Organ Music by Margaret Mahy Read Free Book Online Page A

risk factors, or anything of that kind – you are treasure troves. At your age you’re not likely to have fluid in the lungs, or pancreatic malfunction.’
    He frowned at them, looking a little troubled.
    â€˜You see, once you’re here there’s no going back,’ he said with irritation. ‘There can’t be. Why on earth were you stupid enough to get into the car? It was a dishonest thing to do, and you both know it. What were you doing in Forbes Street, of all disgusting places?’
    David did not answer. He felt sure that, if he did, Winnie Finney would realize he was much sharper than he was pretending to be. But there was some truth in what Winnie Finney was saying. He and Harley had deliberately climbed into a car that was not theirs. They had driven away in it: a dishonest thing to do. They didn’t deserve whatever was about to happen to them, and yet in the beginning it had been their fault. Never again ! He found himself thinking. If we get out of this ... well, never again .
    â€˜I was a Forbes Street kid,’ said a voice – Quinta’s. Yet she was not in the room. Her voice was in David’s head. ‘I had my tattoos done in Forbes Street. I had my ears pierced there. I was trash – or that’s what he would have called me. But I was tough trash. Too tough for him! He hasn’t been able to see me off. I’m still hanging round, waiting for my chance.’
    Winnie Finney seemed quite unaware that Quinta was speaking. He was still talking about organs: ‘There are better people than you who can use your corneas, your livers and tendons. You’ll both have profoundly fulfilled lives. And, after all, it is immortality of a kind.’
    He picked up his phone.
    â€˜Call me! Go on, call me!’ said Quinta’s voice. ‘Make him see me!’
    David could not speak, but he shouted with a soundless voice he discovered within himself.
    â€˜Quinta! Quinta! ’
    â€˜I have with me the two specimens we mislaid,’ Winnie Finney was saying into the phone. ‘They’re in good condition except for a sleeping drug that will work its way through their systems quite harmlessly. But we’ve been a little complacent, haven’t we? A little careless?’ His words were mild but his voice was somehow menacing. He was being nasty to someone. ‘We must be careful,’ he said.
    David made himself shudder. He probably overdid it, trembling furiously, but Winnie Finney did not seem suspicious. And he did not seem to notice that behind him the air was swirling and thickening.
    Quinta was forming herself out of nothing.
    Of course! David thought. She really is a ghost. She isn’t chained to any life-support system . All the same, he definitely did not believe in ghosts. He had never believed in them, even when he was a little boy.
    â€˜Stop thinking me out of existence,’ Quinta’s voice said. ‘Think at him! At him! At him! They can’t monitor thoughts. They can’t transplant ideas. Tell him he’s the blemished one! Sullied! Disfigured! Load me with words. I’ll use them like bullets! I can! You can! You must .’
    Having that voice in his head was like looking into a dreadful mirror and seeing a monster smiling back at him. At the same time he felt a sense of power stir in him, and that power was his. Quinta’s presence had set something free. He could use words, not just for fun but as if they were weapons. He tried desperately to think of fierce words he could invent.
    â€˜Cantankerous! Cantakofulum! Furioso !’ he cried, firing the words off violently, and sensing that Quinta would snatch them out of the air, give them mysterious force, and shoot them at Winnie Finney – who abruptly stopped his conversation and looked at him with annoyance.
    â€˜Shut up!’ said Winnie Finney. ‘I’m on the phone.’
    â€˜Snarlarium! Fang-Fang!’ yelled David, inventing