Embassy of the Dead Read online

  There is a severed human finger in my bag.

  “. . . and you’ll call me every evening?”

  There is a severed human finger in my bag.

  “Don’t forget to set your alarm. Remember your dad starts work early tomorrow, so he won’t be there to wake you up.”

  There is a severed human finger in my bag.

  “You’ll need to catch your normal bus to school. I’m sorry I couldn’t rearrange my shift.”

  “That’s OK.” Jake remembered being quite relieved when she’d told him. He didn’t really want his mom dropping him off and trying to kiss him goodbye in front of the whole class.

  “You’ve got the number in your phone in case of any problems, OK? Jake? Have you set your alarm?”

  Jake looked at his phone. “Yes, Mom!”

  He hadn’t.

  “You must be hungry, love. I’m sure your dad’s making something nice for dinner. Try to eat some vegetables. You’re growing. It’s important.”

  Jake nodded. It was weird how having a severed human finger in his bag hadn’t put him off dinner.

  She looked over at him again. Then she patted his leg. “Something’s up, isn’t it?”

  Jake’s mom was a nurse. She had probably seen lots of severed fingers—although she had never specifically mentioned any. Maybe Jake should tell her about the one in his bag?

  “Give him a chance, Jake.”

  She was talking about Dad again. She did that sometimes. Like she thought everything Jake did was connected to the fact that she and Dad had split up.

  It had taken a while for Jake to understand what “Dad moving out” meant. He could still remember the conversation they’d had that day.

  “So how long are you going for?” Jake had asked Dad. But Mom had done all the talking. Dad had spent the entire conversation looking at the floor, while Mom skipped around the question.

  “You can visit him whenever you want. He’s only going to be living at the farm.”

  The straight answer would’ve been forever.

  The farmer Dad worked for was letting him stay in one of his unfinished cottages until he found somewhere better.

  Jake had sighed. “Is it because of the camper van?”

  Mom shook her head. “No. Although that thing is pretty annoying.”

  Jake looked out the car window and smiled ruefully. He could remember the day Dad had bought the camper van as a “family Christmas present” two years ago. Mom had not been impressed. Now, whenever Mom and Dad argued—which, quite frankly, was pretty often—Mom brought up the fact that Dad had let Jake drive the camper van on the road. Jake had started learning to drive ages ago on the farm roads, sitting on Dad’s lap until his feet could reach the pedals. The week before Dad had left, Jake had been allowed to drive home from the farm with Dad in the passenger seat—it was only ten minutes or so along really quiet roads. He could still see his dad’s face, beaming proudly as they pulled into the driveway.

  “You’re a natural, son!”

  Mom had gone absolutely through the roof.

  But she wasn’t mad when they had told Jake about them splitting up. She just looked sad. Jake wasn’t sure which was worse.

  “It’s just that sometimes people get along better when they live apart . . . and we don’t want to argue anymore,” she said.

  That, at least, was something Jake could agree with. There wasn’t much that Mom and Dad hadn’t argued about. They argued about work, about money, about vacations. Sometimes they even argued about taking him to school.

  “Is it because of me?” Jake had asked.

  Mom had shaken her head and hugged him. Holding him until he had to push her away. Dad was still looking at the floor, and Jake could remember the feeling of wanting him to say something . . . wanting him to say anything. Even to argue.

  Anything to change what was happening.

  But he didn’t.

  He just sat there.

  That night Jake hadn’t been able to sleep. He’d left his bedroom to get a glass of water from the kitchen. When he’d gotten to the hallway, he could hear a strange noise coming from the kitchen. It was Dad crying. Jake stopped. Then, unnoticed, he crept back up to bed.

  The next day Dad had loaded up the camper van with his stuff. He hardly had anything. Jake and Mom stood on the sidewalk as Dad climbed into the driver’s seat and closed the door.

  He rolled down the window. “You coming along?” he’d asked Jake. “We can take the van out.” He looked at Mom. “Only on the dirt roads, mind you.”

  Mom smiled and draped her arm around Jake’s shoulder. “You go if you want, love.” She winked at him. “He’ll need some help figuring out his TV.”

  Jake took a deep breath. He couldn’t believe it. Dad was leaving, and they were talking about the TV—normal stuff—like nothing was happening. Like his family wasn’t splitting up. It occurred to him that they hadn’t even asked him what he thought, like he didn’t have a say in whether his family stayed together or not. Why not? They were his parents as much as he was their son. That’s how families work. They stay together.

  Jake shook his head. “It’s all right, Dad. I’ve got some homework to do.” He turned and went inside the house and up to his room, where he buried his head in his pillow and cried until he had no more tears left.

  As Mom pulled up at the end of the lane that led to the farm, Jake started to panic.

  He still hadn’t asked her about the finger.

  What are you supposed to do with a severed finger?

  A severed finger wasn’t the sort of thing you could put in the garbage. It wasn’t the sort of thing you could keep, either. It would probably need to be buried. Maybe the person the finger belonged to was still alive? Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t a problem Jake had experienced before. It was the sort of serious problem that needed grown-up advice. The sort of problem that needed Mom. He imagined turning to Mom and saying, I have in my possession a severed human finger.

  It sounded like the first sentence in a very long conversation that would probably end with him being accused of murder and thrown in prison. The subject needed to be approached with caution . . .

  He stepped out of the car and took a deep breath. “Mom,” he said, “do you believe in ghosts?”

  “Ghosts? No, don’t be silly.”

  Now what? Jake tried again. But the phrase I have in my possession a severed human finger caught in his throat.

  Mom looked at him quizzically. “Are you all right, Jake?”

  He nodded. It was like he had lost the power of speech completely.

  Mom checked her watch. “I’ve got to go. Have a nice time on your trip. Be careful. Say hi to Dad.” She smiled. “I love you.”

  Jake forced a smile back and waved as she drove off, all hope of a solution disappearing with her.

  Now he just had Dad to help with the finger situation.

  Things looked bleak.

  He turned around. Dad’s cottage looked bleak, too.

  He pushed open the unpainted front door.

  Everything about Dad’s place was depressing. Well, it had the important things—namely, a sofa and a TV—but there were none of the pointless things that adults usually put in houses, like vases and pictures. Stuff like that. Stuff that his mom’s house was full of. Maybe all that pointless stuff Mom and Dad had collected together added up to something. Like a place needs a certain number of photographs, or calendars, or tea towels for it to qualify as a proper home. Even Dad’s carpet was depressing, thought Jake as he let himself in. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what could make a carpet depressing, but somehow his dad’s carpet managed it.

  At least Dad was keeping the place fairly clean. And he didn’t make Jake eat any vegetables. Dinner was already on the table as Jake walked through to the kitchen—sausage, beans, and fried toast.

  “Don’t tell Mom about the fried toast, OK?” said Dad, smiling as he ushered Jake to the table. He had those lines you get around your eyes when you smile a lot.

  Halfway through eating his dinner, Jake decided to try again with his “what to do about the severed finger” problem.

  “Do you believe in ghosts, Dad?” he asked.

  “Ghosts?” Dad looked puzzled. They had been talking about whether an Olympic sprinter could outrun a hippo.

  Dad chewed thoughtfully on a bit of sausage, then swallowed. “I don’t know,” he said, cutting a new bit of sausage and staring at the wall for a minute, deep in thought. Finally, he looked back at Jake and said, “Did you know they kill more humans than snakes do?”

  Jake looked up in alarm. “Ghosts?!”

  “No, silly.” Dad smiled. “Hippos!”

  Jake vacantly wiped the last of the bean juice from his plate with a piece of fried toast and popped it in his mouth.

  It was clear: he was on his own.

  Jake opened his eyes. Apart from a crack of light that shone through the half-open door to the living room, it was pitch-dark. He lay motionless on his dad’s sofa, his head peeking out from a sleeping bag. Something had woken him.

  Something in the room.

  Seconds passed.

  Silence.

  Still Jake didn’t move. His eyes darted around as they adjusted to the darkness. He could make out shapes: the familiar outline of furniture, the glass doors that led to the farmyard. There was no one in the room. He was certain. He propped himself up on his elbow and listened.

  Still silence.

  I’m being stupid.

  He lay back down. Tomorrow he’d wake up early before his dad went to work and show him the severed finger. Dad might not believe the ghost bit, but he’d know what to do about the finger. And everything would be OK. It was funny, but just deciding to share his secret made him feel better.
So much better, in fact, that suddenly he wanted to see the finger again. One last time. To check that it hadn’t all been a dream.

  Jake sat up in his sleeping bag again and stretched his arm over the edge of the sofa to fetch his backpack, but as his hand probed the darkness, he felt something he wasn’t expecting. It was a pile of dirt. He rubbed it in his fingers. It was like the fresh soil of a newly dug garden.

  His hand wandered farther across the depressing carpet until it came to something else.

  He froze.

  It was another hand.

  A cold hand that faded away from his touch . . .

  Jake gasped and sprang up, falling off the sofa and onto the floor, landing tangled in his twisted sleeping bag. His heart was hammering. He opened his mouth to cry out for his dad, but then, in the gloom—starting from the tip of a nose, and working outward toward the edges—a familiar long face appeared inches from his own. Sunken gray eyes stared at him. Fresh soil fell from the brim of the ghost’s top hat and landed next to Jake’s face.

  “It’d be a kind service to me if you refrained from having a case of the screamers, boy,” said Stiffkey.

  Jake nodded. He couldn’t have made a sound if he’d wanted to.

  Stiffkey straightened up. “I’m afraid there’s been a terrible misunderstanding.” He raised a long, thin gray finger in the air. “Just let me explain, because I don’t want to be here any more than you want me to be here.”

  Even with his apologetic stoop, he must’ve been a good six inches taller than Dad, and his hat merged into the ceiling. He wrung his hands together. “Now, where should I be starting?” he muttered, pacing the room. “I suppose I’d best skip the beginning, because the beginning is nothing to do with you, or anyone else for that matter . . .” He paused and looked at Jake. “You know I’m a ghost?”

  Jake nodded.

  “And you know all about ghosts?” He didn’t wait for Jake to answer. “I’ll take your silence as a no. Well, there’s plenty more to haunting than clanking chains and fading through the walls of some fancy old house, ain’t there?” He paused, pulled out his pocket watch, and glanced at the clock on the wall. “Anyway, can’t stay long. The clock’s ticking, and though my watch be the right time now, at the moment it mattered, it wasn’t.”

  Jake had no idea what Stiffkey was talking about.

  “And I haven’t spent a lifetime and a deathtime waiting to be Undone just to have one mistake and one child spoil it. So here’s the thing . . .” The ghost crouched down next to Jake and lowered his voice. “I was given something by somebody for somebody else.”

  Jake nodded like he understood. He didn’t.

  “Ain’t no business of yours who either of them were,” Stiffkey continued, “and I couldn’t say even if I wanted to, which I don’t.”

  Jake cleared his throat. “What does waiting to be Undone mean?”

  The ghost’s voice dropped again, now to a whisper. “It’d be of no interest to you whatsoever to know anything about being Undone, or about the Embassy of the Dead.” Stiffkey removed his top hat, seemingly as a sign of respect. More soil fell to the floor. “Point is, we need to right what’s wrong, which is why I’m here. Earlier today, when I said ‘Good morning,’ you said ‘Yes.’ But you’re not good morning, are you?”

  Jake scratched his head. “How can I be ‘good morning’? It’s a polite greeting, not a person.”

  Stiffkey looked cross. “That’s where you’re mistaken. Goodmourning is a person . . .” He shook his head. “It’s spelled different, like ‘mourning a lost child.’ I thought you was he. And he’s been specially licensed to talk to the dead, which you have not.”

  Jake smiled. “That’s funny. He’s called Goodmourning and you’re an undertaker. Makes sense you’d know each other.”

  “An undertaker, says you? Well, ain’t you observant?” The ghost fixed Jake with a disapproving stare. “But there’s nothing funny about burying the dead, especially not children.”

  “Yes, of course. Sorry.” Jake felt guilty now. Making a joke about mourning to an undertaker was possibly a little tactless—particularly if the undertaker himself was dead.

  “Besides, Goodmourning ain’t his true name and I ain’t ever met him. It’s the Undoer code name he goes by,” said Stiffkey. “As I was trying to say, a delivery meant for Goodmourning was received by you.” He glanced around the room, looking nervous. “So, I’m very much hoping you still have the package?”

  “Yes, I’ve got it right here. I haven’t done anything with it.”

  “Well, that is good news. In which case, I’ll be taking it back now and we’ll say no more about it . . . to anybody.”

  Jake felt a surge of relief flow through his body. He was going to be free of the finger. He reached for his backpack and began to unzip it. “And don’t worry,” he said to Stiffkey, “I haven’t told anybody about the box, or about you.”

  The ghost sighed deeply. “Good. Children are the worst at keeping secrets, and though you’re sensitive, you’re still a child. The only thing a ghost dislikes more than a living child is a cat. Cats see everything.”

  Jake thought back to the cat in the alleyway. It had seen Stiffkey before he had. “What do you mean, I’m ‘sensitive’?”

  “Sensitive to the ways of the dead,” explained Stiffkey. “That’s another reason I thought you were Goodmourning—you can see me, and there’s not many of the living who can.”

  Jake nodded, just grateful to be relieved of the burden of a severed finger. He took the box from his bag and lifted it up toward Stiffkey.

  The old ghost sighed with obvious relief and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “And glory be that even a living child knows not to be opening a box that bears the mark of the Embassy of the Dead!”

  Jake froze. “But I did . . .” he said.

  “Did what, child?”

  “I did open the box!”

  Stiffkey staggered backward. His face, already gray, turned a shade less colorful.

  “But you said you hadn’t done anything with it!”

  “I meant I hadn’t, you know, given it to anyone, or . . . or thrown it away . . .”

  A look of horror flashed across Stiffkey’s face. “Then all is over, child. The Embassy will know . . .”

  “And then what?” asked Jake, looking up at the ghost nervously.

  Stiffkey looked away, unable to hold Jake’s gaze. “He’ll be coming for you.”

  “Who will?” asked Jake quietly, swallowing. He could feel his heart rattling his rib cage.

  “Mawkins,” said Stiffkey. He fixed Jake with an unblinking stare.

  “Who’s Mawkins?” asked Jake in a shaky voice.

  A sudden wind rattled the window. Outside, a storm was brewing and a fog seemed to be drawing in around the house.

  Stiffkey let out a moan. “First the fog. Then the bonewulf will appear. Mawkins is near, boy. Leave the box here and then run . . . Run for your life!” And with those words he began to disappear. First from the edges, until only his eyes—filled with hopelessness—were visible, and then they, too, faded from sight.

  “Stiffkey!” hissed Jake. “Wait!” He was frozen with panic. He knew he was in terrible danger, but he didn’t know what to do. He was about to run into the hallway when he heard the sound of the front door blowing open in the wind.

  Whoever, or whatever, it was that was coming for him had arrived.

  Jake could hear something entering through the open door. Something moving in the darkness of the hallway. He stood still, listening—whatever it was, he could hear it breathing: a loud, damp, snorting rattle. Was this a bonewulf? Jake backed across the room to the glass doors that led out to the farmyard. His leg bumped against the coffee table, and a mug fell to the carpet with a dull thud. He froze. The snorting had stopped. The creature, like him, was holding its breath. Listening. Waiting.

  Quickly, Jake turned and tried the glass door. It was locked. He closed his eyes in dismay, then opened them again in terror at the sound of something behind him. Whatever it was, he could smell it now—a rotting stench that filled his nostrils. And he could feel the warmth of its presence, too. It was in the room.

  His heart was beating wildly, but there was only one thing he could do. Jake turned to face the creature, then immediately regretted his decision.