The Cartographer Read Free

‘they’re followed by’, which was not what God was supposed to do. I didn’t know how good God was at ghosts, but I was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. When it came to ghosts, I would try anything.
    The house had a kennel behind it. I froze when I saw it, and studied it in a state of near panic, remembering the way out.Every jungle had an exit track, but in the Phantom comics the bad guys from the town who went into the jungle rarely got to use it. Often, they never came back, and the jungle would claim another victim. I did not want to be a victim. But there was no sign that a dog lived there. There was just the same smell that the shed had. I knew what dogs smelt like because we’d had one for a few years — don’t ask.
    The house had a path leading around the side, and it branched off to the right and led deeper into the jungle. Down the path a few yards was a little wooden house, not as big as the torture chamber, and more house-shaped. I opened the door and went in. It had large windows and a window in the roof that looked like it was covered in sugar. It was empty, but on the floor there were about a million drops of coloured paint. And it smelt exactly the same as the inside of St Felix’s Church, all candle-y and woody. I wanted to make the little house mine. Smells like that don’t come along every day.
    Against the back wall of the big house, there was a ladder. It was wooden and grey, like everything else, but it looked strong. It went right up to the second floor, and I realised that it had been used to get up to a part of the roof that jutted out at the top. On the ground at the foot of the ladder was a stack of reddish roof tiles, big enough to hide behind, if necessary. Either side of the ladder were windows. My idea was that if this was a ghost house it would be empty, as that, too, is a well-known fact. I needed to know what I was up against, or rather, what I might have to retreat from. I had no problems with retreat, and it would give me an excuse to use the escape route. I took off my bag and started climbing up the ladder.
    On I went, and looked through the window on the first floor. Inside was a large room with a fireplace covered by acopper screen with a couple of Irish setters on it. There were lounge chairs and the biggest sofa I had ever seen. There were several tables with newspapers, magazines and books all over them, and on one a typewriter. There were stacks of books on the floor too, and shelves of books against a wall. The door into the room was open, and through it I could see a passage, and stairs. This was not a ghost house: ghosts did not read the paper or type things. Somewhere, there were people.
    I looked down and almost fell off the ladder with fright. I was high off the ground but still within the jungle. I knew that as long as I was on the ladder I was relatively safe. Barring boa constrictors. Had the guys who’d gone after the treasure known that … well, they didn’t. Further up I went, steeling myself, and found that the ladder had an iron bit in the middle — that looked as if it belonged in a torture chamber as well. I stopped and worried for a while, and decided that I had never heard of an outdoor torture chamber. And besides, there were still no flaming torches to be seen.
    Just as I was getting close to the second-floor window, there was a hell of a ruckus inside the house and someone — a lady — came to the window, while I hid myself under the ledge, and threw something into the garden — a book by the look of it — so that it landed in the bushes. Then I heard her go back into the room, then deeper into the house, where she started yelling at some bloke who was doing a bit of yelling of his own. It was too good to miss. I climbed up the last few rungs and had a look into the room. This window had white lace curtains tied back against the sides, and was wide open. Inside there was a bed