The Hollow Boy

by Jonathan Stroud

Beyond the barrier of nails the air was cold, skin-bitingly so. It was as if someone had left a freezer door wide open. As Lockwood closed the door behind us, darkness swallowed us like we’d been immersed in ink. It wasn’t just that the ceiling light was off—it was a more profound blackness. No light came in from the street outside.

  But there had been no curtains at the window; it had been a bare piece of glass.

  Something was blocking it, preventing light from coming through.

  Away in that cold, cold inky dark, a person was weeping—a horrible sound, desolate yet wheedling, as of one spiritually bereft. The noise echoed oddly, as if we were in a vast and empty space.

  “Lockwood,” I whispered, “are you still there?”

  I felt a friendly prod. “Right beside you. Chilly! Should have put my gloves on.”

  “I hear crying.”

  “She’s at the window. In the pane. You see her?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t see her clawing hands?”

  “No! Well, don’t describe them to me….”

  “It’s a good thing I don’t have any imagination, or I’d be having nightmares tonight. She’s wearing a lacy gray gown, and a sort of ragged veil over her face. Some kind of letter in one hand, spotted with something dark. Don’t know what that’s about—might be blood or tears. She’s clutching it to her chest with her long, shriveled fingers….Listen, I’m laying out the chains. Best thing we can do is smash the window. Smash it and burn it in the furnaces….” His voice was calm; I heard the hasty clink of iron.

  “Lockwood, wait.” Standing blind, with air blistering my face, I composed myself—opened my ears and mind to deeper things. The crying sound receded just a little; in among it I heard a whisper, a tiny out-breath….

  “Safe…”

  “What is?” I asked. “What’s safe?”

  “Lucy,” Lockwood said, “you’re not seeing what I’m seeing. You shouldn’t be talking to this thing. It’s bad.” More chinking at my elbow; I could sense him moving forward. The whispers cut out, resumed, cut out again.

  “Put the chains away,” I snapped. “I can’t hear.”

  “Safe, sa-afe…”

  “Lucy—

  “Quiet.”

  “I kept it safe.”

  “Where did you do that?” I said. “Where?”

  “There.” As I turned to look, my Sight cleared. I caught the outline of the window in the corner of my eyes—and within it, darkness superimposed on darkness, a long-haired shape, hunch-shouldered, bent arms raised above the head as if caught in the midst of some frenzied dance or rite. The fingers were grotesquely long; they seemed to spear toward me across the room. I cried out. At my side I could feel Lockwood jumping forward, swinging his sword out and upward. The fingers broke, became separate beams of black light, scattered as if by a prism. Screaming filled my ears. Then the noise splintered like shattered glass. It fell away into silence.

  My eardrums flexed; pressure left the room. Light filled it. It was only the pale pink streetlight from out on Nelson Road, but it cast everything into three soft, grainy dimensions. How small it was; not a vast echoing chamber at all. Just an ordinary room with a kids’ bunk bed and chairs, and a dark armoire at my back. Warm air sucked in from the landing, caressing my ankles as it came under the door. Lockwood stood in front of me, rapier out, iron chain trailing through the broken window. Lights shone in the houses opposite. Broken glass jutted from the frame like teeth.

  He spun around, staring, breathing hard. His disheveled hair hung dark and loose over one eye. “Are you all right?”

  “Of course.” I was looking at the armoire. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “She was attacking you, Lucy. You didn’t see her face when her veil blew back.”

  “No, no,” I said, “it was okay. She was just showing me where.”

  “Where what?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t think. Shut up.”

  I waved him to one side, walked to the armoire. It was a big one, and old, too—the wood so dark it was almost black. It had decorative tracing on it, scuffed with ancient use. The door was stiff when I pulled it open. Inside hung children’s clothes, overlaid with white moth-strips. I stared at them, scowling, then flicked them aside. The base of the interior was a single piece of wood. Its level seemed a full foot higher than the bottom of the armoire when viewed from outside. I took my penknife from my belt.

  Lockwood was hovering uncertainly at my shoulder. “Luce…”

  “It was showing me where it hid something,” I muttered, “and I think—yes!”

  Jamming the knife in a crack at the back did the trick. When I twisted, the panel came up. It took quite a bit of fiddling with angles, and chucking half the clothes out onto the floor, but I got the piece clear. I put away my knife and got my penlight out.

  “There you are,” I said. “See?”

  Inside the cavity, bundled up: a dusty, folded piece of paper, fixed with a wax seal. Dark spots stained it. Tears or blood.

  “She was showing me,” I said again. “You didn’t need to worry.”

  Lockwood nodded, his face still doubtful. He was studying me closely. “Maybe…” All at once he broke into a smile. “And better still, that tea will still be warm. I wonder if she’s got biscuits, too.”

  Happiness filled me. My instinct had been right. Those few seconds had been all I needed to connect with the ghost and understand its purpose. Yes, Lockwood saw appearances, but I could see beyond that. I could uncover hidden things. He held the door open for me; I grinned at him, squeezed his arm. When we went out onto the staircase, we could hear the frail voice of Mrs. Peters, still singing in the kitchen.

  It turned out that the paper I’d found was the ghost’s confession—or at least, it was the confession of someone named Arabella Crowley, written in 1837, a date that roughly matched the Specter’s clothes. It seemed she’d smothered her husband in his sleep and gotten away with it. Her guilty conscience had kept her spirit from its rest; now that the document had been found and her crime revealed, the ghost was unlikely to return.

  That was my interpretation, anyway. Lockwood took no chances. The following morning he had the fragments of windowpane incinerated in Clerkenwell Furnaces, and he encouraged Mrs. Peters to have the armoire broken up as well. Slightly to my annoyance, he repeated his orders to me not to try communicating with Visitors that weren’t safely constrained. Of course I understood why he was cautious—his sister’s fate loomed heavily over him—but to my mind, he overstated the risks. I was increasingly confident that my Talent could bypass such anxieties.

  Over the next few days, new cases continued to come in thick and fast for Lockwood & Co. Lockwood, George, and I continued tackling them separately.

  This led to problems. For a start, our hectic schedule meant that we had little time to research any job in advance, an omission that was always dangerous. One night Lockwood was nearly ghost-touched at a church near Old Street. He had cornered a Phantasm beside the altar and almost missed a second one creeping up from behind. If he had read up on the history of the church beforehand, he would have known it was haunted by murdered twins.

  Fatigue was an issue, too. George was ambushed by a Lurker he hadn’t spotted near Whitechapel Lock, and he only escaped by jumping headfirst into the canal. I fell asleep during a stakeout in a bakery and totally missed a charred ghost emerging from the oven. The sudden smell of roasted meat woke me just as it was reaching for my face with blackened fingers, much to the amusement of the whispering skull—which had been watching from its jar but hadn’t said anything.

  Our narrow escapes bothered Lockwood, who saw it as yet further proof that we were undermanned and overworked. No doubt he was right, but I was more interested in the freedom that my solitary expeditions gave me. I was waiting to make a proper psychic connection with a ghost—and it wasn’t long before I got precisely that opportunity.

  My appointment was with a family in apartment number 21 (S
outh Block), Bermuda Court, Whitechapel. It was the housing project case, the one I’d been stuck with because of the dibs rule. It had been postponed twice due to client illness, and I nearly couldn’t take it on the third time, either, because I’d already booked train tickets to go back home to see my family. I hadn’t set eyes on my mother or sisters since coming to London eighteen months before. Though I viewed the trip with mixed feelings, Lockwood had given me a week off, and I wasn’t going to rearrange that for a job that involved climbing lots of stairs.

  I agreed to pop in the night before I left. Lockwood and George were busy with other cases, so I took the skull along. It provided company, of a disagreeable, unsavory sort. If nothing else, its jabbering helped keep the silences at bay.

  Bermuda Court proved to be one of those big concrete housing projects they’d built after World War II. It had four blocks of apartments arranged around a grassy yard, each with external stairs and walkways running around the sides. The walkways acted as protection against the weather but also cast the doors and windows of the flats into perpetual shadow. The surface of the concrete was rough and ugly, dark with rain.

  As I’d predicted, the elevators were out. Apartment 21 was only on the fifth floor, but I was out of breath when I arrived. My backpack, weighed down by a certain jar, was killing me.

  The light was almost gone. I took a rasping breath and rang the bell.

  “Man, you’re unfit,” the skull said in my ear.

  “Shut up. I’m in good shape.”

  “You’re wheezing like an asthmatic sloth. It would help to lose a little weight. Like that bit on your hips Lockwood’s always going on about.”

  “What? He doesn’t—”

  But at that moment the clients answered the door.

  There was a mother, gaunt and graying; a large, silent, slope-shouldered father; and three small kids, all under six, living together in a unit with five rooms and a narrow hall. Until recently there’d been a sixth person, too: the kids’ grandfather. But he’d died.

  Slightly to my surprise, the family didn’t usher me into the living room, which is where such awkward conversations usually take place. Instead, they led me into a tiny kitchen at the end of the hall. Everyone crowded in; I was pushed so tight against the stove, I twice turned a dial with my bottom while I heard their story.

  The mother apologized for the uncomfortable surroundings. They did have a living room, she said, but no one went in it after dark. Why? Because the grandfather’s ghost was there. The children had seen him, every night since he’d died, still sitting in his favorite chair. What did he do? Nothing, just sat there. And beforehand, when he was alive? Mostly sat in that same chair, while he wasted away from the sickness he’d refused to get treated. He’d been skin and bones at the end. So light and papery, you’d think a draft would have carried him away.

  Did they know why he’d returned? No. Could they guess what he wanted? No. And what had he been like, when alive? At that there was a lot of shuffling of feet. The uncomfortable silence told me much. He was a difficult man, the father said, not generous with his money. He was tight and grasping, the mother added. Would have sold us to the devil, if the devil offered cash. Sad to say, but it was true: they were glad he was gone.

  But he wasn’t gone, of course. Or, if he had left, he’d now come back.

  They made me tea, and I drank it standing under the single bright light of the kitchen, with the children’s eyes, as wide and green as those of cats, staring up at me. At last I set the cup down in the sink, and there was a sort of collective sighing that the moment had now come. With that they showed me to the living room. I stepped through onto the worn carpet and closed the door behind me.

  It was a rectangular room, not large, centered on an electric fireplace. A metal guard ran around the hearth to keep the kids away. I did not switch on the light. A wide window looked out over the grassy wasteland behind the estate. There were lights on in the other units, and an old neon streetlight—left over from the times when ordinary people went out at night—on the path below. Its glow gave shape to my surroundings.

  The furniture was of the kind that had been fashionable a couple of decades back. Hard, high-backed chairs with jutting armrests and spindly wooden legs; a low, stiff-sided sofa; side tables; a plain glass cabinet set in a corner. A deep-pile rug had been arranged before the fire. Nothing quite matched. I saw kids’ games stacked in another corner and sensed they’d tried to tidy up for me.

  It was chilly in the room—but not ghost-chilly. Not yet. I checked the thermometer on my belt. Fifty-three degrees. I listened but caught only a noise like distant static. I carried my bag over to the sofa below the window and set it quietly on the floor.

  The jar, when I pulled it out, was glowing its palest green. The face rotated slowly, eyes glinting in the plasm.

  “Cramped little hovel,” the voice whispered. “Won’t fit many ghosts in here.”

  My fingers floated over the lever in the jar’s lid that would cut off communication. “If you’ve nothing useful to say…”

  “Oh, I’m not knocking it. Hell of a lot tidier than your place, that’s for sure.”

  “They say this is where it happens.”

  “And they’re right. Someone died in here. The air’s stained with it.”

  “You sense anything else, you let me know.” I set the jar down on a side table.

  Then I turned to face the high-backed chair opposite.

  I already knew it was the one. You could guess from its domineering position, the way it sat closest to the TV in the corner, closest to the fireplace; all the other seats were less conveniently situated. Then there was the walking stick propped against the wall in the shadows beyond; the little side table marked with mug rings. The chair itself was decorated with some god-awful flowery pattern. The fabric had been worn white on the armrests, and repaired with leather patches near the ends. There was a dirty bald mark halfway up the back, too. The sponge of the seat cushion had been compressed thin with long usage; it was almost as if someone sat there still.

  I knew what I should do. Agency practice was clear. I should get out the chains, or, failing that, a sensible amount of filings, and carefully encircle the chair. I should set up lavender crosses as a secondary barrier, and place myself at a safe distance from the likely manifesting point. George would certainly have done all that. Even Lockwood, always more cavalier, would have whipped up a chain circle in double-quick time.

  I did none of those things. I went as far as loosening the strap of my rapier and opening my bag, so that my tools were near at hand. Then I sat back on the sofa in the orange-pink darkness, crossed my ankles, and waited.

  I wanted to test my Talent.

  “Naughty,” the skull said in my mind. “Does Lockwood know you’re doing this?”

  I didn’t reply; after a few more gibes, the ghost fell silent. Beyond the door came muffled noises—kids being told to shush, clinks of crockery; sounds of an evening meal being made. A smell of toast permeated the air. The family was so close by. In theory I was endangering them by not putting out defenses. The Fittes Manual was very clear on this. DEPRAC rules expressly forbade contact without adequate protection. In their eyes, I was committing a crime.

  Outside the window the night grew black. The clients ate their meal; the children were ushered into one of the bedrooms. Toilets flushed. At the sink, someone was doing the washing up. I sat quietly in the dark, waiting for the show.

  And it began.

  Slowly, insensibly, a malign atmosphere began to invade the room. I heard the change in the quality of my breathing; I was taking quicker, shorter gulps of air. The hairs on my arms prickled with disquiet. Doubt rose in me; also anxiety and a strong feeling of self-loathing. I took some gum, chewed steadily, made the usual adjustments to counteract the malaise and creeping fear. The temperature dropped; the reading on my belt thermometer showed fifty degrees, then forty-eight. The quality of the light altered; the neon glow became fuzzie
r, as if struggling through molasses.

  “Something’s coming,” the skull said.

  I chewed and waited. I watched the empty armchair.

  At nine forty-six precisely (I checked my watch), it was empty no longer. A faint outline became visible in the center of the chair. It was very weak, and scuffed and smudged in the middle, like a pencil drawing poorly erased. You could see what it was, though: the shrunken figure of an old man, sitting there. He exactly fitted the contours of the worn sponge seat; the outline of the head rested precisely over the grubby bald spot on the back. The apparition remained transparent, and I could still see every detail of the appalling flowery pattern of the cushions behind, but steadily its features grew more certain. It was a very small, shriveled man, bald except for a few long white hairs straggling behind his ears. I guessed he had once been fat, round-faced even; now the flesh on his cheeks had fallen in, leaving the skin hanging empty. His limbs, too, had wasted away; the fabric of his sleeves and trousers hung horribly flat. One bony hand lay cupped amid the folds and looseness of his old man’s lap. The other curled at the end of the armrest like a spider.

  He’d been a wicked thing, that was for sure. Everything about him projected a discomforting malice. The eyes glittered like black marbles; they were staring fixedly at me, and there was the faintest of smiles on the thin lips. My every instinct told me to defend myself: bring out the rapier, lob a salt-bomb or a canister of iron—do something to get the presence away from me. But it didn’t move, and neither did I. We sat in our seats and stared at each other across the thick fur rug and the gulf that separates the living from the dead.

  I had my hands folded in my lap. I cleared my throat. “Well,” I said finally, “what is it that you want?”

  No sound, no reply. The shape sat there, eyes shining in the dark.

  Over on the side table, the skull in the jar remained silent and shrouded too; only the faintest green haze behind the glass showed that it was present, watching.

  Without the protection of iron chains, the full chill of the apparition tore into me. The temperature at my belt was down to forty-four degrees; it would be colder still near the chair. But the degree of cold isn’t really the point; it’s where it comes from. Ghost chill is a fierce, dry cold; you can feel it sucking the life and energy from your bones. I bore it. I didn’t move at all, but just stared at the old man.