Read an Excerpt
Chapter 1
Ghost Train
It was a cold and blustery day at the wrong end of November when trouble returned to Eerie-on-Sea. Violet spotted it first, of course, but it was I, Herbert Lemon—Lost-and-Founder at the Grand Nautilus Hotel—who had the queasy feeling from the start. The queasy feeling that began when we were sent to meet a surprise hotel guest at the town’s tumbledown railway station.
“I didn’t even know there was a railway station in Eerie-on-Sea,” says Vi as we walk through the drafty ticket office and out onto the platform. The rusty old rail track beside it disappears into the gaping mouth of a tunnel hewn long ago into Eerie Rock. “It looks more like the entrance to a ghost train.”
“Pah!” Mr. Mollusc replies, with a scowl at the dead leaves that drift along the platform and the one flickering Victorian lamp that illuminates them. The Welcome to Cheerie-on-Sea station sign creaks like a broken promise—the letters C and H obscured by a sooty cobweb that no one will wipe away till spring. The wind moans around the wrought-iron columns that hold up the station canopy, and from somewhere there comes a persistent thumping sound that I can’t explain.
“No wonder we get so few guests in winter,” the hotel manager adds with a shudder.
I glance at my two companions, and my mouth twitches between a smile and a frown. It’s not every day I’m out and about with my best friend, Violet Parma, and the miserable old manager of the Grand Nautilus Hotel. It’s a strange feeling having to deal with both of them at the same time.
“It’s not a proper railway service anymore,” I explain to Violet. “More of a tourist attraction these days.”
The train—an antique steam locomotive called Bethuselah—wheezes back and forth along the old cliff-top line during the summer months, stopping at a few half-forgotten villages on the way. I expect the sun-seeking tourists who ride it in August think it’s quaint. But quaint is one of those words that can tip easily into eerie once the weather turns and the dark of winter closes in. And yet, the train does still sometimes run in the off-season—cliff collapses and bonkers weather permitting. You’d have to be pretty bonkers yourself to use it then, though, which is why I’m huddling beside Violet, wrapped up against the icy wind in a coat and scarf, and muttering, “I’ve got a queasy feeling about this,” as we wait for old Bethuselah to bring her mysterious visitor to town.
“And you really don’t have any idea who it is?” Violet demands of the hotel manager, ignoring my queasiness and taking a crumpled bag of Mrs. Fossil’s rum fudge from her pocket. “This special guest?”
“No, I do not,” Mr. Mollusc snaps, turning to Violet to bristle his mustache directly at her. “And quite what business it is of yours, I don’t know. I am here as an emissary of the Grand Nautilus Hotel, at the behest of Lady Kraken herself. Herbert Lemon is here to carry the bags and do as he’s told. Remind me again, girl, why you are here.”
Violet shrugs.
“Maybe I’m a trainspotter,” she replies, with a sweet look of innocence that hardly suits her. “Here to spot a train.”
“Pfft!” goes Mr. Mollusc. “Hardly! You’re here to rubberneck at our VIP and stop the Lemon boy from doing his work, as usual. But I’m warning you, Violet Parma—Her Ladyship has commanded a Grand Nautilus welcome for this very special person, and you will not get in the way.”
And he tries to look important as he wipes the remains of the “pfft!” off his mustache with a hanky.
“So, it really could be anyone?” says Violet, her eyes wondering. “Could be a film star! Or a sports champion, or”—she excitedly pops a piece of fudge in her mouth before offering the bag to me—“or a mysterious person with a dark past, whose arrival will spark a whole new adventure!”
The hotel manager frowns in annoyance as he slaps my hand away from the bag.
“No sweets on duty! And no dark pasts or adventures, thank you very much. If I had my way—Oh, what is that noise?”
The thumping sound, the one we noticed earlier, has been growing louder.
“It . . .” I start to say, with a definite uptick of the queasy feeling, “it sounds like footsteps. On the roof!”
“Nonsense!” Mr. Mollusc snorts, looking up at the creaky wooden canopy that covers the platform. “Why would anyone be up there? Above us? Walking toward that . . . that hole over there? Thumping and lumping along with the slow, uncertain, awful shuffle of a . . . of a . . .”
He gulps.
“Of a zombie?” I suggest, and the Mollusc stiffens with fright.
Slowly, the three of us look up at the windy gap in the platform roof as the . . . whatever-it-is . . . approaches.
Thump . . . thump . . .
Thump!
The sound comes to an abrupt halt right by the hole.
And nothing happens.
“Perhaps this is a ghost train, after all,” Violet declares brightly, before chomping on another cube of fudge. “How exciting!”
“Oh, really!” Mr. Mollusc pulls himself together. “I’m sure there’s a perfectly rational explanation for—”
And that’s when, with a terrifying shriek of despair, the ghost appears!
