Lockwood & Co. Book Three: The Hollow Boy

by Jonathan Stroud

  My fingers closed on the wooden board at the foot of the bed.

  I tensed my muscles, came to an abrupt and jerking standstill, almost horizontal, boots twisted behind the box, arm bent, face almost on the footboard. I stretched out my other hand and pressed it palm down on the rough, tired fibers of the carpet, softly taking my weight.

  And now there was George’s voice, replying to Lockwood. They were at their bedroom doors. Going to get some rest; copying me.

  “Yeah, but we need to keep an eye on her,” George said. “Out in the field, I mean.”

  “She’s stronger than you think. Don’t underestimate her.”

  Holly, always Holly. The two doors closed. I allowed my body to sag across the box. When I was sure everything was silent, I did a half roll sideways, off the box, onto my knees, and grabbed the bedpost to pull myself up.

  How cold the wood was; I was much nearer the death-glow than felt comfortable. I thought of the black scorch mark hidden beneath the covers. I thought of the face of the black-eyed girl. Then, like electricity arcing through a wire, sound crackled upward through my fingers, out of the past, through my eyes and teeth. And everything went—

  Dark. There was a child’s voice calling in it, high and shrill.

  “Jessica? Where are you? I’m sorry. I’ll come now.”

  Silence in the dark. No answer. But something heard: a cold malignant presence, waiting in the room. I felt its anticipation. Lacking life, it was drawn to its warmth with powerful hunger. Very recently, released from its prison, it had tasted life—and drained it clean away.

  “I’m here now, Jess. I’ll come and help.”

  The presence swelled in eagerness. Chill spread out from it, rippling against the walls.

  “You needn’t sulk,” the child said. Footsteps on the landing. The sound of an opening door.

  And then? A scream (the child); the cold presence welling up and outward (I sensed its triumph); a sudden twang of metal scraping; and then a sharper and more bitter cold—the cold of iron. And then: confusion. A firenzy. A stabbing, slashing mess of shrieks and curses; a carving and a cutting, an evisceration; a spectral power torn asunder, swallowed up by grief and rage.

  And then—

  Almost nothing. The presence, in all its hunger and its chill malevolence, was gone.

  Just a boy’s voice calling in the dark. Sobbing out his sister’s name.

  “Jessica…I’m sorry…sorry….”

  The voice dwindled away; the refrain (never varying, never ending) grew fainter. It shrank into the past and could not be heard. And then, when I raised my head, I realized that I could once again see the pale light burning above the empty mattress, and my hand was still clamped on the wooden board. I pried my fingers open. It was dark outside the window. I was crouching by the bed, and my knee hurt horribly.

  Even then, in the desolation and emptiness that came afterward, it took me an age to gather the courage to get up, open the door, and slip out onto the landing. What if he’d heard? What if he came out, right then, with the sounds of his sister’s death still tingling on my fingers and his child’s voice echoing in my ears? What would I do? What would I honestly say to him?

  But the door did not creak, and my footsteps made no noise, and I crossed the silent landing safely. I allowed myself a big sigh of relief as I began to climb the attic stairs.

  At which there was a violent bang behind me, and a voice shouting my name.

  Screaming Spirits and sudden visitations of the Limbless have frightened me less. I spun around, face contorting, body sagging against the wall.

  “George! I was thirsty! I just went down to get a drink of water!”

  “Yeah?” His fist was filled with papers; he had a pen behind his ear. “Listen, Lucy. I know what’s going on!”

  “A drink of water is all it was, I swear! I ate too many salty chips at tea, and—Oh, you’re talking about the Chelsea outbreak, aren’t you?”

  Behind the spectacles I saw it blazing, that old familiar fire. “Yes,” George said. “The outbreak. I’ve cracked it, Luce. I’ve figured it out. I know where it began.”

  “It’s amazing what you can come up with,” George said the following morning, “when you lie awake in bed. It’s such good thinking time. I’ve been working with the maps, and the documents Kipps gave me—you know, the ones that list all the Visitor encounters in Chelsea over the last few weeks. And I’ve been doing a lot of ferreting in the Archives. But it’s only when you lie there and let the information settle in your mind that you start to see the pattern.”

  “And you have?” Lockwood asked.

  “Oh yes, I see a pattern now.”

  Breakfast time, and we were at the kitchen table. But the bowls and jam jars and sticky fragments of toast had been cleared away. We were suited and booted and ready for business; there wasn’t a bathrobe or rumpled T-shirt to be seen. Holly Munro, coming up from her early morning vacuuming of the office, had caught the expectant atmosphere. She produced newly baked honey biscuits from a tin and set them in the center of the Thinking Cloth. We had mugs, tea, and, in George’s case, a manila folder stuffed with documents. Everything was set for him.

  It was fortunate, from my point of view, that his moment of inspiration had come now. It allowed me to relegate my experience of the night before to the back of my mind. Or try to. For whenever I looked at Lockwood, so coolly contained and self-assured, the memory of that desperate little voice came rushing back, and set me squirming in my seat. Nor could I forget the echo of that little boy’s violent grief, the fury that had instantly avenged his sister and—years later, in his every action—continued to avenge her.

  Well, I’d wanted to understand him better, and now I did. Eavesdropping on his past had been effective. But as I should have expected, it didn’t exactly make me feel too good.

  At least there were other things to distract me now.

  George opened his folder and selected the topmost paper. This he unfolded and pushed along the table to us. “Here,” he said. “What do you think of this?”

  It was a map of the Chelsea district, very similar to the one behind Barnes’s desk, only festooned with George’s indecipherable pencil scrawls. There was the Thames, there was the King’s Road, and there were all the hauntings that had taken place over the last few weeks. Unlike the DEPRAC map, George hadn’t color-coded them. Each was marked with a neat red circle, dozens and dozens of them. In some areas the streets were almost completely obscured by overlapping dots, which merged together like spreading stains.

  We stared at it. “Well…” I said at last, “it’s spotty.”

  “I looked a bit like that once,” Lockwood remarked, “when I had hives one time. George, I’m sorry. I can’t make out anything there.”

  George adjusted his spectacles and grinned. “Of course you can’t. Which is just one of the reasons why poor old Barnes has got things so wrong. So—this is a summary of every supernatural incident that’s been recorded in Chelsea up until a couple of nights ago. Impossible to see a pattern, I agree. The only thing you can hope to do is pinpoint the geographical center—that’s Sydney Street—and hunt there. But we know that’s been a red herring.”

  He paused to take one of Holly’s biscuits. Our fragrant assistant was listening to George with rapt attention. We all were. Despite his untucked state, his slouching posture, despite the apparently leisurely manner with which he dunked the biscuit in his tea, excitement crackled around him like forked lightning. The charge had built up in him over weeks of solitary work; now it sprang into all of us unbidden. He pointed at the map with a stubby finger. We leaned helplessly forward.

  “One thing you might notice,” George said, “is the shape of the spotty super-cluster. It’s kind of like a squashed rectangle: narrow to the west and wider in the east, like a shoebox that’s been stepped on. And the reason for that is the first clue to what’s going on here. First off, here’s the Thames: the largest mass of running water in London. We know
that no ghosts can cross it—so that’s the southern border of the cluster.”

  “I think even Barnes knows that,” I said.

  “Sure, but look to the north. See here, along the Fulham Road? What’s along here?”

  “I know that!” Holly Munro exclaimed. “Iron foundries for the Sunrise Corporation! When I worked for Rotwell, senior management often attended meetings there. I sometimes went with them. There’s a number of small ironworks there.”

  “Exactly,” George said. “And not just Sunrise. I think Fairfax Iron’s got some factories in Fulham, too. So the smoke that discharges from all those chimneys settles over that part of London, taking with it tiny particles of iron. And that’s why spectral activity is blocked here. The super-cluster stops at this northern boundary.”

  Lockwood whistled. “I see where this is going….So here in the west, down at the squashed end of the rectangle, there’s got to be something else, too, something plugging the gap, stopping the contamination from spreading….”

  And then I had it. “The Brompton lavender works!” I said.

  We all knew the site. It was the biggest in the city, where they shipped in fresh stuff from the north of England and worked it into perfumes and ointments, or dried it nicely for cushions, displays, and other home defenses. “But it’s down here at Sand’s End, isn’t it?” I went on. I pointed at a great bend, where the river turned south. “There’s a gap between it and the Fulham ironworks. Why can’t the outbreak get through?”

  “Because the wind blows off the river and spreads the lavender scent inland,” George said. He chuckled. “It closes off the gap perfectly. So you’ve got the Thames to the south, the iron district to the north, and the lavender factory in the west: three strong geographical influences that stop the haunting from spreading. They act as a kind of funnel that distorts the shape of the cluster. And if the cluster’s distorted, there’s no point in looking for a conventional center to it, is there? Which brings me to this….”

  He got out another map and spread it on the table. Lockwood pushed our cups out of the way to make room; Holly put the plate of biscuits on the floor.

  It was similar to the first, except that the dots were colored orange, and there were far fewer of them, particularly to the north and east.

  “This is the situation one month ago,” George said. “It was already bad, but not nearly as crazy as now. I got most of this from that report Kipps gave me. See how there’s already plenty going on in the middle of the King’s Road? But also in the west, too. And if we go even farther back…” He produced yet another map, this one with only the smallest smattering of green dots. “This is six weeks ago, when it all officially began. See where the center of activity is now?”

  “Looks like it’s shifted farther west,” I said, “back along the King’s Road. There’s not so much going on, though.”

  “No, it was only just getting started. But here’s the clincher.”

  A fourth map. It had the fewest dots of all—just seven, in fact. They were all dark blue, like spots of ice, and all were set in a little bow-shaped arc around the western tip of the King’s Road. “This is two months ago,” George said, “before the whole thing blew up. Nothing special—just a Shade in a launderette, a couple of Tom O’Shadows, a patch or two of Gray Haze….Incredibly minor stuff, scarcely made the local papers at the time—I had to really grub about to find reports of ’em—and they aren’t included in DEPRAC’s tally. Barnes probably wouldn’t consider them to be part of the outbreak at all.” He looked around at us. “But I do. If you start here, and then look at the others in sequence, you’ll see the pattern I’m talking about.”

  “It’s a wave,” I said.

  “Right. A ripple of supernatural activity spreading from a single focus, flowing out along the only channel available to it, through the heart of Chelsea.”

  “And that focus—” Lockwood prompted.

  “Is just about here.” George stabbed his finger at a blank portion of the map, around which the seven blue dots circled like an arc of orbiting moons. It was a block on the south side of the King’s Road, right at its western tip, not far from the river and the lavender works. It seemed to be a single large building.

  There was a respectful silence. Lockwood exhaled slowly. “You’re a genius, George. I’ve said it before.”

  George selected a giant biscuit from Holly’s plate. “You can say it again if you like.”

  “Why DEPRAC hasn’t figured this out,” I said, “is beyond me. What idiots they are.”

  “I actually might not have noticed the pattern myself,” George admitted, “without Flo Bones’s help. She’s been patroling Chelsea’s river edge for days. She confirms that the strongest supernatural activity she’s noticed is all down in that corner. She’s seen masses of spirits swirling about, displaying signs of agitation. That’s where the psychic wave breaks most heavily on the shore.” He prodded the map in the same place again. “No question about it. The power’s emanating from there.”

  “So what is this place,” I asked, “at the end of the King’s Road, and why haven’t we heard of it? And why, if it’s the focus”—I gestured at the maps—“aren’t there any dots on it at all?”

  “Good questions.” Taking his time, in the manner of a plump magician producing a rabbit from a hat, George reached into his folder once more. He pulled out a picture, a black-and-white copy of a photograph taken from a newspaper clipping.

  It showed the front of an imposing building, twice the height of the shops around it; a brooding, square construction in a heavy, classical style. Flags flew from the parapet. Squared columns were inset into the walls. It had a lot of windows, tall, rectangular, reflecting the blank sky. The ground-floor windows were shaded beneath awnings; people in old-fashioned clothes walked the sidewalks there, past indistinct but intricate displays. In the center, a darkly uniformed figure could be seen standing outside a rank of broad glass doors.

  “That, my friends,” George said, “is Aickmere Brothers department store, once world famous, still celebrated, and now—in my opinion—the probable focus of the Chelsea hauntings.”

  “Never heard of it,” I said.

  “I have.” Lockwood twisted the photograph to face him. “I went there once as a little kid, I think. It used to have a great toy department.”

  At his side, Holly Munro was nodding. “Me too. My mother took me to Aickmere Brothers to look at the silver jewelry. I remember it being very ornate and splendid, but also a bit shabby.”

  “That would be right,” George said. “It’s the largest department store outside central London, and one of the oldest and grandest anywhere. It was originally built in 1872, and expanded greatly between 1910 and 1912. When its Arabian Hall, known as the ‘Hall of Wonders,’ was unveiled a hundred years or so ago, it supposedly featured fire-eaters, belly dancers, and a live tiger in a cage. Those glory days, I think, are long gone. But people still go there—to this very day, in fact—because that side of Chelsea hasn’t been evacuated. It’s a couple of blocks from one of the DEPRAC cordons. And there have been no reported hauntings in the store at all.”

  “If your theory’s correct,” Lockwood said, “that’s more than a little odd.”

  “Isn’t it? All the more so when you uncover its past history. I’ve been looking back for historical mentions of this part of Chelsea, to see if there’s been any ghostly activity. When I became interested in Aickmere’s, I honed in on that specific site.” George took a bite of biscuit. “Well…I found things.”

  I looked at him. “Bad?”

  “You remember Combe Carey Hall?”

  Lockwood and I exchanged looks. “The most haunted house in England? Yes.”

  “It’s not as bad as that.”

  “Thank God.”

  “Thing is, I can’t imagine why.” George patted the plump manila folder. “Turns out, you see, this end of the King’s Road is an historic black spot. Half the worst possible things you can think of to
ok place just about there.”

  I took a punt. “Plague?”

  “Yup. The Black Death swept through in the 1340s. See how the road swerves just beside Aickmere’s? That’s because there was a plague pit there, where they piled the bodies and dosed them with quicklime. Used to be a little mound on the spot, and a circle of stones, but the Victorians leveled it when they were widening the thoroughfare.”

  “There are plenty of other plague pits in London,” Lockwood objected. “Sure, they’ve had cluster hauntings associated with them, but nothing on the scale of this.”

  “I know,” George said, “and I can’t begin to explain why this has stirred things up so much. I’m just giving you the facts. So we’ve got plague. What else d’you reckon?”

  “War,” I said. “Battle or skirmish.”

  “Another point to Lucy. She’s good at playing Atrocities. Yes, it’s a Blitz bombing. In 1944, Aickmere Brothers was closed for six months after a doodlebug landed on the building next to it, pulling down the side wall and part of the roof. Twelve people were killed, including air raid wardens stationed on that roof. Twelve years ago, store management called in agents after those wardens were seen reenacting their shrieking death-falls through several floors: they fell straight through Haberdashery and Home Furnishings and landed in Cosmetics.”

  “Was the Source found?” Holly Munro asked.

  “I believe bone fragments were discovered and store defenses were improved.”

  Lockwood pulled doubtfully at his collar. “I don’t know, George….None of this strikes me as anything particularly special. And if those Visitors were dealt with—”

  “I’m just getting warmed up. There’s a big one you haven’t thought of yet.”