The Screaming Staircase

by Jonathan Stroud

  “Hi,” I said. I withdrew my hand from my pajamas. I rubbed hair out of my eyes. “Hi.”

  “Sorry it’s a bit early,” Lockwood said. “I see you haven’t been up long.”

  Funny, when I’d lived with him at Portland Row, I’d puttered around in nightclothes all the time. Now that we worked apart, I was suddenly wildly embarrassed. I looked down. No, they weren’t even my best pajamas. They were an old gray pair I was using while my laundry was being done.

  My laundry…My blood went cold. The laundry package! If it was outside the door…

  I craned my head out, surveyed the landing to either side. No. No sign of it. Good.

  “Are you all right?” Lockwood asked. “Something wrong?”

  “No, no. Everything’s fine.” I took a deep breath. Be calm. The pajamas weren’t a biggie. I could deal with this. It was all going to be great. I put one hand nonchalantly on my hip, tried for an expression of airy unconcern. “Yes. Everything’s fine.”

  “Good. Oh, there was this package on your step,” Lockwood said. He produced a see-through plastic bag from behind his back. “Looks like it’s got a lot of…nicely ironed items in it. Don’t know if they’re…”

  I gazed at it. “Yeah, those are…those are my neighbor’s. I’ll look after it for him. For her.” I snatched the bag and tossed it out of sight behind my door.

  “You look after your neighbor’s underwear?” Lockwood glanced back across the landing. “What kind of an apartment building is this?”

  “It’s—Well, actually I—” I ran harassed fingers through my uncombed hair. “Lockwood,” I said, “what are you doing here?”

  His smile broadened, carrying me with it. It became a sunnier place, that little landing; the smell of my neighbor’s lavender plantation receded; I no longer noticed the peeling wallpaper in the stairwell. How I wished I was properly dressed. “I wanted to check in, see that you were doing okay,” Lockwood said. “And,” he added, before I could challenge him, “I’ve got something to ask you, too.” His gaze flicked past me for an instant, into the room. “If you’ve got the time, that is.”

  “Oh. Yes. Yes, of course I have. Um, why don’t you come in?”

  “Thanks.”

  He stepped inside, and I closed the door. Lockwood looked around.

  “So this is your place,” he said.

  My place. Oh, God. With the shock of seeing him, I hadn’t stopped to think about the condition of my room. I glanced around, and with an instant awful clarity I saw everything: the sorry hump of bedspread in the center of the mattress; my pillow, laced with ancient stains; the various mugs and chips bags and plates with toast crusts stacked to the left of the sink; the dirty bags of iron and salt, the rusty chains, the ghost-jar with its horrid skull (now mercifully quiet); the colorful scraps of clothing scattered on the floor. Then there was the carpet. I hadn’t vacuumed the place in months. Why hadn’t I? Why hadn’t I actually bought a vacuum cleaner? Oh, God.

  “It’s…nice,” Lockwood said.

  His voice, so calm and measured, had an immediate effect on me. I took hold of my thoughts and quieted them. Yes. Actually it was nice. It was mine, after all. I was paying for it; I was making it work. It was my place. It was fine.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Look, do you want to sit down? No—! Not there!” Lockwood had made a move toward the hideous tangle of my bed. “There’s this chair here….No, wait!” I’d spotted the pink towel draped over the chair back, still damp from this morning’s shower. “Let me move that for you.”

  I whipped it away, revealing a snake pit of tangled gray undergarments I’d tossed there a few days before.

  Oh, God.

  Lockwood didn’t seem to register my squeal of discomfort. He was looking out the window. “I’m actually quite happy to stand. So…this is Tooting, is it? It’s not an area I know well, but it’s a pretty nice view you’ve got here….”

  I threw some clothes under the bed, nudged a crumb-strewn plate under the chair. “Which part? The industrial boiler company or the ironworks?” I gave a light, slightly hysterical laugh. “It’s not exactly Portland Row.”

  “No. Well.” He turned back to me. We looked at each other.

  “So,” I said, “do you want some tea? I could do with some.”

  “That would be nice. Thanks.”

  Making tea is a ritual that stops the world from falling in on you. Everything pauses while you do familiar things with taps and kettles; it allows you to catch your breath and become calm. I’ve made tea on camping stoves while Specters paced beyond my protective iron chains; I’ve brewed some while watching a Revenant claw itself free of its grave. I’m not normally a shaky tea-maker, but somehow in Lockwood’s presence it took me twice as long as usual. Even tossing a tea bag into a mug was a task fraught with difficulty; I kept sending it spinning across the counter. My thoughts were racing; my body scarcely seemed my own.

  He was here! Why was he here? Excitement and incredulity kept smashing together, like waves colliding at a jetty. There was so much noise going on in my mind that the first priority—making small talk—was a bit of a problem.

  “How’s business with Lockwood and Co.?” I asked over my shoulder. “I mean, I see you in the papers all the time. Not that I’m looking for you, obviously. I just see stuff. But you seem to be doing okay, as far as I can gather. When I think about it. Which is rare. Do you take sugar now?”

  He was staring at the clutter on my floor, blank-eyed, as if lost in thought. “It’s only been a few months, Luce. I haven’t suddenly started taking sugar in my tea….” Then he brightened, nudging the ghost-jar with the side of his shoe. “Hey, how’s our friend here doing?”

  “The skull? Oh, it helps me out from time to time. Hardly talk to it, really….” To my annoyance, I noticed a stirring in the substance that filled the jar, implying a sudden awakening of the ghost. That was the last thing I wanted right now. At least the lever was closed; I wouldn’t have to listen if it chose to speak.

  I bent down to get milk out of the little fridge. “Did you get someone else, then, to help you?” I asked. “Another agent?”

  “I thought about it. Never got around to it, somehow.” Lockwood scratched his nose. “George wasn’t keen. So it’s just the three of us still, muddling along without you.”

  Still the three of them. For some reason the idea both pleased and pained me. “And how is George?” I said.

  “You know old George. The same.”

  “More experiments?”

  “Experiments, theories, weird notions. He’s still trying to solve the Problem. His latest hobby is buying every new invention the Rotwell Institute churns out. He tests them to see if they work as well as good old-fashioned salt and iron. They don’t, of course, but that doesn’t stop him from filling the house with all manner of ghost-detectors, divining spindles, hex-wands, and things that look like teacups that are supposed to tinkle when a ghost draws near. All claptrap, basically.”

  “Sounds like George hasn’t changed at all.” I poured the milk and put the bottle cap back on. “And how’s Holly?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Holly.”

  “Oh, good. She’s good.”

  “Great.” I stirred the tea. “Can you flip the trash can open, please?”

  “Of course.” He put a polished shoe on the pedal; I lobbed the tea bag in. Lockwood removed his foot and the lid clanged shut. “Little bit of teamwork there,” he said.

  “Yeah. We still haven’t lost it.” I handed him his mug. “So…”

  He was watching my face. “You know, I think I will sit down, if you don’t mind. Anywhere will do.”

  He took the chair; I took the bed. There was a pause. Lockwood nursed his tea; he seemed unsure how to begin.

  “It’s nice to see you,” I said.

  “You, too, Luce.” He smiled at me. “You’re looking well, anyway; and I hear fine things about you from some of the other agencies. Sounds like you’re going great guns, do
ing the freelance stuff. I’m not surprised, obviously—I know all about your Talents—but I am happy for you.” He scratched behind an ear and fell silent again. It was an odd thing, seeing Lockwood so unsure of himself. I could still feel my pulse beating in my chest, so I wasn’t much better off, but at least I didn’t have to do the talking now.

  As I waited, I saw a greenish light at the end of the bed and realized that the ghost in the jar had fully formed. It was staring at Lockwood with an expression of extravagant disgust and derision, while mouthing soundlessly against the glass. I couldn’t lip-read, but whatever it was saying was clearly uncomplimentary.

  I scowled at it, then caught Lockwood’s eye.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Just the skull. You know what it’s like.”

  Lockwood set his tea down. For a moment he looked around the room. “I’m not sure this is really the place for you, Lucy.”

  “Surely that’s my business.”

  “Yes, yes, of course it is. And I’m not here to try to talk you out of it. I tried and failed at that months ago. You made your decision, and I respect it.”

  I cleared something in my throat. “It was the right thing to do.”

  “Well, we’ve been down that road.” Lockwood brushed his hair back from his eyes. “Anyway, the thing is, Luce…I’ll get straight to the point. I’m in need of your help. I’d like to hire your freelance services for a case.”

  It was one of those moments when a single strand of time looped off from the rest, carrying me on it, and everything else seemed to freeze. I sat there, thinking back across that long, hard winter, to the awful day I’d left the company. To walking with Lockwood through the park as he tried to talk me out of it; to our final dreadful conversation in a café while three successive cups of tea grew cold; to how—growing angry with me at the end—he’d left me there. I recalled my last night in the house, with everyone so distant and polite; and my departure when all the others were asleep in the blue light of the dawn, dragging my duffel bag and the ghost-jar softy down the stairs. Ever since then I’d rehearsed our eventual meeting, running through different scenarios in my head. I’d imagined Lockwood asking me to rejoin the company. Asking, or begging, even—going down on bended knee. I’d thought of how I would have to refuse him, and how the warm pain of it would pierce my heart. I’d also conjured visions of meeting him unexpectedly, while out on moonlit cases, and of us having bittersweet conversations before going our separate ways. Yes, I’d imagined plenty of situations, all sorts of variables.

  But never quite this one.

  “Run that past me again, slowly,” I said, frowning. “You want to hire me?”

  “I don’t ask it lightly. It’s just a one-off. A single case. One night’s work; two, max.”

  “Lockwood,” I said, “you know my reasons for leaving….”

  He shrugged; the smile lessened. “Do I? To be honest, Luce, I don’t think I’ve ever fully understood them. You were frightened of unleashing your Talents on us, was that it? Well, you seem to have them sufficiently under control now that you’re doing great things with most of the other agencies in London.” He shook his head. “Anyway, hear me out. I’m not asking you to join us again, obviously. I’d never do that. It’s just a temporary arrangement. It would be no different from you teaming up with Bunchurch, or Tendy, or whoever else you’ve been with these last few weeks. Just business, that’s all.”

  “But you don’t need my help,” I said. My tone was a little flat; something in what he’d said pressed on my spirits. I could feel doors slamming in my mind.

  “Well, here’s the thing. We do.” Lockwood leaned forward, and I noticed a scar on the side of his neck—not large, but white and raised—one I’d never seen before. “You’re right, Lockwood and Co.’s been doing pretty nicely these last few months, well enough to be selective about our clients. We’ve had some interesting ones, like the blind dressmaker who saw ghosts imprinted on her own private darkness, but our latest is in a category of her own. You know her. It’s Penelope Fittes.”

  Hold up. That took me by surprise as well. Penelope Fittes was chairperson of the oldest, largest, and most celebrated of all psychic detection organizations, the great Fittes Agency. Along with the head of Rotwell’s, and several of the iron and salt magnates, she was one of the most powerful people in the country. I blinked at him. “Er, doesn’t she have an agency of her own? Rather a big one, in fact.”

  “Yes, but she’s taken a shine to us,” Lockwood said. “She’s liked us ever since the Screaming Staircase affair. And after we saved her from assassination at the carnival last autumn, she’s made it her business to monitor our progress and send the odd job our way. Well, she’s got a new case for us, quite a big one, and the thing is, by all accounts it needs a good Listener.”

  I looked at him.

  “A very good Listener.”

  I said nothing.

  Lockwood shifted in his seat. “So…I wondered if you could help us out, just this once, in a freelance capacity….You are the best, after all.”

  Time snapped back into one piece; I was wholly in the present, alert and questioning.

  “What’s the case?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I frowned. “Don’t you think you ought to find out before dragging me into it?”

  “It’s difficult and dangerous, that’s all I’ve been told. But Penelope Fittes is intending to brief us—by ‘us’ I obviously mean me, George, and Holly, but you could join, too, if you were up for it—tomorrow morning at Fittes House. You know how much of a recluse Ms. Fittes is, particularly after that carnival thing. It must be something special if she’s personally involved.”

  “I still don’t get it. Why does she want you to do this job? She’s got a million agents of her own.”

  “Again…I don’t know, Luce. But if we do it well, it’ll stand us in good stead for further commissions.”

  “I’m sure it will, and that’s great for you, but I’m no longer part of Lockwood and Co., am I?”

  “No. I’m well aware of that. But you happily work with other agencies, don’t you?”

  “Yes, you know I do, but—”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Don’t pressure me, Lockwood. You know it’s not the same.”

  I got up abruptly, grabbed the damp towel, and tossed it over the ghost-jar, blocking the face from view. Its contortions had been growing ever more frantic; they’d disturbed me even out of the corner of my eye, and I couldn’t put up with it any longer.

  I threw myself back onto the bed, glowering. “What were we saying?”

  “I’m not trying to pressure you, Luce,” Lockwood said. “I realize it’s odd, me just showing up, but if you’re worried about risk, the chances of anything going wrong are very small. Almost nonexistent. Maybe you had a wobble a few months ago, but personally I believe you’ve always had your Talent under excellent control. I don’t think there’s the slightest chance of you endangering us. You always were too strong for that. Sure, for whatever reason, you no longer want to be a full part of our team. It became a burden for you, one that could no longer be borne. That meant you had to leave us in a hurry, which was difficult for you, I know, just as it was for us. We all had to pick up the pieces. I’m not going to pretend that Lockwood and Co. found it easy after you left….George was pretty upset about it.” He looked down at his hands. “Anyway, I’ve no doubt those feelings of yours still remain. Teaming up for a night would be weird for all of us, but most of all for you. But I do think you could be strong enough to ignore the weirdness, Luce, if you thought it was the right thing to do. One night’s work, Luce…it’s almost nothing. Just helping us out. Who knows, it might make us all feel a bit better about things, I don’t know.”

  He flicked a glance up at me—it was sad and hopeful all at once, a glance that presumed nothing—then gently lowered his gaze and went back to contemplating his hands. He’d made his pitch; there wasn’t much else he could say. I wa
s looking at my own hands, frowning at the scrapes on the knuckles, the faint magnesium staining on the fingers, the dirty flecks of iron and salt crusted under the nails….What was all that about? Flo Bones probably had a better manicure, and she made her living scraping holes in river-ooze. The skull was right: I wasn’t in good shape. Sometime over the winter, I’d stopped taking care of myself; I’d let myself go.

  But in the meantime, I had been focusing on something else, and that was my Talent. Could I control it better now? I thought so, yes—working with adult supervisors was an endless test of the emotions, and I’d never come close to losing control. So perhaps, for one time only, it would be safe enough….

  It would be good to help them out, redress the balance after the way I’d left them.

  I looked over at Lockwood as he sat shoulders-forward, head slightly bowed. He seemed more diffident than I’d ever seen him: not vulnerable, exactly, but certainly exposed. After what I’d done, it must have been so difficult for him to come here.

  “There are other Listeners out there,” I said. “Good ones, too.”

  “Like who?”

  “Kate Godwin’s okay.”

  “Oh, come on. She’s not half the Listener you are.”

  “There’s Leora Jones of Grimble, Melita Cavendish at Rotwell…”

  “As good as you? You don’t believe that! How many of them can buddy up to a talking skull?”

  “I don’t buddy up to it.”

  Lockwood made a face. “Whatever. Besides, they’re not freelance, are they?”

  This was true. And he was quite right, incidentally. The rest paled in comparison to me. Only one other person had ever spoken with ghosts the way I did, and she’d died long ago. I was silent for a while.

  Lockwood started to get to his feet. “It’s okay, Lucy. I understand your reluctance, and I don’t blame you in the slightest. I’ll go back and tell the others.”

  “I suppose doing a job for Penelope Fittes might get me noticed,” I said.