrow of Hackney, August 26, 1997
Five women stood staring down into the freshly dug hole. They gazed dispassionately upon the body of the man they’d just killed and unceremoniously dumped into the hole. Rain was lashing the earth with a dull thrumming sound, stirring up a musty scent that filled their nostrils, rivulets of muddy water flowing into the pit. They were soaking wet and streaked with mud, but they didn’t care.
“Is the monster dead?” asked Janell. Her red hair was plastered to her skull and she was shivering violently. “Is it really dead?”
“It is,” said Carrie, the sporty one amongst the five friends. “We’ve slain it.”
“I can’t believe it,” said Janell.
“What can’t you believe?” asked Amaryllis. “That it’s dead or that we killed it?”
“Both.”
“Better believe it,” grunted Courtney. Rain was streaming down her face, which now resembled a raccoon’s, her mascara creating black streaks across her cheeks.
“And now it’s time to make sure it stays dead,” said Perpetua, and flicked an amulet on top of the body.
Five pairs of eyes followed the silver amulet as it described a perfect arc through the air, then landed on the monster’s chest, where it would make sure it would never rear its ugly head again.
Five shovels dug into the pile of dirt next to the hole and dumped the wet earth onto the body. The fifth and final shovelful was thrown down by Amaryllis, the youngest of the bunch, and the one who’d suffered the most at the hands of the man. She hesitated before tossing the soggy soil onto their victim. They should have closed his eyes. It was way too creepy staring into those dead eyes. They were fixed on her, an accusing expression gleaming in those dead orbs. As if ready to rear up, and attack them again. Finally, with a brave whimper, she flipped the shovel blade and the muddy sod dropped down, plunking down onto the man’s face.
“Well done, Amaryllis,” said Courtney. “Now let’s pray this is the end.”
“This is the end,” they all murmured softly, before digging their shovels in again.
They worked in silence, as more and more of the black earth covered the dead man, soon completely obscuring him from view. When the hole was filled up, they flattened the earth with their shovels, then rolled the plaque back into place. And as they walked away, their deed done, lightning slashed the night sky, and lit up the plaque. It read: Cardinal Yardley Roman Catholic School Time Capsule – Not To Be Opened Before 2067.
London Borrow of Hackney, Present Day
There was a full moon out, which made the work that much easier. Of course, it also meant they could easily be seen from the road by anyone walking their dog.
“Come on, Doug,” said Ricky. “No one in their right mind walks their dog at this time of night. They’d be completely mental!”
“They might,” Ricky said, anxiously glancing up and down the street.
The two friends had come down to the front lawn of the Cardinal Yardley School, their alma mater, to do something they’d been wanting to do since they were little kids. Now, since reaching the ripe old age of twelve, no longer boys but men, they’d decided finally to screw up their courage to the sticking point and raise the capsule.
“Do you think it’s heavy?” asked Doug Adams, the fair-haired one of the two. He shoved his shovel into the ground and took out a first chunk of turf and dumped it to the side.
“I don’t think so,” said his best friend, dark-haired Rick Curtis. “Most of these capsules are quite small.” He was staring pensively and a little trepidatiously at the ancient stone walls of the school’s main building. It looked medieval, with its fortified battlements, thick masonry and heavy oak entrance door. It reminded him more of a dungeon than an actual school. He shivered. “This place gives me the creeps,” he confessed.
“Which is exactly why we need to dig up this capsule,” said Doug, his tongue sticking out while he stuck his spade into the ground again.
They’d had some trouble removing the heavy bronze plaque and dumping it to the side, and the deeper they dug, the more Rick was having second thoughts about this endeavor. “What if they put some kind of protection in place?” he asked. “You know, like in those Indiana Jones movies?”
“Are you kidding? This isn’t some ancient treasure, Ricky. Just a bunch of old crap.”
“If it’s just a bunch of old crap, why are we digging it up?” he asked heatedly.
“There might be some fun stuff in there,” said Doug, always the more adventurous of the twosome.
“Like what?”
“Like Mrs. Rampart’s knickers.”
Rick grinned. He would like that. He hated Mrs. Rampart’s guts. Ever since she’d punished him for accidentally aiming a soccer ball straight through the library window, she’d had it in for him. “We could fly her knickers from the school flagpole!”
“Or we could boil them down and make Mrs. Rampart Knickers Juice! We could bottle it and sell it and make a fortune!”
“Or we could stick it on the head of Cardinal Yardley himself!”
They both looked up at the statue of the old cardinal, which stood sentinel in front of the school, his eyes staring manly up at the sky, his long beard brandishing in the wind, his funny-looking hat slightly askance, as if he’d dipped into the sacramental wine again. Both boys’ eyes gleamed. Yeah, this was a right great scheme: dig up Mrs. Rampart’s knickers and stick them on the head of that old fruitcake Cardinal Yardley.
With renewed fervor, they dug their spades in. It was hard going, and the capsule proved to have been buried a lot deeper than they’d anticipated when they’d concocted this wild scheme, but finally Rick’s spade hit something solid. His eyes went wide with excitement. “I think I’ve got it, Doug!”
“Go on, then. Don’t stop now,” Doug urged. And as they cleared away the dirt, Rick saw something glimmering in the moonlight. It looked like… an amulet.
“Hey, look at that!” said Doug. “We found treasure after all!”
Rick reached down and picked up the amulet. He removed the caked earth and twisted the precious find in his fingers.
“I think it’s silver,” said Doug, his voice reduced to an awestruck squeak. “Regular silver!”
“There must be more,” said Rick, and started removing the dirt with his hands.
He felt it before he saw it. There was something mushy under his hands. Something soft and squishy. And when he finally reared back, a scream stifled in his throat, Doug asked, “What is it? What’s wrong, Ricky?”
He gestured at the face of the man he’d just uncovered. “It’s—it’s—it’s a body, Doug! There’s a dead body down there!”
And then they were both screaming.
When they’d finally recovered their sangfroid, Doug said, “We have to bury it again. No one can know we were here.”
Rick quickly agreed. He could just imagine what his parents would say if they found out that instead of having a sleepover at Doug’s place, he was digging up dead bodies in the middle of the night.
They quickly shoved the dirt they’d removed back into place, then placed the clumps of turf on top of them and rolled the plaque to cover up the damage they’d done. When they were finished, no one could see that the site had been disturbed. And as Rick threw one final glance at their handiwork, a glint caught his eye. And then he saw it: Doug was throwing the silver amulet in the air and deftly catching it again.