Now that he’d given us that fatal news, Inspector Barnes seemed restless and ill at ease. He stalked around the room, glaring at the artefacts, sipping at his tea.
‘Put the letter on the sideboard, please,’ Lockwood said. ‘I’ll look at it later.’
‘No good being miffed, Mr Lockwood,’ Barnes said. ‘This is what happens when an agency isn’t properly run. No supervisors! Agencies with adults ensure everything’s done with maximum care for property and minimum loss of life. But you’ – he waved a hand disgustedly – ‘you’re nothing but three kids playing at grown-up games. Everything in this house is testament to that, even this rubbish on the wall.’ He peered at a small label. ‘“An Indonesian ghost-catcher”? Fiddle-faddle! Belongs in a museum!’
‘That collection was my mother’s,’ Lockwood said quietly.
The inspector didn’t hear; he tossed the envelope onto the sideboard and, in the same moment, noticed the object concealed beneath the spotty handkerchief. Frowning, he flicked the cloth aside, revealing the jar of yellow smog. His frown deepened. He bent close, peered into its depths. ‘And this? What’s this monstrosity? Some other appalling specimen that should have been incinerated long ago . . .’ He tapped dismissively on the glass.
‘Er, I wouldn’t do that,’ Lockwood said.
‘Why not?’
A rush of yellow plasm; the ghost’s face congealed into existence directly opposite Barnes’s own. Its eyes bulged out as if on stalks; its mouth gurned wide, revealing an Alpine range of jagged teeth. It was doing something improbable with its tongue.
It was hard to guess exactly how much of the apparition the inspector saw. Certainly he sensed something. Emitting a whoop like a howler monkey, he sprang back in terror. His hand jerked high; hot, strong tea rained down over his face and shirt-front. The cup clattered to the floor.
‘George,’ Lockwood said mildly, ‘I told you to keep that jar downstairs.’
‘I know. I’m so forgetful.’
Barnes was blinking, gasping, wiping at his face. ‘You irresponsible idiots! That hellish thing – what is it?’
‘Not sure,’ George said. ‘Possibly a Spectre of some kind. Sorry about that, Mr Barnes, but really you shouldn’t have looked so close. It’s easily startled by grotesque shapes.’
The inspector had snatched up a napkin from the tea tray and was dabbing at his shirt; now he scowled round at us all. ‘This is exactly what I’m talking about,’ he said. ‘Jars like that shouldn’t be kept in private homes. They need to be in secure locations, under the control of responsible institutions – or, better still, destroyed. What if that ghost got free? What if some kid came in and found it? I could barely see the outline and it frightened me half to death, and you go leaving it casually on a sideboard.’ He shook his head sourly. ‘Like I say, you’re just playing games. Well, I’ve said what I came for. Read those documents, Mr Lockwood, and think about what you want to do. Remember – four weeks is all you’ve got. Four weeks and sixty thousand pounds. No, don’t bother seeing me out; I can manage, assuming some ghoul doesn’t devour me in the hall.’
He slapped his hat on his head and stomped from the room. We waited until we heard the front door slam.
‘Rather a tiresome meeting in so many ways,’ Lockwood said, ‘but it perked up a little towards the end.’
‘Didn’t it?’ George chuckled. ‘That was priceless. Did you see the look on his face!’
I grinned. ‘I’ve never seen anyone move so fast.’
‘He was absolutely petrified, wasn’t he?’
‘Yeah. That was great.’
‘Really funny.’
‘Yes.’
Our laughter drained away. There was a long silence. We all stared out at nothing.
‘Can you pay the Hopes off?’ I said.
Lockwood took a deep breath; the effort seemed to pain him – he rubbed the side of his ribs irritably. ‘In a word: no. I’ve got this house, but not much in the bank. Nothing like enough to fix the Hopes’ place, anyway. The only way I could do it is sell up here, and that’s effectively the end of the agency, as Barnes well knows . . .’ For an instant he seemed to shrink back into his chair; then a switch was flicked and energy returned. He flashed us both a bruised, resplendent smile. ‘But it’s not going to come to that, is it? We’ve got four weeks! That’s plenty of time to earn some real cash! What we need is a really high-profile case that gives us a bit of significant publicity, gets the ball rolling.’ He pointed at the casebook on the table. ‘No more of these rubbish Shades and Lurkers – we want something that’ll truly make our name. Well . . . we’ll get on to it tomorrow . . . No thanks, George – I don’t want tea. I’m a little tired. If it’s all the same to you, I’m off to bed.’
He said goodnight and left. George and I sat there, saying nothing.
‘I didn’t tell him, but we’ve lost one of those cases already,’ George said at last. ‘They rang up today and cancelled. Heard about the fire, you see.’
‘The cat lady?’
‘I’m afraid not. One of the interesting ones.’
‘Four weeks isn’t really long enough to get that money, is it?’ I said.
‘No.’ He was cross-legged on the sofa, chin resting gloomily on his hands.
‘It’s so unfair,’ I said. ‘We risked our lives!’
‘Yeah.’
‘We faced down a formidable ghost! We made London a safer place!’
‘Yeah.’
‘We should be getting praised for this!’
George stretched, prepared to rise. ‘Nice thought, but it’s not the way things work. You hungry?’
‘Not really. Just exhausted. I think I’m going to bed too.’ I watched him gather up the tea things, and retrieve the inspector’s fallen cup from under the settee. ‘At least Annabel Ward’s dealt with,’ I said. ‘That’s a little consolation.’
He grunted. ‘Yeah. You did that bit right, at least.’
11
I awoke, some time in the middle of the night, with the room in darkness and all my body aching. I lay on my back – the least uncomfortable position – turned slightly towards the window. One arm was bent and resting on my pillow, the other stretched out on the duvet. My eyes were open, my mind alert. It almost seemed as if I hadn’t been asleep at all, but I must have been, for all around me was the heavy, velvet silence of the dead hours.
My cuts felt raw, my bruises tender; a whole day after the fall, my muscles were in the process of stiffening nicely. I knew I should probably get up and take some aspirin, but the packet was in the kitchen far below. It was too much effort to go and fetch it. I didn’t want to move. I was stiff, the bed was warm, and the air was much too cold.
I lay quiet, staring at the sloping attic ceiling. After a short time, a pale white glow showed beyond the window, dim at first, then flaring. That was from the ghost-lamp, regular as a lighthouse beam, shining way off on the corner of the street. Every three and a half minutes it pierced the night with its harsh white radiance for exactly thirty seconds, before switching off again. Officially this was designed to keep the roads safe, discourage Visitors from lingering. In reality – since few ghosts wandered the open roads – it was about reassurance, to make people think the authorities were doing something.
It worked in its way, I guess. It gave a little comfort. But when it shut off, it made the night seem blacker still.
While the light was on, I could see the details of my little room: the ceiling beams, the dark strips of the iron ghost-bars around the window; the flimsy wardrobe that was so shallow all my hangers had to go in at an angle. There was scarcely any room in it – I usually ended up chucking my clothes in a heap on the chair beside the door. I could see that heap out of the corner of my eye. It had risen mighty high. I’d have to sort it out tomorrow.
Tomorrow . . . Lockwood’s brave face notwithstanding, it didn’t look as if there were many tomorrows left to us. Four weeks . . . Four weeks to find an impossible amount of money. And
it had been my insistence that had kept us in the house after the ghost-girl’s first attack. It had been me who drove us on to face her again, when it would have been so easy just to pack our things and leave.
My fault. I’d made the wrong decision, like at the Wythburn Mill. That time I’d not obeyed my instincts. This time I’d followed my instincts, and they’d been wrong. One way or another, when it came to a crisis, the end result was the same. I messed up, and disaster followed.
Out in the street, the ghost-lamp switched off; the room was dark again. Still I hadn’t moved. I was hoping I could con my mind into going back to sleep. But who was I kidding? I was too sore, too awake, too guilty – and also much too cold. I really needed another duvet from the airing cupboard in the bathroom below.
Too cold . . .
My heart gave a little tremor as I lay there in my bed.
It really was too cold.
And not the ordinary dank middle-of-November kind, either. It was the sort of cold that causes your breath to plume above you as you sleep. It was the sort that causes little crystal webs of ice to grow on the inside of your window-panes. It was a spreading, numbing, lung-scouring chill, and it was very well known to me.
I opened my eyes wide.
Darkness. I saw the faintest outline of the gable window and, through it, the orange-tinted London night. I listened – heard only the blood pounding in my ears. My heart beat against my chest so hard I guessed the quilt above was jumping in response. All my muscles tensed; I’d become super-aware, feeling every inch of contact on my skin – the brush of my cotton nightie, the warm, smooth pliancy of the sheet, the press of the plasters on my wounds. The hand that lay on the pillow twitched involuntarily; sweat broke out on my palm.
I’d seen nothing, heard nothing, but I knew.
I was not alone in the room.
A small part of my mind screamed at me to move. Throw off the heavy duvet, get to my feet. What I’d do then I didn’t know – but anything was better than just lying there, helpless, clenching my panic tight between my teeth.
Just get up. Throw open the door. Run downstairs . . . Do something!
I lay quite still.
A trickle of cold memory told me that making for the door might not be wise. Because I’d seen . . . What had I seen?
I waited. Waited for the light.
Sometimes three minutes takes a long, long time.
Down by the corner store, in the ghost-lamp’s hidden circuitry, the electronic switch clicked on. Behind the great round lenses, magnesium bulbs ignited, bathing the street in cool white light. High up at my attic window, the glow returned.
My eyes flicked in the direction of the door.
Yes. There. The chair and heap of clothes. They formed a black and shapeless blot – but it was higher than usual, far higher than it should have been. If I’d taken all the clothes I owned in the world and piled them there with my skirts and jumpers at the bottom and my socks teetering at the top, they wouldn’t have been anything like as tall, or thin, as the shape that stood just visible in the dark place by the door.
It didn’t move. It didn’t have to. I stared at it for thirty seconds, lying frozen in the bed. And I did feel frozen too. The ghost-lock had stolen up on me so subtly, so stealthily, that I’d been entirely unaware of it till now.
The light from the street went out.
I bit my lip, ignited my concentration, drove the feeling of helplessness from my mind. I wrenched my muscles into action, threw my bedclothes off me. I hurled myself sideways, rolled off, landed on the floor.
I lay quite still.
All my muscles throbbed with pain; the violent action hadn’t done my stitches any good. But I’d put the bed between me and the door, and the thing that stood beside it, which was good. It was all that counted now.
I was pressed low against the carpet, head resting on my hands. Ice-cold air bit the exposed skin of my feet and legs. The carpet was covered with a faint luminosity, a thin, white, swirling haze: ghost-fog, an occasional side-product of a manifestation.
I closed my eyes, tried to calm down, open my ears and listen.
But what’s easy when you’re fully clothed and kitted out, and have a gleaming rapier at your side, isn’t so simple when you’re in your pink-and-yellow nightie, sprawling on the floor. What’s fine when entering a haunted house on agency business doesn’t work so well when you’re in your very own bedroom, and have just seen something dead standing a metre or two away. So I picked up no supernatural sound at all. What I got were life’s essentials – my beating heart, the pumping of my lungs.
How the hell did it get in? There was iron on the window. How could it get so high?
Calm down! Think. Did I have any weapons in my room – anything I could use?
No. My work-belt was on the kitchen table, two full floors below. Two floors! It might as well have been in China. As might my rapier, lost back at Sheen Road, burned and melted in the fire. All our spares were in the basement, and that was three floors down! I was completely defenceless. There was probably plenty of kit scattered nearer in the house, but that was useless too, because the thing was hovering by the door.
Or was it? Air shifted. My skin crawled.
Lying on my stomach as I was, I couldn’t raise my head too far, not without supporting myself on my hands. All I could see was the nearest bed-leg, grey and granular, strands of white-green ghost-fog, and the wall. My back was to the open room. Something could be drifting up behind me that very moment, and I wouldn’t know anything about it.
Dark or not, I had to look right now. I steeled myself, prepared to rise.
The light in the street came on again. I straightened my arms, craned my head up, peeped back over the edge of the mattress . . .
And felt my heart nearly stop in fear. The shape was no longer by the door. No. It had moved up, slowly, silently, and was now hovering above the bed. It hung there in a stooped, investigative posture, plasm trailing on the mattress, its long dark fingers blindly probing the warm patch on the sheet where I’d just been lying.
If it had stretched those fingers to the side, it would have touched me.
I ducked back down.
In many ways the spare bed that I slept in was a manky affair. It was probably the very one Lockwood had snoozed in all those years ago as a little kid. Its joints were rickety, its mattress a wilderness of humps and springs. But one good thing about it: it lacked those built-in drawers you get with modern beds. So there was plenty of room beneath for crumpled hankies, books and dust; even for my little box of stuff from home.
And plenty of room, right then, for a swiftly moving girl.
I don’t know whether I crawled or rolled; I don’t know what I crushed or broke. I think I hit my head, and I must’ve torn the plasters off my forearms, because I later found them all bloodied on the carpet. One second, maybe two: that was all it took for me to shoot beneath the bed and out the other side.
As I emerged I was engulfed by something cold.
It was big and soft, and flopped on me from above. For a split second I thrashed about in utter terror – then realized it was just my duvet, slumping off the bed. I hurled it away, struggled to my feet. Behind, on the bed, came a flare of angry other-light. The patch of darkness sprang into focus: a pale, thin shape drifted after me with outstretched arms.
I leaped to the door, tore it open with a crash, and launched myself desperately down the stairs.
Onto the first-floor landing, colliding with the banisters, threads of cold air clutching at my neck. ‘Lockwood!’ I shouted. ‘George!’
Lockwood’s door was on the left. A little crack of light appeared beneath it. I scrabbled at the handle, staring over my shoulder at the pale glow extending swiftly down the stairs. The handle moved uselessly up and down; the door was locked, it wouldn’t open. I raised a desperate fist to hammer on the wood. Round the angle of the stairs came fingers, a shining, outstretched hand . . .
The door swung open;
soft yellow lamplight almost blinded me.
Lockwood stood there, dressed in striped pyjamas and his long dark dressing gown.
‘Lucy?’
I pitched past him into the room. ‘A ghost! My room! It’s coming!’
His hair was a little rumpled, his bruised face tired and drawn, but otherwise he was as self-possessed as ever. He didn’t ask questions, but stepped backwards, keeping his face towards the black opening of the door. There was a chest of drawers beside him. Without looking, he opened the uppermost drawer with his good hand, reached purposefully inside. I felt a warm surge of relief. Thank goodness! It would be a salt bomb or a canister of iron filings maybe. Who cared? Anything would do.
He brought out a crumpled mess of wood and string and bits of metal. The metal pieces were shaped like animals and birds. Lockwood took hold of a wooden pole and began untangling the strings.
I stared at it. ‘That’s all you’ve got?’
‘My rapier’s downstairs.’
‘What the hell is it?’
‘Toy mobile. Had it when I was a kid. You hold it here, and the animals hang from this rotating wheel. Make a jolly sound. My favourite was the smiley giraffe.’
I looked towards the open door. ‘Well, that’s very nice, but—’
‘They’re made of iron, Lucy. So what happened? Your knees are bleeding.’
‘An apparition. Dark aura at first, but other-light’s kicking in now. Secondary effects of ghost-lock, fog and chill. It just followed me down the stairs.’
Lockwood seemed satisfied with the mobile. When he held it up and flexed his wrist, the little circle of dangling animals turned freely. ‘Turn off the bedside lamp, will you?’
I did so. We were plunged into darkness. No spectral glow showed on the landing.
‘Take it from me, it’s out there,’ I said.
‘OK. We’re making for the door. As you pass my bed, pick up a boot.’
We stole towards the door, with the mobile held in front of us, and peered cautiously out. There was no sign of the apparition on the landing or the stairs.
Lockwood & Co: The Screaming Staircase Page 11