Having dismissed the idea the Sensation girls had kidnapped Sharshua and were holding her to ransom for expensive chocolates, Bubbles Bannatyne resolved to question her on her whereabouts later.
For now, she wanted to concentrate upon the main activity of the evening, ghost hunting, while the night was still young. She and the twins descended the building, dodged the gate keeper and leapt over a low fence to the south of the front lawn so they were officially out of bounds after dark without permission slips.
It was a clear starry night and one half of Foam was visible as a yellow gleam above the trees of an opposing slope that hemmed in the school from the sea. As they descended, so did the moon until it nestled among foliage, casting curious rays across the otherwise unlit path that led south. At the fork in the road they chose the easterly branch, a narrower path that rose and then dipped steeply again. The other road of course led to the settlement of Cherryball Flats.
A wind blew from the south and rustled the trees either side of the girls as a dip in the road made their route difficult to see, if not for glowworms and other luminous insects that flitted from branch to branch like curious fairies following their progress. More than once the twins had to use torches to find the right trail.
The great dome of Cloven Skull, with its telling notch at the crown, loomed ahead.
"This is it girls," Bubbles whispered as they reached a side path through crumbling stone walls. "An old settlement it once was, built up around some mining concern that paid out then played out," and she smiled at her own witticism, borrowed no doubt from an old book she had once read.
"We have gold in ours hills back home," Divvy whispered back as she played the shaded torchlight over weird tree shapes and ivy tangled walls in the darkness around her.
"We panned for bits of it when we were young," Fizzy added and Bubbles sniggered. They were all of eleven years old now, full of the experiences of a busy and active life.
By this time the moon had moved and some of its light was filtering into the valley so that the girls could dispense with torches and pick their way safely among giant ferns, thick acacias and crumbling stones that were once the solid floors of abandoned houses. Bubbles wished she had stuck to her thick soled hiking boots as the rough terrain made her feet ache. In a moment however she was grateful for the stealthy approach recommended by the Massking twins as in the silence of their progress they caught the sounds of movement.
It was not the rustling of night creatures in the undergrowth, but the scrape of something hard on stone, followed by little hammering noises as if a ghostly miner was still prospecting for valuable ore among the rubble.
"Quick!" Bubbles hissed quietly. "Behind that wall. We'll follow it to where there's an opening and outflank the source of the noise."
The girls pursued their way with difficulty along what might have been a narrow alleyway a hundred years ago, thick with ferns. It was difficult not to make a sound among the dry fronds but the mysterious hidden noise continued, so they knew whatever was making it had not been disturbed by their change of position.
Bubbles made it to the empty doorway in a dividing wall first, with the twins crowding behind her so eagerly they almost pushed her through the opening. The Frangea girl slipped her minicam out of her pocket and peered slowly round the corner. Then she huffed.
"What is it?" squeaked Divvy, pressing forward to see.
"A very substantial ghost with what appears to be pink hair," Bubbles sighed. "She's not even trying to pretend to be supernatural."
The twins looked through the doorway and saw in the dark space beyond, partially lit by Foamlight, a figure in a tweed coat and bright scarf, sat upon a mound of rubble looking very bored. The girl did not wear a hat so that even in the subdued light the pink shade of her hair was clearly visible. She held some metallic box upon a strap in one hand and in her boredom she was bouncing it upon a rock, hence the tapping sound.
"She doesn't bite you know," a voice sounded from the shadows and the twins squealed in surprise. Danique Ferale, dressed in midnight black, with her thundercloud hair mushrooming around her pale face, appeared on the other side of the wall and smiled at the startled Flare girls. "We've been waiting for you, like for ages," she said sullenly.
Bubbles stepped forward and saw over Danique's shoulder Pinky Ponsonby jump up with relief and approach the others.
"I don't think much of your ghost," she said, tilting her chin at the Perfecta girl. The latter raised the box in her hand and a camera flash lit the gloom briefly.
"Got you," she said with a smirk. "What took you so long to get here? We've waited and waited and really thought you'd backed out."
"No chance," Fizzy said.
"We're fearless," Divvy agreed.
"We got sidetracked by a library incident," Bubbles said without going into details. "Look, something's up here. I'll be frank with you. We thought you were setting us up for some spooky prank and we wanted to catch you at it. To be even more frank, we're disappointed with how unspooky you are."
"The blonde duplicates seemed a little spooked just now," Danique hinted tartly.
"There's a difference in being frightened and being startled," Divvy sourly responded.
"There is? There is!" Fizzy processed her sister's words and brightened with understanding.
"Now we'll be frank with you," Danique said. "Pinky saw something last night. We wanted you to see it tonight. Then I got thinking. If there truly is some sinister apparition out here it might actually be dangerous, so we wanted to back you up, sort of."
Bubbles held out her hand and Danique glanced down at it.
"Shake," she said. From somewhere in the folds of the black garment worn by the Sensation girl a white hand appeared briefly and performed the requested action before disappearing again as if it had never existed.
"Well," one of the twins said, meandering aimlessly along the crumbling wall a moment, "what happens now?"
"We all prepare to die," gasped the other twin and she pointed. Through a distant gap in the wall opposite a flicker of cold light, quite different from the softer tones from the moon above, cast purple shadows over a ruined pillar a moment. The girls all turned, frozen with shock.
"That's where I saw it, last night," Pinky gulped, taking a step back. Bubbles in contrast took a step forward and raised her own minicam. She took one snapshot at the glowing thing before being pulled back by Danique and the girls raced away from the ruins, up the trail and back towards the school without saying a word. By the time they reached the grounds of Miss Plazenby's they were breathless and speechless and thrilled beyond measure.
They sat upon a wall and gathered round Bubbles as she flicked open the viewing screen of her minicam. The light of it shone upon their faces, each wide eyed with eager interest at what the girl may have captured.
There it was, just next to a pillar, its inner glow lighting up the ragged column distinctly. There was a blurry indistinctness around the edges but enough detail confirmed it was the figure of a girl, a young girl seemingly wandering aimlessly in the abandoned ruins.
"Correct me if I am wrong," Danique Ferale said solemnly. "But don't you think she looks like your Octora girl?"
Bubbles looked closer at the image, expanding it a little and centering it on the small screen. When she did that she could see exactly what the other meant. The ghost looked uncannily like Sharshua Dragonsong.
(Sorry but that's all for here folks! Has Sharshua turned into a ghost or can she, as the twins suggest, use her new-found glow in the dark skills to direct traffic in her spare time? Or does the ghostly connection presage an untimely end for the Octora girl? All becomes translucently clear in the astonishing conclusion to 'Sharshua Dragonsong and the Ghost' available in e-book form at Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble and all the other excellent online retailers. Shop around for a competitive price!)
