Hutchison Spectre Collectors: A New York Nightmare!

1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-78800-040-6
Verlag: Nosy Crow Ltd
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, Band 2, 240 Seiten

Reihe: Spectre Collectors

The second in Barry's Hutchison's very funny series about Denzel and his unusual friend, Smithy, full of ghouls, magic and outrageous battles. Denzel and Smithy are summoned to the US by the New York branch of the Spectre Collectors, who turn out to be two kids called Weinberg and Martinez. There's been some weird spectral activity and they need help. Soon Denzel is immersed (literally) in an adventure involving a shark, a massive gorilla and lots and lots of evil ghosts. He's even hearing voices... For readers who like their funny stories to be just a little bit spooky too... Look out for other titles in the Spectre Collectors series: Spectre Collectors: Too Ghoul for School Spectre Collectors: Rise of the Ghostfather!

Barry Hutchison is an award-winning children's author and screenwriter, currently hiding up a mountain in the Highlands of Scotland. Since landing his first children's book publishing deal in 2008, Barry has toured extensively around UK schools, sharing his love of reading and stories about weeing in the kitchen sink with pupils of all ages. He has a passion for encouraging reluctant boys to pick up a book, and in 2013 was appointed as Scotland's third Patron of Reading, becoming the first man to hold the position. A lifelong fan of funny books, Barry loves making readers laugh with his unique brand of comedy. He lives with his wife, Fiona, and his children, Kyle and Mia, none of whom appreciate his jokes in the slightest.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hutchison, Barry

Leseproben

Denzel Edgar was halfway through the Hall of Mirrors when he saw the ghost.

It was standing in front of a short, squat mirror, jumping up and down and flapping its arms at its sides like a chicken.

“Here, Denzel, check this out. What do I look like?” said Smithy. “I’ll give you a clue. Bu-buuck!”

Smithy was small, scrawny and generally a bit untidy. Those were the first things people noticed about him. What most people didn’t notice was that he’d been dead for the better part of five hundred years. Even Denzel had only discovered this fact quite recently, despite having been best mates with him for ages.

“Shh. Shut up,” Denzel whispered. He turned slowly, the beam of his torch reflecting strangely across the peeling walls and bare wooden floor. “We’re supposed to be looking for the … thing. The whatchamacallit?”

“Ghost?” said Smithy.

“Yes, but … Boyle called it something. It had a proper name.”

“Gavin?” Smithy guessed.

Denzel shone the torch in Smithy’s face, but Smithy didn’t flinch. “What? No! I mean like an official scientific name. Free-formed Vaporous… Oh, I don’t know.”

He looked down at the garish ring on his finger. The gemstone was supposed to light up when anything supernatural was nearby, but it was currently dark. That should have been comforting, but as Denzel knew for a fact there was at least one ghost in the room – currently strutting back and forth, pretending to be a flightless bird – the lifeless gem didn’t fill him with confidence.

The walkie-talkie on Denzel’s belt crackled into life, making him jump. He fumbled for the radio, almost dropped his torch, then briefly juggled them both for a few frantic seconds, as the voice of a gruff teenager spat from the tinny speaker.

“Denzel. Anything? Over.”

Denzel managed to stop juggling and found the “talk” button on the side of the radio’s plastic casing. “Uh. No. There’s just a load of mirrors.”

He released the button and waited for a reply. When none came, he thonked himself on the side of the head with the torch and pressed the button again. “Sorry. Over. Sorry, Boyle. I mean … over.”

“Keep looking,” said Boyle. “We’re definitely picking up Spectral Energy. What’s Smithy doing? Over.”

Denzel pressed the button and glanced over to where Smithy was checking himself out in another mirror. “Right now? A handstand,” said Denzel. “Over.”

“Ha! Think you can turn me upside down, do you? Not so clever now!” Smithy told the mirror, then he lost his balance and crashed, feet first, into it. The mirror fell in a din of smashing glass and Smithy sprang upright like a startled gazelle.

“What was that? Over,” Boyle demanded.

Denzel hesitated with his finger over the button. “Uh, nothing,” he said. “False alarm. Thought it was a ghost, but it wasn’t.”

“It was a goat,” said Smithy, leaning over to speak into the walkie-talkie. He winked at Denzel and gave him a thumbs-up.

Denzel mouthed at him to be quiet, then laughed falsely. “Haha. Not really. That would be … mad. But we’re OK here. Nothing to report, over.”

There was a lengthy pause from the other end, then: “Keep your eyes peeled. And if you see something, do not engage. Over and out.”

“Uh. OK. Bye,” Denzel said into the radio, then he clipped it back on to his belt.

Smithy waggled his eyebrows and grinned goofily. “I think he fell for the goat thing.”

Denzel sighed. It had been a week since he and Smithy had officially been made members of the Spectre Collectors – a top-secret organisation dedicated to protecting the world from supernatural threats – and neither of them was exactly getting the hang of it.

“It’s not really fair, is it?” he said.

“What’s not fair?”

“Well, I mean … Boyle and Samara are teamed up together. She can do magic; he’s got, like, all the guns in the world.”

Smithy frowned. “So?”

“So what have we got? A couple of torches, a walkie-talkie and a ring that’s cutting the circulation off in my finger.”

Smithy slipped an arm around Denzel’s shoulder and began to sing quietly in his ear while swaying from side to side. “You and me, we got each other, just a couple of pals in a creepy old circus.”

Denzel shrugged him away. “Get off,” he said, but he couldn’t stop himself smiling. “Anyway, it’s not a circus, it’s a creepy old fairground.”

“Is it? What’s the difference?” Smithy asked.

“Well, lots of things,” said Denzel. “You don’t get animals at a fairground.”

“There’s animals here,” said Smithy. “Look.”

He pointed his torch into one of the corners. The light reflected off a tiny pair of eyes. “See?”

“That’s a rat,” said Denzel, fighting the urge to run away screaming. “They don’t count.”

They pressed on through the Hall of Mirrors, catching misshapen reflections of themselves leering out of every rotten frame.

“That’s a point,” Denzel said, keeping his distance from the corner with the rat in it. “Can you get ghost animals?”

“Oh yeah, definitely,” said Smithy. “You can get ghost anything. Even inanimate objects. I saw a ghost lizard once.”

Denzel shot him a sideways glance. “A ghost lizard?”

“Yep. A chamelo, or something. It was in a pet shop. This kid touched it then – pchow – it disappeared.”

“Could it maybe have been a chameleon?”

Smithy clicked his fingers. “That was it! Pchow,” he said, waving his fingers mysteriously in front of Denzel’s face and whispering. “Disappeared.”

“You’ve literally just described all chameleons.”

“What? All chameleons are ghosts?”

“No,” said Denzel, then he decided it wasn’t worth the effort. “Forget it. Yeah, that is some spooky stuff, all right.”

“Oh, and I also saw someone get eaten by a ghost lion once,” said Smithy. He tapped himself on the side of the head. “But I’ve pretty much blocked that memory out. Onwards!”

He marched off towards the door at the far end of the hall, leaving Denzel to try to figure out if he was joking or not. It was hard to tell with Smithy. Denzel sometimes wondered if even Smithy himself knew, half the time.

They stepped out of the Hall of Mirrors and into the cool night breeze. Empty popcorn tubs fluttered across the overgrown grass like disappointing butterflies, their colourful print long since faded. The rusted metal of an old roller coaster creaked and groaned as the wind whistled between its legs and through its crumbling tracks.

“What about clowns?” asked Smithy.

“What about them?”

“Are they circuses or fairgrounds?”

“Circuses,” said Denzel.

“Good. I hate clowns,” said Smithy. “Oh! Here’s one. What would you rather – be trapped in a cage with a killer clown…”

“Right.”

“Or be trapped in a cage with a bear?”

“Well—”

“But,” continued Smithy, who wasn’t finished. “The bear is dressed like a clown, and the clown is dressed like a bear.”

Denzel frowned. “Who’s dressing bears up like clowns?”

Smithy shrugged. “I don’t know. The government.”

They set off towards the next building on the list Boyle had given them of places to check. Boyle himself would be over by the big wheel with Samara, which was where the actual ghost-sighting had taken place. Denzel reckoned he and Smithy had been sent to scope out the other places mainly to keep them out of the way.

“So let me get this straight. The government has dressed a bear up like a clown…”

“And a clown up like a bear,” Smithy added.

“Right. And a clown up like a bear, and – for reasons unknown – is making me choose which one I want to be put in a cage with,” said Denzel. “And no matter which one I pick, they’re going to try to kill me.”

“Exactamundo,” said Smithy. “So which do you choose?”

Denzel kicked a decomposing soft toy that was tangled in the grass. Its head came off, spraying damp stuffing across the ground. “Clown dressed like a bear, probably,” he said.

“Interesting. How come?”

“Well, if I was a bear and someone dressed me like a clown, I’d be furious,” Denzel reasoned. “I wouldn’t stand a chance fighting that; it’d rip me to bits. But a clown in a bear suit is going to be quite clumsy, I reckon. If he’s got a big headpiece on, it’d make it hard for him to see, wouldn’t it? I could just push him over.”

Smithy nodded slowly. “OK. What if the bear was invisible and the clown could fly?”

“Shh,” Denzel hissed. “Did you hear that?”

...