“He gave us clues to the locations of the relics,” said Resus. “That’s it!” he exclaimed as a thought occurred to him. “You can ask Samuel Skipstone! He’s being looked after right now by Cleo’s dad, at twenty-two Scream Street!”

  “Impossible,” scoffed Zeal. “Skipstone died long ago, while working on his history of Scream Street.”

  “He merged his spirit with that book,” explained Luke. “He lived on! That’s how we know his handwriting.”

  “And you can show me the finished book, with Skipstone inside, as proof?”

  “Actually, no,” admitted Cleo. “It turned to ash after we brought his body back to life.”

  “You brought him back to life?” Zeal Chillchase exclaimed. “This gets more fantastical by the second! You should have planned your story a little better, children. Do you have any witnesses to back up your tale of these so-called relics?”

  “Just one,” said Luke. “Sir Otto Sneer.”

  “The landlord of Scream Street knows about the relics?”

  Luke nodded. “Ask him.”

  Chillchase looked at him for a moment, then opened the door and beckoned to a Mover in a white jumpsuit who stood waiting outside. The Tracker pressed his fingers to the forehead of the faceless man for a second, who then nodded and hurried away. “If, by some chance, Sir Otto confirms your story, I’ve ordered for him to confiscate the relics.”

  “You can’t let Sneer have them!” protested Resus.

  “If they exist — which I doubt,” retorted Chillchase, “they are important G.H.O.U.L. artefacts and should be kept safely by someone responsible.”

  “Responsible?” snorted Cleo. “I don’t think we’re talking about the same Sir Otto.”

  “We are,” said Zeal. “He has a nephew, Dixon, who is a shapeshifter like me.”

  “So that’s how you did the schoolboy trick!” exclaimed Resus.

  “It helps in my work as a Tracker.”

  “You keep using that word,” said Cleo. “What’s a Tracker?”

  “I find and observe unusual life-forms,” explained Chillchase. “Then I pass their details on to the Movers, who relocate them to a G.H.O.U.L. community.”

  “Is that what happened to me?” asked Luke. “A Tracker found me?”

  Zeal paused for a moment. “I did,” he said quietly.

  “You?” demanded Luke, standing up so fast that his chair skidded across the room. “You’re the one who condemned my parents to life in Scream Street?”

  “I had no choice,” barked Chillchase. “Your werewolf was dangerous and it was only a matter of time before it seriously hurt or even killed someone!”

  “I would never have done that.”

  “Oh no?” said the Tracker. “Let’s see, shall we?” Pulling a crystal ball from another pocket in his coat, he placed it in the centre of the table and waved his hand over its surface. An image began to form inside the globe.

  Resus and Cleo leant in to watch as the school bully, Steven Black, was chased across the graveyard by Luke’s werewolf. The creature pushed the terrified boy to the ground and was preparing to pounce, when a chihuahua leapt from the bushes, nipping the wolf in the leg. With a roar, the werewolf turned from the bully and went after the tiny dog instead.

  Luke forced himself to watch the scene from behind his friends. “You were there!” he cried. “You looked on as I attacked Steven Black!”

  “Better than that,” replied Chillchase, pocketing the crystal ball. “I saved him.” And he pulled back his hair to reveal the same damaged ear they had seen on the schoolboy.

  “No,” whispered Luke as he began to recognize the injury. “It can’t be true…”

  “What’s the matter, Luke?” asked Cleo. “What’s he talking about?”

  Zeal smiled. “Allow me to demonstrate…” Taking a deep breath, the Tracker began to shrink. His leather coat became soft, white fur and his arms transformed into tiny front legs. Within seconds, a chihuahua stood in front of the trio.

  Resus stared at the tiny dog’s injured ear. “You’re Fluffy!” he exclaimed. “The dog that stopped Luke from attacking the bully. He thought it was just a lucky coincidence, but you were following him!”

  Zeal Chillchase shapeshifted back to his human form. “I tracked Luke right from the night of his first transformation,” he revealed. “I was the ambulance driver who took him to hospital on his tenth birthday, and a month later I watched as a spider outside his room while his parents tied him to his bed during the second attack.”

  He strode over to where Luke was standing, white faced. “You never stood a chance of getting away from me, Watson. None of your family ever does!”

  “My family?” said Luke. “What are you—”

  Suddenly the door opened and the Mover in the white jumpsuit entered. Once again, Zeal pressed his fingertips against the man’s forehead for a second, then the Mover left.

  Chillchase turned back to the trio. “Sir Otto Sneer says he knows nothing about any relics,” he said.

  Resus leapt to his feet. “That’s a lie!” he shouted. “He’s been trying to get them from us ever since we met Samuel Skipstone!”

  The Tracker continued. “He did, however, send details of how, ever since Luke moved to Scream Street, the three of you have worked to make the lives of your fellow residents a misery.”

  “What?” said Cleo indignantly.

  “You infected your neighbours with vampire Energy,” recited the Tracker, “you also released a swarm of suffocating spiders, took an unauthorized trip to the Underlands and even built a demon from the body of the Headless Horseman!”

  “We had to do those things to stop Sir Otto,” insisted Luke.

  Chillchase snarled. “Who do you think I’m going to believe? The respected landlord of a G.H.O.U.L. community, or three kids I caught selecting an innocent schoolboy for an unprovoked werewolf attack?” And with this he opened the door again to admit three more Movers, this time dressed in black jumpsuits. They each grabbed one of the children and handcuffed their wrists behind their backs.

  Zeal Chillchase removed his sunglasses for the first time and glared down at the trio. “Luke Watson, Resus Negative, Cleo Farr… I hereby sentence you to be moved to separate G.H.O.U.L. communities for the remainder of your natural — or unnatural — lives.”

  Cleo’s eyes flooded with tears as she struggled against her bonds. “Where are you sending us?” she asked, her voice cracking.

  Chillchase replaced his sunglasses with an air of finality. “Anywhere but Scream Street!”

  Chapter Ten

  The Escape

  Luke rested his head against the cold bars of the door to the holding cell and watched as Movers in jumpsuits of varying colours carried full body bags past them and off along the corridor. “This is all my fault,” he groaned.

  “This is all my fault,” repeated a troll from the corner of the cell.

  Resus threw the monster a look and joined his friend. “How is it your fault?”

  “I got you involved in the hunt for the relics in the first place,” said Luke. “If I’d gone looking for them on my own, we wouldn’t be in this position.”

  “Wouldn’t be in this position,” said the troll.

  Cleo stood up from where she had been squashed on a bench between a sleeping banshee and a drunken gargoyle, and glared at the troll. “Do you mind?” she snapped. “This is a private conversation!” She hurried over to Luke. “If it wasn’t for our help, you’d still be looking for the first relic,” she said.

  “She’s not wrong!” grinned Resus.

  “And,” continued Cleo, “over the past few weeks we’ve had the best adventures of our lives! We wouldn’t have missed them for the world.”

  Luke gave a faint smile. “It’s just a shame it all has to end this way.”

  “All has to end this way.” The troll’s rumbling voice echoed around the cell.

  Before anyone could say anything, the door to the cell was yanked open and Zeal Chillchase appeared. Without giving the children so much as a glance, he read aloud from a piece of paper in his hand, “Lan Mossdrop!”

  A small man with the head of a wasp stepped out of the shadows at the back of the cell. “No,” he gurgled. “You can’t do this to me!”

  A Mover stepped out from behind Zeal and grabbed Lan Mossdrop, dragging him out of the room and over to a wooden platform on the far side of the corridor.

  “For invading a nursery school and using the human toddlers as bowling pins, I sentence you to life in the Underlands!” announced Chillchase.

  The wasp creature began to scream as the Tracker pulled hard on a nearby lever. A trapdoor set into the platform opened beneath Lan Mossdrop, and he fell into the blackness below.

  “At least we’ve not been banished to the Underlands,” shivered Luke when Zeal had left. “I don’t like the look of that trapdoor!”

  “I don’t like the look of that trapdoor!”

  Ignoring the troll, Cleo watched as another group of Movers went past, carrying more coloured body bags, each with a still figure inside. “What are they?”

  “They’re how you’re moved to your new G.H.O.U.L. home,” explained Luke, remembering the evening he had watched his parents being zipped into similar bags by the Movers. “I guess the purple ones are destined for Scream Street.”

  “They’ll probably split us up among the other colours,” sighed Resus.

  “I hope I don’t get green,” said Cleo, struggling not to cry. “It doesn’t suit me!”

  Luke stared unhappily at his friends. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I’m so sorry,” repeated the troll.

  Luke turned angrily to where the monster was sitting. “All right,” he demanded, “why are you doing this?”

  “Doing what?” rumbled the troll.

  “Repeating everything I say,” barked Luke. “It’s really annoying!”

  “It’s really annoying,” moaned the troll.

  “There!” said Resus. “You’re doing it again. Why?”

  The troll shrugged its boulder-like shoulders. “You are sad. I want to be sad too. I don’t know how.”

  “You don’t know how to be sad?” asked Cleo.

  “I’ve heard that about trolls,” Resus said. “They don’t feel emotions in the same way as we do. They have to learn them.”

  “Is that why you’re copying us?” asked Luke. “You’re learning how to be sad?” The troll nodded.

  “Why do you want to be sad?” said Cleo.

  “Lan — the wasp man — went to the Underlands,” replied the troll flatly. “I cannot go. They are sending me somewhere else. He is my friend.”

  “They’re moving you to a separate location from your friend?” said Luke. “We know what that feels like.”

  “That is why I copy you,” the troll sniffed. “I want to feel it too.” It turned to Cleo. “You understand. You are part troll.”

  “Sorry,” said Cleo, “I’m not a troll at all. I’m a mummy.”

  “But you have a troll arm,” replied the monster, tapping her plaster cast clumsily.

  “That’s just lotus flower,” laughed Cleo. She ran her fingers thoughtfully over the tough cast for a second. “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Wompom,” said the troll.

  Cleo grinned. “Well, Wompom, you might just have given me an idea…”

  “I TOLD YOU TO STOP COPYING EVERYTHING I SAY!” roared Luke.

  Wompom the troll climbed to its feet, its head bent to stop it scraping on the ceiling of the cell. “I WILL SAY WHAT I WANT!” the monster bellowed.

  “I warn you — I’m in enough trouble not to care what I do!” screamed Luke, beating at the troll’s chest with his fists. “They can’t punish me any more than they are already!” Other creatures began to back away from the fight that was erupting in the middle of the cell.

  “You can do nothing to me,” growled Wompom. “I will squash you.” The troll grabbed the bench, unseating the still-sleeping banshee, and swung it at Luke’s head. Luke ducked and the bench smashed against the metal bars of the cell.

  “That’s it,” hissed Resus. “Keep it up…”

  Luke grabbed a piece of the broken seat and rattled it along the bars. “Come on,” he taunted. “Come and do your worst!”

  The Mover on guard quickly unlocked the door to the cell, and entered just as Cleo leapt out from behind it. She dealt him a blow across the back of the head with her plaster cast and the Mover fell to the floor, unconscious.

  “I told you these things were tough,” grinned Cleo.

  Luke gestured towards the open cell door. “Quick,” he urged. “Before they notice…”

  Wompom patted him on the head with a rough-skinned hand. “You have taught me a new feeling today. The feeling of trusting someone new.” Then the troll lurched out of the cell and hurried over to the trapdoor that led to the Underlands.

  Cleo found the lever and pulled hard. With a creak, the trapdoor opened beneath Wompom’s feet and the giant creature fell through. As the wooden hatch swung back into place, the troll could be heard shouting below, “I’m coming, wasp man…”

  “Right,” said Luke, turning back to Resus and Cleo. “Let’s go!”

  The trio raced along the bare corridor, passing a number of closed doors as they went. Each room had its department name written on the door: Fang Licensing, Homes for Gnomes, Apparition Chamber. Nothing, however, looked as though it might be a holding room for body bags.

  As they turned the corner, Luke, Resus and Cleo suddenly found themselves face to face with another leather-coat-wearing Tracker dragging a handcuffed skeleton along beside him. “Yuri Pinetop,” said the Tracker, eyeing the children suspiciously. “I’m taking this fugitive to the holding cell.”

  “Trumpton Bakedbeans,” announced Luke, saying the first thing that came into his head. “These two are being taken to identify fellow criminals.”

  “Why aren’t you in official Tracker uniform?” asked Yuri.

  “The mummy hit me with a spell,” Luke lied as convincingly as he could. “It caused my shape-shifting muscles to stick in child form. Once these two identify their accomplices, they’re going straight to the Underlands!”

  “A member of staff in the Apparition Chamber should sort out your shape-shifting,” said Yuri as he began to lead the skeleton away.

  “Er … the spell affected my memory, too,” Luke called after him. “Where are the body bags kept again?”

  “Second-to-last door on the right,” yelled the Tracker over his shoulder.

  “Thanks!” Luke called back, then he noticed Resus’s amused expression. “What?” he said defensively. “I found out where the body bags are, didn’t I?”

  “You certainly did, Trumpton!” grinned the vampire.

  Before Luke could retort, an alarm suddenly sounded.

  “They must be on to us!” cried Luke, and he, Resus and Cleo dashed back along the corridor. They pushed open the door marked Outgoing Life-forms, where occupied body bags in a rainbow of colours were piled from floor to ceiling.

  “You know what to do,” Luke said to the other two. “Just make sure you choose purple!”

  Quickly unzipping one of the bags, Luke found himself looking at the scaly, yellow body of some kind of snake with a human face. “Can I hitch a lift?” he whispered to the unconscious creature, slipping in beside it and pulling the zip closed.

  Seconds later, the door crashed open. “They’re not in here!” called a voice. “Keep searching, they can’t have gone far.”

  Luke froze beside his unwitting companion, breathing as shallowly as he could and hoping that Resus and Cleo had had similar success.

  “Get these bodies onto the trucks,” ordered another voice. Luke felt his bag being lifted up and carried away, and the sound of the alarm faded fast.

  The last thing he heard was the angry voice of Zeal Chillchase echoing along the corridor. “I’ll find you, Luke Watson. Wherever you go — I’ll find you!”

  Chapter Eleven

  The Decision

  Luke waited until he heard the last of the Movers leave the house, then he unzipped the body bag and slipped out from beside the still-unconscious snake creature. The plan had worked: he had been moved back to Scream Street, along with its new residents. “Thanks for the ride,” he quipped before stepping out onto the landing to discover Resus and Cleo emerging from other bedrooms. “You made it!”

  “Of course,” grinned Resus. “I adder great journey.”

  “Come on,” said Luke with a groan. “We’ve got to get to Mr Skipstone.”

  The trio left the house and began to run in the direction of 22 Scream Street, stopping suddenly when they spotted Niles Farr marching across the central square, a limp figure under each arm. As they hurried over, the towering mummy carefully laid Samuel Skipstone and an unconscious Sir Otto Sneer on the ground.

  “Dad!” exclaimed Cleo. “What’s going on?”

  “You were a long time,” said her father. “Mr Skipstone was worried.”

  The author looked pale and weak. He coughed as he tried to sit up, but then slumped back down with the effort. “You were gone so long,” he wheezed, wiping his forehead with his bandaged hand, “that I knew something was amiss. I came to find you and discovered Sir Otto with these…” He opened his jacket to reveal a golden casket decorated with hieroglyphics.

  “The relics!” cried Cleo. “Sneer found them!”

  “I knew he’d search my house as soon as G.H.O.U.L. told him where we were,” said Luke. “He was probably going to take them back to Sneer Hall while he found a way to restore the vampire’s fang.”

  “And my dad knocked him for six!” said Cleo proudly.

  Niles Farr bowed slightly. “It was a pleasure to do so.”

  “There they are,” called a voice across the square. Luke turned to see his own parents racing towards them. Resus’s mum and dad were just a few steps behind.