Lockwood & Co. The Creeping Shadow

Lockwood’s sudden enthusiasm for the Aldbury Castle case was startling, not to mention suspicious, but he was evasive when we interrogated him. “It’s clearly a fascinating cluster,” he said. “All sorts of interesting features. That weird Creeping Shadow story, for a start—didn’t you think that was worth investigating?” He gave us one of his widest smiles. “At the very least, it’ll get us away from London for a bit. We know the Winkmans were looking for Lucy a few days ago, and they’re bound to be after us all now that we’ve raided their night-market. It’ll get us out of harm’s way until the heat dies down.”

“I don’t feel particularly threatened,” I said.

“Ooh, anything could happen, Luce. Anything. Bit of safe country air will do us a world of good….” He tapped his fingers on the desk. “Will there be anything else?”

“So the fact that there’s an outpost of the Rotwell Institute a couple of miles up the road from the village doesn’t have any bearing on it, then?” George said. That had been my thought, too.

“Oh, you remember that?” Lockwood wore his blandest expression. He scratched the side of his nose.

“Of course we do. Danny Skinner mentioned it, didn’t he? He said they’d paid no attention to the problems of the village. Is it one of the research facilities on Holly’s list?”

“Well, as a matter of fact it is,” Lockwood said. “One of several, mind you, so there’s no guarantee it’s going to be relevant at all….” He shrugged. “Okay, look, I wouldn’t say the presence of that base has put me off, exactly. We might take a squint at it while we’re down there, assuming all the ghosts tramping around the place give us any peace. But the village is our primary concern. That’s what we’re being hired to sort out, and if we’re going to head down there tomorrow, we’d better get ready.”

The rest of the day passed swiftly. Lockwood sent George off to the Archives to research anything to do with the village and its history; he sent Holly to Mullet’s to order fresh salt and iron and arrange for them to be delivered to Waterloo Station. And he himself departed on a couple of errands, about which he was uncharacteristically silent. The results of one of these trips was dramatically revealed the following morning when we arrived at the station and saw a gaunt figure in black waiting on the platform beside the sacks of supplies.

“Hardly recognized you there, Kipps,” George said, “without your swanky jacket and sword. I thought if you took them off, you’d fall apart into separate wriggling pieces.”

It was true that Kipps looked different. Perhaps more than any other operative, he had been defined by his connection to the Fittes Agency. His jeweled rapier, the unnecessary tightness of his trousers, the cocksure spring in his step—everything had always trumpeted his excessive pride in being a member of the organization. Today he wore black jeans, a turtleneck, and a black zip-up jacket. Perhaps his jeans were a trifle tight, his boots a trifle pointy, but it was fairly sensible attire, assembled almost without vanity. Fortunately he hadn’t entirely changed. He still possessed his air of ineffable gloom.

“I just had a realization,” he said when we were on the train and rocking slowly through the south London suburbs. “After the Guppy job. I mean, there we were—in a house possessed by a wicked and powerful entity, and you all were running around like madmen—fighting, screaming, being fools—but dealing with it…and I was just a fifth wheel. I couldn’t see it, I couldn’t hear it…I was too old to do anything useful. And that’s what being a supervisor is: it’s a life of sending others out to fight and die. I’ve known that for a while, but it took you to make me realize I couldn’t bear to continue with it. I couldn’t stay at the Fittes Agency. I’d rather do something else.”

“Like what?” George said. “Art critic? Train buff? With that turtleneck, you could be almost anything.”

“It was probably another dumb decision,” Kipps said. “Like agreeing to come along with you today. Lockwood says he wants my expertise, but I’m not sure what I can contribute aside from standing around like a fence post. Maybe I can make the tea.”

“Actually, I think it’s admirable,” I said. “Your decision. It’s about being true to yourself.”

He grunted. “You’re good at that, certainly. That’s why you’ve come back to Lockwood and Company, I suppose.”

“As it happens, I’m only temporarily—” But the train was rattling over a particularly loud section of track, and then Lockwood and George were arguing over who would carry the salt bags, and Holly was handing biscuits around, and I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. I sat in a corner of the compartment by the window, staring at the reflection of myself that ran like a ghost over the vista of gray roofs.

How had it come to this, tagging along with Lockwood once again? Was I truly like Kipps, rudderless and cast adrift from purposes of my own? A subtle shift had come over me in the last few days; a realization that I had allowed myself to change direction. After the loss of the skull, after Harold Mailer’s murder and the pursuit through Clerkenwell, I’d needed help badly—and Lockwood had offered it. There’d been no one else to turn to. It had been a good decision. But after that—how one thing led to another!—it had seemed only natural to stay on at Portland Row, only natural to let Lockwood help me retrieve the skull, only natural to help him hunt for it in the night-market….And now—was it natural to accompany him to Aldbury Castle, too? Sure, I could invent plenty of excuses to justify it. I was keeping myself safe from the Winkmans. I was (perhaps) pursuing the Rotwell Institute and the missing skull. I was giving Lockwood & Co. the support they deserved….All that might well have been true. But it boiled down to the same thing in the end. I was simply happy to have the chance to be with them again.

It was with inconclusive thoughts like these that I occupied myself as the train left London and dawdled its way into the countryside. By ten o’clock, without danger or alarm, we had reached our destination.

For those wanting a detailed record of the horrors that subsequently unfolded, the village of Aldbury Castle occupied a pleasant rural location fifty miles southwest of London. It was set in chalk uplands, with wooded rolling hills on three sides, and a leisurely river winding on the other. The site was remote, reached only by a meandering road, and by a train stop (it would be a stretch to call it a station) on the main Southampton line, three quarters of a mile away to the west. There was no station office or building of any kind, just a white and winding path running off into the forest, to join the road on its way to the village.

If there ever had been a castle in the area, it had long vanished. The road crossed the river on a stone bridge, and then bisected the village green—a broad expanse of long dark grass, surrounded by cottages. Sheep grazed here. Three great horse chestnut trees dominated the center of the green, casting into shadow the fourteenth-century market cross and the trough rotting beside it.

On the other side of the green, the road forked outside the door of the one surviving pub—the Old Sun Inn, which our client, Danny Skinner, called home. All the other main buildings of Aldbury Castle were visible from here, too—the village stores, The Run (a row of terrace houses), and the church of St. Nestor, on a rise above the rest of the village. Outside the church, an ancient ghost-lamp, rusty and broken, stood on a low mound. A lane beyond the church led off through the woods to fields and hills.

Those hills were bathed in sunshine when we walked over the bridge and entered the village for the first time, but the green was wet and frosted with cobwebs. Shadows of the eastern woods stretched like fingers across the grass. There was a smell of smoke in the air. It was a beautiful spring day.

“Seems much too pretty to be a hot spot for ghosts,” Holly said.

“You say that.” I pointed to a great circle of blackened ground in a prominent spot by the road. “They’ve been busy setting fire to something.”

“Or someone,” Kipps said.

Holly wrinkled her nose. “Oh, yuck.”

“Well, I don’t see any charred legs sticking out of it,” George said. “More likely to be objects that they think might be Sources. They’re panic burning. But first things first. That cross is the one the kid mentioned. I want to have a look at its sinister carving.”

He led the way through the long wet grass, which whispered and spattered against our legs. When we got near the trees, we flung down the bags of salt and iron; we were hot despite the cool air.

The base of the cross was stepped, and had been repaired, not very well, with modern bricks. The rest was ancient, weathered by the wind and frost of countless years. The stone had a grainy softness to it; pale green lichen extended over it in patches, like the map of an unknown world. You could see that the whole thing had once been intricately decorated—patterns of interlocking vines wound their way up the sides of the cross, with obscure objects cradled in their fronds.

George seemed to know precisely where to look. Halfway up one face, the lichen had been picked away, revealing the traces of an image. In its bottom left-hand corner, a set of tiny figures clustered. They were no more than stick people, lined up like bowling pins ready to be felled. To the right was a pile of skulls and bones. Towering over the lot, crammed into the center of the available space, rose a huge misshapen figure with sturdy legs and arms and a squat, almost squared body. The head was indistinct. Whatever the creature was, it dominated the scene.

“There he is,” Lockwood said. “The dreaded Creeping Shadow. The kid told me on the phone that it had been seen again the other night.”

George grunted skeptically; he was tracing its shape with a chubby finger.

“What do you think it is, George?” I asked.

He adjusted his glasses. “At the Archives yesterday,” he said, “I found a mention of the cross in an old Hampshire guidebook. They describe this as a fairly common depiction of the Last Judgment, when the dead rise up from their graves at the end of time. Here are the bones, look; and here are the saved souls rising.”

“And the chunky guy in the middle?” Lockwood said.

“An angel, presiding over it all.” George pointed. “Yeah, see these marks here? I reckon he once had wings.” He shook his head. “It’s no graveyard ghoul, no matter what Danny Skinner says. Whatever’s hanging around the village is something else.”

“So maybe he is making most of it up…” I said. “Speak of the devil—there he is.” A figure had come out of the Old Sun Inn and was waving to us across the road.

“He was right about the battle, though,” George said, as we walked toward the inn. “There was a ninth-century dustup between the Saxons and the Vikings in the fields east of the modern village. At one time, before the Problem, it was a popular spot for antiquaries to go digging—a couple of centuries ago they turned up quite a few shields, swords, and skeletons. Farmers would find bones caught in their plows, that sort of thing. Must have been quite a skirmish. But like you said, Lockwood, it’s not a massive battle by national standards—there are other, more recent sites that haven’t caused nearly as much trouble as this one appears to be doing.”

“Our job is to find out why,” Lockwood said. “Assuming we don’t end up strangling our client first, which is a distinct possibility.”

The Old Sun Inn was a timber-framed building, half swaddled with marauding ivy. Much of it seemed to be in a state of disrepair. The main entrance, in what appeared to be the oldest part of the house, faced toward the church; another door led to the pub garden and the green. On a post hung a dilapidated painted sign showing a massive bloodred sun, hovering like a beating heart above a darkened landscape. Our client was swinging on the garden gate below this, waving as we approached. In broad daylight his protruding ears had a pinkly see-through quality. He was grinning at us with a kind of fierce pleasure that contained both delight and anger.

“At last! You took your sweet time. The Shadow was back last night, and the dead walked in Aldbury Castle, while the living cowered in our beds. And you all missed it again! You want lemonades? Pops will get you some.”

“Lemonade sounds good,” Lockwood said. “Maybe after we see our rooms.”

The kid swung manically back and forth. “Oh, you want rooms? But you’ll be out fighting Visitors all night, won’t you?”

“Only some of the time.” Lockwood put out a hand and stilled the movement of the gate. “And you definitely promised us somewhere to stay. Rooms now, please.”

“Ooh, I don’t know….I’ll ask Pops. Hold on.” He slouched away into the bar.

“Is it just me,” Kipps said, “or does that boy need punching?”

“It’s not just you.”

Presently our client re-emerged, as perky as a ferret up a trouser leg. “Okay, I got you rooms.”

“Excellent…Why are there only two keys?”

“The inn has two guest rooms. One key for each.”

We gazed at him, certain horrific permutations drifting through our minds. Lockwood spoke carefully. “Yes, but there are five of us, with a variety of needs, habits, and private regions that we don’t want shared. There must be other rooms.”

“There are. They’re inhabited by me, my dad, and my mad old grandpa; I can tell you, his private needs and habits are well worth avoiding. There’s also a storage closet in the kitchen, but that’s damp, rat-infested, and haunted by the ghost. Cheer up—you’ve got five beds! Well, four, to be fair. One’s a double. Here’s the key for the double room; it’s also got a cot. The other’s a twin. I hope you have a lovely stay. I’ll leave it to you to settle in, and see you in the bar later.” With that, he departed.

There was a heavy silence. I scanned the others, taking in Holly’s neat traveling bag, doubtless crammed with body lotions and skin cleansers; George’s ominously light backpack, which lacked room for any conceivable change of clothes; Kipps’s angular and palely ginger frame, the horrors of which were just hinted at beneath his turtleneck; and Lockwood. To share a room with any of them presented problems.

The others were making similar swift calculations.

“Lucy—?” Holly began.

“You beat me to it. Don’t mind if I do.”

“In that case,” Holly said, plucking a key from Lockwood’s hand, “we’ll take the twin room and leave you boys to it. Good luck deciding who gets the cot.”

We left them standing in the hall and went up to our room.

It was a small, neat space, surprisingly pleasant, with white lace coverlets on the beds, and a vase of fresh lavender on the windowsill. We put our bags down and stood at the window, looking out over the green. You could hear the jangling of the iron charms on the doors of the distant cottages and smell the lavender in the air.

“You know something?” Holly said. “I’m glad it’s worked out like this. I’m pleased you’re here.”

“Well, if I wasn’t, you’d have to share rooms with one of the boys,” I said.

She gave a delicate little shudder and drew her coat elegantly around her. “True….But I didn’t just mean that. I’ve felt bad ever since you left. About you going, about the way it all ended back then. I felt responsible.”

“Oh, don’t you start!” I said. “Everyone thinks I left because of you. And I really didn’t. If it was just about you, believe me, I would have stayed.” I gave her a stern glare.

Holly lifted her hands in a peaceable gesture. “There you go with that look again! I just mean it was the arguments we had that brought it to a head—that made you lose control.” She was referring to the Poltergeist I’d conjured up during our blazing fight at Aickmere’s department store, and she was quite correct—but that didn’t mean I enjoyed hearing her say it. My frown deepened. “Oh, you’re getting angry with me again,” Holly went on, “and I don’t think I’m doing anything wrong. All I’m saying—”

“It’s okay. I know what you’re saying.” I let my face relax. “Thanks for saying it.”

“And I hope you find the skull one day,” Holly added, after an unusually warm pause. “I know how important it is to you.”

I could have denied it. I probably should have. “Yeah,” I said. “I kind of miss having it around.”

“I can’t think why. It’s a horrible thing, and I don’t think it liked me.”

I chuckled. “Well, no, it really didn’t.”

“It made unpleasant faces whenever I went by.”

“That’s nothing. It actively encouraged me to murder you once or twice. But don’t worry, I’m not going to take up any of its suggestions, even the coat hanger one.”

Holly looked anxiously around the room. “The coat hanger one?”

“It was a kind of garrote thing, using hangers like those ones over there….Anyway, don’t worry about that. Let’s get settled in. Which bed do you want?”

“The one by the door.”

Not long afterward we went downstairs again. At the foot of the stairs was a flagstoned hallway, dominated by its ancient entrance door. An arch beyond opened into the pub, a low-ceilinged chamber with a sweet, melancholy smell of stale beer. Here a broad-chested man with a pale, pained face and slate-gray hair was drying glasses behind the bar. From his protruding ears, I guessed him to be Danny Skinner’s father, the owner of the inn. A wild-eyed old man sat in a corner by the fire. Otherwise, aside from the rest of our team, the place was empty. Lockwood, with Danny at his side, was ordering lemonades. Kipps and George stood glumly by, each with a subtly harried look.

I sat on a bar stool next to Lockwood. “I take it you took the cot,” I said.

He nodded. “Leader’s prerogative.”

“I didn’t sign up for this,” Kipps said. “Horrific phantoms, yes. Waking up next to Cubbins, no.”

“As soon as it gets dark we’re going to have to deal with the inn’s ghost.” George, too, spoke with deep feeling. “Then Kipps or I will be able to sleep in the storage closet downstairs. All the other Visitors can wait.”

Mr. Skinner, the innkeeper, nodded toward the arch. “Well, if you’re interested in our ghost, that’s where it happens, out in the hall. Glowing child, that’s what they say it is. The big door there’s where kids hear the knocking.”

“They’re making it up!” A shout made us turn. The old man by the fire was glaring at us madly. “It’s nothing but the wind! Trees knocking on the window! Too much cheese at night! Claptrap and baloney!” He took a sip of beer.

“That’s my grandpa,” Danny whispered. “Used to be vicar at St. Nestor’s Church, until he got too crazy. He’s too old to have ever seen a ghost, so he doesn’t believe in them—or in ghost-hunters, naturally. If he insults you, just ignore him.”

“Oh, we’ll suffer in silence. You’ve given us plenty of practice at that.” Lockwood was gazing out at the dark and quiet hallway. “Okay, we’ll look into this midnight visitor for you. So there’s no one else at the Old Sun Inn?”

“You’re our only guests.” The innkeeper shook his head sourly. “The Old Sun Inn…there’s an inappropriate name for you. If there’s a darker spot in all creation than Aldbury Castle, I wouldn’t like to see it. Come outside with me a moment.”

He flipped his dish towel over his shoulder, pushed the bar flap open, and limped out across the lobby, ignoring the cries of the old man for another glass of beer. In the garden the sun was drawing clear of the beech woods, and the sky was a cold, pale blue. Two children were playing far off, thrashing through the long grass on the green.

“Used to be kept mowed, this green did,” Mr. Skinner said, as we trooped outside behind him. “Nice and neat, it was; we had picnics, bands playing, and whatnot. Course, no one bothers with any of that anymore. The only communal activity now is when we gather to burn the clothes of the recently deceased. Never does any good, mind. More ghosts than people, Aldbury Castle has, and more being added every day.”

He pointed out across the grass. “There’s a headless lady who walks under the chestnut trees,” he said. “See where the shadows are darkest? That’s supposed to be her grave. That bit of stained ground? That was where the gallows were. We destroyed them years ago, but the children say a shape still lingers there—the ghost of a peddler hung from one of the trees after selling pies with rotten meat.”

“Bit severe,” George said, “but you can understand their annoyance. Anything else?”

“The church has its ghost, of course. Fellow who fell from the tower while fixing the lightning rod, they say. And see along there? Half the cottages on that side of the green have been abandoned for years; an influenza epidemic one hundred years ago left too many unquiet souls in them. Then there’s the duck pond. A teacher took her own life in it, twenty years ago. I remember that myself. Miss Bates, a sad and quiet woman, she was. Wouldn’t say boo to a goose. Found her in the center of the pond on a bright spring morning, long hair floating out like river weeds….”

“Oh, God, her spirit hasn’t got lots of hair, has it?” George said. “Long, lank, black hair? I can’t bear hairy ghosts. Or ones with tattoos.”

“George.”

“What?”

“Shush.”

“There’re dozens more. We’ve always been on the edge of things,” Mr. Skinner said, “where the barrier between this world and the next wears thin. Not surprising, really, given our history.”

“You mean the battlefield?” Lockwood asked. “Where was that, do you know?”

“Up Potter’s Lane, there, beyond the church. Through the woods and between the hills. When I was a boy, the farmers used to still turn up the occasional bone in the fields there. Sometimes they’d be ground up in the combine blades. Mind you, the Rotwell place has tidied up most of that now. We used to go into the woods for dares; in the dawn light we’d see the warriors’ ghosts standing in the mists, among the wheat. Passive things, they were; didn’t cause any trouble, unlike the Visitors nowadays. Well, you’ll have your work cut out for you here. You’ll want food, will you, while you’re alive? I can do you a tripe-and-turnip stew for supper.”

“Oh…that sounds great. Is there anything else?”

“Just stew.”

“Well,” Lockwood said heartily as the innkeeper hobbled slowly back inside, “I think it’s in all our interests to get this village taken care of as quickly as possible, don’t you?” He smiled around at us. “And for Kipps’s and George’s sake, if there’s a ghost in the Old Sun Inn, that’s as good a place as any to start.”