‘So there you have it,’ gloated Crawler. ‘Now you know. My search is over. I have what I need. I’ll be opening a ghost train with actual ghosts. It’s going to be an absolute smash.’
He clicked a button on the slender gadget in his hand, and on the large screen opposite us, a rippling image appeared.
‘Had these made up specially,’ he said. ‘They’re going out tonight.’
I squinted at the screen. My reading skills weren’t the best any more, what with only having a visitors’ book to practise on, but I managed to make the following words out on the brightly coloured poster:
Obediah painfully attempted to spell out the words for his brother, stumbling at every other letter. ‘We didn’t have much schooling at the spike,’ he said eventually, blushing. ‘What does it say?’
But before I could help, Crawler was off again. ‘You are standing in the ground floor of the Crawler Lane Haunted House and Ghost Train™,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Painstakingly and lovingly hand-built by us.’
Scanlon looked as if he was going to say something, then shrugged and went back to staring at a spot just above my shoulder.
Something clicked into place. All those cuts and grazes he’d turned up with over the summer, his bruised knuckles and the paint splatters …
‘It’s a labour of love,’ smirked Crawler. ‘It’s a masterpiece. It’s right in the middle of a very large private wood, so we’re very remote. And people will travel for millions of miles and pay whatever we tell them to pay for a half-hour ride,’ Crawler boasted, rocking on his feet and looking up at the ceiling, as if contemplating just how high his money would reach.
‘D-dad,’ stammered Scanlon, ‘you never said we were going to put them in here. You said we were going to go into entertainment, and leave the ghost-hunting behind!’
‘I lied,’ said Crawler impatiently. ‘It was for your own good.’
‘Oh, you were lied to, were you, Scanlon?’ I said. ‘By someone you trusted? That must hurt.’
CRAWLER FLICKED ON a few light switches and told us to board the ghost train. ‘I’m going to show you your rooms,’ he said.
With a groan and a clang, the train roared to life, before taking us down murky passages and claustrophobically small tunnels. The entire Haunted House was built around a winding, almost never-ending rail track, which, Crawler explained, was meant to disorientate the passengers, so they never knew exactly where they were.
‘Heightens the experience,’ he said knowledgeably. ‘Make people feel lost, and you’re frightening them already.’
As we flew through dank spaces, staring into the darkness around us, Crawler shouted instructions over his shoulder.
‘You never ask for help. You never address the customers directly, unless it is in character and agreed beforehand. You do not mention the ghost train at all – you maintain the illusion that they are visiting you in your own authentic time and place of origin.’
One of the rooms we sped past contained a working replica of a cotton loom, a massive, noisy, clattering beast made of wood with a heavy barrel in the middle which shunted from one side of the room to the other quickly.
‘I want the workhouse brats to run in and out of the loom, trying to dodge it, as they attempt to rethread the needle and clean the dust from the machinery,’ said Crawler. ‘At various intervals throughout the day, I want them both to die all over again, screaming in pain. But – make it funny. Throw a little slapstick in there. You know, a few pratfalls here and there, before they get mangled.’
‘We’re being asked to just scream and run for a few hours a day?’ Theo looked as if he couldn’t believe his luck.
Obediah nodded. ‘That’s not labour. That’s a holiday.’
The toddler, the Girl With No Name, meanwhile, was to have her own room, a replica nursery, with one cot, one faded blanket and one dirty old teddy bear.
‘The room’s been rigged so that whenever the ghost train enters it, creepy lullaby music will play through the speakers. The punters are going to love it,’ Crawler told Scanlon.
The girl began to cry.
The train made an abrupt turn and led us down a few more corridors, before slamming through a pair of saloon-bar doors, which swung behind us. The room we were in was very bare, with an elevated plinth and a bucket with silver spears inside.
‘This is Isolde’s room, a special place for a bit of role play,’ said Crawler. ‘The spears will be for the customers to throw at it. It has to stand on that plinth and dodge them, while growling and getting angry. If any spears actually hit it, it must pretend to die.’
He’d turned Isolde into a dartboard.
‘How am I going to explain any of that to her?’ said Scanlon, anxiously glancing at the exhibit in question, who was busy picking fleas out of her braids and flicking them away.
Crawler shrugged. ‘It will get the idea eventually, I expect.’
Vanessa’s room was what looked like one big meeting room, with a large desk in the middle. Around the desk sat three male dummies, wearing grey suits and red ties.
‘Oh, I feel right at home,’ said Vanessa.
‘I want the squashed woman to sit here for a while, staring at the pie charts and profit graphs on the wall with a confused look on her face, like she can’t understand it,’ said Crawler.
Vanessa stared at the pie chart. ‘I think the calculations on the graphs are ever so slightly off,’ she whispered to Scanlon. ‘I may be wrong, of course, but—’
‘Then it will ask if anyone wants something from the vending machine. Then it excuses itself and walks to this …’ he gestured at the snack dispenser by the wall, ‘and tries to get something out of it. I’ve rigged the
