Lockwood & Co. The Creeping Shadow

That afternoon, spurred on by a tasty bar-snack lunch of stale cheese sandwiches, pork rinds, and more lemonade, we got speedily to work. Holly and I interviewed the inhabitants of the inn, and got some useful info from Danny Skinner and his dad. As well as the apparition that Danny had once seen near the old door, they both reported a permanent chill in one area of the hallway, which lingered even when the radiators were on. Mr. Skinner had long ago stopped sitting in the armchairs in the hall, owing to feelings of faint depression and nausea. As for the kid, from his bed he regularly heard a loud hammering on the door as midnight came.

We got nothing worthwhile from old Reverend Skinner. As his grandson had predicted, he couldn’t countenance the existence of ghosts. The cold spot was a draft; the spectral knocking was the drains; as for us, we were shameless hucksters pulling the wool over our clients’ eyes. Despite his contempt, he seemed fascinated by our efforts and hung around like a headache as we carried out our daytime survey.

By and large, what we found backed up the Skinners’ story. Even in the late afternoon, certain primary phenomena—mainly chill and creeping fear—could be detected in the hall of the inn, and also in the kitchen, which was reached through an interconnecting door. Both areas were laid with the original flagstones. Other first floor regions seemed unaffected.

The great front door was black with age. We unlatched it and inspected both sides. There were scratch marks on the external face, but they could have been made by anything. Beyond the dusty porch, a path led to an iron fence that barred the way to the churchyard.

The afternoon wore on. Suppertime came, and stew was served. We sat at the mullioned windows of the public bar looking out over the darkening green. The trees that ringed the village were black now, the old cross glowing with the last light of evening. The atmosphere was dark and sinister. Much the same could be said for the stew.

“I can see a couple of Visitors already,” Lockwood said. “See out there, on the far side of the green? Two faint shapes hovering by the road.”

No one else could see them, but we believed him. He had the best Sight among us—those of us who had any Sight at all.

“Well, this is where I become useless,” Kipps said. He was stirring his stew around and around, as if by some alchemy it might become edible. “I don’t know what I can do to help this evening, short of being tethered by the door like a goat to lure the ghost.”

“That’s actually not a bad idea,” Lockwood said. “We just might do it. Alternatively, George has a suggestion. He’s brought something along for you.”

“Yep,” George said. “You could try these.” His backpack hung on his chair; he ferreted around inside it and, with a flourish, drew out a heavy pair of rubber goggles with thick crystal eyepieces. He handed them to Kipps, who took them wordlessly, turning them over in his pale hands.

“What are they?”

“Rare and expensive items,” George said, “which I stole. Made by the Orpheus Society, used by John William Fairfax, late owner of Fairfax Iron. The lenses are crystal instead of glass. As to what they do—I have a theory. Try them.”

Kipps was hesitant. “Have you put these on? What did you see?”

“I saw nothing. But they’re not for me. I think they’re for old fogies like you. Go on.”

With any amount of grumbling and struggling with the strap, Kipps eased the goggles over his head. The thick rubber hid half his face, which was an immediate improvement.

“Does Penelope Fittes know you’ve got these?”

“Nope. And she’s not going to, either. Quit moaning and look out the window.”

Kipps did so. At once he stiffened; his fingers gripped the sides of the goggles. “I can see three dark figures out on the green….”

“Are they there when you remove the specs?”

Kipps tore them away. “No…no, they’re gone.”

George nodded. “Excellent. That’s because you can’t see ghosts ordinarily. The crystals help your eyes—they refocus the light somehow. It bothered me for ages that I couldn’t figure out what these goggles did—but I was being stupid. The Orpheus Society is full of old codgers who have been searching for ways to join the fight against Visitors. An invention like this gives them that ability. And it will allow you, Kipps, to see psychically again.” He waved a hand. “It’s all right, you don’t have to thank me. At least not with words. Money will do fine.”

Maybe it was the light, maybe it was the stew, but I almost thought Kipps’s eyes had actually filled up. “I—I don’t know what to say….” he said. “This is…” He broke off, frowning. “But—hold on, if somebody’s invented these, why doesn’t everyone have a pair?”

That was what I wanted to know.

“The Orpheus guy implied it was a prototype,” George said. “Maybe it hurts your eyes, maybe it’s not actually that effective on most ghosts. We don’t know. I was hoping you could test it for us, Kipps. We’ve brought a spare sword along, too.”

“Even so,” Holly said, as Kipps placed the goggles reverently beside his plate, “can it be right that people are dreaming up important things like this—and no one knows anything about it?”

Lockwood shook his head. “In truth,” he said, “there’s an awful lot about the Orpheus Society we just don’t understand yet. We’re going to have to look into it. But we’ve got other things to worry about tonight.” He gestured at the darkened hall. “And the biggest of them is what’s going to come knocking on that door.”

After our meal, and bidding the Skinner family go to the safety of their rooms, we gathered our equipment and went into the hallway. Night fell, the evening progressed. We made certain preparations.

As midnight drew near, the atmosphere in the room grew heavy, and our vigil more alert. Lockwood lit the gas lamps. We watched their green flames flicker and dance against the dark-striped wallpaper of the ancient hall.

“This is pretty scary,” Kipps said, “but infinitely preferable to getting in a bed with Cubbins.” He had the goggles on top of his head; every now and then he pulled them down over his eyes and squinted fiercely into every corner of the hall. “Think we’re ready?”

“As ready as we’ll ever be.” Lockwood glanced up at the ceiling, from where the sound of slowly pacing footsteps could be heard. “All we need now is for the batty old fool to go to sleep.”

Unusually for an adult in a haunted house, old Reverend Skinner had reappeared several times during the evening, asking questions and getting in the way. He had finally gone upstairs only after eleven, and was evidently not yet in bed.

“He doesn’t trust us,” Lockwood said. “Just like he didn’t trust his own grandson. Wants to see things with his own eyes, which is ironic for a priest. Temperatures? I’ve got sixty degrees here.”

George was over by the stairs. “Sixty-two.”

“Fifty-three with me.” Holly stood near the fireplace. Kipps, by the kitchen door, had fifty-three, too.

“Forty-two degrees here, and falling.” I was sitting in a Queen Anne armchair to the left of the wide front door. A standard lamp with one of those mangy tasseled shades cast uncertain light on the flagstones. “It’s got to be a focus. Woo! See that?” The light had flickered off, then on again. “Got electrical interference, too.”

“Turn the light off,” Lockwood ordered, “then everyone come back into the circle.” We’d set out a big one with nice thick iron chains in the middle of the hallway. The feeling we’d had since arriving was that the Visitor here was strong. All our equipment was safely within the circle. Lockwood lowered the shutters on the lanterns, as George, Holly, Kipps, and I rejoined him. Dim light shone around the bottom of the stairwell from some lamp upstairs. Otherwise the room was dark.

“I hear creaking,” I said.

“That’s just old Skinner, wandering about upstairs. I wish he’d go to bed.”

Holly stirred. “Did you put the iron chain across the stairs, Lockwood?”

“Yeah. He’s safe up there.”

A little noise sounded on the front door of the Old Sun Inn. It was half knock, half scratch. We stiffened.

“Hear that?” I hissed. I always have to check.

“Yes.”

“Do we answer it?”

“No.”

The sound came again, a little louder. Cold air pulsed across the room.

“I’m guessing we don’t answer that, either?” I said.

“Nope.”

A sudden ferocious hammering on the old oak door. All five of us stepped back involuntarily. “Blimey, someone wants to get in,” George said.

“Third time lucky,” Lockwood said. “Lucy, if you could do the honors.”

Don’t think I was dumb enough to leave the circle at this point. No way. You get cases of Shining Boys (and, occasionally, Shining Girls), and by and large you don’t mess with them. They’ve usually been wronged, and they’re never too pleased about it. I was going to stay well away. So I picked up the cord that we’d tied to the door latch earlier and gave it a gentle tug.

The cord went tight. The door swung open.

Outside was that soft, deep darkness you get in the dead hours of the night. We could see the faint lines of the iron fence beyond the path. The stone doorstep was worn low in its center from centuries of feet on their way to or from the inn.

No feet on it now, though. There was no one there.

“Of course not,” George said softly. “It’s already inside.”

As if in answer, a faint light flared near the armchair, just above the floor.

“I see it….” Kipps had the goggles on. His whisper was stiff with joyous fear. “I see it!”

At first it seemed like a small fluorescent globe, no wider than my hand. It spun with other-light, slowly circling; as we watched, it swelled, took on the form of a tiny, radiant child with thin, thin legs and arms. The child wore a ragged coat and trousers; beneath the coat its chest was bare. It had a gaunt, malnourished face, and great round hungry eyes. All of us watching behind the iron chains suddenly found it hard to breathe; cold air stung our lungs, pressed on our skin like water fathoms deep. The shining child stood half in and half out of the armchair where I’d just been sitting, head bent, eyes lowered in a submissive attitude of shame or dejection.

It looked like a hapless little thing. My heart bled for it.

“I can hear faint sounds,” I said. “Like someone shouting angrily. An adult, I think, but it’s very far away.”

“Very long ago, you mean,” Lockwood said.

“It could never get past that iron fence outside,” George whispered. “It’s been in here all the time. The knocking on the door is some kind of re-enactment. It’s replaying whatever happened in this room.”

I’ll tell you how it feels, hearing sounds from the distant past like that. It’s like words written in chalk on a bumpy wall. They’ve been almost entirely rubbed away. A few edges remain, some scraps and fragments, but the rest is eroded and gone, and you haven’t a hope of figuring out the message. I guess it’s also like an untuned radio, emitting flecks of noise that you know mean something, but you can’t tell what. It frustrated me as I stood there listening: I wanted to hear what the child had heard. The wan little shape kept flinching, so I guessed there’d been violence in the voice.

“I’m so sorry,” I breathed. “I can’t make out the words….”

“Don’t worry about it.” Lockwood was busy loosening the canisters in his belt. Now and then he glanced back up to check that the Visitor hadn’t moved. “The key thing now is we find out where it goes. If it leaves the room, we follow it. What do you think it is, George, a Shining Boy?”

“Reckon so.” George had drawn his rapier; it gleamed coolly in the light streaming from the child. “It’s a Type Two, so we’ll have to spike it if it tries anything.”

“I see it…” Kipps said again. “It’s the first apparition I’ve seen in years!”

“Well, don’t get carried away,” Lockwood told him. “We don’t know what it’ll try.”

From time to time I saw the child looking up, as if snatching fearful glances at whoever spoke to it. These glances were directed at the fireplace, and when I looked that way I noticed that, unlike the rest of the room, which was lit by the pale, trembling radiance of the ghost, this portion remained dark. My eyes were repeatedly drawn to the black and narrow space, wondering who had stood there; but, like the words spoken by the angry voice, that knowledge was forever lost and gone.

“It’s moving,” Lockwood said. “Stand by.”

The child had drifted diffidently out across the room, veering toward us, head down, great eyes gazing at the floor. All at once its head jerked up; it raised its thin arms in a protective gesture above its face, and vanished. The room was black; we stood there, blinking. But it seemed to me that in the instant before the radiance went out, the stubbornly dark portion of the room had shifted, and borne down at speed upon the child.

“Think that’s it?” Holly whispered.

I shook my head—a useless thing to do in a darkened room, but there you go. “No,” I said. “Hold on….” The atmosphere in the room hadn’t altered. The presence remained. And, sure enough, now the glowing child was back in its original position beside (and in) the Queen Anne armchair, exactly as before.

“Replay,” Lockwood said. He suppressed a yawn. “This could go on all night. Anyone got any chewing gum?”

“Lucy does,” George said. “Well—one piece, anyway. I ate the others, Luce. Sorry.”

I didn’t answer. I was focusing my mind, trying to reach the child. It was a forlorn hope. To do so, I’d have to ignore the distant shouts, probe deeper into the hollows of the past, and also get beyond the psychic disruption caused by the iron chain. As always, that was part of the problem. The chain got in the way.

At that moment, a querulous voice—not loud, but by its unexpectedness intensely jarring—broke in upon us. “What’s going on down here? Why is it so dark?”

Our heads snapped around; a thin form was silhouetted in the stairwell. The Reverend Skinner—old, confused, reaching for the light switch.

“Sir!” Lockwood shouted. “Get back, please! Don’t come down into the hall!”

“Why is it so dark? What are you doing?”

“Oh, wouldn’t you know it?” George said. “He’s crossed the chain.”

I looked back at the shining child, which had suddenly changed posture. Gone was its forlorn, abandoned look. The head had turned; it was looking toward the stairs with new intentness. The eyes were like deep wells. The child began to move across the room….

Dazzling light burst upon us—harsh, electrical, and blinding.

“Aah! Turn off the light! Turn off the light!”

“We can’t see….”

“What are you playing at?” the old man said. “There’s nothing there….”

“Nothing that you can see, you mean.” With a curse, Lockwood jumped over the chains, ran for the stairs. I stepped out and, still half-blinded, threw a speculative salt-bomb on the flagstones in the center of the hall. Holly and George had done the same: triple starbursts, triple scatterings like snow.

Lockwood was at the wall. He stabbed at the switch—darkness returned.

And the radiant boy was right beside him, reaching out with tiny fingers toward the old man’s neck.

Lockwood fell on Skinner, protecting him with his body. He lashed out with his rapier. The ghost moved back, then tried to dart around the blade, its eyeless sockets staring. Lockwood and the old man collapsed back onto a nearby table, knocking into a tall and intricate model sailing ship made out of matchsticks. The ship spun to the edge of the table and hung there, teetering on the brink.

Lockwood’s sword moved so fast it could scarcely be seen, blocking the feints and darts of the ghost’s probing hands. George and I ran forward, blades patterning the air, seeking to create an iron wall above the table that the child couldn’t cross. The ghost was pinned in a narrow space between our whirling blades.

Now here came Kipps, his goggles glinting. He had a salt-bomb in his hand. He threw it hard against the ceiling so that salt came down upon the ghost in a fiery rain. The iron and salt together was enough. The ghost trembled. It broke apart and fractured into plaintive strips that hung there, dancing.

The model ship tipped over. It smashed into a million pieces on the floor.

The fragments of the ghost grew faint. Its radiance drew together into a coiling wisp of light that fled across the hall and sank beneath a flagstone at the entrance to the kitchen.

There was darkness in the room.

“Fantastic…” That was Kipps’s voice. “I’ve been wanting to do something like that for years.”

Lockwood flicked at the switch. “Okay,” he said cheerily. “Now we can have the light on.”

As case finales go, it wasn’t the most decorous we’d seen: a pop-eyed old ex-vicar, bewildered, bruised, and winded, sprawled over an ornamental table with Lockwood’s elbow in his belly, a letter rack wedged in his pajamas, and the fragments of a matchstick tea-clipper ship made by (as we later learned) his favorite grandfather scattered all around him.

It might have been even worse if we could have understood his breathless moans.

I took a stab, though. He didn’t sound happy to me.

“Oh, quit complaining,” I snapped. “You’re alive, aren’t you?”

“Yes, you’ve lost a model,” George said, “but you’ve gained an exciting three-D jigsaw. There’s always a bright side, if you choose to look for it.”

It’s safe to say he didn’t.