“My bedroom!” he whispered.

  “Top marks, werebrain — we’re in your bedroom,” quipped Resus.

  “No, you don’t understand,” said Luke, stepping closer. “I mean that’s my bedroom, on the other side — my old bedroom!”

  Cleo stared up at the shimmering arch. “This must be your doorway home!” she exclaimed.

  “What?” gasped Resus. “Why did you open it now?”

  “I didn’t,” protested Luke. “I just dropped—”

  He stopped. “I dropped the werewolf’s claw into the casket with the other relics …”

  “…and putting them all together must have activated the magic!” finished Cleo.

  Luke held his hand out towards the shimmering entrance to his old bedroom with trembling fingers. His old room, in his old house. He’d done it. The first person ever to open a doorway out of Scream Street.

  He took a step towards the glimmering portal, but Cleo grabbed his shoulder and held him back. “What are you doing?” she asked. “You can’t go through now!”

  “Mr Skipstone said that the doorway would remain open until my greatest wish was fulfilled,” Luke reminded her. “So as long as I don’t take my mum and dad through, it should stay open.” He stared through the arch into the world he’d often thought he’d never see again. “I just want to make sure it’s real,” he said, and, taking a deep breath, he stepped through.

  There was a brief moment of disorientation in which Luke was forced to close his eyes against the dizziness. For a second he didn’t want to open them again in case the doorway was nothing more than a mirage. What if the founding fathers’ relics showed you what you really wanted but stopped short of actually giving it to you? He didn’t think he’d—

  Beep! A car horn outside made him jump.

  A car horn? But there were no cars in Scream Street… Slowly, Luke opened his eyes to find himself standing in the bedroom of his old house. The room was bare, as all the furniture had been moved with his family — but it was definitely his own room. Luke ran his fingers over the familiar felt-tip mark he’d scribbled onto the wallpaper when he was little, and revelled at the sound of traffic in the street outside. He was home.

  Turning back to the doorway he could see Resus and Cleo standing just a few metres away in his Scream Street bedroom, their mouths moving as they spoke, but their voices sounded muffled and distant. Between them and him, the golden casket lay open, the relics of the founding fathers pulsing with the same light as that of the doorway.

  Luke tucked the Horror Heights book into his pocket and pushed his head back through the shimmering arch. The sounds of Scream Street quickly replaced those of his own world.

  “…long are you planning on staying through there?” finished Resus.

  “The relics worked,” beamed Luke. “It’s a doorway back to my world! Come and have a look!”

  “What about Mr Skipstone?” asked Cleo. “We have to get that book to him.”

  “Your dad’s looking after him,” said Luke, “and this will only take a minute or two. It could be the only chance you get to see where I’m from!”

  Resus grinned. “I thought you’d never ask…” He bounded through the portal and, after shaking his head to clear the dizziness, held his hand back through to Cleo. “Come on!” he called, his voice muffled.

  Gripping his fingers tightly, Cleo allowed herself to be pulled through the shimmering doorway — and immediately crashed to the floor.

  Luke helped her to stand. “The dizziness will wear off in a second,” he said.

  Resus gazed around the empty bedroom. “Well, this isn’t exactly the brave new universe I was expecting,” he said, a little disappointed. “It’s just a bedroom.”

  “That’s because it is a bedroom, clever-cape,” grinned Luke. “Mine!” He hurried over to the window. “Look!” he shouted excitedly. “You can see the supermarket from here, and the park where I used to play football!”

  Cleo joined him at the window just as a double-decker bus thundered by outside. The mummy screamed and ducked down, her hands over her ears.

  Luke stared at her. “What’s that all about?”

  “Get down,” hissed Cleo, grabbing a handful of his T-shirt and pulling hard. “I think that was a dragon!”

  Luke tried hard not to laugh. “Don’t be silly,” he said, “it was a bus!”

  “I don’t care what they call dragons in your world,” snapped Cleo, “but wherever you’re from, when a big, green thing roars past — you hide!”

  “Cleo, there were people inside it.”

  “And we’ll be next if it spots us, you idiot,” Cleo wailed, still tugging persistently at his top.

  With a sigh, Luke crouched down next to his friend. “It’s just the same as the tour bus that came to Scream Str—”

  He was interrupted by a shout from downstairs. “Luke, quick!”

  Luke and Cleo ran down the stairs to find Resus in the hallway, staring at the front door. The letterbox rattled as the postman dropped a handful of junk mail onto the pile that had built up on the doormat.

  “The front door’s throwing up!” exclaimed the vampire, pulling a long, silver sword from his cape. “It’s probably not a real door at all — more likely to be a shapeshifter.” He waved the sword threateningly. “Come on, coward, show us your true form!”

  Luke placed his hand on Resus’s arm and lowered the sword. “I don’t think that bringing you two here was a very good idea,” he grinned. “Come on, let’s get back to Scream Street and Mr Skipstone.”

  Cleo led the way back upstairs, with Resus guarding the rear in case the shapeshifter attacked. Luke looked contentedly around his bedroom. “Just think,” he smiled. “I’ll probably be sleeping in here again tonight.”

  “We’ll miss you,” said Cleo.

  “I’m not going just yet,” Luke reassured her, pulling Fangs of Destiny from his pocket. “First we’ve got some magic to do back in Scream Street!” He took a step towards the shimmering doorway.

  “WACHOO!”

  Just as Luke reached the portal, a muffled sneeze rang out from the other side. At his feet the golden casket was suddenly lit up by a burst of orange — and the vampire’s fang was changed into a pair of spectacles. The entire doorway exploded in a rainbow of colours, knocking Luke, Resus and Cleo to the floor.

  Luke jumped up and stared around the bare bedroom in disbelief. “No!” he shouted. “NO!” He ran his hands over the walls, trying to find a crack in the plaster that could be the portal back to Scream Street, but they remained smooth and solid.

  “What was that?” demanded Cleo.

  “Another of Tress’s sneezes!” said Resus. “It changed the vampire’s fang.” He paled even further beneath his white face paint. “Without all six relics providing their magic, the doorway closed…”

  “We can open it again, though, can’t we?” asked Cleo. “We can still get back to Scream Street?”

  Her question was met with silence. Luke rested his forehead against the bedroom wall. “No,” he replied quietly. “We’re trapped here.”

  Chapter Eight

  The Plan

  Cleo squealed as another double-decker bus charged past.

  “If you’re going to panic every time we’re near a busy road, this will take for ever,” grumbled Luke, pressing the button for the pedestrian crossing outside the supermarket. It was good to see the familiar landmarks around his home again, but he couldn’t stop worrying about what was happening back in Scream Street.

  Despite Resus and Cleo’s protests, Luke had decided that if they were going to find another way back to Scream Street, that would mean going outside.

  “I don’t feel right,” muttered Resus.

  “Well, you look right, and that’s what matters for now,” said Luke. He had insisted that Resus removed his false fangs and washed off his white face paint before they left the house. The vampire now trudged along moodily, his cape folded up and stuffed into a plastic carrier bag.

  “I wish you could say the same for me,” grunted Cleo. “I don’t look right at all, do I!” A disguise for the mummy had been a bigger problem, but luckily the Movers had missed one of Luke’s parents’ cupboards when relocating the family to Scream Street. Cleo was now wearing one of his mum’s floral summer dresses, and a net curtain torn from the window of the downstairs toilet covered her head as a makeshift scarf. “I look like an idiot,” she moaned as the trio crossed the road. “I can’t believe I’m wearing a dress!”

  “Cleo,” hissed Luke as they reached the other side, “if you walked around in my world wrapped from head to toe in bandages, you’d look as though you’d had a major accident and be carted off to the nearest hospital!”

  “What about my face?” sulked the mummy. “The dress doesn’t cover my face, and neither does this headscarf thing.”

  “If anyone asks, we’ll say you’ve had an allergic reaction.”

  “What to?” asked Resus.

  “It doesn’t matter what to!” Luke yelled in exasperation. He took a deep breath and lowered his voice again. “It’s just an excuse in case we need it.” They had now reached the park, and Luke slumped onto a bench. His friends sat beside him.

  “So,” said Resus cautiously, “what’s the plan?”

  “I don’t have a plan,” admitted Luke. “Having spent all my time finding a way out of Scream Street, I never thought I’d need to break back in!”

  “Eefa was at your house earlier,” said Cleo. “The one in Scream Street, I mean. She was fixing the things that Tress had changed with her sneezes. Maybe she’ll come back and do the same for the vampire’s fang.”

  “I’ve thought of that,” said Luke, “but she wouldn’t know what she was looking for. No one knows we’ve been collecting the relics except the three of us.”

  “And Samuel Skipstone,” added Resus.

  Luke buried his face in his hands. “That’s the other thing,” he wailed. “Mr Skipstone wasn’t looking good when we left. If we don’t get the Horror Heights book to him, he could die. In fact, he could already be—”

  “Let’s not think like that,” Cleo interrupted hurriedly. “We have to stay optimistic and hope for the best.”

  “If only we’d told our parents that we were collecting the relics,” Luke groaned. “At least then there’d be a chance of someone working out where we were and trying to help us get back.”

  “Actually, there is someone else who knows we’ve got them,” said Resus. “Sir Otto Sneer.” It was true. Ever since they had begun their quest, Scream Street’s landlord had tried to steal the founding fathers’ relics for himself so that he could use their power to further torment the “freaks” he despised so much.

  “If we could somehow get a message to him,” Resus continued, “he could show Eefa which of the relics has changed.”

  “And then walk off with them all?” retorted Cleo. “We can’t let Sneer know where they’re hidden after all we’ve been through.”

  “If it gets us back to Scream Street we might have to,” admitted Luke. Sir Otto had created poltergeists, disabled the vampires’ blood supply and even created a demon in order to get hold of the relics. Now, leading him to them could be their only hope of returning to their families.

  “We won’t be able to contact him, though,” said Resus glumly. “The only way to do that would be through G.H.O.U.L., and I doubt it even advertises its existence to people in this world, let alone its address.”

  Luke sat up. “Say that again!”

  “What? That G.H.O.U.L. doesn’t advertise its address?”

  “No,” said Luke excitedly, “the bit about getting in touch with Sir Otto through G.H.O.U.L.! It must be in contact with him somehow — it could help us get a message through!”

  “That’s an idea,” agreed Cleo, “but Resus is right — I don’t think the Government Housing Of Unusual Life-forms will be common knowledge in this world. You’d never heard of it until the night you were moved. We’ll never find them.”

  “Maybe we don’t have to find them,” said Luke, a smile spreading across his face. “How about we let them find us…”

  “That’s him,” Luke said, pointing.

  Resus pulled his cape back on and peered round the bush to get a better view. “That’s the school bully?” he asked. “He doesn’t look very tough to me.” The trio were hiding across the road from Luke’s old school, watching as the pupils went home for the day.

  “There is something different about him,” admitted Luke. “He’d normally be tripping the other kids up by now, and calling them names — but he seems to be keeping himself to himself.” They watched as the bully fidgeted nervously with his tie, his eyes darting back and forth as he clung to the shadows.

  “I guess that’s what being attacked by a werewolf does to you,” said Cleo.

  Luke felt a twinge of guilt as he thought back to the moment he had transformed into a werewolf and attacked Steven Black. The bully had stolen the schoolbag of a younger girl, and as Luke had attempted to retrieve it for her, Steven had pushed him to the ground. A few minutes later, the bully had been running for his life as a werewolf pursued him across the adjoining church graveyard.

  “Maybe it shouldn’t be him,” said Luke. “I think I’ve scared him enough for one lifetime.”

  “You’re not backing out, are you?” asked Resus.

  “Of course not,” replied Luke. “But if I’m going to transform and attract the attention of G.H.O.U.L. I want to make as little impact as possible. Steven Black looks as though he’s ready to snap!”

  “OK,” agreed Resus. “Let’s choose someone else…”

  “We’ll have to be quick,” said Cleo. “There’s only one kid left: that boy over there with the funny ear.”

  Luke looked to where she was pointing. “He’ll do,” he said. “Let’s go!”

  Scrambling out of the bush, the trio approached the lone boy. His left earlobe was torn, as though he’d been in an accident, and he instantly covered it with his hand in front of the strangers.

  Luke cleared his throat. “I’m, er, very sorry to have to do this…” He closed his eyes in concentration and began to summon the anger that would kick-start his werewolf transformation.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Luke Watson,” said the schoolboy, and there was a sound like running water as the child began to change shape, his body growing and stretching until, eventually, in his place stood a tall man in a long, black leather coat and mirrored sunglasses.

  The figure flashed a silver badge at the trio. “Zeal Chillchase, Tracker for G.H.O.U.L.,” he said in a deep voice. “You three are under arrest!”

  Chapter Nine

  The Interrogation

  “I will ask you one more time!” yelled Zeal Chillchase, slamming his hands down on the table in front of him. “What were you planning to do with that child?”

  The trio faced Zeal across a table in a bare, windowless room. Luke gripped the sides of his chair and struggled to contain his temper. The Tracker was trying to sound as threatening as possible, and Luke was determined not to give him the satisfaction of seeing him get angry.

  “I’ve told you,” he said wearily. “We just wanted to frighten someone so that G.H.O.U.L. would know we were here.” On either side of him, Resus and Cleo nodded their agreement.

  Chillchase glared at Luke from behind his mirrored shades. “You escaped from Scream Street, then came here just so you could get caught again? I find that very difficult to believe.”

  “It’s the truth!” protested Cleo. “We didn’t mean to get trapped here — the doorway closed accidentally.”

  Zeal leant in towards the trio. “And how did you open this doorway?”

  “We used the relics of Scream Street’s founding fathers,” explained Resus. “We’ve been helping Luke to collect them.”

  “So your plan to come here and attack a child was arranged in advance?”

  “We didn’t plan to attack anyone!” shouted Luke. “I just wanted to take my parents home.”

  Cleo touched his arm gently. “Calm down,” she said. “If you get too angry …”

  “…nothing will happen,” finished Zeal. “This room — in fact, the whole of G.H.O.U.L. headquarters — is magically sealed against unauthorized transformations. Our vampire friend here will also discover that his cape has been deactivated.” Resus quickly pushed his hand into his cloak to check, and found nothing more than the silky blue lining.

  “So, is that where we are?” asked Cleo. “G.H.O.U.L. headquarters?” After their arrest, Zeal Chillchase had opened a Hex Hatch — a kind of window in the air — that had brought them directly to this bare, lifeless room.

  “Don’t try the innocent act with me,” Zeal replied. “I’ve been a Tracker long enough to have seen every trick in the book!”

  “But we are innocent,” insisted Resus. “The doorway opened before we expected it to. Luke was just showing us his old house when one of the relics changed and the doorway closed behind us.”

  Zeal ran his fingers through his hair. “The ‘relics’ again,” he grunted. “There’s no mention of any relics in The G.H.O.U.L. Guide.”

  “The G.H.O.U.L. Guide?” asked Luke. “What’s that?”

  Chillchase reached into one of the pockets of his leather coat and produced a thick, gold-covered book. He tossed it onto the table with a thump. “A complete reference to every G.H.O.U.L. community in existence — and beyond,” he said. “With no mention of any founding fathers’ relics.”

  “There must be,” insisted Luke, flipping open the book and skimming through its pages. “We can’t be the first people ever to—”

  He stopped, staring at the page in front of him. “I know that handwriting… This was written by Samuel Skipstone!”

  “That’s right,” agreed Zeal, surprised. “He wrote this for internal use here at G.H.O.U.L.” He watched as Luke found the chapter on Scream Street and began to search for any mention of the relics. “How do you know about Samuel Skipstone?”