Lockwood & Co. The Creeping Shadow

It was very silent. The wind that had blown across the fields earlier was gone, and the night was bitterly cold. Thick wires and horseshoes of frost lay in the dents and ripples of the hard black earth; the whole land was white with it. A flat brightness lay over the field and the escarpment beyond, and on the dark trees at its top. The source of this brightness was hard to make out. There were no stars in the black sky, and no moon showing. We stood alone in the field, looking back at where we’d been.

“Well, no one seems to be after us,” Lockwood said. His voice sounded small; it didn’t carry well in the freezing air. “That’s good.”

“Were there men at the doors?” I said. I found it hard to speak. “I didn’t see any.”

“No. They must have left. Lucky for us.”

“Yeah. Lucky.”

Looking back, I saw that the floodlights had been turned off. You could see the poles hanging above the roofs like giant insects, bent and dead. The buildings showed like pieces of pale gray paper, stuck onto a dark-gray board. Even the lights in the hangar we’d just run from had been switched off. The institute was bathed in the same subdued, flat, gray glow that lit the field and trees.

“Power cut,” Lockwood said. “Maybe that’s what distracted them.”

The outside of Lockwood’s cape was thick with ice; I could feel the weight of mine hanging on me, too. The insulating qualities of the feathers still worked well, though—I sensed, rather than felt, the grueling cold all around. White threads swirled around us.

“Where’d all this mist come from?” I said. “All this frost? It wasn’t here before.”

“Some effect of their experiments?” Lockwood suggested. “I don’t know.”

“It’s a strange light. Everything’s so flat.”

“Moonlight does odd things,” Lockwood was looking toward the trees.

“Where is the moon?”

“Behind the clouds.”

But there were no clouds.

“We’d better get going,” Lockwood said. “The others should be halfway back to the village by now. They’ll be getting help. We should join them, reassure them we’re okay.”

“I don’t understand it.” I was still looking up at the sky.

“We need to catch up with them, Luce.”

Of course we did.

We started walking. Frost cracked underfoot, and our breath hung in the air so that we plunged through it with each step.

“It’s so cold,” I said.

“We were lucky they didn’t come after us,” Lockwood said again. He glanced over his shoulder. “Odd, though…I’d have thought somebody might come.”

But we were the only moving things in that wide, wide field.

By unspoken agreement we took the lane through the forest. The light was different there, too. The gray haze seemed to penetrate everything. The lane was white as bone. Thin lariats of mist wound in and out of the trees.

“This is weird,” I whispered. “There’s nobody anywhere.”

I’d thought we might see the others ahead of us, but the road was empty, and we could see a good distance in the soft, flat light. We hurried on, following the gradient downhill. We passed the side track to the open quarry, with its little memorial cairn of stones. The flowers that had decorated it were gone, and the photograph at its top was frosted with ice. There was no sound in the gray forest, and no wind. Shimmering crystal flecks fell from the surface of our capes, and our breaths came in brief and painful bursts. Soon we would reach the village. Our friends would be there.

“Maybe there are some people about,” Lockwood said softly. Neither of us had spoken for a while. When we did, neither of us wanted to raise our voices; I don’t know why. “I thought I saw someone walking down that side track from the quarry. You know, just beyond the cairn.”

“You want to go back, see who it was?”

“No. No, I think we should just keep going.”

We walked more quickly after that, our boots clicking on the frost-hard road. We crossed the silent forest and came to the wooden footbridge over the little stream.

The stream was gone. The bridge spanned a dark, dry channel of black earth that wound off among the trees. Lockwood shone his flashlight beam on it, the light frail and flickering.

“Lockwood,” I said, “where’s the water?”

He leaned against the railing, as if weary. He shook his head, said nothing.

I could hear my voice cracking with panic. “How can it have just…disappeared? I don’t understand. Have they dammed it suddenly?”

“No. Look at the ground. Bone-dry. There’s never been any water here.”

“But that makes no—”

He pushed himself upright, his hand rasping as it pulled free of the rail. Ice particles glistered on the fingers of his glove. “We’re almost at the village,” he said. “Perhaps there’ll be answers there. Come on.”

But when we came down from the lane, the village had changed, too. Never exactly well-lit, the cottages around the green were now entirely dark. Their shapes merged in the half-light and could scarcely be seen. The green itself was filled with shifting coils of mist. Above us, the church tower blended with the pewter-black sky.

“Why are all the lights off here, too?” I said.

“Not just off,” Lockwood whispered. He pointed. “Look by the church. The ghost-light’s gone.”

It was true. True, and it made no sense. On the little mound beside the church, there was an empty space. The rusty, disused ghost-lamp wasn’t just gone—there was no trace of it ever having been there at all.

I didn’t say anything. Nothing made any sense, not since we’d come out of the institute. A creeping, pervading wrongness hung over everything; in the cold, the silence, the soft, pale light, and the terrible, sapping solitude of it all. But it numbed you, too; it was hard to think.

“Where is everybody?” I murmured. “Someone should be around, surely.”

“It’s after dark—they’re all at home. And George and the others will be safe inside the inn.” Lockwood’s voice didn’t carry any conviction. “We know half the village is deserted, anyway. We shouldn’t expect to see anyone.”

“So we go to the inn?”

“We go to the inn.”

But the inn, when we reached it, was as dark as all the rest. Its sign was blistered with frost. The door swung open to the touch, and a faint stale smell came from the black interior. Neither of us wanted to go inside.

We walked back out onto the green and stood there, wondering what to do. When I looked down, I saw that where my boots protruded beyond frozen drapes of the spirit-cape, the leather and steel caps were white with ice. Our capes were almost solid; they creaked whenever we moved. Then I noticed something else. A thin gray plume of smoke was rising from Lockwood’s cape, drifting away into the dark air. The surface flickered, as if with heatless flames.

“Lockwood, your cape—”

“I know. Yours is doing it, too.”

“It’s like…like when we saw the Shadow. You remember how it left a trail of…”

“We need to think about this.” Lockwood’s face was drawn, but his eyes blazed defiantly. “What have we done that might have made things different? There’s only one thing. Up at the institute, what did we do?”

“We went into the circle.”

“Yes, and…”

“And we came out again.” I looked at him, suddenly aware. “We left the circle on the other side….We followed the iron chain and left on the other side.”

“You’re right. Maybe that’s important. I don’t know why it should be, but if it is…”

“All this…” I said.

“All this isn’t what it looks like.” Lockwood stared at me. “What if we haven’t actually come out, Lucy? What if we’re somehow still inside?”

How dark the green was, how thick the rising mists, how unyielding the silence.

“We have to get back to the circle,” Lockwood said.

“No, look,” I said, my voice rising in my relief. “We’re talking nonsense. There they are.”

I pointed across the green. On the far side, within the mist, three figures were limping slowly up the road toward us.

Lockwood frowned. “You think that’s them?”

“Who else would it be?”

He squinted out from under his steaming hood. “It’s not them….No, look—they’re adults. They’re all too tall. Plus, I thought those cottages were abandoned. Didn’t Skinner say—?”

“Well, anyway, maybe they can tell us what’s going on,” I said. “And look, here’s somebody else coming.”

It was a little girl, stepping out of a garden in front of a house. She opened the gate and shut it carefully behind her, before starting toward us. She had a pretty blue dress on.

“I don’t recognize her,” I said. “Do you?”

“No, Lucy…” Lockwood was turning on his heels, looking all around. The mists were pretty thick over by the duck pond, but we could just see someone walking along the opposite bank, between the barren willows—a lady with long pale hair. “Nor her…” Lockwood said, “Nor any of them. But we’ve heard about them all.”

There were other movements in the mist, people coming out of their houses, latches lifting, gates being softly unlocked.

“Lucy,” Lockwood said, “we really need to go.”

“But look, that little girl—”

“Danny Skinner told us about her, Luce. Remember? Hetty Flinders, with her nice blue frock.”

Hetty Flinders? Yes….

She’d died.

With steady, unhurried steps, the girl in the blue dress and the other inhabitants of the dark village made their way toward us. You could see the details of their clothes—some modern, others less so. Their faces were as gray as the frosted ground.

For a few dreadful seconds it was as if some power pinned us where we stood; our blood was water, our limbs cold stones. But we had the warmth of the spirit-capes around us; and, deep inside, our willpower still burned strong. As one, we shrugged the death-clasp off. As one, we began to run.

We pressed close together, hoods low over our faces against the cold. We cut across the green, boots thrumming on the hollow, frozen earth. Smoke poured from our icy capes, extending behind us like a comet’s tail.

The green was not a big space, but it seemed to expand as we went across it. It took a long time to get near the church. We passed beneath the tower at last. Looking up, I saw the shape of a person standing there; I felt him lock his gaze with mine.

We ran down the lane past the churchyard. From the other side of the hedged embankment came noises—the grinding of stone, the whisper of rustling cloth. Shapes appeared at the hedge. They began pushing their way through, framed against the sky.

Out of the village, up the cold road. It was hard to move fast; whether it was the chill, or something else, my limbs felt like lead. It was like walking through mud, like going the wrong way up an escalator. Lockwood, usually so fleet of foot, was having the same problem. Our breaths came in gasps. Over our shoulders, we could see the people of the graveyard and the people of the village congregating in the road, pooling toward us, following our trail.

We fled over the footbridge, over the dried-up stream, into the woods. We took the shortest way. At the turning to the quarry, a man stood waiting for us at the cairn. His face was the one we’d seen in the photograph atop the neat pile of stones; his features too were blurred as if by rain. He walked into the center of the lane and reached out for us. Lockwood and I veered away, off the road, up into the forest. The ground was thick with dead black brambles that burst into dust as we ran through them. The branches of the trees were sharp and snaring, snagging at our faces, catching on our clothes. We ran through light and dark, dodging, jumping, fighting against the cold, thick air.

I could see other people in the trees now, moving slowly, yet somehow effortlessly keeping pace. They were homing in on us from either side. Lockwood, just ahead of me, took a flare from his belt. He threw it at the nearest figure; it struck a tree root, bounced, broke open. The breaking made no noise; and nothing came out—no burst of light, no dazzling white fire. I’d instinctively squeezed my eyes tight shut; now I opened them, one after the other, to see our pursuers clambering over the roots, working their way implacably through brambles, still silent, patient, utterly unmoved.

We struggled up an icy slope, skidding, gasping; and all at once plunged down a steep hollow into a thicket. Black thorns stabbed my spirit-cape, intertwining with the silver, snaring it in several places. I was pulled back, trapped and twisting. As I struggled, the spirit-cape ripped. It tore in two. I screamed. A piercing cold like death stabbed me like a knife driven between the shoulders. I couldn’t breathe. I fell to the ground. Feathers scattered on the frost beside me like smoking drops of blood.

I couldn’t breathe….

Then Lockwood was beside me, pulling me to him, dragging me beside him under his cape. Its softness enfolded me. The desperate cold lingered for a moment. It drew back painfully, like clawed fingers being withdrawn. I took a wrenching breath. I could feel Lockwood’s warmth against me, and mine against him. We crouched together, side by side, his arm around me, my right knee pressed tight against his left. Our faces were very close, mine lower, his higher, leaning together as we peered out from under the burning hood at the swirling grayness all around.

Our descent into the thicket had been abrupt. Our pursuers were somewhere above us. Nothing was near.

“Are you all right, Lucy?”

I nodded, blinked ice out of my eyes. In that second in which my cape had fallen away, a coating of frost had adhered to my face.

“Am I pressing too close?”

“No.”

“Say if I am.”

“I will.”

“We’ve got to go on, into the mist. But we have to stick together like glue. The cape’s not very big. You’ll have to stay really close to me, Luce. Can you do that?”

“I’ll try.”

“Quick, then. They’re coming.”

Up on our feet, out of the hollow and up a final rise. Dark shapes converged on us, bursting out from beneath the trees. We were almost at the brow of the hill. Gunner’s Top was what it had been called; or something very like that. The name didn’t seem appropriate here. Nothing under that flat black sky had a name.

The mists below now lay thicker on the fields than when we’d left them. The buildings of the institute were barely visible; their roofs rose above the murk, as dark and dead as standing stones.

We skittered and skidded down the slope, arms around each other, plowing up clouds of ice crystals at every step. Every movement was jerky, hard to take. We started out across the field. “No good,” I gasped. “I’ve got to rest.”

“Me, too.” We stopped, turned stiffly together beneath our hood—just in time to see a tide of figures surging over the hillcrest, pouring down the slope behind us.

“Okay,” Lockwood said. “Maybe a rest’s not such a good idea.”

Onward, in silence, through the mists; and now those mists parted, and we saw a tall bearded man, picking himself up off the ground, turning his head as we passed by. He carried a great sword. Both blade and skin were glimmering with frost.

Stumbling, almost falling, we ran on. The mists closed up again. Behind us we heard footsteps shuffling on hard ground.

“A Viking’s all we need,” I gasped.

“Like moths to a candle,” Lockwood said. “Our warmth, our life—it draws them all. They followed the Shadow just the same. Last push, Lucy! We’re almost there—”

We could see the fence of the institute, open, blank, and empty. Beyond, the doors of the central building hung wide and black.

“I’m never going to make it,” I said.

“Keep going. We’re there. We’ve done so well.”

Through the fence, across the frosted gravel. We reached the double doors. The interior of the hangar was filled with mist. There was ice on the ground here, too. We paused, panting. We were almost worn out. Beneath the smoking spirit-cape, our gloves sparkled with ice. Our breath echoed like it was reverberating off our bones.

“How are we doing?” Lockwood said.

I looked back. “They’re still coming. They’re at the fence now.”

“Better get on with it, then.”

We stumbled through the open doors.

It was the same place—no doubt about that. The soaring roof, the metal walls. Far off through the mists, I saw the stacked crates. But the light was still odd, so that everything was layered, gray and grainy, as if with scales. That mist played tricks with my eyes. Nothing seemed quite straight, neither floor nor ceiling, hatch nor door. It looked as if everything was made of wax, and had been heated so that it swelled and softened, and was just about to melt. But everything was brittle with cold; thin cracks ran across the floor at my feet, and our boots rang out like iron.

The mist in the center of the hall was very thick. We couldn’t see through it.

“The chain…” Lockwood gasped. “Where is it, Luce?”

“I don’t know….” Looking behind, I saw the shapes of our pursuers clustering at the doors.

“Oh, God. Where is it?”

“We’re almost at the other end. We must have gone too far….”

We circled in a panic, around and around. Lockwood wanted to go one way, I another; we almost tore his cape, tugging it between us.

We stopped, spent and despairing. I could hear many footsteps on the earth behind. All around us, just the swirling mists, the mist and melting wall….

And there, slouching in a corner by the sidewall, a thin and rangy youth, hair spiked, hands in pockets, staring at me. He stood amid a pile of discarded jars and boxes. He was as gray as the inhabitants of the dark village, except for his grin, which gleamed sardonically even in the swirling dusk and was somehow most familiar. He stretched out an arm, pointed behind me. I turned, saw the post and chain.

“There it is!” I pulled Lockwood around. “Look!”

Lockwood cursed. “Why didn’t we notice it before? Are we blind? Come on!” We circled toward the post. When I glanced back, the mists had closed in once more and the grinning youth was gone, and we were alone beside the post and its icy iron chain.

“Hold on to it,” Lockwood said. “We go together. You first. Follow it right through. Don’t stop for anything.” He had drawn his sword, was staring all around us. The mists, swirling like stage curtains, grew darker with approaching forms. I caught a flash of Hetty Flinders’s bright blue dress.

It probably wasn’t very far we had to walk before stepping back into the circle. But it seemed to go on a bit, what with the awkwardness of being clasped together, so that we could only shuffle like penguins, and with the people of the village now erupting from the mist, and with us both swinging our rapiers to keep them at bay. When the vortex of Sources in the circle came into sight, it was a positive relief. I was almost ready to greet Solomon Guppy and Emma Marchment as old friends. Without regrets we threw ourselves over the chains, through the wall of whirling, shrieking spirits, and found ourselves again in the still heart of the iron circle.

The man in iron armor was nowhere to be seen. We inched our way along the chain toward the other side.

“If Rotwell’s out there,” Lockwood said, “we’re just going to have to deal with it. I’d rather be killed by him than have something…happen to me back there.”

I glanced behind us. “Think they could follow us through?”

“The iron will hold them up. But why not? It’s a hole, and there are a lot of them. I only hope Steve Rotwell and his friends get to meet them, too. Got your sword ready, Luce?”

“Yep, and if I don’t stab someone’s backside with it in the next five minutes, I’m going to be sorely disappointed.”

“Let’s see if we can surprise them, then. Come on.”

Again, just for an instant, the rushing ghosts were all around us. And then we were over the chains, and we stepped out together into the warmth, noise, and joyous, blinding light of the real world.

Where a battle was going on.