Lockwood & Co. The Creeping Shadow

It was cold out on the front porch, and there was a thin rain falling in the London night. You could hear it pattering on the hedges and on the concrete drive, and dripping from a broken gutter. Otherwise the city was quiet; we were in the dead hours, and nothing living was abroad. Cold, rain, and silence: that was a combo that suited us all right then. We needed to calm down.

One of the dangers of spending too much time in a haunted house is that you begin to follow its patterns and its rules. Since the rules inside the building are invariably warped and twisted, you find yourself slowly losing contact with the principles that keep you safe. We’d fallen into this trap in the Guppy house, separating too easily, becoming prey to individual psychic attacks. Holly, George, and I had all been affected; our nerves were on edge, and we huddled in silence by the porch lantern, munching chocolate and staring out into the dark. Lockwood and Kipps had so far not been directly targeted, Kipps either because he had rarely strayed from his iron circle, or because he no longer had the sensitivity to pick up on subtle manifestations. As for Lockwood, perhaps he was less vulnerable, and the entity had sensed his strength—it was hard to say.

Certainly he seemed relaxed enough now. “There you go, Luce,” he said, catching my eye. “Aren’t you pleased you came out with us tonight? No one can say that Lockwood and Company doesn’t show you a good time.”

I took a swig from my thermos. The night air was doing its job. My head felt clearer now. “Best evening out I’ve had in ages,” I said. “Random body parts and mortal fear? That’s better than Indian food.”

He grinned. “You’re doing great. If it was just Holly, George, and me, we’d have had a couple of visuals, maybe, but nothing more. Thanks to you, we’ve got almost too much information.”

I couldn’t help but smile at him. Compliments from Lockwood were always nice to hear. “Too much and not enough,” I said. “I’ve heard Guppy in half the rooms of the house. I’ve heard him walking around, eating, whistling, even chopping in the kitchen. Holly and George and I have all seen secondary flashbacks—again in different rooms. Just about the only thing we haven’t seen is the apparition itself. And we’re no closer to finding the Source.”

Lockwood shook his head. “I think we are. The table, the bones, that pot on the stove—they’re all aspects of the apparition. Guppy isn’t in one portion of the house, he is the house. He’s not locked in one small area; he’s everywhere. George—you told us Guppy almost never left the property if he could help it. Clearly he was obsessed with the place. He may be long dead, but that still holds. I think he’s still here.”

“Couldn’t it be the spirit of the victim, though?” Kipps said. “Thanks to George we know how his remains ended up in every room. Feet in the lounge, toenails in the pantry—”

“Eyeballs in the pantry,” George said. “In a jar.”

“Yes, thank you,” Kipps growled. “I don’t need the details again. The point is, he could just as easily be responsible for all this, couldn’t he? And you reckoned you heard his scream….”

“We did,” I said, “but I still think it’s Guppy. All the sounds relate to his horrible activities. He’s re-creating it for his own pleasure, and to freak us out.”

“Is the whole house the Source, then?” Holly asked in a small voice. She’d been subdued since the incident in the dining room. “Is that possible? If so, maybe we should just burn the place down.” She gave a little gulping laugh. “I’m not really suggesting that, obviously.”

George adjusted his glasses. “I don’t know….We’ve set fire to houses before.”

“Deliberate arson is not likely to impress Fittes or Barnes,” Quill Kipps said. “Besides, there will be a more localized Source somewhere—the psychic heart of the haunting. The problem is, no one’s ever been able to find it. Right, I’m going to make a suggestion in my official capacity as observer for the Fittes Agency. In our company, when psychic danger has been experienced and you haven’t got a clue what to do, the general rule is to retreat. Retreat and recalibrate. Live to fight another day.”

“You mean give up?” Lockwood was incredulous; he patted Kipps fondly on the shoulder. “That’s not the Lockwood and Company way.”

Kipps shrugged. “Then it’ll keep sapping your spirits with little attacks until you’re too frazzled to notice you’ve been ghost-touched. Unless you can draw the ghost out and persuade it to reveal the Source, which is hardly likely, I don’t see how you’ll ever get anywhere.”

Lockwood snapped his fingers so suddenly that we all jumped. “That’s it! You’re a genius, Quill! We’ll draw it out! Guppy’s been having his way for far too long. Luce, you’ve experienced most of his tricks. I’d say the kitchen was where most of the phenomena have been concentrated, wouldn’t you?”

“No question about it,” I said.

“Then let’s assume that that’s the room he cares about the most.” Lockwood’s eyes glittered. “I wonder whether we can upset him. Everyone drink up. It’s time we fetched our crowbars.”

Short, light crowbars, the kind favored by burglars in the days when ordinary criminals dared to go out at night, are a standard piece of agency equipment. They’re used mostly for knocking through walls or prying up floorboards in search of bones and relics, but they’re more versatile than that. Over the years I’d used mine for breaking open waterlogged chests, levering a coffin out of a sandpit, and—since the bar was helpfully made of iron—skewering a Tom O’Shadows to a door. I’d never gone as far as destroying a kitchen with it, but there was a first time for everything.

It was silent in the house as we went in and filed back up the hall. It was even quieter than when we’d first arrived: there was no psychic pressure at all. Even the lack of pressure was ominous: it suggested that something had drawn back and was watching us. We had our crowbars over our shoulders—except for Kipps, who’d found a rusty mallet in the garage, which he thought was even better. We passed the dark marks on the wallpaper, the handprints on the glass pane. Lockwood closed the kitchen door behind us. There was the drab little space, with its wooden cabinets, its notched butcher block, its old stained sink with ugly taps. The moon had moved in front of the house, and the kitchen was darker than before. George’s silver bell was still on the counter. He moved it to the windowsill, out of harm’s way.

We double-checked the iron chains in the center of the room and relit some candles that had blown out. Holly turned the lantern down low. Then we gathered by the butcher block. Lockwood inserted his crowbar into a narrow space between a countertop and the cupboard below.

“Kipps and I will start,” he said. “The rest of you keep watch.”

He heaved up the crowbar.

Lockwood said this was no real crime, given what had been done here. Even so, my nerves jangled as the old wood splintered. Maybe it was rotten; certainly it came apart easily, with a single great crack that echoed around the room. I imagined that sound reverberating through the rest of the house.

Maybe we all imagined that, because for a moment, no one moved. Even Lockwood paused with the crowbar still embedded in the countertop.

Nothing but silence.

So he went to work again, ripping into the brittle particleboard, forcing it back on itself so that it burst in a shower of splinters. After a bit he moved back and let Kipps take over with the mallet. Drawers fractured; shelves snapped like broken bones. Already a great hole had opened to the left of the metal sink, and the kitchen that had remained untouched for thirty years was altered irrevocably.

Kipps took a swig of water. We listened. The house was quiet. He began again.

While the mallet swung, I moved away across the room, out of Kipps’s sight. I felt in my backpack, and twisted the lever of the ghost-jar.

“Ooh, the tension,” whispered the voice. “Even I’m nervous, and I’m a ghost. Five fools trying their damnedest to rouse a monster. But what will you do if he comes?”

“Skull,” I whispered, “it’s your last chance. You’ve been useless this evening. Swallow your pride and give me some help here, or I swear next time I’ll leave you at home under the bed.”

There was a faint, dry chuckle. “Oh, next time? But there won’t be a next time with Lockwood and Company, remember? It’ll just be you and me, mucking along together as before. That’s our future, clear as day!”

“Yeah? Here’s another future,” I snarled. “See this crowbar? I’ll smash you and your jar with that and bury the pieces in the garden if you don’t help me out.”

The chuckling stopped. “Bit harsh.” The voice grew thoughtful. “One day, Lucy, I’ll have you in my power, and we’ll see who dances to whose tune. Well, what can I tell you that you don’t already know? The creature infests the house; his essence was drawn into the walls by sweat and blood and hideous obsession. Years pass; his awareness comes and goes. I felt it when we entered, then it drew back. He is sluggish. He dozes; perhaps you have seen his dreams.”

“But now—” I said, then stopped as an immense effort from Kipps broke a mustard-colored panel and sent it flying across the room.

“Congratulations. You’ve woken him, and he’s not happy.”

Kipps was standing upright, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. Lockwood had pulled some fragments of particleboard clear. He lifted his crowbar, ready to resume. I held up my hand to pause them.

Far off in the house, I heard it.

Click-click-click.

And all at once I knew what it was.

It was sound of teeth being tapped together.

Click-click-click…

It was a habit he’d had. He did it as he shuffled slowly around the house, looking in his recipe books, watching his neighbors from his windows.

Click-click-click…Click-click-click…

Watching, watching…Eventually selecting one.

“Got company,” I said.

For a moment, none of us moved. Four pale faces stared at me in the swirling candlelight of the ruined kitchen. Kipps and Lockwood stood ankle-deep in shattered wood. They were covered in sawdust, glistening with sweat; they were as pale and hideous as Bone Men. Holly looked like a particularly anxious Floating Bride. George, hair disarranged, glasses shining like headlights, might have passed for some unhinged spirit manifesting as an owl. We looked and listened.

I pointed upward. The lightbulb in the ceiling juddered as heavy, shuffling footsteps crossed the room upstairs.

“Excellent,” Lockwood said. “If he’s stirring, we’re on the right track. That means he definitely doesn’t like it when we do something like this!” He swung the crowbar level with his head and smashed in the side of a cupboard halfway up the wall.

Click-click-click…

Something was walking along the landing, heading for the stairs.

“Come on, Guppy. You can move faster than that.” Lockwood wrenched at a spar of wood that jutted up from the floor. The units beside the sink had been completely destroyed, exposing bare brick and moldy floor. He struck the sink’s metal support, snapping it in two. He was aflame with sudden defiant energy, swooping and darting like quicksilver, tugging and striking and kicking away the debris. Even Kipps moved back to give him space; the rest of us could do little but watch as he sought to summon a horror by the application of pure will.

George sidled close to me. “What does Lockwood plan to do when it…arrives?”

“I have no idea.”

Heavy footsteps on the stairs; I heard steps creaking as immense pressure weighed them down.

“Lucy,” George whispered, “can I share something personal with you?”

“Yes.”

“If you’d rather I didn’t, you being a free agent and all, you only have to say.”

“It’s still me, isn’t it? Just spit it out.”

“Okay…” He nodded, took a short breath. “I really don’t want to see this one.”

“Guppy?”

“Right. I mean, I’ve seen a lot of apparitions in my time,” George said, “and some of them have been…pretty grisly, you know. You remember that wormy girl we saw near Hackney Gardens? I couldn’t eat Swiss cheese for months after that. But there’s something about this one—”

I nodded. “I know. You don’t have to say it. Me, too.”

As I spoke, I was staring at the glazed glass panels in the kitchen door. They were fairly opaque, but you could see the glow of the lantern on the distant porch and the snuff-lights on the stairs. This light was stirring violently, and dimming, and now a great dark shape moved slowly into view at the far end of the hall. Holly gave a little squeal.

“Apparition’s in sight, Lockwood,” George said. “What do we do?”

“Exactly what we’re already doing.” Lockwood was grinning, his hair flopping over his face. “We bring him to us, and we wipe him out. Stand firm. He’s trying to break us all with fear.”

And making a pretty good job of it, if my own ghost-lock was anything to go by. I could barely move, but I edged to the back corner of the room. The shape was growing. Teeth clicked, lips smacked together. I could hear feet in carpet slippers shuffling along the hall.

I stepped away, turning my back on Kipps again. “Skull,” I hissed, “now would be a terrific opportunity to prove your worth. There’ll be no more talk of crowbars from me if you can spot the Source.”

“I see….First it’s threats, then sweet words. Have you no dignity?”

“Not right now. Can you sense where it is?”

“Well, from the efforts it’s making to get to you, I’d say it thinks you’re on to something.”

“The Source is near!” I called. I sprang across to the mess of shattered wood. “What’s behind those broken cabinets? Keep an eye out for anything!”

Crouching beside the ruined sink, I began to hurl aside pieces of wood. Kipps and Lockwood joined me at once, but Holly and George stood transfixed, staring at the door. In moments a small space was cleared. I peered under the sink. The floorboards were rotten at the back, and in places didn’t reach the wall. Loops of pipework dangled in the shadows like exposed intestines. I shone my torch around the darkened recess.

I thought of Emma Marchment’s ghost—her hidden treasure, her precious thing. Guppy had kept something, too; he’d secreted it somewhere here.

“Any luck, Luce?” Lockwood’s voice was calm.

“We’re close. How long have we got?”

“Oh, about thirty seconds.”

I squinted over my shoulder; beyond the glass, the shadow had resolved into a definite shape. You could see the black outline of the vast wide head, the swell of stomach spreading out from wall to wall. There was the rustling of cloth against the wallpaper, there was the clicking and clacking of the great loose mouth. I heard a crack of tendons, a knee protesting under dreadful weight.

It was almost at the door.

I swore under my breath. “The only place I can see,” I said, “is where that floorboard’s broken away. There, in the corner, behind the pipework—do you see?”

In an instant Lockwood was lying on his front, peering at the remotest portion of the wall. His flashlight turned on. “I see the hole. There’s something shining in it. It’s quite far in—would be hard to reach…”

Holly screamed. She was gazing at the door. There, halfway up, pressed against the glass: a huge white hand.

Lockwood jumped up. “George, snap out of it! We’ll need your strength for this. Take a look.” He tossed the flashlight to George, and in the same motion took his rapier from his belt.

Fingers curled around the edge of the door. The nails were broken and fouled with dirt.

George sprang over the pile of wood and lowered himself down beside me. He squinted into the cavity. “I see it….It’s a jar of some kind. But the pipe’s in the way.”

Lockwood flicked his coat back; he was checking the equipment on his belt. “Break the pipe if necessary.” He walked across the room. “The rest of you, get inside the circle.”

I rose to my feet. “Lockwood,” I said, “what are you—?”

“I’m going to buy George some time. Get in the circle, Lucy.”

The door was opening; a vast black shadow spilled through it like a lolling tongue. Lockwood threw a salt-bomb into the crack; there was a horrible high-pitched scream. Then he had slipped through the door and pulled it shut behind him.

Holly, Kipps, and I were transfixed, staring after him—

Ding-a-ding-a-ding!

All three of us cried out, all three of us turned. It was the silver bell, swinging wildly on its wires of zinc and spider-silk.

“Oh, it rings now?” I cried. “That thing is so useless, George!”

George was lying on his back, head out of sight. “Well, don’t blame me! Blame the Rotwell Institute! They’re selling any old junk!”

“Just get into that hole!”

“Got a tap wrench?”

“No! Why would I? I don’t even know what it is!”

“It’s this bloody pipe that’s the problem—I can’t pull the thing out.”

I was staring at the door. Shapes moved beyond it; I heard thuds, slashes, and again and again that keening scream. None of us had gotten into the circle as Lockwood had ordered, and now we saw the chains sliding sideways on the linoleum floor. The chains had been folded over, but not tied. The outer one whipped away; the inner one held firm. A force blasted out across the kitchen, toppling the candles, making us stagger where we stood. For an instant I saw Lockwood’s outline thrust back against the glass, then he was gone. The whole house seemed to shake.

“We have to go and help him, Kipps,” I said.

Kipps didn’t seem to have moved since Lockwood had left the room. His face was white. He gathered his wits. “Yes. We must. Come on.”

“Lucy!” That was George, from below.

“What?”

“Got a spanner?”

“No! I’m not a plumber, George! I’m an agent! Agents don’t carry spanners!” I was halfway to the door.

“It’s all right! It’s all right! I’ve broken through the floorboard…I’ve almost gotten it out…” Something grated against brick; George’s legs thrashed from side to side. “There!” He sat up, holding a jam jar wreathed in cobwebs. It glinted an unpleasant white. “Get me a Seal!”

Holly was already standing by; she had a silver net in her hand.

Beyond the glass, a vast and swollen shape lurched toward the door.

The handle turned.

Holly dropped the net, swathing the jar in silver.

The door swung slowly open—

—revealing only Lockwood, leaning against the wall. His coat was dusty, his hair plastered over one eye. His right arm was slack, his right hand bleeding; from his left, his rapier hung loosely, trailing along the floor. We stared at him. He stood there, breathing hard and grinning, alone in that empty hall.

It turned out, once we’d inspected him, that a bruised arm and cut hand were the worst of what Lockwood had suffered, inflicted when he was blown back against the door. Perhaps he was a little quieter than normal; otherwise, physically, he was quite unharmed. While Kipps went to find a phone box to summon a Night Cab, he sat on the porch and let Holly fuss around him; meanwhile, George and I pulled our remaining equipment out onto the lawn.

When we were packed up, I went to stand beside Lockwood.

“Didn’t we do brilliantly?” he said. “I think even Kipps is impressed, and that takes some doing. Thank you for agreeing to help us out tonight, Luce.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “Not a problem.”

“Did you take a peep at the Source? Did you see what it contained?” The jam jar, securely wrapped in silver and ready for its final journey to the furnaces, sat a little way off, shimmering under the stars.

“George told me. Lots of human teeth.”

“A special collection of them. Must have been dear to Guppy’s heart.”

“How nice. Well, it’s over now. I’m glad we did the job.”

“It was good to team up with you again.” Lockwood smiled at me, then looked away into the garden. I could sense he was about to speak. “Actually, Lucy…”

“Yes?”

“I was wondering something—”

“Yes?”

“Do you have any of that chocolate left? I saw you’d started a bar earlier.”

“Oh. Yeah, of course. Here, take it all.”

Lockwood wasn’t normally one to overdose on sweet stuff; he left that more to George and me—or used to, when we worked together—but he tore the silver paper away and ate the whole bar, piece by piece, until it was all gone, staring sightlessly into the night. I thought he looked very tired.

When he’d finished, he gave a sigh of satisfaction. “Thank goodness for you, Lucy. Holly never carries chocolate, and George has always scarfed his before we’re out of Portland Row. But I can always rely on you.”

I cleared my throat. “I’m glad to be of service. And you’re right,” I went on, in a sudden rush. “It’s great we got a chance to work together again. I’m really glad we could—Oh, and here’s Kipps, back already….He made good time.”

A Night Cab had pulled up at the end of the drive, its horn blaring. Lockwood was slowly getting to his feet. The time for talking had passed.

Except for one last thing.

“Lockwood,” I said, “when you went out into the hallway…”

The final smile was weary. “Lucy, you really don’t want to know.”

We ended up needing three taxis. Lockwood, Holly, and Kipps took the first one, carrying the Source off to Clerkenwell, while George and I waited behind with the bulk of the bags. When the other cabs came, I’d head to Tooting, he’d go to Portland Row. It was the parting of the ways. We sat on a garden wall opposite number 7.

“George,” I said, after a while, “you’ll know this kind of thing. Mummified heads. How common are they?”

George being George, the question didn’t faze him. “As psychic artifacts? Rare. Has to be the right conditions for mummification: either very dry, or containing certain chemicals, like you get in peat bogs. Can’t have much air, else the microbes get to work. Why?”

“No reason. Just I heard of two recently, and I was wondering how likely it was, that’s all.”

He grunted but said nothing. Silence enveloped us.

“George,” I said again, “what Lockwood did back there—”

“I know.”

“It was brilliant, yes, but also—”

“Crazy?”

“Yeah.”

George took off his glasses and rubbed them on his sweater as he always did when considering something disagreeable. It was a different kind of rub than the one he used when he was excited, agitated, or simply being a know-it-all. I’d forgotten how clearly I could read him. If you’d hidden his face and simply showed me his glasses moving on his shirt, I could easily have told you his mood.

“Yes,” he said, “and the really bad thing is that I wasn’t at all surprised. This is typical behavior for him now. Lockwood’s more reckless than ever. He throws himself into everything like he doesn’t care. Most cases we go on, I don’t have time to even do a quick background check, let alone research the haunting.”

I stared into the dark. Lockwood’s recklessness was part and parcel of who he was. I guessed he’d been that way since his sister died, when he was very young. It was also linked to the reasons why I’d stepped away from the agency, though it wasn’t the full story by any means. “He’s always been like that,” I said. “That’s just his way.”

“But it’s worse than before.” George was staring down at his sweater. His eyes, exposed without his glasses, looked smaller, weak, and frail. “You know he was always brave, but not like that.”

I knew what he meant. We were both thinking of the shape at the door.

“When did it start?” I said. “When did it get worse?”

George shrugged. “After you left.”

“And you think…” I frowned, hesitated. “Why do you think that is?”

George put his glasses back on; his eyes sprang back into focus, sharp and questing. “Wrong emphasis, Luce. Why do you think that is?”

“Well, it’s got nothing to do with me.”

“Of course not. Your leaving the company had no effect on any of us. Why, a day after you left, we’d forgotten your name.”

I glared at him. “You needn’t be like that. That’s hurtful.”

George gave a sudden whoop of rage. “How d’you want me to put it? You waltzed off on a whim and left us to pick up the pieces. Now you suddenly swan back and expect us to carry on where we left off! You can’t have it both ways—either we were affected by your departure or we weren’t. Which do you prefer?”

“I didn’t ask to come back!” I roared. “Penelope Fittes—”

“Has got nothing whatsoever to do with it, as you well know. It was Lockwood who came knocking on your door, and that’s why you considered the proposal, and let’s face it, that’s why you said yes.”

“Well, would you rather I hadn’t?”

“It’s none of my business what you decide. You cool freelancers walk your own path.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake! Now you’re just being childish.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

Neither of us spoke after that. We sat in silence on the wall, waiting for our separate cabs.