Lockwood & Co. The Hollow Boy

To protect our clients’ sanity, and my own peace and quiet, the skull in the ghost-jar ordinarily resided in a remote corner of our basement office, concealed beneath a tea cozy. Occasionally it was brought up to the living room and the lever in its lid opened, so that it could communicate eerie secrets of the dead—or exchange childish insults with me, whichever it felt like doing. It so happened that it was sitting on the sideboard late that afternoon, when I came in to gather equipment for the evening.

As arranged earlier, we were splitting forces. George had already departed for the Whitechapel public restrooms in search of the reported Shade. Lockwood was readying himself for his expedition in search of the veiled woman. My visit had been canceled; I’d just been gearing up for the block of apartments when I’d had a call from my client, postponing the visit due to illness. That meant I had a swift choice: stay at home and sort the laundry or accompany Lockwood instead. You can guess which one I picked.

I gathered my rapier from where I’d chucked it the night before, and also a few scattered salt-bombs that had been dumped beside the sofa. As I made for the door, a hoarse voice spoke from the shadows. “Lucy! Lucy…”

“What now?” With the onset of evening, dim flecks were swirling in the glass. The hunched mass of the battered skull faded from view. The flecks congealed to form a malicious face, glowing green and soft in the darkness.

“Going out?” the ghost said agreeably. “I’ll come along.”

“No, you won’t. You’re staying here.”

“Oh, do a skull a favor. I’ll get bored.”

“So dematerialize. Rotate. Turn inside out. Stick around and enjoy the view. Do whatever it is ghosts do. I’m sure you can find ways to amuse yourself.” I turned to go.

“Enjoy the view? In this hellhole?” The face swiveled in the jar, the tip of its nose dragging against the inside of the glass. “I’ve been in mortuaries with better standards of housekeeping. I wish I didn’t have to see the squalor I’m surrounded by.”

I paused with my hand on the door. “I could help you with that. I could bury you in a hole and solve your problem altogether.”

Not that I was truly likely to do this. Of all the Visitors we’d encountered—of all the Visitors anyone had encountered in recent times—the skull was the only one capable of true communication. Other ghosts could moan, knock, and utter snippets of coherent sound; and agents such as me, who were skilled at psychic Listening, were able to detect them. But that was a long way from the skull’s ability to engage in proper sustained conversation. It was a Type Three Visitor, and very rare—which was why, despite great provocation, we hadn’t thrown it in the trash.

The ghost snorted. “Burying requires digging, and digging requires work. And that’s plainly something none of you is capable of. Let me guess…I bet it’s Whitechapel again tonight? Those dark streets…those winding alleys…Take me! You need a companion.”

“Yep,” I said. “And I’m going with Lockwood.” In fact, I had to hurry. I could hear him putting his coat on in the hall.

“Aha…Are you? Oh, I see. Better leave you to it, then.”

“Right. Good.” I paused. “Meaning what?”

“Nothing, nothing.” The evil eyes winked at me. “I’m no third wheel.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. We’re going on a case.”

“Of course you are. It’s a perfect contrivance. Quick, better run upstairs and change.”

“Lucy—got to go!” That was Lockwood in the hall.

“Coming!” I shouted. “I don’t need to change,” I growled at the skull. “These are my work clothes.”

“They don’t have to be.” The face regarded me critically. “Let’s take a look at you. Leggings, T-shirt, raggedy old skirt, moth-eaten sweater….Like a cross between a demented sailor and a bag lady. How does that make you look pretty? Who’s going to notice you if you go out like that?”

“Who says I want to look pretty for anybody?” I roared. “I’m an agent! I’ve got a job to do! And if you can’t talk sense…” I scuttled over to the sideboard and grabbed the tea cozy.

“Ooh, have I hit a nerve?” The ghost grinned. “I have! How fascin—”

Regrettably, the rest was lost. I’d turned the lever, jammed the cozy over the jar, and stalked out of the room.

Lockwood stood waiting in the hall, immaculate, inquiring. “Everything okay, Luce? Skull giving you trouble?”

“Nothing I can’t handle.” I smoothed back my hair, blew out flushed cheeks, gave him a carefree smile. “Shall we go?”

No ordinary taxis were licensed in London after Curfew, but a small fleet of Night Cabs operated from well-protected night stations, catering mainly to agents and DEPRAC officials whose business took them out after dark. These cars—shaped like conventional black cabs, but painted white—were driven by a hardy breed of often bald middle-aged men, taciturn, unsmiling, and efficient. According to Lockwood, most of them were ex-convicts, let out of prison early in return for taking on this dangerous and unsociable task. They wore a lot of iron jewelry and drove very fast.

The nearest Night Cab station was at Baker Street, not far from the Tube. Our driver, Jake, was one we’d had before. Silver earrings swung wildly at his neck as he pulled out of the underground garage and accelerated eastward along Marylebone Road.

Lockwood stretched out on the seat and grinned across at me. He seemed more relaxed now that we were out on a case; his weariness of the morning had fallen away.

By contrast I still felt flustered after my conversation with the skull. “So,” I said in a businesslike voice, “what’s this Visitor we’re after? A domestic job?”

He nodded. “Yes, an apparition spotted in an upstairs room. Our client is a Mrs. Peters. Her two young boys saw a sinister veiled lady, dressed in black, seemingly imprinted within the glass of the bedroom window.”

“Ooh. Are the kids okay?”

“Just barely. They were driven to hysterics. One’s still heavily sedated….Well, I expect we’ll soon see this lady for ourselves.” Lockwood stared out at the deserted sidewalks, the grid of empty streets stretching away.

The driver looked over his shoulder. “Seems quiet tonight, Mr. Lockwood. But it isn’t. You’re lucky to get me. I’m the only cab left in the station.”

“Why’s that, Jake?”

“It’s that outbreak in Chelsea. There’s a big push on to try to quash it. DEPRAC’s calling up agents left, right, and center. They’ve commandeered a lot of taxis to stand by.”

Lockwood frowned. “So which agencies are they using?”

“Oh, you know. Just the major ones. Fittes and Rotwell.”

“Right.”

“Plus Tendy, Atkins and Armstrong, Tamworth, Grimble, Staines, Mellingcamp, and Bunchurch. Some others, too, but I forget the names.”

Lockwood’s snort sounded like a moped backfiring. “Bunchurch? They’re not a major agency. They’ve only got ten people, and eight of them are useless.”

“Not my place to say, Mr. Lockwood. Do you want lavender piped through the air conditioner? New car this, got it as an extra.”

“No, thanks.” Lockwood breathed in deeply through his nose. “Lucy and I do have a few defenses of our own, even if we’re not from a ‘major agency.’ We feel safe enough.”

After that he fell silent, but the force of his annoyance filled the cab. He sat staring out of the window, tapping his fingers on his knee. From the shadows of the backseat I watched the intermittent glow from the streetlamps running down the contours of his cheeks, picking out the curve of his mouth and his dark, impatient eyes. I knew why he was angry: he wanted his company to be spoken of as one of the great ones in the capital. Ambition burned fiercely in him—ambition to make a difference against the Problem.

And I understood the reason for that fire too.

Of course I did. I’d known it ever since that day in the summer, when he’d opened the door on the landing and led George and me inside.

“My sister,” Lockwood had said. “This is her room. As you can probably see, it’s where she died. Think I’ll close the door now, if you don’t mind.”

He did so. The little wedge of sunlight from the landing snapped shut around us like a trap. Iron panels lining the interior of the door clicked together softly, cutting us off from all normality.

Neither George nor I said anything. It was all we could do to stand upright. We clung to each other. Waves of psychic energy broke against our senses like a storm tide. There was a roaring in my ears.

I shook my head clear, forced myself to open my eyes.

A blackout curtain hugged the window opposite. White slivers from the summer afternoon showed around its edges; otherwise there was no light anywhere.

No natural light.

Yet a radiance—thin as water, silvery as moonlight—occupied the room.

Even I could sense it, and I’m useless when it comes to death-glows. I usually have to take Lockwood’s word for it that they’re there at all. But not this time. A bed stood in the center of the room: a twin bed, arranged with the headboard flush against the right-hand wall. The legs and frame had been painted white or cream, and there was a pale bedspread draped over the bare mattress, so that the whole thing hung in the dimness like a cloud in a black sky. Superimposed on top of the bed was something else: a roughly oval, egg-shaped glow, tall as a person, blank and bright and coldly shimmering. It was a light without a source—there was nothing at its center—and I couldn’t truly see it. Only, when I looked away, it flared into prominence at the corner of my vision, like one of those spots you see after you’ve looked too closely at the sun.

It was from this faint oval smudge that the psychic energy poured, strong and unceasing. No wonder the strips of iron had been bolted to the door; no wonder the walls of the room shone bright with silver wards. No wonder the ceiling was thick with silver mobiles that stirred now in the breeze caused by the closing door. Their tinkling was softly melodic, like far-off children’s laughter.

“Her name was Jessica,” Lockwood said. He moved past us, and I saw that he had taken the dark glasses out of his pocket—the ones he used to protect himself from the brightest spectral glows. He put them on. “She was six years older than me,” he said. “And fifteen when it happened to her—right here.”

He spoke like it was the most normal thing in the world to be standing with us in the dark, revealing the existence of a long-dead sister, with her death-glow hovering before us, and the psychic aftershock of the event battering our senses. Now he approached the bed; being careful to keep his hand clear of the oval light, he pulled back the bedspread, revealing the mattress below. Halfway along it was a broad, blackened, gaping wound where the surface of the fabric had been burned as if by acid.

I stared at it. No, not acid. I knew ectoplasm burns when I saw them.

I realized I was gripping George’s arm even harder than before.

“I’m not hurting you, am I, George?” I said.

“No more than previously.”

“Good.” I didn’t let go.

“I was only nine,” Lockwood said. “It was a long time back. Ancient history, if you like. But I figure I owe it to you both to show you. You do live in this house, after all.”

I forced myself to speak. “So,” I said. “Jessica.”

“Yes.”

“Your sister?”

“Yes.”

“What happened to her?”

He flicked the bedspread back into position again, tucked the end neatly against the headboard. “Ghost-touched.”

“A ghost? From where?”

“From a pot.” His voice was carefully toneless. The dark glasses that protected his eyes also hid them very successfully. It was impossible to read his expression. “You know my parents’ stuff?” he went on. “All the tribal ghost-catchers on the walls downstairs? They were researchers. They studied the folklore of the supernatural in other cultures. Most of what they collected is junk: ceremonial headdresses, that sort of thing. But it turned out that some pieces did do what was claimed. There was a pot. I think it came from Indonesia someplace. They say my sister was sorting through a crate; she got the pot out and—and she dropped it. When it shattered, a ghost came out. Killed her.”

“Lockwood…I’m so sorry….”

“Yes, well, it’s ancient history. A long time ago.”

It was difficult to focus on anything but Lockwood’s words, on them and on the ferocity of the spectral light. But I could see that the room contained an armoire and two dressers, and there were boxes and tea chests lying about too, mostly stacked against the walls, sometimes as many as three or four high. Resting on top of everything were dozens of vases and jam jars holding bouquets of dried lavender. The room was filled with its sweet, astringent odor. This was so different from the normal smells in our house (particularly on the landing, George’s bedroom being just opposite) that it only added to the feeling of unreality.

I shook my head again. A sister. Lockwood had had a sister. She’d died right here.

“What happened to the ghost?” George said. His voice was indistinct.

“It was disposed of.” Lockwood crossed to the window and pulled the blackout curtains back. Daylight stabbed me; for a moment my eyes recoiled. When I could look again, the room was brightly lit. I could no longer see the glow above the bed, and the sense of psychic assault had been subtly muted. I could still feel its presence, though, and hear the faint crackling in my ears.

The room had once been a pleasant blue, the wallpaper decorated with a child’s pattern of diagonally arranged balloons. There were posters of lions, giraffes, and horses stuck to a bulletin board, and old animal stickers slapped randomly all over the headboard of the bed. Yellowing glow-in-the-dark stars dotted the ceiling. But that wasn’t what drew the eye. On the right-hand wall two great vertical gouges had torn straight through the paper and into the plaster beneath. They were rapier slashes. In one place the cut had gone as deep as the brick.

Lockwood stood quietly by the window, staring out at the blank wall of the house next door. Some dried lavender seeds had dropped onto the sill from the vases that sat there. He brushed them with a finger into his cupped hand.

Something like hysteria was building in my chest. I wanted to cry, to laugh uncontrollably, to shout at Lockwood….

Instead I said quietly, “So what was she like?”

“Oh…that’s hard to say. She was my sister. I liked her, obviously. I can find you a picture sometime. There’ll be one in the drawers here somewhere. It’s where I put all her things. I suppose I should sort through it all one day, but there’s always so much to do….” He leaned back against the window, silhouetted against the light, pushing the seeds slowly around his palm. “She was tall, dark-haired, strong-willed, I guess. There’s once or twice I’ve seen you out of the corner of my eye, Luce, and I almost thought…But you’re nothing like her really. She was a gentle person. Very kind.”

“Okay, you are hurting my arm now, Lucy,” George said.

“Sorry.” I pried my hand free.

“My mistake,” Lockwood said. “It came out wrong. What I was trying to say was—”

“It’s all right,” I said. “I shouldn’t have asked you about her in the first place….It must be difficult to talk about this. We understand. We won’t ask you anything more.”

“So, this pot,” George said, “tell me about it. How did it keep the ghost trapped? Pottery on its own wouldn’t have done the job. There must’ve been some kind of iron lining—or silver, I suppose. Or did they have some other technique, which—ow!” I’d kicked him. “What was that for?”

“For not shutting up.”

He blinked at me over his spectacles. “Why? It’s interesting.”

“We’re talking about his sister! Not the bloody pot!”

George jerked a thumb at Lockwood. “He says it’s ancient history.”

“Yes, but he’s clearly lying. Look at this place! Look at this room and what’s in it! This is so right now.”

“Yes, but he’s let us in, Luce. He wants to talk about it. I say that includes the pot.”

“Oh, come on! This isn’t one of your stupid experiments, George. This is his family. Don’t you have any empathy at all?”

“I’ve got more empathy than you! For a start I can see the bleeding obvious, which is that Lockwood wants us to discuss it. After years of emotional constipation, he’s ready to share things with us—”

“Maybe he does, but he’s also completely brittle and hypersensitive, so if—”

“Hey, I’m still standing here,” Lockwood said. “I didn’t go out, or anything.” Silence fell; George and I broke off and looked at him. “And the truth is,” he went on, “you’re both right. I do want to talk about it—as George says. But I also don’t find it very easy, so Lucy’s spot-on too.” He sighed. “Yes, George, I believe the pot had a layer of iron on the inside. But it cracked, okay? And maybe that’s enough for now.”

“Lockwood,” I said. I looked toward the bed. “One thing. Does she—?”

“No.”

“She’s never—?”

“No.”

“But the glow—”

“She’s never come back.” Lockwood tipped the lavender seeds into one of the vases on the sill and wiped his long, slim hands. “In the early days, you know, I almost hoped she would. I’d come up here, when I was in the house, thinking I might see her standing at the window. I’d wait a long time, looking into the light, expecting to see her shape, or hear her voice….” He smiled at me ruefully. “But there was never anything.”

He glanced over at the bed, his eyes still penned in behind the blank black glasses. “Anyway, that was early on. It wasn’t healthy, my just hanging out in here. And after a while, when I’d had rather more experience with death-glows and what goes with them, I began to dread her return as well as want it. I couldn’t bear to think how she might appear to me. So then I stopped coming in here much, and I set up the lavender to…to discourage surprises.”

“Iron would be stronger,” George said. He was like that, George; cutting, in his bespectacled way, to the nub of the issue quicker than everyone else. “I don’t see any iron here—apart from on the door.”

I looked at Lockwood; his shoulders had gone tight, and for a moment I wondered whether he was going to get angry. “You’re right, of course,” he said. “But that’s too much like dealing with an ordinary Visitor—and she’s not that, George, she’s not ordinary. She’s my sister. Even if she does come back, I couldn’t use iron on her.”

Neither of us said anything.

“The funny thing is, she loved the smell of lavender,” Lockwood said, in a lighter voice. “You know that scrubby bush of it around the side of the house, out by the trash bins? When I was a kid she used to sit with me and make lavender garlands for our hair.”

I looked at the vases with their plumes of faded purple. So they were a defense—but a welcome, too.

“Anyway, lavender’s good stuff,” George said. “Flo Bones swears by it.”

“Flo just swears in general,” I said.

We all laughed, but it wasn’t really a room for laughter. Nor for tears, oddly, or for anger, or for any emotion other than a sort of solemnity. It was a place of absence; we were in the presence of something that had left. It was like coming to a valley where someone had once shouted, loud and joyously, and the echo of that shout had resounded between the hills and lasted a long time. But now it had vanished, and you stood on the same spot, and it was not the same.

We didn’t go back to the room. It was a private place, and George and I left it alone. After that first seismic revelation, Lockwood didn’t bring up the subject of his sister again, nor did he hunt out the photograph he had promised. He rarely mentioned his parents, either, though he did let slip that they had left him 35 Portland Row in their wills. So—somehow, somewhere—they had died, too. But they and Jessica stayed in shadow, and the questions hovering around the silent bedroom largely remained.

I tried not to let it worry me, and instead be satisfied with what I had learned. Certainly I felt closer to Lockwood now. My knowledge of his past was a privilege. It made me feel warm and special at times like this, speeding with him in the back of the taxi through the London dark. Who knew—perhaps one night, when we were working alone together, he might open up and tell me more?

The cab braked suddenly; both Lockwood and I jerked forward in our seats. In front of us, moving figures filled the street.

The driver cursed. “Sorry, Mr. Lockwood. Way’s blocked. There are agents everywhere.”

“Not a problem.” Lockwood was already reaching for the door. “This is exactly what I want.” Before I could react, almost before the car had stopped, he was out and halfway across the road.