Lockwood & Co. The Hollow Boy

It turned out that the paper I’d found was the ghost’s confession—or at least, it was the confession of someone named Arabella Crowley, written in 1837, a date that roughly matched the Specter’s clothes. It seemed she’d smothered her husband in his sleep and gotten away with it. Her guilty conscience had kept her spirit from its rest; now that the document had been found and her crime revealed, the ghost was unlikely to return.

That was my interpretation, anyway. Lockwood took no chances. The following morning he had the fragments of windowpane incinerated in Clerkenwell Furnaces, and he encouraged Mrs. Peters to have the armoire broken up as well. Slightly to my annoyance, he repeated his orders to me not to try communicating with Visitors that weren’t safely constrained. Of course I understood why he was cautious—his sister’s fate loomed heavily over him—but to my mind, he overstated the risks. I was increasingly confident that my Talent could bypass such anxieties.

Over the next few days, new cases continued to come in thick and fast for Lockwood & Co. Lockwood, George, and I continued tackling them separately.

This led to problems. For a start, our hectic schedule meant that we had little time to research any job in advance, an omission that was always dangerous. One night Lockwood was nearly ghost-touched at a church near Old Street. He had cornered a Phantasm beside the altar and almost missed a second one creeping up from behind. If he had read up on the history of the church beforehand, he would have known it was haunted by murdered twins.

Fatigue was an issue, too. George was ambushed by a Lurker he hadn’t spotted near Whitechapel Lock, and he only escaped by jumping headfirst into the canal. I fell asleep during a stakeout in a bakery and totally missed a charred ghost emerging from the oven. The sudden smell of roasted meat woke me just as it was reaching for my face with blackened fingers, much to the amusement of the whispering skull—which had been watching from its jar but hadn’t said anything.

Our narrow escapes bothered Lockwood, who saw it as yet further proof that we were undermanned and overworked. No doubt he was right, but I was more interested in the freedom that my solitary expeditions gave me. I was waiting to make a proper psychic connection with a ghost—and it wasn’t long before I got precisely that opportunity.

My appointment was with a family in apartment number 21 (South Block), Bermuda Court, Whitechapel. It was the housing project case, the one I’d been stuck with because of the dibs rule. It had been postponed twice due to client illness, and I nearly couldn’t take it on the third time, either, because I’d already booked train tickets to go back home to see my family. I hadn’t set eyes on my mother or sisters since coming to London eighteen months before. Though I viewed the trip with mixed feelings, Lockwood had given me a week off, and I wasn’t going to rearrange that for a job that involved climbing lots of stairs.

I agreed to pop in the night before I left. Lockwood and George were busy with other cases, so I took the skull along. It provided company, of a disagreeable, unsavory sort. If nothing else, its jabbering helped keep the silences at bay.

Bermuda Court proved to be one of those big concrete housing projects they’d built after World War II. It had four blocks of apartments arranged around a grassy yard, each with external stairs and walkways running around the sides. The walkways acted as protection against the weather but also cast the doors and windows of the flats into perpetual shadow. The surface of the concrete was rough and ugly, dark with rain.

As I’d predicted, the elevators were out. Apartment 21 was only on the fifth floor, but I was out of breath when I arrived. My backpack, weighed down by a certain jar, was killing me.

The light was almost gone. I took a rasping breath and rang the bell.

“Man, you’re unfit,” the skull said in my ear.

“Shut up. I’m in good shape.”

“You’re wheezing like an asthmatic sloth. It would help to lose a little weight. Like that bit on your hips Lockwood’s always going on about.”

“What? He doesn’t—”

But at that moment the clients answered the door.

There was a mother, gaunt and graying; a large, silent, slope-shouldered father; and three small kids, all under six, living together in a unit with five rooms and a narrow hall. Until recently there’d been a sixth person, too: the kids’ grandfather. But he’d died.

Slightly to my surprise, the family didn’t usher me into the living room, which is where such awkward conversations usually take place. Instead, they led me into a tiny kitchen at the end of the hall. Everyone crowded in; I was pushed so tight against the stove, I twice turned a dial with my bottom while I heard their story.

The mother apologized for the uncomfortable surroundings. They did have a living room, she said, but no one went in it after dark. Why? Because the grandfather’s ghost was there. The children had seen him, every night since he’d died, still sitting in his favorite chair. What did he do? Nothing, just sat there. And beforehand, when he was alive? Mostly sat in that same chair, while he wasted away from the sickness he’d refused to get treated. He’d been skin and bones at the end. So light and papery, you’d think a draft would have carried him away.

Did they know why he’d returned? No. Could they guess what he wanted? No. And what had he been like, when alive? At that there was a lot of shuffling of feet. The uncomfortable silence told me much. He was a difficult man, the father said, not generous with his money. He was tight and grasping, the mother added. Would have sold us to the devil, if the devil offered cash. Sad to say, but it was true: they were glad he was gone.

But he wasn’t gone, of course. Or, if he had left, he’d now come back.

They made me tea, and I drank it standing under the single bright light of the kitchen, with the children’s eyes, as wide and green as those of cats, staring up at me. At last I set the cup down in the sink, and there was a sort of collective sighing that the moment had now come. With that they showed me to the living room. I stepped through onto the worn carpet and closed the door behind me.

It was a rectangular room, not large, centered on an electric fireplace. A metal guard ran around the hearth to keep the kids away. I did not switch on the light. A wide window looked out over the grassy wasteland behind the estate. There were lights on in the other units, and an old neon streetlight—left over from the times when ordinary people went out at night—on the path below. Its glow gave shape to my surroundings.

The furniture was of the kind that had been fashionable a couple of decades back. Hard, high-backed chairs with jutting armrests and spindly wooden legs; a low, stiff-sided sofa; side tables; a plain glass cabinet set in a corner. A deep-pile rug had been arranged before the fire. Nothing quite matched. I saw kids’ games stacked in another corner and sensed they’d tried to tidy up for me.

It was chilly in the room—but not ghost-chilly. Not yet. I checked the thermometer on my belt. Fifty-three degrees. I listened but caught only a noise like distant static. I carried my bag over to the sofa below the window and set it quietly on the floor.

The jar, when I pulled it out, was glowing its palest green. The face rotated slowly, eyes glinting in the plasm.

“Cramped little hovel,” the voice whispered. “Won’t fit many ghosts in here.”

My fingers floated over the lever in the jar’s lid that would cut off communication. “If you’ve nothing useful to say…”

“Oh, I’m not knocking it. Hell of a lot tidier than your place, that’s for sure.”

“They say this is where it happens.”

“And they’re right. Someone died in here. The air’s stained with it.”

“You sense anything else, you let me know.” I set the jar down on a side table.

Then I turned to face the high-backed chair opposite.

I already knew it was the one. You could guess from its domineering position, the way it sat closest to the TV in the corner, closest to the fireplace; all the other seats were less conveniently situated. Then there was the walking stick propped against the wall in the shadows beyond; the little side table marked with mug rings. The chair itself was decorated with some god-awful flowery pattern. The fabric had been worn white on the armrests, and repaired with leather patches near the ends. There was a dirty bald mark halfway up the back, too. The sponge of the seat cushion had been compressed thin with long usage; it was almost as if someone sat there still.

I knew what I should do. Agency practice was clear. I should get out the chains, or, failing that, a sensible amount of filings, and carefully encircle the chair. I should set up lavender crosses as a secondary barrier, and place myself at a safe distance from the likely manifesting point. George would certainly have done all that. Even Lockwood, always more cavalier, would have whipped up a chain circle in double-quick time.

I did none of those things. I went as far as loosening the strap of my rapier and opening my bag, so that my tools were near at hand. Then I sat back on the sofa in the orange-pink darkness, crossed my ankles, and waited.

I wanted to test my Talent.

“Naughty,” the skull said in my mind. “Does Lockwood know you’re doing this?”

I didn’t reply; after a few more gibes, the ghost fell silent. Beyond the door came muffled noises—kids being told to shush, clinks of crockery; sounds of an evening meal being made. A smell of toast permeated the air. The family was so close by. In theory I was endangering them by not putting out defenses. The Fittes Manual was very clear on this. DEPRAC rules expressly forbade contact without adequate protection. In their eyes, I was committing a crime.

Outside the window the night grew black. The clients ate their meal; the children were ushered into one of the bedrooms. Toilets flushed. At the sink, someone was doing the washing up. I sat quietly in the dark, waiting for the show.

And it began.

Slowly, insensibly, a malign atmosphere began to invade the room. I heard the change in the quality of my breathing; I was taking quicker, shorter gulps of air. The hairs on my arms prickled with disquiet. Doubt rose in me; also anxiety and a strong feeling of self-loathing. I took some gum, chewed steadily, made the usual adjustments to counteract the malaise and creeping fear. The temperature dropped; the reading on my belt thermometer showed fifty degrees, then forty-eight. The quality of the light altered; the neon glow became fuzzier, as if struggling through molasses.

“Something’s coming,” the skull said.

I chewed and waited. I watched the empty armchair.

At nine forty-six precisely (I checked my watch), it was empty no longer. A faint outline became visible in the center of the chair. It was very weak, and scuffed and smudged in the middle, like a pencil drawing poorly erased. You could see what it was, though: the shrunken figure of an old man, sitting there. He exactly fitted the contours of the worn sponge seat; the outline of the head rested precisely over the grubby bald spot on the back. The apparition remained transparent, and I could still see every detail of the appalling flowery pattern of the cushions behind, but steadily its features grew more certain. It was a very small, shriveled man, bald except for a few long white hairs straggling behind his ears. I guessed he had once been fat, round-faced even; now the flesh on his cheeks had fallen in, leaving the skin hanging empty. His limbs, too, had wasted away; the fabric of his sleeves and trousers hung horribly flat. One bony hand lay cupped amid the folds and looseness of his old man’s lap. The other curled at the end of the armrest like a spider.

He’d been a wicked thing, that was for sure. Everything about him projected a discomforting malice. The eyes glittered like black marbles; they were staring fixedly at me, and there was the faintest of smiles on the thin lips. My every instinct told me to defend myself: bring out the rapier, lob a salt-bomb or a canister of iron—do something to get the presence away from me. But it didn’t move, and neither did I. We sat in our seats and stared at each other across the thick fur rug and the gulf that separates the living from the dead.

I had my hands folded in my lap. I cleared my throat. “Well,” I said finally, “what is it that you want?”

No sound, no reply. The shape sat there, eyes shining in the dark.

Over on the side table, the skull in the jar remained silent and shrouded too; only the faintest green haze behind the glass showed that it was present, watching.

Without the protection of iron chains, the full chill of the apparition tore into me. The temperature at my belt was down to forty-four degrees; it would be colder still near the chair. But the degree of cold isn’t really the point; it’s where it comes from. Ghost chill is a fierce, dry cold; you can feel it sucking the life and energy from your bones. I bore it. I didn’t move at all, but just stared at the old man.

“If you have a purpose,” I said, “you might as well tell it to me.”

Just the silence and the glittering of the eyes, like starlight in the dark.

No real surprise. It wasn’t a Type Three, scarcely even a Type Two; it couldn’t speak, couldn’t communicate in any obvious way.

Even so…

“No one else is going to listen,” I said. “Better take this chance while you can.”

I opened my mind, tried to empty it of sensation, see if I detected anything new. Even an echoing mess of emotion, like I’d gotten from the Changer at Lavender Lodge, might be enough to set me on the right track….

From the chair came a scratchy rustling of fabric, a pick-pick-picking sound, like cloth being teased and pulled by the tip of someone’s nail. I heard shallow breathing, a person muttering under their breath. My skin crawled. I couldn’t take my eyes off the smiling apparition in the chair. The sounds came again—muffled, but very close.

“Is that it?” I asked. “Is that what you’re telling me?”

A crash in the corner—I sprang up in fright, scrabbling for my rapier. The ghost was gone. The chair was empty; the squashed seat, the worn patch, everything exactly as before. Except for the walking stick, which had toppled over, cracking against the fireplace.

I checked the time—then rechecked it with something like alarm. Ten twenty? That was weird: according to the watch, the apparition had been present for more than half an hour, yet it had felt like scarcely a minute to me….

“Did you get it?” The skull’s voice jerked me back into action. The face in the jar had re-emerged, nostrils flaring smugly. “Bet you didn’t. I did. I know, and I’m not telling.”

“What is it with you?” I said. “You’re like a toddler. Yes, of course I got it.”

I rose, crossed to the door, and switched on the light, ignoring shrill protests from the jar. The evil atmosphere had vanished from the room. Under the ceiling light, the outdated shabbiness of the furniture was revealed in all its muted oranges and browns. I looked at the stack of kids’ games: Scrabble, Monopoly, and the Rotwell Agency’s Ghost Hunter—that one where you have to remove the plastic bones and bits of ectoplasm without setting off the buzzer. Battered boxes, secondhand games. The house of an ordinary family without much cash.

He was a difficult man. Not generous with his money….

I walked over to the chair.

“You haven’t a clue, have you?” the ghost called. “Tell you what: let me out of this jar, and I’ll happily spill the beans. Come on, Lucy. Can’t argue with that for a deal.”

“Don’t try to flutter your eyes at me. It doesn’t work with empty sockets.”

I bent beside the chair, inspecting the nearest armrest. The patch at the end was made of some kind of imitation leather, more plasticky than anything. It had been roughly sewn onto the original fabric, but in places the stitches had come undone, and one corner was curling up like the edge of a stale sandwich. I pushed at the edge experimentally, slipped my fingers underneath, and lifted it. There was a layer of foam stuffing, which came away easily. Then you could see the tightly wound wads of banknotes compressed into the space beneath.

I grinned at the skull over my shoulder. “Sorry. Looks like no deal for you today.”

The face grimaced and vanished in a starburst of peeved plasm. “That,” its voice said, lingering, “was just a lucky guess.”

I took my vacation and went back north, to the town where I was born. I saw my mother, I saw my sisters; I stayed with them for a few days. It wasn’t the easiest of homecomings. None of them had ever traveled more than thirty miles away in their lives, let alone gone to live in London. They looked askance at my clothes and shining rapier, frowned at the smallest changes to my accent. The scent and aura of the city hung around me. I spoke with an assurance they didn’t recognize about places and people that meant nothing to them. For my part, I found them slow and hidebound by their fear. Even in good weather, they went out only reluctantly; evenings saw them cowering by the fire. I grew impatient, and crosser still when they scarcely argued back. There was something in their sheeplike resignation that made me want to scream. What kind of life was it, to sit dumbly in the dark, in living fear of death? Better to go out and face it, head-on.

I left them a day earlier than planned. I had an itch to get back to London.

It was an early-morning train. I sat in a window seat, watching the tapestry flash by: the fields and woods, the spires of hidden villages, the chimney stacks and ghost-lamps of the ports and mining towns. Everywhere you looked, the Problem hung invisible over England. Brand-new cemeteries at crossroads and in wild, abandoned places; crematoria on the edges of cities; curfew bells in market squares. Superimposed upon it all, my face blurred in and out of view. I glimpsed the child I’d been when I first came down to London, and the operative I’d now become, a girl who spoke with ghosts. More than spoke: who understood their desires.

My encounter with the miser’s ghost had changed everything for me. It had been that strange sensation I felt afterward, walking back through Whitechapel, with all my tools still on my back, and all those unused flares and canisters jangling in my belt. I hadn’t needed any of them. I’d dealt with the Visitor without resorting to weapons or even defenses. No salt, no lavender; not an ounce of iron spilled. How many times, in any agent’s career, had a successful investigation ended in quite so neat a way?

The old man in the chair had been unpleasant, and his ghost still radiated that blackness of soul. Yet he had come back with a coherent purpose, a desire to make restitution—to reveal the hidden money to his heirs. My calm interrogation had given him the chance to do precisely that. If I’d blasted him in the usual way, that outcome would not have been possible. But I’d done it by giving my Talent free rein.

There were obvious dangers attached to my new approach, but great advantages, too; and as I gazed out through the window a new way of working began to open up in front of me.

The skull in the jar was still the exceptional case, the Type Three ghost with which full communication was possible. But I was coming to believe that there were other ways of bridging the gap between ordinary Visitors and the living.

My hunch relied on two things: that many ghosts had some objective in returning; and that, if you calmly sought to discover this, they would leave you alive long enough to find it out. The first part of the statement was uncontroversial—it had been accepted since the days of ghost-hunting pioneers Marissa Fittes and Tom Rotwell fifty years before. But the second part flew in the face of orthodox opinion. Every modern agency sought to constrain the ghost as a matter of first principles; when this was done, the Source could be found and destroyed, thus removing the ghost as well. It was universally assumed that the ghost would resent this process, and seek to prevent it. Since an angry ghost could quickly kill you, agents weren’t inclined to mess about.

In some cases, weapons were certainly necessary. Could the terrible thing in the attic at Lavender Lodge ever truly have been reasoned with? Almost certainly not. But others—I thought of the sad Shades thronging in the boardinghouse, the veiled Specter in the bedroom window—were desperate for connection.

And I could provide that, however imperfectly.

What I needed was for Lockwood to let me experiment some more. He would be resistant—naturally so, because of what had happened to his sister—but I felt I would bring him around. At this thought, my mood lifted. The bulb of sadness that I’d been nurturing since visiting my mother shrank deep inside and was forgotten. I would talk to Lockwood and George about my ideas when I got home. I needed to share them with my friends.

Back in London, I asked the cab to stop by Arif’s store at the end of Portland Row and bought a selection of iced buns. It was past eleven; Lockwood and George would be just about ready for a snack by now. I was back a day early. Since they wouldn’t be expecting me, I could make my arrival an extra-nice surprise.

But there was a surprise waiting for me when I entered the house. It made me stop in amazement, keys held frozen in my hand. The hall had been vacuumed, the coat-rack tidied; the rapiers, umbrellas, and walking sticks arranged in size order in their pot. Even the crystal skull lantern on the key table had been dusted and polished so it shone.

I couldn’t believe it. They’d actually done it. They’d tidied! They’d tidied up for me.

I put my bag down softly and tiptoed into the kitchen.

They were in the basement by the sounds of it, and they were in a very good mood. I could hear their bubbling laughter even from the kitchen. It made me smile to hear them. Perfect. The buns would go down well.

I didn’t hurry. I made some tea, put the buns on our second-best plate (I couldn’t find the best one), arranged them so Lockwood’s favorites—the ones with almond icing that he rarely allowed himself—were on top, and set everything neatly on the tray.

I opened the door with a foot, nudged it wider with my hip, and pattered lightly down the iron stairs.

Happiness bloomed inside me. This was what it was all about. Portland Row was home. My real family was here.

I ducked through the arch into the office and stopped, still smiling. There they were, Lockwood and George, bent forward attentively on either side of my desk. They were laughing heartily.

Between them, sitting in my chair, was a shapely, dark-skinned girl.

She had black hair worn long at the shoulder, a pretty, roundish face, and a kind of dark blue pinafore dress with a nice white top underneath it. She looked very new and fresh and shiny, like someone had popped her out of a plastic case that morning. She sat straight-backed and elegant, and didn’t seem particularly discomposed by having George and Lockwood draped so close. On the contrary, she was smiling too, and laughing a little bit. Mainly, though, she was listening to the boys laugh.

On the table were three mugs of tea and also our best plate, scattered with the remains of several almond buns.

I stood there, looking at the three of them, holding the tray.

The girl saw me first. “Hello.” She said this in a mildly inquiring sort of way.

George’s head jerked up; the fatuous grin on his face at once shrank into noncommittal blankness. Lockwood’s smile tightened; he gave an odd little skip, a sort of sidling sidestep backward, then moved hastily toward me. “Lucy, hello. What a lovely surprise. You’re back early! How was your trip? Nice weather, I hope?”

I stared at him.

“So…” he said. “Good journey? Oh—more buns? How lovely.”

“There’s a girl,” I said. “A girl sitting in my chair.”

“Oh, don’t worry! That’s only till the new desk arrives.” He gave a light laugh. “Should be tomorrow, Wednesday at the very latest. Nothing to worry about….We didn’t expect you back so soon, you see.”

“A new desk?”

“Yes, for Holly.” He cleared his throat, smoothed back his hair. “Well now, where are my manners? This is a time for introductions! Holly, this is Lucy Carlyle, the perfect agent, whom you’ve heard so much about. And Lucy”—Lockwood gave me his biggest smile—“let me introduce you to Holly Munro. Our new assistant.”