Lockwood & Co. The Creeping Shadow

Even without the explosions, even without the blazing white magnesium fires, even without the shouts and screams and the whizzing flares, we’d have struggled to comprehend anything in those first few moments. The sensory contrast with the place we’d left was just too great. My brain was seared by savage brightness. The pain was numbing. I squeezed my eyes shut just as a wall of sound and heat hit me like a shovel to the head. I stumbled back, confused and helpless. Beside me, I could sense Lockwood doing the same.

All of a sudden I felt wet, too; the ice from the spirit-cape was melting. Freezing moisture ran down my neck, soaking my shoulders and arms. The shock jolted me into action. I peeled away from Lockwood, threw off the cape, took a mighty step—and promptly fell over something solid lying on the floor. I landed flat on my face in the soft, damp earth.

“Have a nice trip?”

I spat soil from my mouth. Then I opened my swollen eyes a crack, and through bleary but steadily improving vision saw the ghost-jar sitting in the open backpack, where I’d left it among the empty boxes. The reflection of white fires danced against the glass. The face behind it was watching me with unfeigned glee. I recognized the grin.

“Hello again,” it chuckled. “You look so rough. It’s really excellent. But you’d better wake up quickly and get involved, or they’ll destroy the place without you.”

“Who will?”

“Your friends.”

Shocking news delivered by a skull: that’s about as good a recipe as I can think of for making you snap out of your pain, exhaustion, and psychic befuddlement. I didn’t know whether to be thrilled or terrified—it was probably a combination of both. But I rolled over, forced my unwilling muscles to get me into a standing position; and by the time I’d managed that, I had more or less absorbed what was going on.

The old-time Viking/Saxon smackdown was no longer the most recent skirmish on that barren square of ground. A new one was in full swing. Everywhere I looked, magnesium flares were exploding, salt-bombs were bursting, pellets of iron filings were spattering viciously against the wall. Debris littered the floor; it was a piece of wood from the platform at the end that I’d stumbled over just now. The focus of the action appeared to be the corner of the building, between the piles of crates near the door to the weapons room and the side passage we’d seen the Rotwell crew leave through earlier that night. We’d heard them coming back in shortly before we’d gone into the circle, and sure enough they were still there, most of them. But they were no longer doing anything remotely scientific. No more clipboards for Mr. Johnson. No more flasks for Steve Rotwell. Instead, they and the rest of their team were scurrying around in panic as a rain of small explosions peppered them. A bright magnesium fire burned in the exit to the passage, preventing their escape. The electric cart was overturned, wheels gently spinning. It appeared to have been driven into the wall.

The origin of the ongoing attack was the pile of burning crates by the other door, and here three fast-moving figures could be glimpsed, popping out from cover at random intervals to hurl ghost-bombs and blast iron capsules down on the foe. Several of the Rotwell group were returning fire from behind the upturned cart, and the man in hulking iron armor, the erstwhile Creeping Shadow, was making strenuous efforts to climb up onto the crates, presumably to do battle. He wasn’t having much luck. His armor was battered and his helmet slightly askew; and his progress was limited by his inability to raise his knee high enough to reach the wooden platform.

So intent was everyone on the fight that no one had noticed our arrival. There was a movement at my side. It was Lockwood, fearsomely disheveled, but calmly rolling up the wet and steaming spirit-cape and stuffing it in his backpack. “Everything okay, Lucy? Warming up a little?”

“Just a bit. Look at all this. What’s going on?”

“It appears to be a rescue effort.” He pointed in wonder at a slim shape half concealed between two crates. It had spikes of ashy, deranged hair, a ferocious, feral expression, and an enormous capsule-gun in its slender hands. “Is that…is that actually Holly?” he asked.

“You know, I think it is.”

Kipps was visible, too, in a vantage point near the wall. Calm, steely, and implacable, he had a nice barrage of salt-bombs going. As we watched, he scored two successive hits on the armored man, knocking off his helmet and tipping him onto his back like a drunken, rolling tortoise.

But neither Kipps nor Holly was the most remarkable thing on view.

“Check out George,” I said.

Lockwood whistled. “He’s like a whirling dervish!”

George was, indeed, a thing to behold. Darting out from behind the crates to lob magnesium flares directly at Steve Rotwell, he repeatedly paraded himself in full view, as if daring the enemy to do its worst. His face still bore smears of makeup from our attempt at commando camouflage earlier in the evening. To this had now been added streaks of magnesium salt that slanted across his cheek and forehead like slashes of pale war paint. His teeth were bared, his hair stood up, his glasses blazed red in the flames flickering from the crates beside him. He had an enormous flare holster strapped diagonally across his chest, from which he pulled an endless stream of missiles. Occasionally he yelled shrill and incoherent cries.

“I could watch this all day,” Lockwood said, “but I suppose we have to help them.”

“You go, I’ll follow. Just one thing I need to do first….”

Twice since its theft I’d been close to retrieving the skull in the jar; twice I’d been forced to leave it behind. It wasn’t going to happen again.

The ghost grinned as I hoisted the backpack over my shoulders. “Ah, two firm friends, reunited at last! There should be sweet violin music playing for us, but I’ll settle for the screams of the dying.”

My eyes scanned the carnage. “No one’s actually dying, are they?”

“Maybe not, but it’s not for want of trying. There’s a few nasty magnesium burns on view. Some of those scientists are going to have trouble sitting down tomorrow morning.”

“Good. Tell me what’s happened, then.” I stood, just in time to see Lockwood vaulting up onto the platform, using the chest of the armored man as an impromptu step. I had my backpack on, my sword out. I was ready to enter the fray.

“That’s what I wanted to ask you,” the skull said as I ran. “I’m dying to hear about your adventures. I bet they’re much more interesting than all this nasty violence.”

“Just give me a straight answer!” I ran up the front of the armored man, kicked out at a Rotwell scientist who was leveling a gun at me, and jumped onto the platform, where I ducked behind a crate. Something exploded right behind me, sending feathery plumes of fire fizzing over my head.

“It’s a story quickly told. These fools were about to send another man through to the Other Side, only to be rudely interrupted by the arrival of your very angry friends. That’s about it. The End. Now go and finish things.”

“Okay,” I said. “And…and when you say the ‘Other Side’…”

“You know.”

“But—”

“You know perfectly well.”

Maybe I did, but now, fortunately, was not the time to dwell on it. Keeping low, I slipped between the crates to join the others. Nearest was Holly. I tapped her on the shoulder, gave her a cheery grin.

“Aaah!”

“Hey, Holly! Holly, don’t shoot me! It’s me! It’s me!”

“Aaah! But you’re dead!”

“No—would a ghost tap you? Would a ghost talk to you…?” I waited. “Would a ghost punch you in the face? You’ll find out if you don’t stop screaming.”

“But you went in the circle…”

“I’m okay. And Lockwood, too—look, he’s over there, with George. Well, don’t start crying now.” I gave her a swift hug. “See? Would a ghost do that? Come on. We’re doing well. George is driving them from the field.”

This was, in fact, mostly true. At Lockwood & Co., George was famous for not being able to throw or catch with any accuracy. Back in the kitchen at Portland Row, even the casual passing out of fruit or bags of chips became an exercise fraught with danger. Heads would be struck, glasses broken, peaches spattered on the wall above the sink. Curiously, that particular anti-talent boosted his effectiveness here. Whenever he ventured out from the crates and, with a savage cry, lobbed a flare or ghost-bomb toward the enemy, no one had a clue where it would land. Following the movement of his arm was no help; the item would as often as not shoot out implausibly in the opposite direction and send another Rotwell employee spiraling through the air. As a result, every time he popped into view, all the enemy agents ducked for cover. Many of them were already running down the length of the building, making for open air.

Sensing victory, Kipps emerged from his place of concealment, carrying a giant bag of ghost-bombs. Lockwood went to meet him; after brief greetings, he joined Kipps in lobbing missiles down the room.

“How long’s this fighting been going on, Hol?”

Holly lifted her capsule-gun and wiped her face. Her hair and hands were dusted with a coating of gray ash. “Not long. Since we saw you enter the circle.”

“You were here when we…? How—?” Then another thought occurred to me. “But hold on, that’s been…that was ages ago, wasn’t it? Hours…”

“Don’t think so, Lucy. About ten minutes.”

“But—but it takes half an hour to walk to Aldbury Castle. Must be twenty minutes or more to run back….” I spoke as if to myself. Yet it was certainly true that my whole experience on the other side of the circle now felt curiously insubstantial, weightless, almost dreamlike.

It wasn’t the time to worry about it.

“What are you talking about?” Holly fired an exploding capsule down at the man in battered armor, who was fleeing awkwardly across the hangar. His breastplate had slipped off and was swinging like a pendulum. His boots, gloves, and other parts lay like scrap iron on the floor. She patted the side of the gun. “You know, this is a great weapon.”

“It definitely suits you. Let’s go and join the others. It looks like they’re starting to mop things up.”

The enemy ranks were thinning out. Many of the scientists had fled, and the rest seemed inclined to follow them, despite Steve Rotwell’s ferociously shouted orders. Half-crouched behind the upturned cart, he had not retreated or resorted to firing any high-tech weapons. He had his rapier drawn.

George gave me a wave as I approached. Strapped to the back of his belt was one of the enormous flares we’d noticed in the weapons room, large as a coconut. “Hi, Luce.”

“Hey, George. I see you’re having fun. That’s a mighty big one you’ve got there.”

“Yes, that’s my insurance policy. But I reckon these ghost-bombs will do the job for now.”

Lockwood had just tossed one down at Steve Rotwell. It burst beside him. A gnarled female shape, translucent and shimmering pale blue, rose up at his back. Barely bothering to turn, Rotwell swung his rapier backward, snipping it neatly through the midriff. The ectoplasm fizzed and burst asunder.

“Ooh, see that?” George called. “He just sliced an old lady in two. That’s low.”

“Typical Rotwell behavior.” Kipps threw another bomb, which bounced off a wall and came to an anticlimactic stop. “Hey, that one didn’t even work!” He shook his fist at Mr. Rotwell. “What kind of a product d’you call this?”

“You’ve got to admit, Kipps,” George said, “you didn’t get a night like this when you were working for Fittes. Doesn’t it make you feel better?”

“Feel better about what?”

“About being you. Watch out!” With a roar of fury, Steve Rotwell had thrown caution to the wind; he sprang across the cart in a single bound, took two great strides, and leaped up onto the platform, where he swung his sword at Kipps. Another blade swung to meet it; they collided directly above Kipps’s head. Imagine an upside-down skull-and-crossbones flag and you’d have the moment perfectly.

It was Lockwood’s rapier, of course, and for a few heartbeats he and Rotwell remained locked in that position, both straining, neither moving. Kipps had been frozen for an instant; now his neck slowly concertinaed down into his shoulders until his head was clear of the shivering blades. White-faced, he lurched away.

Steve Rotwell was taller than Lockwood, and considerably heavier. He exerted his weight on the sword; Lockwood, by careful twists and adjustments of his slim wrist, offset the force. Otherwise neither moved.

“I made a prediction earlier,” Steve Rotwell said. “Do you recall it?”

“I do,” Lockwood said. “You said I’d cross you.” He gestured around at the burning building, at the screaming employees disappearing into the distance. “Does this count as crossing you? If so, congratulations—you were right.”

“That wasn’t all.” Rotwell jumped back, swinging his sword away. He kicked a spar of burning wood at Lockwood, who jumped clear; it shattered against the crate behind him in a starburst of sparks. “I promised to deal with you when that happened. And so I shall.”

He drove forward, twirling his rapier in a series of grandiose loops. Lockwood parried him once, twice, a third time, but was forced backward off the platform. He jumped lightly onto the earth, with Rotwell thudding down behind him.

“Years of work,” Rotwell said. “Years of careful study, and you’ve ruined it in one evening.”

“You brought it on yourself!” Lockwood was still on the defensive, straining to cope with the older man’s savage attack. “Your experiments unleashed terror on Aldbury Castle! It’s because of you that so many ghosts were raised! Dozens of people were killed! And all because your man in iron armor was out there, walking on the Other Side, stirring up the dead.” He gave a deft shimmy and struck at Rotwell’s wrist, but the blow glanced off the ornate hand-guard of the sword.

Steve Rotwell drew back. “You do know more than I expected…but I don’t think you understand it all. If you did, you’d realize that the unfortunate deaths of the villagers was a small price to pay.” With a twirling double stroke he knocked Lockwood back into the suspended iron chain. “And the same can certainly be said of your death, too.”

He aimed an almighty blow downward; Lockwood ducked aside and the sword sliced straight through the iron chain. The portion of chain attached to the post fell to the floor. The rest was at once sucked inside the circle, like spaghetti being drawn into a giant mouth, and it disappeared.

Lockwood stumbled away, closer to the circle and its column of circling ghosts. He looked weary, and I thought I understood why. My own experience beyond the circle had left me weakened. My limbs were like water, my head still spun. If Lockwood felt anything like me, it was probably all he could do to hold the sword.

“He’s beating him,” Holly gasped.

Kipps nodded. “He’s got Lockwood cold.”

“Or so he thinks.” George had a final standard flare in his shoulder belt. He took it out, winked at us, and hurled it straight at Rotwell’s head. At least, that’s what I assume he was aiming for. In actuality, the flare sailed clean past and landed by the edge of the circle of chains, where it exploded with great ferocity. When the smoke cleared, fires burned on the ground and the chains were blackened and twisted. Some of the links had almost split. At once the shapes inside the circle began to cluster at that spot.

“Ooh, that’s not good,” Kipps said. “Cubbins, where did you ever learn to throw?”

“He didn’t, basically,” I said. “That’s the problem.”

I ran past them and jumped off the platform.

Lockwood and Rotwell were clashing blades once more. Lockwood’s sword was moving with desperate speed, but his face was pale. He was defending all the time, being edged back toward the circle. Rotwell sensed his chance. With two mighty swipes he knocked Lockwood backward, close to the weakened chains. The Visitors within sensed his proximity; they thronged at the boundary in ever greater numbers, pale hands reaching, mouths agape. The psychic roaring from the circle increased. I could see the broken chains stir slightly as a force pushed on them from inside.

Lockwood still had his rapier up. He parried, he dodged, but his normal energy and control had gone. The next moment, the sword was gone, too. Rotwell had contemptuously struck it away. Lockwood jumped back. He stood at bay in front of the iron circle, thin, pale, helpless—and still defiant. He stared at his enemy with blazing eyes.

“In a minute,” Steve Rotwell said, “I’m going to kill your friends. But the first honor goes to you.” He lifted his rapier.

And that was when I arrived.

Yes, Rotwell had his sword arm raised, but he was also stooping slightly, back bent, bottom out. In every respect, he presented an excellent target. I swung my boot in and around like a soccer player zeroing in on a goal.

It was a terrific kick, if I do say so myself. I connected well. Rotwell shot forward, straight at Lockwood, who flung himself to the side. Rotwell toppled right across the iron chains and lay sprawled on top of them, one arm lost in the haze beyond. He blinked; he grimaced. He gave a deep-throated cry of fear. He tried to rise. But ice was already crusting over his back; it grew out in thin fingers across the surface of his hair. With a mighty effort he got to his knees—you could see the sinews straining in his neck. But something prevented him from going farther. The gray shapes were congregating close. Something was tugging on the arm inside the circle. It jerked him inward, once, then twice. Both times, he succeeded in pulling himself away. But his strength was gone. Ice extended over his forehead, crested his cheekbones, ran down his chiseled jaw.

It was all over for Steve Rotwell. He made a last effort, cried out a final time…

And was sucked inside the circle. It happened so fast, so silently, so weightlessly, it was like he’d been inhaled. One moment he crouched there, a bulky man, encased in spreading ice; the next, the chains were completely empty. Steve Rotwell, chairman of the Rotwell Agency, was gone.

The gray shapes swirled in triumph. The chains shivered—the broken links moved across the ground. Something inside had struck against them with considerable force. They would not hold for long.

Lockwood got unsteadily to his feet; he picked up his sword. White-faced, he grabbed my hand, hurried us toward the others. “George.”

“What?”

“We’ve got to destroy the circle. That monster flare of yours. Now might be just the time for it.”

“What? Big Brenda?”

“You’ve given it a name?”

“I’ve grown kind of attached to her.” George pulled the silver coconut from his belt and hefted it in his hand. “Oh, very well. Want me to throw it?”

“No! I mean—why not give it to Lucy? She’s closer. No—just pass it to her. Don’t throw.”

George gave it to me. I was surprised by how heavy it was. “It’s got a timer switch, here, Luce,” he said. “What do you think? Set it to two minutes?”

I looked at the broken circle, at the mess of forms that pressed against the ruptured links of chain. There was Emma Marchment’s ghost, hollow-eyed and red of mouth; there Solomon Guppy’s swollen form. There too, I thought, half-hidden in the broiling mist, was something in a bright blue dress I recognized far too well. Very soon the links would break and the circle would open, and these spirits would spill out into the world.

I turned the dial and flicked the switch. “I think one minute would be about right,” I said. “How fast can we all run?”

It turned out that the answer was “just fast enough.” The primary explosion happened just about the time we reached the boundary fence and were heading out into the field. It was big enough to take the roof off the building behind us, and send us all tumbling, head over heels, across the grass. For an instant, night became day; you could see all the subtle greens and yellows of every weed and grass blade picked out in 3-D detail. Then the first bits of metal began raining down around us, and any interest in botany was over.

We kept on running. A few minutes later, we reached the comparative safety of the hillside. We collapsed at the top of the slope, beneath the birch trees, watching the institute facility burn.

When he’d gotten his breath back, Lockwood looked over at where George, Kipps, and Holly were sprawled in various attitudes of exhaustion. “Thank you for saving us,” he said. “Lucy and I have never been so pleased to see anyone. We thought you’d all gone home.”

“We nearly had,” Holly said.

George nodded. “After you left us in the weapons room, we had an argument about what we should do. Kipps was all for leaving, like you ordered. But I couldn’t do it. I wanted to go after you, and Holly backed me up. So then Kipps said that if he was going to jump off a cliff he’d do it with a gun in his hand, and he started loading us up with all the weapons we could carry. We were delayed by those two scientists coming through again, but we followed pretty quickly after that. You should have seen the three of us, marching down that corridor, armed to the teeth.” He gave a chuckle. “Anyway, when we got to that big room, we slipped in behind the crates, and then things got really bad for us, because we were just in time to see you head into the circle.”

“So it was you we heard?” My jaw dropped. “Lockwood and I thought you were more Rotwell agents on the way! That’s why we ended up going inside!”

“Ah, well,” George said, “sorry about that. But you can’t blame us for coming back, can you? Anyway, seeing you disappearing in among the ghosts…That stunned us. Spirit-capes or no spirit-capes, we thought you were dead. And a moment later Rotwell and his gang all trooped back in, and that guy was there in his stupid armor, marching up the chain, ready to go inside.”

“You were looking at the Creeping Shadow,” I said. “No, don’t ask. We’ve a lot to tell you, but we can do it later. So what happened next?”

“What happened,” Kipps said from the grass, “was that George went mad.”

George took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I didn’t know that bloke was the Shadow,” he said, “but I knew full well what that circle was. And I thought you’d died there. So my numbness went away and I just felt…angry. Next thing I knew, I was setting fire to a perfectly good research facility.” He gave a heavy sigh. “Hey, ho, that’s how things go. It worked out all right in the end.”

“I guess that’s one way of putting it,” Lockwood said. The inferno had spread along the covered passageways and now reached the weapons room, with its stockpiles of flares and bombs.

“Well, we thought you were dead, didn’t we?” George said. “We were upset.”

Just then there was a colossal multi-plumed explosion. The remaining buildings of the Rotwell Institute facility vanished, to be replaced by successive pluming cauliflowers of white fire.

“Lucy,” Lockwood said, “next time we’re at home and George wants the last biscuit, remind me to let him have it.”

“As far as I’m concerned,” I said, “he can have the whole barrel.”

We sat on the slope, the five of us, watching the destruction. Beyond the far hills, the first signs of dawn stained the eastern sky. Pretty soon, ash began glittering in the fields like frost.