The Hollow Boy

by Jonathan Stroud

  Of all its features, it was the stairwell that most concerned us, and here again our client had told the truth. It was a remarkably elegant construction and the dark heart of the building. Approaching from the front door, you almost immediately came upon it: a great oval cavity cut right up through the house. The stairs hugged the right side of the oval, tight against the wall, curling steeply counterclockwise to the level above. On the left side, a slim banister arced around, cordoning off the stairwell from the hall; beyond it, a flight of steps led down to the basement. Standing in the hall—or on each landing—you could look up to see the curl of the stairs repeated again and again until you reached a great oval skylight at the attic, or down to the black-and-white tile flooring of the kitchen basement below.

  None of us liked those tiles, which looked very clean and scrubbed. It was there that the night-watch boy’s body had been found.

  Aside from the skylight high above, the landings and stairwell had no access to natural light. The effect was of an inward-looking space, heavy and silent and turned toward the past, with little connection to the outside world. Though it was only mid-afternoon, the electric lanterns, set in floral sconces at intervals along the walls, were already on. They emitted a cold and greasy glare.

  The first thing we did, while it was still light, was give the house the once-over. We went through it systematically, in silence, listening as our footsteps rang on the varnished floorboards. We made readings, noted temperatures, took turns using our psychic senses. It was too early to get anything spectacular, but it was worth checking just in case.

  Then we focused our attention on the stairwell.

  We started in the basement, at the entrance to the kitchen, and worked our way slowly up. From the outset it was clear that the stairs, and the landings close to the banister, were colder than the rest of the house—not by much, but consistently down by five or ten degrees. That was all we found. Lockwood didn’t see anything. I listened, but heard nothing sinister whatsoever, unless you counted George’s stomach rumbling.

  On the staircase’s final curl, where it rose from third floor to attic level beneath the pale eye of the skylight, Lockwood bent to the baseboard. He placed his finger on it, then put it to his lips. “Salt,” he said. “They’ve cleaned up, but there’s been salt spilled here.”

  “The night-watch girl?” George was making notes with a stubby pencil; he had a spare one tucked behind his ear. “Some kind of last defense?”

  “So she must have been found here,” I said. Yes, found crouched against the wall, mute and mindless….I looked at the bland plaster, the nondescript emptiness of the space, searching out the horror that had happened here. Other than the salt, there was no trace of it. Perhaps that was the worst thing of all.

  An hour had passed; the skylight had grown dim. On the attic landing, the last shaft of daylight shrank into shadow. Grayness swelled out around the curl of the staircase. We went back downstairs.

  It was time for food, and George’s story. None of us wanted to use the kitchen in the basement where the boy had died. We set up camp instead on the ground floor, in the room of paintings, dragging in a table and some chairs, and laying out our water bottles, biscuits, sandwiches, and reviving packets of chips. We lit the gas lanterns and set one at either end of the table. I found a socket, filled the electric kettle, and switched it on. George got out some papers from his investigations at the library. We made tea and settled ourselves down.

  “One day we should do this somewhere nice,” George said. “You know, have a picnic where nothing’s going to want to kill us. It would be quite fun.”

  “What would we find to talk about, though?” Lockwood asked. He took a swig of tea. “Come to think of it, what did kids do with themselves in the days before the Problem? Most of them didn’t even have to work, did they? What was it—school or something? Life must have been so dull.”

  “And safe,” I said. “Don’t forget that.”

  “Not so safe if you lived in this house,” George said darkly. “Not if you were a servant lad known as ‘Little Tom.’” He consulted his notes for a moment, leaning forward like a short, roundish general assessing battle plans, then took a bite of biscuit. “It was the summer of 1883 when the killing took place. According to the Pall Mall Gazette, the house was owned by a fellow named Henry Cooke, an old soldier and merchant, who’d served out in India. It was his son, a certain Robert Cooke, who was arrested one hot July night for the murder of a servant, Thomas Webber, also known as ‘Little Tom.’ He was put on trial at once, and found guilty.”

  “How did he kill him?” I asked. “And why?”

  “Why, I don’t know. I don’t have many details. How, yes. He stabbed him with one of his father’s hunting knives. The article says that the argument began down in the kitchen, late one evening. Little Tom was first attacked there, and badly wounded. Then a terrible chase took place, under the horrified gaze of many witnesses—guests, servants, and other family members—before the final fatal blow was struck. There was blood everywhere. The Gazette calls it ‘the house of horror.’ Another one! London has so many. I should make a list sometime.”

  I was looking at the ceiling of the room. It was decorated with swirls and spirals formed of plaster molding, as tight and intricately fibrous as bone marrow. “That pretty much fits in with the bloody footprints,” I said.

  Lockwood nodded. “And with what the kid told Wintergarden. The chase begins down in the kitchen and spirals up through the house. Maybe poor Little Tom was cornered in the attic and killed there.”

  “What happened to the murderer?” I asked. “Hanged?”

  “No. He was sent to Bethlem psychiatric hospital. They realized he was crazy, you see. Anyway, he died soon after. While walking on the grounds, he evaded his captors, ran out into the road, and threw himself beneath the wheels of an undertaker’s carriage.”

  Lockwood made a face. “A cheery tale.”

  “Aren’t they all?”

  Outside, over the square, the sun was fast descending. Black clouds had piled around it, seeking to smother its dying light. A great flock of birds wheeled over the elm trees, spiraling and twirling like a living twist of smoke. We finished our tea.

  “Good stuff, George….” Lockwood had taken off his rapier and leaned it against his chair. He had his coat collar up, and his face was mostly in darkness. His long fingers tapped on the table, beating the rhythm of his thoughts. “Now,” he said, after a pause, “we need to get to work. But we don’t treat this as a normal case. I want you both to listen carefully. The haunting, as reported, is a complicated one. We’ve got the bloody footprints climbing the stairs from bottom to top. We’ve got these two mysterious shapes, locked into their chase. We’ve got feelings of extreme terror that affected the night-watch kids. And we’ve got the fact that something—either all or part of this—did something terrible to those children. One witness is dead, the other driven mad.” He crumpled a chip bag and put it in his pocket. “It’s confusing, and we can’t leave anything to chance.”

  “It’s definitely unusual to have two apparitions manifesting in the same haunting,” George said. “That raises big questions. Are they both active spirits, or is one just a visual echo of the original event, conjured up by the other? I’ve seen that happen. There was that nasty case in Deptford with the sailor and the Burmese python, where—”

  Lockwood held up his hand. “We all know that story, George. Stick to tonight.”

  I’d been shifting impatiently in my seat. “It’s probably not as confusing as you make out. It’s Cooke’s wicked spirit driving this. We need to find the Source and destroy it.”

  “Sure,” Lockwood said, “but not tonight. Tonight it’s observation only. We don’t engage. The ghosts have a specific trajectory. They appear at the bottom, shoot straight up the stairs, and vanish somewhere at the top. It all happens really fast. Here’s what we do: we rig up three separate iron circles. George is in the basement, Lucy’s on the second
floor, I’m stationed at the top. We wait, we watch what happens. Afterward we compare notes. No, don’t argue.” (I’d opened my mouth in a querying sort of way.) “This is a two-night mission. Holly tells me it’s standard practice in Rotwell’s.”

  “Oh, that’s got to be all right, then,” I said.

  There was a slight pause. “What about the footprints?” George asked.

  “The footprints linger, and we can investigate them later. It’s these nippy spirits we need to observe. Sounds to me as if they’ll go straight past us, but if by chance they do approach, use your weapons without a second thought. Understand?”

  George nodded.

  “Lucy?”

  “Yes, yes, of course. Fine.”

  “One other thing: none of us leaves our iron circles for any reason whatever. And Lucy, I don’t want any attempt at psychic connection. I’ve been thinking about the way you spoke to that woman’s ghost the other week. Yes, it got results, but I didn’t like it. We don’t know what we’re dealing with here. We do know it killed a child.”

  “Of course I understand that,” I said. “No problem.”

  “Right. You brought the skull along with you? Good. See if it’ll give you any insights. Let it take the risks, not you. And now we’d better get moving. If you can’t feel something coming, I can.”

  He stood abruptly, reached for his rapier. Our picnic was dissolved.

  An hour later, with the sun’s light firmly extinguished, we’d rigged ourselves up okay. I stood on the second floor landing, surrounded by my chains, facing the stairwell. My bag was inside; I had some salt-bombs out and ready. I was maybe five feet from the banister, where the ghosts were said to pass on their curving progress up the stairs.

  I’d gone for a double circle, two chains winding over each other like coiling snakes. It would be tough for any spirit to overcome. Still, given that the night-watch girl had been driven mad with shock, I did wonder whether standing behind chains was going to be protection enough. After all, we’d presumably still see whatever it was she saw. From the taut expressions on the others’ faces as we’d separated, I guessed they were wondering the same thing. But none of us mentioned it. You don’t get far being an agent who overthinks. George thinks masses, and he kind of proves the point.

  Just outside the chains, I’d plonked the ghost-jar unceremoniously on the floor. It was glowing with a sour green light, but I couldn’t see the face. The ghost was there, though.

  It let out a long, appreciative whistle. “Nice pad,” it whispered. “I could get used to this. So, then…Lockwood. I heard him telling you off just now.”

  “He wasn’t telling me off.” I looked over the banister into the stairwell. We’d turned off the wall lights but had set out snuff-lights on the stairs. Every third step had its own small candle. Some were tall, others short; all were lit and unprotected, vulnerable to whatever influence might pass them. Their warm spheres of light interlinked and overlapped in the darkness, like giant spiraling bubbles trapped in time. It was quite pretty, in a sinister sort of way.

  “Are you going to listen to him?” the skull said. “I wouldn’t listen to him. If you want to make psychic contact with a killer ghost, why not? I say, Go, girl!”

  “You are so obvious. I wouldn’t do anything that stupid.” Far below me, in the basement, I could see the dim red glow of George’s lantern. Like me, he’d fixed it so almost no light showed; by flipping a switch, you could open the shutters and gain full power in the blink of an eye. Lockwood, somewhere two floors above, would have a similar setup. I imagined him up there, standing alert and watchful in the dark. I felt a twist in my chest, pleasant and painful at the same time: probably indigestion from those stupid sandwiches. “Now,” I said, looking back at the jar, “I brought you here for a reason. What do you sense? Anything?”

  “I don’t think he’s listening to you anymore,” the voice persisted. “It’s that Holly who’s distracted him….Oh, don’t deny it! Just because I’m evil doesn’t mean I can’t see what’s right in front of my nose.”

  “You don’t have a nose.” I stepped back over my chains. “Tell me about the stairs!”

  “Well…bad things happened here.”

  “Thanks. I could have told you that.”

  “Could you? Can you see the blood all over it? Can you hear the screams?”

  “No.”

  “More fool you. You’re not as perceptive as you think. For instance, you’re thinking too much about Lockwood to even notice there’s something creeping up behind you…right now!”

  A creak on the floorboards. I squealed, spun around. Before I could react, a flashlight flicked on, and a familiar spectacled face loomed out of the darkness. “George!”

  “All right, Luce.”

  “What are you doing leaving your circle? Get back!”

  He shrugged. “Well, nothing’s coming now, is it? Could be hours yet. Got any gum?”

  “No! Go back to your place. If Lockwood saw…”

  “Relax. We’re safe for the moment. Did you say you had some gum?”

  “No. Yes…Somewhere. Here, take it.” I fished out a packet and passed it over. “You okay down there?”

  “Bearing up.” He fumbled with the wrapper, fingers shaking. “There’s a pool of spreading cold on the tiles. Where that boy fell, you know. And I’m getting a funny taste in my mouth….Miasma’s starting.” He shoved the pack of gum into my hand and shivered. “Here, you’d better keep it. I’ll get back down.”

  “Lucy! George!” Lockwood’s voice echoed down the stairwell. “Everything all right down there?”

  “Yes!”

  “Good. Stand tight! I think the atmosphere’s starting to change.”

  George grimaced, gave a wave. A moment later he was a plump shadow fleeing down the stairs, setting the candles jerking. The bubbles of light stabilized, resumed their placid spiral. I sat cross-legged in the circle, watching the darkness, and waited for something to happen.

  My head jerked up. I felt a cold and queasy prickling, as if invisible insects, small and numberless, were scurrying across my skin. My neck ached. I was acutely aware that considerable time had passed. My mind had been stretched out thin, my consciousness somewhere remote; now it snapped back to attention. What time was it? I checked my watch. Its luminous digits, solid and reassuring, showed nearly twelve fifteen. Midnight had passed!

  I cleared my throat, stretched, looked around. The house was silent. The snuff-lights gleamed on the staircase much as before, but I thought their orbs had shrunk, as if under unseen pressure. I looked at the ghost-jar. It no longer glowed, but shone black and still as wine. And what was that shimmering on the surface of the glass?

  Frost. I stretched my hand in front of me, out beyond the chains—and pulled it sharply back. It was like dipping my fingers into a bath of icy water.

  I got stiffly to my feet. I had a foulness in my mouth, as if I’d swallowed something bad and couldn’t shake the taste. I found gum, ripped off the wrapper, furiously began chewing. Furious was the word. Everything I did felt jagged, edgy. I could sense my psychic nerves being pulled steadily out of shape.

  Nothing had actually happened yet, but it was the buildup that really got to you. It was the knowledge that you were being pulled back toward the replay of an evil event, something that had twisted the personality of the house out of true. Everything was moving backward, and the past had more power than the future—George called it Time Sickness. He reckoned that was why it felt so unnatural, so fundamentally wrong.

  “Watch the candles.” It was the skull’s voice in my ear. “Watch their light.”

  And sure enough, the candles were twitching, responding to a minute agitation of the air. I could feel the hairs on my arms rise, my breathing tighten. My ears hurt, as if I were descending in an elevator, too far, too fast. I closed my eyes and listened. From somewhere came a cry of mortal pain.

  I opened my eyes. “George?”

  An almighty bang. I jumped w
here I stood. The noise echoed up the staircase, was swallowed by the dark. I knew it had come from below, from the basement. The candle auras had stilled; they gleamed like the irises of sightless eyes.

  “George?”

  No answer. I cursed, drew my rapier, stepped out of the circle into the freezing dark. I crossed to the banister, and looked down.

  Two flights below, something was coming up the stairs. I could see dark smears appearing on the steps. Whatever made them was invisible, but it moved slowly, spattering them as it went, extinguishing each candle as it passed.

  Darkness in the basement; no red glow from George’s lantern. I gripped the banister, craned my head out to see if I could—

  The last candle on the basement stairs died. Gleams of wetness appeared on the floorboards of the hall. Was that a cloudy hand gripping the banister for support…?

  No—there were two hands, one some way behind the other. And now first one, and then the other, flowed suddenly forward, picking up speed, angling around to the flight that would bring them up to me.

  “Lucy…” It was the voice from the jar. “I’d step over here sharpish, if I were you.”

  Still I clutched at the rail. How cold it was, tearing at me through my gloves. It was so hard to think of moving. My limbs were far too heavy, my body somehow far away.

  On the stairs, two racing, cloudy forms dragged darkness up behind them like a cloak. Fast as you could snap your fingers, the candlewicks they passed snuffed out.

  “Bet Holly would have the wit to get back to safety,” the skull remarked.

  Something needling jabbed inside me; indignation cut through ghost-lock. I shoved my body backward, threw myself across the landing. Tripping over the chains, I fell into the circle, on top of my bags, and sprawled there as two shapes erupted past me.