Un Lun Dun

42. Haunts and Houses

This had most definitely not been the plan. Deeba’s delight at having escaped the giraffes changed instantly to a new anxiety.

And she couldn’t run out, with the giraffes hovering, watching. She put up her umbrella, uselessly, and held it like a shield. Deeba began to turn on the spot.

“No one come close,” she shouted. “I’m watching. First sign of anyone trying to possess me, I’ll…”

I shouldn’t really have started that sentence, she thought, because there was nothing she could finish it with.

Deeba walked cautiously farther into Wraithtown, turning as she went. It wasn’t just the inhabitants of Wraithtown who were ghosts. It was also the buildings.

Each of the houses, halls, shops, factories, churches, and temples was a core of brick, wood, concrete, or whatever, surrounded by a wispy corona of earlier versions of itself. Every extension that had ever been built and knocked down, every smaller, squatter outline, every different design: all hung on to existence as specters. Their insubstantial, colorless forms shimmered in and out of sight. Every building was cocooned in its older, dead selves.

From all the ghost-windows, the ghosts of Wraithtown watched.

Deeba turned faster and faster as apparitions came onto the street to meet her.

In the light of the lowering loon, translucent figures emerged. They faded up out of nothing, men and women in costumes from throughout history. Some looked like Londoners, in antique wigs and old-fashioned coats. Some looked to Deeba more like UnLondoners, in their peculiar outfits. All were colorless, completely silent, and insubstantial. Deeba could see them through each other.

They wafted closer.

“You stay back!” Deeba said. “Don’t come no closer! I know what you’re trying to do! I just need one piece of information, and then I’m gone.”

The Wraithtown ghosts circled her, and began to talk. She could see their mouths working, but there was not a sound. Deeba shook her head.

They grew agitated, and even looked as if they were shouting, but the only things she could hear were the sighs of the wind, and the far-off cries of dogs and foxes. One ghost soundlessly stamped its foot in frustration. The loonlight glimmered through them.

“I need to see a list. I need to see the list,” Deeba said. She mouthed the words slowly, as if she were talking to someone who didn’t speak good English. “One of you must be able to talk to me,” she said. “Don’t come any closer! I’ll be gone in a second! I just need to see the list!”

Deeba stepped back from a nebulous figure dressed like Shakespeare, who had come close enough to touch.

“Stay away!” she shouted. “Don’t any of you understand?”

“They all understand you,” someone said. “You don’t understand them.”

She turned. Through the spectral layers of the crowd around her, leaning against a flickering ghost-house, she could just make out the boy Hemi.

“You!” she said.

He walked towards her, straight through the ghosts, one by one.

“Don’t come too close,” she said warningly. “Stay back! How long you been watching?”

“ ‘Don’t come close’?” he said. “How rude are you? You’re the one came here asking for help.” A nearby ghost looked down in surprise as Hemi stepped through his chest and stood before Deeba.

He wore a shabby old suit. His skin was as pale as she remembered, his eyes as shadowed, his voice as sarky[19]. “Blimey, look who’s back,” he said.

“Just stay away,” Deeba said. She backed up warily, raising her umbrella. “Why do you keep following me?”

Hemi made a rude noise.

“Follow you?” he barked. “Don’t be soft[22].”

“You were on the bus,” Deeba said. “With that man.” Hemi looked sheepish.

“Alright, yeah…I did sort of follow you on the bus. But just because your mate’s…y’know, the Shwazzy,” he said. “I wanted to know about you, and anyway…” He stopped suddenly. “What do you mean, ‘with that man’?” he demanded.

“And you followed us on the roofs. And you stole Zanna’s travelcard!”

“Hold on! Alright, granted I was sort of behind you on the roofs, too, but how dare you call me a thief! I was looking out for you on the roofs, you dozy ingrate. Who do you think whistled up to the bridge when those junkies were coming? I blatantly never stole nothing! And what do you mean ‘with that man’?”

“You tell me.” Deeba’s voice was guarded.

“I knew it! You’re saying I was one of them grossbottlers.” He put his hands on his hips and shook his head. “Outrageous. Blame the wisper, right? It was me who stopped that bloke!”

“Why…?”

“’Cause he was trying to hurt the Shwazzy! I mean…’ cause…y’know.”

Deeba said nothing. She thought back to what had happened: the ghost-boy, or half-ghost-boy, emerging somehow from nowhere— sending the attacker neatly into Obaday’s head. She’d never actually seen him touch Zanna on the roofs, either. “I…never realized,” she said at last. Maybe Zanna had simply lost that card— it wasn’t as if Deeba’d never done that. “Why didn’t you say nothing?”

“Like you lot would’ve listened to the wisper.” He raised an eyebrow. “You just said I was following you, and I don’t even know where you came from! You came here! This lot called me as soon as they saw you,” he said. “They know you’re too deaf to hear them. Now put down your bleeding umbrella, tell us what you want, and bog off[2].”

“Sorry,” said Deeba. “But I know what you lot do. I don’t want anyone taking my body. I just have to find something out—”

Hemi interrupted.

“You really do take the Michael[23] don’t you? Why’d any of us want your nasty body?”

Deeba was taken aback. In fact, many of the ghosts were shaking their fists at her angrily, mouthing what looked like swearwords.

“You barge in here,” Hemi said, “spouting nonsense, and then you demand help?”

“I…I’m sorry,” Deeba said. “I was told—”

“What next, you going to join in with the rest of them saying we’re in league with the bleeding Smog?”

Deeba looked around the gathered ghosts. “You…don’t want to possess people?”

“For Deadsey’s sake, of course not!” said Hemi. “Look, you,” he said to Deeba, jabbing his finger at her. “I’m not going to tell you no one from Wraithtown’s ever nicked a body. Just like you can’t tell me that no one from UnLondon’s ever stolen clothes. But do you see me blaming you all for that? Do you?”

“So…why do you live next to living people if you don’t want that?” Deeba eyed the ghosts.

“They don’t choose to stick around!” Hemi said. “After we die, a few of us just wake up again. Sometimes for a few days, sometimes centuries. Isn’t that right?”

A ghost by his side in an ancient dress nodded and rolled her eyes.

“And most of us end up here,” Hemi said. “So what? At least we can talk to each other here. And then we get accused of everything! Next thing we know, there are gangs of UnLondoners snipping at us with exorscissors! D’you know how often some UnLondoner passes over and wakes up in Wraithtown? And then when they see what’s going on, we have to hear all about how sorry they are, blah blah, they had the wrong idea about us, yak yak. Of course, by then it’s too late.”

There was a long silence. Of course, it might have been a hubbub of angry ghosts, but to Deeba, it was a long silence.

“Well…sorry,” she said. “I was told wrong.”

“Whatever.” Hemi sniffed.

There was another silence. Deeba waited for Hemi to ask her what she was doing there. He didn’t.

“Maybe…you could help me?” she said at last. Hemi eyed her.

“Me help you?”

“Please.” She began to speak more urgently. “It’s really important. I need to check something. Someone told me there was…Is there like an official list of all the dead?”

Hemi, and several ghosts, nodded.

“Yeah,” he said nonchalantly. “In the records office. Wraithtown’s a borough of Thanatopia— that’s the city of the London and UnLondon dead. We can’t move to the city center yet— don’t know much about it— but we’ve got access to some of their offical files. The dead are way more organized than the living.”

“Cool,” said Deeba. “Listen…I really need to find out if someone’s on that list.”

Hemi struggled not to look interested, and failed.

“Why?”

“Because I was told he was dead. And that he died before I’d met him. But he’s definitely not a ghost. So I want to know what’s going on.”