I turned my head and called a little louder. ‘Oh, Lockwood, please come here . . .’
His voice sounded muffled back along the landing. ‘Hold on, Luce. I’ve got something . . .’
‘Jolly good! So have I . . .’
When I looked back, the girl was closer, almost out on the landing. The face was still in shadow, but the drifts of other-light that spun about her body shone brighter than before. Her bony wrists were tight against her side, the fingers bent like fishhooks. Her bare legs were very thin.
‘What do you want?’ I said.
I listened. Words brushed soft as spiders’ touch against my ear. ‘I’m cold.’
Fragments. You seldom get more than fragments. The little voice was a whisper uttered at great distance, but also uncomfortably near at hand. It seemed an awful lot nearer to me than Lockwood’s reply had done.
‘Oh, Lockwood!’ I cooed again. ‘It’s urgent . . .’
Can you credit it? I detected a hint of annoyance in his answer. ‘Just wait a sec, Lucy. There’s something interesting here. I’ve picked up a death-glow – a really, really faint one. Something nasty happened in this front bedroom too! It’s so hazy I almost missed it, so it must’ve been a long while back. But, you know, I think it was traumatic . . . Which means – it’s only a theory, I’m just playing with ideas here – there might possibly have been two violent deaths in this house . . . What do you say to that?’
I chuckled hollowly. ‘I say that it’s a theory I can maybe help you with,’ I sang, ‘if you’ll only come out here.’
‘The thing is,’ he went on, ‘I don’t see how the first death’s got anything to do with the Hopes. They were only here two years, weren’t they? So perhaps the disturbances we’re experiencing aren’t—’
‘– actually caused by the husband?’ I cried. ‘Yes, well done! They’re not!’
A brief pause. Finally he was paying attention. ‘What?’
‘I said, it’s not the husband, Lockwood! Now get out here!’ You might notice I’d slightly abandoned my attempts at keeping it light-hearted. That was because the thing in the study had already picked up on my agitation, and was now drifting through the door. The toenails on the thin, pale feet were long and curled.
Both my hands were at my belt. One gripped the rapier hilt; the other had closed on a canister of Greek Fire. You shouldn’t really use magnesium flares in a domestic environment, of course, but I wasn’t taking any chances. My fingertips were icy, but sweaty too; they slipped against the metal.
A movement on my left. From the corner of my eye, I saw Lockwood emerge onto the landing. He too stopped dead. ‘Ah,’ he said.
I nodded grimly. ‘Yes, and next time I call you while in an operative situation, do me a favour, and get your butt out here double-quick.’
‘Sorry. But I see you’ve got it well in hand. Has she spoken?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She says she’s cold.’
‘Tell her we can sort that for her. No, don’t fiddle-faddle with your weapon – that’ll only make it worse.’ The girl had drifted a little closer across the landing; in response, I’d begun to draw my blade. ‘Tell her we can sort it,’ Lockwood said again. ‘Tell her we can find whatever she’s lost.’
I did so, in as steady a voice as I could manage. It didn’t have much effect. The shape neither shrank nor changed, nor became vaporous, nor departed, nor did any of the other things the Fittes Manual claims they’ll do when you give them hope of release.
‘I’m cold,’ the little voice said; and then again, much louder, ‘Lost and cold.’
‘What was that?’ Lockwood had sensed the contact, but couldn’t hear the sound.
‘Same words, but I’ve got to tell you, Lockwood, this time it wasn’t much like a girl talking. It sounded really deep and hollow, and echoed like a tomb.’
‘That’s never good, is it?’
‘No. I think we should take it as a sign.’ I drew my rapier. Lockwood did likewise. We stood facing the shape in silence. Never attack first. Always wait, draw out its intentions. Watch what it does, where it goes; learn its patterns of behaviour. It was so close now that I could make out the texture of the long fair hairs sweeping down around the neck; see individual moles and blemishes on the skin. It always surprised me that the visual echo could be this strong. George called it ‘the will to exist’, the refusal to lose what once had been. Of course, not all of them appear this way. It’s all down to their personality in life, and what precisely happened when that life came to an end.
We waited. ‘Can you see her face?’ I asked. Lockwood’s Sight is better than mine.
‘No. It’s veiled. But the rest is really bright. I think it’s—’
He stopped; I’d lifted up my hand. This time the voice I heard was the barest tremor in the air. ‘I’m cold,’ it whispered. ‘Lost and cold. Lost and cold . . . and DEAD!’
The wisps of light that hung about the girl flared bright and desolate, and for an instant the dark veil was lifted from the face. I screamed. The light went out. A shadow swept towards me, bony arms outstretched. Icy air drove into me, forcing me towards the stairs. I stumbled on the lip and toppled backwards over the edge. Dropping my rapier, I threw out a desperate arm, grasped the corner of the wall. I hung above the void, buffeted by the raging wind, fingertips slipping on the smooth, cold wallpaper. The shape drew close. I was about to fall.
Then Lockwood sprang between us, his blade cutting a complex pattern in the air. The shadow reared up, arm raised across its face. Lockwood cut another pattern, hemming it in on several sides with walls of flashing iron. The shape shrank back. It darted away into the study with Lockwood in pursuit.
The landing was empty. The wind had died. I scrabbled at the wall, pulled myself upright at the top of the stairs and sank to my knees. My hair was over my eyes; one foot dangled over the topmost step.
Slowly, grimly, I reached out for my rapier. There was a dull ache in my shoulder where I’d jarred my arm.
Lockwood was back. He bent close to me, his calm eyes scanning the darkness of the landing. ‘Did she touch you?’
‘No. Where did she go?’
‘I’ll show you.’ He helped me up. ‘You’re sure you’re all right, Lucy?’
‘Of course.’ I brushed my hair away, forcing the rapier viciously back into its belt-loop. The shoulder twinged a bit, but it was OK. ‘So,’ I said, starting towards the study. ‘Let’s get on with it.’
‘In a sec.’ He held out a hand, stalling my movement forward. ‘You need to relax.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘You’re angry. There’s no need to be. That assault would have caught anyone out. I was surprised too.’
‘You didn’t drop your rapier.’ I pushed his hand away. ‘Listen, we’re wasting time. When she comes back—’
‘She wasn’t directing it at me. It was all at you, trying to pitch you over the stairs. I guess we know how Mr Hope came to take his tumble now. My point is, you need to calm down, Lucy. She’ll feed off your anger super-fast, and grow strong.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ I didn’t say it gracefully. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and then another, concentrating on doing what the Manual recommends: mastering myself, loosening the hold of my emotions. After a few moments I regained control. I withdrew from my anger, and let it drop to the floor like a discarded skin.
I listened again. The house was very silent, but it was the silence of the snowfall, heavy and oppressive. I could feel it watching me.
When I opened my eyes, Lockwood was standing with his hands in his greatcoat pockets, waiting quietly in the blackness of the landing. His rapier was back in his belt. ‘Well?’ he said.
‘I’m feeling better.’
‘Anger gone?’
‘Not a trace left.’
‘OK, because if you don’t feel steady, we’re heading home right now.’
‘We’re not heading home,’ I said coolly
, ‘and I’ll tell you why. Mrs Hope’s daughter won’t let us in here again. She thinks we’re too young. If we haven’t cracked the case by tomorrow, she’ll take us off it and put Fittes or Rotwell’s on the job. We need the money, Lockwood. We finish this now.’
He didn’t move. ‘Most nights,’ he said, ‘I’d agree with you. But the parameters have changed. It’s not some poor old boy bothering his widow; it’s almost certainly the ghost of a murder victim. And you know what they’re like. So if your head’s not in the right place, Luce . . .’
Calm and steady as I was, I found his condescension slightly irritating. ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘but it’s not really me that’s the issue, is it?’
Lockwood frowned. ‘Meaning what?’
‘Meaning the iron chains.’
He rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, come on. That’s hardly the—’
‘Those iron chains are standard kit for every agent, Lockwood. They’re essential for protection when we’re up against a strong Type Two. And you forgot to put them in!’
‘Only because George insisted on oiling them! At your suggestion, if I remember.’
‘Oh, so it’s my fault now, is it?’ I cried. ‘Most agents would sooner forget their trousers than go out without their chains, but you somehow managed it. You were so keen on rushing out here, it’s a wonder we brought anything at all. George even advised us not to go. He wanted to do more research on the house. But no. You over-ruled him.’
‘Yes! Which is what I do, on account of being the leader. It’s my responsibility—’
‘– to make bad decisions? That’s right, I suppose it is.’
We stood there, arms folded, glowering at each other across the darkened landing of a haunted house. Then, like the sun coming out, Lockwood’s glare softened to a grin.
‘So . . .’ he said. ‘How’s your anger management going, Luce?’
I snorted. ‘I admit I’m annoyed, but now I’m annoyed with you. That’s different.’
‘I’m not sure it is, but I do take your original point about the money.’ He clapped his gloved hands together briskly. ‘All right, you win. George wouldn’t approve, but I think we can risk it. I’ve driven her away for the moment, and that gives us breathing space. If we’re quick, we can settle this in half an hour.’
I stooped and lifted up the duffel bags. ‘Just lead me to the place.’
The place proved to be on the far side of the study: a blank stretch of wall set between two recessed stretches of the chaotic bookshelf. In the harsh light of our torches, we saw it was still covered with ancient bedroom paper, drab and faded and peeling near the coving. Puffy, shapeless roses ran floor to ceiling in slanting lines.
In the middle of the space hung a coloured map showing the geology of the British Isles. The base of the wall was concealed by thigh-high piles of geology magazines, one or two of which were weighed down by dusty geological hammers. My keen investigative instinct told me that Mr Hope might possibly have been a geologist by trade.
I inspected the bookshelves on either side, saw how the wall protruded at that point. ‘Old chimney breast,’ I said. ‘So she went in there?’
‘She was fading out before she reached the wall, but yes – I think so. Would make sense if the Source was hidden in the chimney, wouldn’t it?’
I nodded. Yes, it made sense. A natural cavity, big enough for anything at all.
We began shifting the magazines away, carting them in cascading armfuls to the other side of the room. Space was an issue. Lockwood wanted to keep my original circle free, and have a good access route to it from the wall where we’d be working, so we dumped most of the magazines by the door and even out on the landing. Every second armload or so I stopped and listened carefully, but the house remained still.
When we’d cleared a big enough area, I opened the bags and poured out another plastic pot of filings in a curving line across the floor. It formed a rough semicircle that extended outwards from the crucial section of the wall. I joined up the two ends with a straight line running along the base of the wall, keeping a yard or so back from it so that the iron wouldn’t be messed up by all the falling plaster. Once I’d finished there was enough room inside the lines for us both to stand, and have our duffel bags too. It would be pretty safe, though not as secure as if we’d used some chains.
I also checked the original circle in the centre of the room. A few filings had got scattered by our feet as we’d tramped past, but I brushed them back into position.
Lockwood removed the geological map and propped it against the desk. Then he went down to the kitchen and returned with a couple of lanterns. The time for watching in the dark was past; action was required now, and for that we needed proper light. He set the lanterns on the floor inside our semicircle and switched them on low, directing the beams towards the empty wall. The light illuminated it like a little stage.
All this took about a quarter of an hour. At last we stood together inside the iron, pocket-knives and crowbars ready, looking at the wall. ‘Want to hear my theory?’ Lockwood said.
‘Thrill me.’
‘She was killed in the house decades ago – so long back she at last grew quiet. Then Mr Hope set up his study in this room, and that’s triggered her somehow. It stands to reason that something of hers must be concealed here; something she cares about, that makes her linger on. Clothes, maybe, or possessions; or a gift she promised another. Or—’
‘Or something else,’ I said.
‘Yes.’
We stood and looked at the wall.
4
Ever since Marissa Fittes and Tom Rotwell conducted their celebrated investigations, way back in the first years of the Problem, finding the Source of a haunting has been central to every agent’s job. Yes, we do other stuff as well: we help create defences for worried households and we advise individuals on their personal protection. We can rig up salt traps in gardens, lay iron strips on thresholds, hang wards above cradles, and stock you with any number of lavender sticks, ghost-lights and other day-to-day items of security. But the essence of our role, the reason for our being, is always the same: to locate the specific place or object connected to a particular member of the restless dead.
No one really knows how these ‘Sources’ function. Some claim the Visitors are actually contained within them, others that they mark points where the boundary between worlds has been worn thin by violence or extreme emotion. Agents don’t have time to speculate either way. We’re too busy trying to avoid being ghost-touched to worry about philosophy.
As Lockwood said, a Source might be many things. The exact location of a crime, perhaps, or an object intimately connected to a sudden death, or maybe a prized possession of the Visitor when alive. Most often, though (73 per cent, according to research conducted by the Rotwell Institute), it’s associated with what the Fittes Manual calls ‘personal organic remains’. You can guess what that means. The point is, you never know until you look.
Which is what we were doing now.
Five minutes in, we’d almost stripped the central slab of wall. The paper was decades old, its glue dry and turned to dust. We could slip our knives under it and cut away great curls with ease. Some practically disintegrated in our hands; others flopped over our arms like giant folds of skin. The plaster of the wall beneath was pinkish-white and mottled, and speckled with orange-brown fragments of paste. It reminded me of breaded ham.
Lockwood took one of the lanterns and made a closer inspection, running his hand along the uneven surface. He moved the lantern at different heights and angles, watching the play of shadows on the wall.
‘There was a cavity here at some point,’ he said. ‘A big one. Someone’s filled it in. See how the plaster’s a different colour, Luce?’
‘I see it. Think we can break inside?’
‘Shouldn’t be too difficult.’ He hefted his crowbar. ‘Everything quiet?’
I glanced over my shoulder. Beyond the little circle of lantern-light, the rest of the room was
invisible. We were an illuminated island in a sea of blackness. I listened and heard nothing, but there was a steadily mounting pressure in the silence: I could feel it building in my ear. ‘We’re OK for the moment,’ I said. ‘But it won’t last long.’
‘Better get on with it, then.’ His bar swung, crunched into the plaster. A shower of pieces cascaded to the floor.
Twenty minutes later the fronts of our clothes were spotted white, the toecaps of our boots smothered by the heap of fragments ranged beneath the wall. The hole we’d made was half my height and wide as a man. There was rough, dark wood behind it, studded with old nails.
‘Some kind of boards,’ Lockwood said. Sweat gleamed on his forehead; he spoke with forced carelessness. ‘The front of a box or cupboard or something. Looks like it fills the whole wall space, Lucy.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Mind the filings.’ He’d stepped back too far, kicking them out of position. That was what we had to focus on. Keep to the rules, keep ourselves safe. If we’d had the chains it wouldn’t have been so difficult, but filings were treacherous, their line easily broken. I crouched down, got the brush and, with small, methodical movements, began to fix the break. Above me, Lockwood took a deep breath. Then came the soft crack of his crowbar biting into wood.
With the line repaired, I scooped away several handfuls of plaster that threatened to spill over the barrier at the front. This done, I remained there, crouching, the fingertips of one hand pressed firmly on the floorboards. I stayed like that for a minute, maybe more.
When I got to my feet, Lockwood had done some damage to one of the planks, but hadn’t broken through. I tapped him on the arm.
‘What?’ He struck the wall again.
‘She’s back,’ I said.
The sounds had been so faint that at first it had merged into the noise we made, and it was only by the vibrations in the floor that I’d noticed it at all. But even as I spoke, they began to rise in volume: three quick impacts – the last a dreadful soft-hard thud – then silence, before the sequence started over. It was an endless loop, identical each time. The sound-memory of Mr Hope falling down the stairs.
Lockwood & Co: The Screaming Staircase Page 3