‘What do you think, my presh? Is it the best thing you’ve ever loaded?’ said Lady Craven hopefully.
Her daughter delicately spat into her hanky. ‘Not really, Mum. It’s just … depressing?’
An awkward silence filled the ballroom. The young people next to Drixie nodded their heads in agreement.
Her words were like a slap. Depressing?
‘Bit of a thrill kill,’ said someone in the crowd. ‘Not what we’re into.’
‘Major unlike. Please swipe,’ spluttered someone else. ‘Or wipe? Just make it stop.’
Drixie nodded. ‘Can you delete, or something?’
‘Delete?’ said Crawler. ‘But … you’ve got at least four minutes left before you need to take the antidote.’
Drixie shrugged and turned back to her friends.
An involuntary gasp left my lips. Had she literally just turned her back on a poltergeist? Did she not know how dangerous that was? I stared around the room. Shock and embarrassment erupted on my skin. My limbs twitched with frustration. I was the star attraction. But she thought I was depressing?
Lady Craven had turned to Crawler. A defeated smile fell out of her face, as empty as a nut thrown by a squirrel. ‘Looks like I got another surprise wrong,’ she said softly. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Lane, but you might as well take it away—’
‘Nope,’ I heard myself shouting. ‘Big fat nope to that.’ My voice flew around the ballroom and its echo came back at us like a gunshot.
Scanlon gave me a warning glance.
I glared back at him. ‘Scanlon, we’ve come all this way, I’ve barely been on this stupid box for more than a minute, and now these … these icy puddles are telling us to leave?’
‘Icy what?’ he said.
‘If you insist,’ Crawler was saying to Lady Craven. ‘We’ll administer the antidote right now.’
‘Oh no you won’t,’ I shouted. And then I located the source of my anger, and raised my voice even more.
The tiny tanned teenager turned around from her friends, surprise and pain carving up her face. She seemed to shrink a couple of centimetres as she finally registered my fury.
‘The poltergeist is shouting at me,’ she gasped, her lips white and trembling with sickness and indignation. ‘She’s fleck shouting at me. Can’t she see I’m not well?’
‘Tell it to stop,’ said her mother. ‘Right now. How disgraceful.’
‘Oh, get over yourself,’ I snapped, jumping off the box on to the middle of the marble floor. ‘You wanted me to entertain your guests, didn’t you? Well, now you’re going to get what you paid for.’
I mean, come on, Lady Big Bucks. Think a little. You don’t invite a poltergeist to your party and then not expect it to get angry. It was like stroking a sabre-toothed tiger and being surprised when it bit off your arm. Wake up and smell the ectoplasm, yeah?
THE PARTY GUESTS began to back away from me slowly, their hands out in a placating gesture as if I was a rabid dog. The few that weren’t doing this weren’t being polite or anything – it’s just that they were too busy slipping into unconsciousness.
For a second, I almost forgot where I was. A tiny, strangled cry came from my left, and I whirled upon it almost gratefully. Ah, yes. Drixie. Drixie Tink. I mean, what sort of a name was that, for starters? That was enough to make me lose my temper right there.
Anyway, Drixie Tink was swaying violently, still on her feet but barely, and quite purple. Erratic gulping noises escaped from her mouth as she took in that unnerving proximity between her and me. Her eyes widened with horror at my battered, bloody, salty corpse, the gaping wounds on my cheeks, the yellowing bruises, those awful nailless fingers that spoke of my last scramble for life.
Grinning, I took a small step towards her.
She fell to the floor, moaning. Her heels drummed out a weak beat on the floor as she tried to inch away from me.
‘Stop,’ she spluttered, wriggling like a woodlouse. ‘Please!’
‘What’s wrong with you? Worried I’ll stain your dress?’ I said.
She’d turned her back on me. She’d made me invisible. It was like dying all over again. Sometimes not being seen is the most violent thing in the world. But I’d make them see me whether they liked it or not.
I didn’t even need to smash anything in that room to destroy it. I mean, I did, obviously, you know me, but actually I caused the most damage just by being there. In their home. Their lives. That was the most destructive thing of all.
Because I showed them what they’d become one day.
At first, I chased them. That was fun. They scattered like weak little pigeons and crammed themselves into corners, crying and whimpering. That was when I sat next to them. I patted their hair. Moved my fingers tenderly up and down their cheeks, and watched as they cried and flinched and – yep – had tiny little accidents.
Crawler ran over and tried, half-heartedly, to stop me by making vague, hugging movements with his arms, but he hadn’t taken the Ghoul Aid so it was easy to dodge out of his reach. He didn’t seem that desperate to stop me either.
When I got bored of prodding them with my clammy fingers, I began to fling china plates at the walls right next to their faces, which was really satisfying. Then I ripped the robot staff in half, which was much trickier than I’d first thought, and sort of like pulling a massive television to bits – so many wires. But when I had about five of those silver spinny discs at my disposal, I plopped five conscious guests on top of them and pushed them, screaming and wailing, down the marble floor and out through the double doors.
Scanlon kept running around the room, darting between the flying crockery and the guests on wheels, giving out
