Lockwood & Co. The Creeping Shadow

Strange how close the darkness is, even when things seem brightest. Even in the glare of a summer noon, when the sidewalk bakes and iron fences are hot to the touch, the shadows are still with us. They congregate in doorways and porches, and under bridges, and beneath the brims of gentlemen’s hats so you cannot see their eyes. There is darkness in our mouths and ears; in our bags and wallets; within the swing of men’s jackets and beneath the flare of women’s skirts. We carry it around with us, the dark, and its influence stains us deep.

That afternoon I sat in the window of a café on Clerkenwell Green, watching the faces in the crowds. Because of my profession, I didn’t get out much during the day, and my experience with ordinary people was mostly confined to the ghost-haunted and the dead. These folk passing me now—they represented everyone else, that terrified majority who kept their heads down, put their iron and silver in the windows, and tried to get on with their lives. The young, the old, busy enjoying the bright spring sunshine; they looked harmless enough to me.

Yet somewhere out there, perhaps even among the people passing outside my window, were those attracted by the dark. It found expression in different ways. Some joined the ghost-cults that had proliferated across London, loudly welcoming the returning dead and trying to hear the messages they brought. Others sought out forbidden artifacts for their danger and rarity; there were stories of rich collectors who had dozens of Sources, stolen from graveyards and secreted in iron vaults underground. And there were those who used the Sources for strange occult rituals. At Lockwood & Co., we’d seen odd markings in the catacombs beneath the Aickmere Brothers department store: evidence of an abandoned circle, surrounded by heaps of haunted bones. George had theories, but the exact purpose of the circle—and who was responsible for it—remained in shadow.

One way or another, despite DEPRAC’s best efforts, the black market for artifacts remained strong. And it seemed that, with the wretched Harold Mailer, I’d stumbled upon one of its main supply lines.

What to do about it, though? Whoever Mailer’s contacts were, it was likely the trail would lead to the criminal Winkman family. Flo had seen the mummified head in their possession, after all. If I could gain proof of the connection between the Winkmans and the theft of Sources from the furnaces, I would make a decent name for myself.

But that wasn’t my main priority. If it had been, I probably would just have nipped along to Scotland Yard, seen Inspector Barnes, and gotten him to do the work.

No, what I wanted, most particularly, was to retrieve the whispering skull.

You heard me right. I wanted the skull back. That wasn’t a statement I’d ever have expected to make.

In many ways, the ghost in the jar had been a thorn in my side for ages. When I’d first encountered it, upon joining Lockwood’s company, I’d reacted with instant horror and distaste; and these feelings only intensified when it began to speak to me. It was thoroughly, defiantly, exultantly reprehensible; in fact, if you wrote down the ten most unsavory character traits you could imagine, the skull possessed the nine worst on the list, and it only lacked the tenth because that one wasn’t quite bad enough. The ghost’s name was unknown, and much of its past a mystery, though since what little we knew of its pre-death career involved grave-robbing, black magic, and cold-blooded murder, that wasn’t altogether a shame. No one else could hear it speak, so the skull had formed a special bond with me. Since it had the language of a longshoreman and the morals of a weasel, I’d had to cope with constant psychic sarcasm and abuse, and also learned plenty of new words.

And yet, despite disliking it so much, I’d come to rely on that ghost.

At the basic level, it did help me, fairly often, when I was out at work. Its insights, no matter how fleeting, had saved me many times. It had pinpointed Emma Marchment’s ghost, for instance, just a day or two before, and perhaps stopped me from blundering straight into her clutches. And last night it had dropped a hint—a pretty belated one, admittedly—about the location of the Source in the Ealing Cannibal affair. This was supernatural assistance that other operatives didn’t have.

Which brought me to the wider point, the more profound reason why I hung around in Clerkenwell that day, hoping against hope that Harold Mailer wouldn’t betray me. The skull was a Type Three ghost, one that could communicate fully with the living, and that made it incredibly rare. And I was rare, too; I alone had the ability to hear it. With such a powerful artifact at my side, I was uniquely successful; the first person since Marissa Fittes to genuinely talk with ghosts. All my confidence, such as it was, stemmed from this simple fact. Without it? I was an ordinary agent once again—skilled, but unspectacular.

Like it or not, the whispering skull helped define me. It was part of who I was. And now some grubby criminals were trying to take it from me.

But I wasn’t going to lose it without a fight.

The Winkmans and their operation were formidable; I knew that from experience. But if I trailed them tonight and found their storehouse, they would discover I was formidable, too.

So I sat, drinking tea and dozing, while the sun went down beyond the houses. As dusk came, I put on my coat, tightened the straps of my rapier, and set off for St. James’s churchyard.

Don’t think I hadn’t cased the place earlier, by the way. It had been the first thing I’d done after Mailer had scampered. I’d headed up toward the church, through the old iron gates, and into the square of open ground, where a few lunchtime picnickers lingered in the cool spring sunlight. It was almost entirely grass, that old yard, still undulating and irregular from where the graves had been removed in the great purge many years before, and it was surrounded on all sides by buildings. St. James’s neoclassical facade loomed to the north; elsewhere were the backs of houses, high churchyard walls, and locked iron gates. One entrance opened onto Sekforde Street, and another onto Clerkenwell Green; these were connected by a simple concrete path. A second, smaller path ran from the church to a narrow alley in the south. Where the two paths crossed, roughly in the center of the churchyard, sat a single black wooden bench.

I’d walked past that bench a number of times, deep in thought. It was a curious choice for a meeting place, being both extremely exposed and actually—when you considered the churchyard overall—quite shut in. I didn’t mind being out in the open, but I did dislike the ring of walls all around.

What had Lockwood once told me about making sure that you always had a way out? Before engaging with any psychic phenomena, it’s vital to establish the terrain. Get a grip on the layout—particularly the exits and dead ends. Why? Because you’ve got to know how to vamoose if you lose control of the situation. I reckoned what applied to ghosts applied equally to crooked furnace workers.

I’d completed several circuits of that churchyard, making calculations, measuring distances, checking and rechecking till I was happy. When I’d finally headed for the café, I could have drawn the whole site from memory. Now, four hours later, I was ready to put my mental map to good use.

With the onset of dusk, the streets of Clerkenwell had emptied fast. The shops were closing, iron barriers were rattling down. Thanks to the sunny day, and the numerous ghost-lamps in the vicinity, a few pedestrians were still abroad, hastening to catch the final Tube trains. Some night-watch kids were already present. In St. James’s Church, wardens tolled the curfew bell.

The churchyard was unlit. Lamps burned at three of its gates, with the black space between them suspended like a hammock. There were lit windows, too, high up in the buildings, which cast scattered squares of brightness across the lawns. I entered from the Sekforde Street gate, which was farthest from the central bench, and swiftly found a dark spot near the wall, where my eyes could adjust to the complex patterns of the half-light.

Was he here?

The path beside me curved faint and pale across the grass like a shining rib bone, and by following it, I saw where it crossed the other one. Close by, I could just see the low black bench and, by frowning, squinting—yes—make out someone sitting there.

So he had come. Good. But was he alone?

I took my time surveying the churchyard, letting my eyes roam the featureless ground. Everything was silent, everything fine. I could see no one else between the bench and the surrounding walls.

Keeping off the path, avoiding the illuminated squares of spotlighted grass, I began walking slowly toward the bench. I kept my eyes fixed on the figure sitting there. It was Harold Mailer, all right; I recognized his raincoat and his narrow, spindly frame. He was sitting quietly, just waiting, staring at the ground.

My boots brushed through dark grass; soundlessly I moved toward him.

When still a ways off, I adjusted my approach so that I angled around behind him. Even from the back I could see how relaxed he was, his arms stretched out along the top of the bench, head slightly tilted, like a man taking a gentle doze.

My feet slowed. I came to a gradual halt.

He was as twitchy as they came, Harold. Nervy at the best of times, let alone at dusk, in a churchyard, on an illicit rendezvous, with his career—and life—hanging in the balance.

All at once his utter relaxation bothered me.

I stared at him. Why was he so chill?

Come to think of it, why was his head at such an angle?

Why didn’t he move?

My hand stole to my sword. I was a statue planted in the grass.

My scalp prickled; I heard a cold voice drifting on the wind.

“Lucy…”

Out of the corner of my left eye, I sensed a shape forming in the air. It was soft, hesitant, knitted from yarns of shadow. It gathered blackness around it as if clumsily clothing itself. It hung in the dark beside me, close enough to touch. Cold radiated from it, sharp as knives. My lips drew back in fear; my teeth grinned in ghastly welcome. I kept hot eyes fixed straight ahead, still staring at the bench and its lifeless occupant with the twisted, broken neck. I did not dare look at the drab thing at my side, and particularly not at the half-formed face I sensed so close to mine.

My voice was barely a rasp. “Harold?”

“Lucy…”

“What have they done to you?”

A tiny cracking noise was the only answer; looking down, I saw flecks of ice spreading across the wrinkles in my sleeve, pincers of frost encircling my boot. The left side of my face burned with supernatural chill; my breath plumed white. The shape was very near.

“Who did this, Harold? Who killed you?”

A mumbled flood of words, splashing against my brain. So full of anguish and confusion…I could not make them out.

How thick my tongue felt, how dry and swollen. It was as if it were glued inside my mouth. “Tell me. If you tell me I can…I can help you….” But I couldn’t get the Lucy Carlyle Formula™ out. Not this time.

“You did this, Lucy….”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a nebulous hand of cloud reach toward my face.

“No, Harold, no, that’s not true….”

“You did this.” Its fingers stroked the air close to my skin. I flinched away. Ice blistered across my cheek. I could feel it building across the hollow of my eye. My mind hurt; my grip closed on the hilt of my rapier.

“No, Harold. Please don’t—”

“It is at the place of blood.”

“What?”

The shape was gone.

With a shudder, with bile rising in my throat, I lurched back and to the side, rubbing at my face, my boot tearing free of the frozen ground.

As I did so, three men rose up from the grass.

For a second I thought they were phantoms, too; the impossibility of their appearance numbed my brain. But I’d forgotten about the humps and ridges, the hollows left long ago, when the churchyard had been emptied of its graves. Some were deep enough to conceal a crouching man; they’d been hiding there while I’d merrily walked toward the body of Harold Mailer at the center of their trap. They were large men, dressed in black; large, but moving fast to encircle me. One was over to the left, back toward the gate where I’d come from; the others blocked the way to other exits. If I’d gotten as far as the bench, I would have had no chance of escape. They would have surrounded me with ease.

But I’d halted. The space behind me was clear.

I turned and ran.

Not toward one of the churchyard gates, where the lamps burned so faintly, but to the black mass of high wall midway between them. In the coffee-colored dusk, it seemed a solid and impenetrable slab. But I’d done my homework, and I knew otherwise.

Up a gentle slope, leaping over hollows, almost twisting my ankle on fragments of old stone, I reached the wall. Behind me, the three figures arrowed inward, converging on me where I stood.

There was an old door there: locked, but usefully designed, with protruding hardware and crossbeams that I could get a foothold on. I launched myself up, grabbed the top of the door, where it was loosely set in a crumbling arch, and began scrabbling higher. One toe on a beam, one on the lock; I straightened my legs, reached up—my fingers connected with the top of the wall. That was all I needed. A kick, an unbecoming wriggle, and I’d pulled myself up and over. I hung there for a moment before dropping lightly down into foliage on the other side. As I did so, something impacted hard against the door.

I was in the yard of an abandoned building, perhaps once the vicarage of the church. Stacks of bricks and piles of rusted scaffolding poles suggested that someone, at some stage, hoped to carry out renovations—but now it was deserted, as I’d noticed earlier that day. A first floor window gaped ahead of me, empty of glass, and I vaulted through it into a black space. I snatched a glance behind, saw figures hauling themselves over the wall, silhouetted for an instant against the stars.

The interior of the place was a mess, full of debris. I flicked on my flashlight; I jumped, dodged, went slaloming from room to room. To my dismay, the windows on the other side had been securely sealed and boarded. I could not get out that way.

Sounds behind me. They were already in the house.

A broad, dilapidated staircase opened before me. I sprang up it, three steps at a time.

There, at the top of the stairs, a window—glazed, but tempting. I pressed my face against it and saw a flat roof below, then a garden stretching away.

Was that window a nice modern one, easy to open? No, of course not. It was a sash affair, old and rotten and warped; it was all I could do to lift it high enough to admit my head and shoulders. It squeaked, juddered in the grooves, then froze altogether. I was going to have to wriggle through.

I looked behind me, and my heart nearly stopped. The three figures were halfway up the stairs. The leader had something silvery in his hand.

No time for wriggling. Stepping back from the window, I launched myself forward through the gap, shunting myself out into the moonlight. As I fell out and down, a hand caught my boot and gripped it tight. For an instant I hung there; then I thrashed upward with my other foot, connecting sharply with something very soft. The hand let go and I tumbled onto the flat roof below.

As soon as I landed, I flung myself violently to the side. Something struck the asphalt roof where I’d just been lying and stuck there quivering. I tore a canister of iron from my belt, turned, and lobbed it hard. It smashed into the window, just above a protruding head. Shards of glass dropped like dislodged icicles; someone screamed, the head whipped back into the house, and I was up and away along the low, flat roof, reaching the corner in five quick strides.

From that corner, I could see a high wall extending away between two gardens, with expanses of grass stretching left and right like black and frozen seas. I didn’t relish being trapped in either garden, with no sure way out. The wall would do. It was three feet lower than the roof, and I had to turn and drop carefully onto the narrow crest of bricks. As I did so, I saw the first of my pursuers jumping from the ruined window.

Along the crest I ran, scampering as a cat would, looking straight ahead, ignoring the drop on either side. There were trees in the gardens; you could see silvery ghost-wards hanging from them, smell the lavender bushes out there in the dark. Behind I heard a shout; something flashed past my shoulder and was gone.

I got to a place where the wall split: it marked the end of the gardens of this street, and the beginnings of the ones on the next. To my right, a side wall sprouted off. To the left, a thick hedge stretched away. I looked back; one of the men had followed me along the wall, moving hesitantly, a small knife in his hand. Another had jumped down onto the lawn and was sprinting across the grass. He would have his work cut out for him, because the hedge would block his way. The third man was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he had been injured by the broken window. I hoped so.

I continued straight, following the line I was on. I wanted to reach the road beyond. Ahead of me: the next row of houses. There, too, glinting coldly in the moonlight, an all-glass conservatory, where my wall came to an end. Beyond, I could make out the low roof of a garage, and perhaps a gap leading to the street.

The conservatory roof was higher than the wall. As I slowed to consider it, something struck my forearm. I felt a sharp lance of pain, and the shock of it made me stumble. I almost toppled from my perch; instead, I pitched forward against the side of the conservatory. My arm stung as I pulled myself up onto its roof; when I touched the place, my fingers came away wet.

Over the glass roof I ran, leaning inward, boots slipping and sliding on the tilted panes. Up off the glass, onto the roof of the garage. The street wasn’t far away.

Another shout behind was answered by a second cry. I paused. Looking back, I saw the first pursuer had climbed onto the conservatory. He was bigger than I was, and considerably heavier; he couldn’t bring himself to run across it as I had. Dropping to a sitting position, he began to shuffle across the apex of the roof like a chubby-thighed kid riding a ghost-horse at the fair.

I waited until he was halfway across, out of reach of either end. Then I took a magnesium flare from my pocket.

It wasn’t a very nice thing to do, but I didn’t much care right then.

When I chucked it, the flare hit the conservatory roof just in front of the shuffling man, exploding in a blaze of searing white light, and showering him in fragments of hot iron. He gave a cry and lurched back, trying to protect his face. Even as he did so, the glass under his knees cracked, then shattered completely. The roof collapsed; with a scream the man pitched forward into the silvery smoke and disappeared.

Something bounced against the brickwork at my back; a knife spun past across the asphalt roof. The pursuer in the garden had broken through the hedge and was running over the lawn toward me.

I gave him a rude gesture, then scrabbled away across the roof, dropped over the far side onto a car hood, and bounced down onto a cobbled driveway. As I hit the ground I was already running. It was a small mews, possibly quite pretty, but I couldn’t hang around to admire the architecture. I was out of it in moments and sprinting full tilt through the silent streets of Clerkenwell.

It was only when I was a mile or so away, lost among the winding alleys near St. Pancras station, that I allowed myself to slow down a little. But I didn’t stop moving even then. My sleeve was wet, and the side of my arm felt numb. It was a cold night; to rest would have made me prey to shock and exhaustion. Plus, it might have set my mind working. And I really didn’t want to think about what had happened to me—and to Harold Mailer—right then.

One thing I did know, instinctively, without deliberation, was that I couldn’t go back home. The men who’d tried to silence me knew full well where I lived. My little studio in Tooting wouldn’t be a healthy place that night.

And so, by slow degrees, going by back roads, making a cautious loop through the northern districts of central London, I started on the long and painful journey toward the one refuge I could think of. The one place I knew I’d be safe.

I didn’t need to think hard about this one, either.

I was making for 35 Portland Row.