Lockwood & Co. The Hollow Boy

The footprints lingered for one hour and seventeen minutes. George timed it on his watch. They were formed of a thin black ectoplasmic substance that radiated extreme cold. When Lockwood touched one with the point of his rapier, it steamed and spat fiercely, sending snakes of black vapor coiling up the silver blade. It was an interesting phenomenon. George mapped them; I made sketches of some of the clearer prints, the ones that weren’t too faint, or too awash with blood.

“They’re small feet,” Lockwood said. “Not tiny, like a young child’s, but pretty slim and slender. Must be Little Tom’s, not Robert Cooke’s.”

“We should measure them, really,” I said. “But I don’t want to get too close.”

“Good point, Luce.” He wore gloves, and had pulled a dark blue scarf out of his bag, his only concession to the chill on the stairs. “I guess we could do a comparison….Who’s got the smallest feet among us?”

“Holly has,” George said, without looking up. “No question.”

I spoke through gritted teeth. “She’s not even here.”

Lockwood nodded. “You’re right, George. They are petite, aren’t they? I bet they’re about that size. We should measure Holly’s feet tomorrow.”

“On it.”

“Of rather more importance,” I said tartly, “is where to look for the Source of all this. Where do we think Little Tom died?”

In the ordinary way, the best place to look for a Source is near where the death took place, but this manifestation presented problems in that regard. Even our surveillance hadn’t helped much. The servant had first been stabbed in the basement, and the haunting had certainly begun there, with a sudden ferocious blast of energy that sent George flying in his circle and his lantern crashing against the wall. He hadn’t seen the two figures, as I had. Lockwood, waiting at the top of the house, had glimpsed them briefly. As they reached the attic, the shapes—moving fast—had seemed to merge. Then there’d been the deafening scream—then nothing. But I’d heard something falling through the air.

“If Cooke pushed Tom off,” George said, “as Lucy reckons, he would have died when he hit the basement floor.”

“Unless he was already dead from his wounds,” I said. “Poor little guy.”

“So the Source could be at the top or the bottom,” Lockwood said. “We’ll look tomorrow. And let’s have less of the ‘poor little guy,’ please, Lucy. Whatever he was in life, Tom’s ghost is part of this dangerous haunting. Think of what happened to the night-watch kids.”

“I am thinking of them,” I said. “And what I’m also thinking of, Lockwood, is that horrible monster chasing the child. Cooke’s ghost. That’s the evil driving this. That’s what we need to tackle.”

Lockwood shook his head. “Actually, we don’t really know one way or the other. We’ve got to be careful with all Visitors. I don’t care if a ghost’s friendly, or needy, or just wants a big cuddle. We keep it at a safe distance. All the big agencies follow that policy, Holly says.”

I didn’t intend to be angry. Basically I knew that Lockwood was right. But my emotions felt stretched right then; it had been a long night—and, back at Portland Row, a long few days. “This ghost is a lad being chased to his death!” I snapped. “I saw him as he passed; he was running for his life. Don’t shrug at me like that! He was so desperate. We’ve got to feel sympathy for him.”

That was a mistake—I knew it at once.

A light in Lockwood’s eyes flicked out. His voice was cold. “Lucy, I don’t have sympathy for any of them.”

Which, let’s face it, was a bit of a conversation killer. The argument stopped there. Because, like the closed door on our landing, the circumstances of our leader’s past were both un-ignorable and impossible to tackle. His sister had died by ghost-touch. His sister. When that subject came up, there wasn’t really anything more to say. So I dutifully shut my mouth and hung around with the others, until, at around one thirty-four in the morning (George timed it), the plasmic footprints grew faint, then softly luminous, then faded clean away. Those footprints had the right idea. We more or less did the same.

She may have made great sandwiches, and she may have had small feet, but at least I could console myself that Holly Munro was deskbound. She didn’t wear a rapier. She didn’t do what I did, going out nightly and risking her life to save London. This knowledge enabled me to hold it together when I got home to discover she’d been in my bedroom and, in a spasm of brisk officiousness, tidied all my clothes.

I meant to mention it to her (calmly, politely, in that way we had) the following morning, but it slipped my mind. By the time I got up, there were a lot of other things going on.

When I came into the kitchen, Lockwood and George were clustered around the table like it was a pretty new assistant, reading a copy of the Times. Holly Munro, cheerfully immaculate in a cherry-red skirt and crisp white blouse, was doing something with the salt bin behind the kitchen door. She’d had it installed to replace the usual mess of bags and canisters we kept there. I eyed her skirt as I came in; she eyed my saggy old pajamas. George and Lockwood didn’t look up or acknowledge I was there.

“Everything all right?” I said.

“There’s been trouble in Chelsea overnight,” Ms. Munro said. “An agent killed. Someone you know.”

My heart jerked. “What? Who?”

Lockwood glanced up. “One of Kipps’s team: Ned Shaw.”

“Oh.”

“Did you know him well?” Holly Munro asked.

Lockwood stared back down at the newspaper. We’d known Ned Shaw well enough to dislike him, with his close-set eyes and unkempt mane of curly hair. He’d had an aggressive, bullying nature. Our hostility had even brought us to blows, though Lockwood had fought alongside him in the ‘Battle in the Graveyard’ at Kensal Green Cemetery. “Not really,” he said. “Still…”

“It’s awful when that happens,” Holly Munro said. “Happened to me at Rotwell, more than once. People I’d seen in the office every day.”

“Yeah,” I said. I shuffled around to the kettle. The kitchen was too small with Holly in it. It was hard to move about. “How did he die?”

Lockwood pushed the paper away. “Don’t know. It’s only mentioned at the end of the article. I think word had just come in. The rest of the news is no better. The Chelsea outbreak’s getting worse, and there’ve been clashes, people protesting about being forced to leave their homes. Police on the streets are having to deal with the living now, not the dead. The whole thing’s a complete dog’s breakfast.”

“At least our case is going smoothly,” Holly Munro said. “I hear you did very well last night, Lucy. It sounds like a terrifying ghost that badly needs destroying. Would you like a whole-wheat waffle?”

“I’m all right with toast, thanks.” Our case. I pulled back a chair, scraping it across the linoleum.

“Should try one,” Lockwood said. “They’re yummy. Okay. The plan for today: our aim is to all get back to Hanover Square after lunch and hunt for the Source before it gets dark. Our client is impatient. Believe it or not, Luce, Miss Wintergarden’s already been on the phone, ‘requesting,’ in her own delightful style, that I personally update her about what we’ve discovered so far. I’ve got to nip over to the hotel where she’s staying now and give her that briefing. Meanwhile you, George, are going to head back to the Newspaper Archives to get more details on the murder. You reckon there must be more info out there.”

George had been scribbling with a felt-tip pen on our Thinking Cloth, writing out a list of names: Mayfair Bugle, The Queens Magazine, The Cornhill Magazine, Contemporary Review…“Yeah,” he said, “there were loads of magazines in late Victorian times, and some of them carried sensational stuff, about true crimes and all that. I bet there’s an account of the Little Tom murder there somewhere, though it might be tricky to find in the time available. It could give us a clearer sense of what happened and help us find the Source.” He threw the pen down. “I’ll get going shortly.”

“We’ve got big deliveries of iron and salt this morning,” Holly Munro said. “I’ll monitor that, and get your bags ready by early afternoon. You’ll want more candles.”

“Great,” Lockwood said. “You can help Holly, if you like, Lucy.”

“Oh, I’m sure Lucy doesn’t want to do that,” Holly said. “She’ll have something more important to do.”

Lockwood chewed a piece of waffle. “I’m not sure she has.”

The kettle boiled.

“Actually,” I said brightly, “I do. I think it would be much more useful if I went down to the Archives—and helped George.”

It wasn’t often that George and I went out together during the day (in fact I’d almost forgotten what he looked like when not surrounded by shadows, ghosts, or artificial light), and you could count the times I’d volunteered to help him at the National Newspaper Archives on the fingers of no hands. If George was surprised by my decision, however, he gave no sign of it. A few minutes later, he was strolling placidly through London at my side.

We walked south through the streets of Marylebone in the general direction of Regent Street. Though the Chelsea containment zone was a mile or two distant, the effects of the outbreak could be felt even here. There was the smell of burning in the air, and the city was quieter than usual. The cafés and restaurants of Marylebone High Street, which like all other commercial establishments closed at four thirty, were only ever busy at lunch; today their interiors were mostly gray and empty, with forlorn waiters sitting idly at tables. Trash bags lay uncollected on the sidewalks; litter blew across the street. More than once we saw orange DEPRAC tape blocking the entrances to buildings, and ghost-crosses daubed on windows: the signs of live hauntings, as yet undealt with by any of the agencies. They were busy elsewhere.

Outside a seedy Spiritualist Church on Wimpole Street, a scuffle was going on. Black-clothed followers of the Ghost Cult that worshipped inside were grappling with one of the local Neighborhood Protection leagues, who’d been trying to strew lavender on the church steps. Middle-aged men and women, gray-haired, outwardly respectable, shouted and screamed at one another, snatching at collars, twisting arms. As George and I drew near, they broke apart and stood in panting silence as we walked between them. When we’d passed, they closed up and began fighting again.

They were just adults. They were all equally clueless. When nightfall came, they’d all stop squabbling and scurry home in sync to bolt their doors.

“This city,” George said, “is going to hell in a handcart. Don’t you think so?”

For the first few blocks we hadn’t talked at all; I wasn’t in the mood for it. But air and exercise had partially roused me out of my gloom. I stamped my boot heels on the pavement. “I don’t even know what that means.”

“It means everyone’s getting frantic, and no one’s asking the right questions.”

We zigzagged down to Oxford Street, where the flea market iron and silver stores, palm readers, and fortune-telling booths stretched for miles in both directions; crossed over at Oxford Circus; and started down Regent Street. The Archives were not far away.

“I know why you’ve come along,” George said suddenly. “Don’t think I don’t.”

I’d been having dark thoughts about waffles, and the unexpected statement made my stomach lurch. “Does there have to be a reason?”

“Well, I’m guessing it’s not the thrill of my company that brings you here.” He glanced at me. “Is it?”

“I love being with you, George. I can scarcely keep away.”

“Exactly. No, you’ve made it pretty obvious,” he said, “what’s on your mind. You need to be careful, though. Lockwood isn’t pleased.”

We stepped in unison over one of the runnels of flowing water that protected the clothes stores on Regent Street. It was one of the safest areas of the city, and the streets were busier now. “Well, I’m sorry about that,” I said, “but I don’t think he’s got any right to object. It’s his fault. I didn’t ask for this.”

“Well, nor did Lockwood.”

“Of course he did. He hired her, didn’t he?”

George gazed at me, his eyes hidden behind his glasses. “I’m talking about your fascination with this ghost, this Little Tom. What were you talking about?”

“Oh, yes. Yes. The same. That’s why I’m here with you. I want to know the story.”

“Right…” We walked another few yards in silence. Up ahead was the Rotwell Building, a shimmering hulk of plastic and glass. Above the entrance, on a pole, the agency’s red lion symbol stood rampant. “So how’re you finding Holly?” George asked.

“I’m…adjusting,” I said. “Slowly. You’re obviously over the moon.”

“Well, she’s making us more efficient, which has to be good. Not that I’m sure about everything she does. I caught her trying to get rid of our Thinking Cloth the other day. Said its scribbles made the kitchen look like the inside of someone’s head. Well, it—but that’s the point.”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s what I find hard. All her fussy rules and regulations. And then there’s the way she looks….There’s a word for it.”

“Yeah,” George said, with feeling. “Glossy. Or were you thinking lustrous?”

“Um, no…that wasn’t quite it. I meant, sort of more…overmaintained.”

He pushed his spectacles up his nose and glanced at me. “She knows what a comb is, I suppose.”

“Are you looking at my hair? What are you saying?”

“Nothing! I’m not saying anything. Absolutely not. Oh…” George’s wriggling awkwardness froze suddenly into something deeper, an expression of numb discomfort. “Heads down, Luce….Don’t look now.”

Directly ahead of us, outside the Rotwell building, stood Quill Kipps. With him were his two close associates, Kate Godwin and Bobby Vernon.

In the daylight Kipps looked slighter than usual. As ever he was flamboyantly dressed, but his face was gray, and there was a haze of ginger stubble on his chin. He wore a black armband tight upon his sleeve, and carried a thick sheaf of documents under one arm. He’d already spotted us. This was a blow. If we’d had the chance, we’d have crossed the street or something.

We drew level with them. Vernon was remarkably small and scrawny; it was as if someone had shaved bits off normal-sized agents and created him from the scrapings. Godwin, a Listener like me, was as chilly as ground-frost, and probably about as hard underfoot. They nodded at us. We nodded at them. There was a pause, as if everyone were going through the usual round of hostilities and cheap comments, only silently, to save time.

“We’re sorry to hear about Ned Shaw,” I said finally.

Kipps stared at me. “Are you? You never liked him.”

“No. Still, that doesn’t mean we wanted him dead.”

His narrow shoulders shrugged skyward beneath his trim silver jacket. “No? Maybe. I couldn’t say.” Kipps often seemed engulfed in bitterness when he spoke with us. Today his hostility seemed less automatic and less personal, yet more deeply felt. I didn’t answer. George opened his mouth to speak and then thought better of it. Kate Godwin checked her watch, stared off down the street like she was waiting for someone.

“How did it happen?” I said finally.

“Typical DEPRAC foul-up,” Bobby Vernon said.

Kipps rubbed the back of his neck with a pale hand. He sighed. “It was a building on Walpole Street. Open floor-plan office. We were working our way through it, taking psychic readings. Some of Tendy’s group were up on the floor above. Bloody idiots disturbed a Specter, drove it down the central stairway to our level. Came straight through a wall where Shaw was and clasped him around the head before any of us could move.”

Kate Godwin nodded. “He didn’t have a chance.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

“Yeah, well. It’ll happen again,” Kipps said. “Not to us, maybe, but to someone.” His eyes were always red-rimmed; I thought they seemed redder than normal. “We’re out again tonight on a three-line whip. Barnes has us all performing like so many dancing bears. The Chelsea outbreak’s crazy. There’s no system to it—or if there is, I can’t see it.”

“Got to be a system,” George said. “Something’s stirring up the ghosts in that area. There’ll be a pattern, if you know where to look.”

Kipps grimaced. “You think so? The best minds in DEPRAC have failed to find it so far, Cubbins. I’ve just been at a meeting here, and no one’s got a clue. The most they’ve come up with is to suggest holding a special agency parade to reassure the public that nothing’s wrong. Can you believe it? We’ve got thousands of people evacuated, ghosts rampant, rioting in London—and they’re planning a carnival. The world’s gone mad.” He scowled at us as if it had been our suggestion, and flourished the sheaf of papers. “Oh, and see this? Copy of all the case reports the different teams have filed in the last week. Apparitions, Glimmers, chill spots—you name it. Hundreds of incidents, and no pattern whatsoever. All team leaders are supposed to read it now, and come up with our own suggestions. As if I’ll have time for that! I’ve got a funeral to go to.” He slapped the papers disgustedly against his fist. “I might as well lob this in the trash.”

We stood there awkwardly. I didn’t know what to say.

“You can give it to me, if you like,” George said. “I’d be interested.”

“Give it to you?” Kipps’s brief laugh had no humor in it. “Why should I do that? You hate me.”

George snorted. “What, you want me to blow you a kiss? Who cares whether I like you or not? People are dying here. I might be able to do something with it, do us all a favor. If you want to read it yourself, fine. Otherwise give it here. Just don’t put it in the stupid bin.” He stamped his foot, red in the face and glaring.

Kipps and his companions blinked at him, slightly taken aback. I was a bit, too. Kipps looked at me; then, shrugging, tossed the papers across to George. “Like I say, I don’t want them. I’ve got other things to do. We may see you at the carnival—if Lockwood and Co.’s invited, which I strongly doubt.” He gave a cursory wave, and with that, the three Fittes agents sloped off into the crowd.

If the National Newspaper Archives building were ever haunted, it would be a devil of a job to sort it. Spreading over six vast floors, each honeycombed with eight-foot-high shelves and book stacks, it’s bigger than any factory and more complex and labyrinthine than the oldest Tudor house. Plus, you’d be constantly tripping over all the scholars crouched in gloomy recesses, staring at old documents, trying to understand the history of the Problem. History was what the Archives were about; you could smell it in the air, taste it on your breath. After half an hour of leafing through century-old magazines, you felt it fused to your fingertips, too.

George liked it; he knew his way around. He took me to the Periodicals section on the fourth level and showed me the Catalogue—a series of giant leather-bound books that summarized the contents of the floor. For events of recent decades, there was an Index, too, which cross-referenced stories contained in all the magazines. For old stuff, though, you had to locate the periodical you wanted, choose the relevant date, and sift through the endless yellowed pages yourself, looking for your story.

Armed with a list of magazines from George, I weighed in, finding copies of the Cornhill Journal and Mayfair News from summer 1883, and taking them to the reading tables perched above the central atrium. I began to browse, looking for any mention of the horrors of Hanover Square.

Soon I had the smell of stale ink in my nostrils. My eyes ached from poring over minute print. Worse, my mind ached from all the half-glimpsed irrelevant details. Victorian controversies. Forgotten society ladies. Essays on faith and empire by hairy, self-confident men. This was stuff that would have been dull when it was published, let alone more than a century later. It was ancient history. How could George enjoy doing this?

Ancient history…That was exactly what Lockwood had once said about his sister, who’d died only six years ago. The more I thought about it, the more I realized how present she was, influencing his every action. I remembered his coldness the night before; his dismissal of my empathy for the little ghost. And of course Holly Munro had backed him up today: she wanted the thing destroyed, no questions asked. I’d only seen her for five minutes, but she’d been irritating that morning.

I continued reading, moving among the shelves, steadily working through George’s list. My mind wandered. Whenever I passed the Catalogue and Index, I thought about the events, six years before, in Portland Row.

Once, when I returned to the tables, I discovered George there, surrounded by magazines, copying lines into his notebook. “Found out about our ghost?” I asked.

“Nope. Not a sausage on that yet. I’m taking a break, checking out something else.” He yawned and stretched. “Don’t know if you remember, but when Miss Wintergarden came to see us, she was wearing a little silver brooch.”

“Oh, yes,” I said. “I was meaning to ask you about that. Was it the same as—?”

“It was. An ancient Grecian harp or lyre. The precise same symbol we saw on Fairfax’s goggles, and on that box that Penelope Fittes was holding, you know, when we spied on her in her library.”

I nodded. Combe Carey Hall…the Black Library of Fittes House….Months separated the two incidents, but as I’d almost died on both those nights, I didn’t have any problem recalling them. The odd little harp symbol had puzzled us ever since, the few times we remembered it. It represented…what had Wintergarden called it? “Was it the Orpheus Club?” I said.

“Orpheus Society. I’ve just been looking it up.” George adjusted his glasses as he tried to decipher his own spidery handwriting. “It’s listed in Debrett’s Almanac of Registered British Groups, Clubs, and Other Organizations as a ‘theoretical society for prominent citizens to research the Problem and the nature of the Other Side.’ They make it sound like a talking shop for posh bigwigs, but we know there’s more to it than that. It’s got a registered address in St. James. Not a clue what it is, but we should check it out sometime.” He eyed my latest pile of tomes. “How are you getting on?”

“Nothing so far. How recent does the Index go, by the way? Last few years?”

“They keep it up to date as far as they can, yes. Why?”

“No reason.”

Some while later, with George elsewhere, I strolled over to the Index shelf.

I found the volume I wanted. The one for six years ago. A list of subjects contained in the magazines and newspapers of that year: events, hauntings, features, names.

On impulse I flipped to the Ls.

There wouldn’t be anything. I knew that. I wasn’t doing any harm.

But when my inky finger ran down the column, there it was:

Lockwood, J.

I felt as cold as when I’d entered the sister’s room. The name, apparently, was mentioned in the Marylebone Herald, the monthly paper for our area of London. It gave the date, and the catalogue number for the bound edition.

It was the work of a moment to locate the relevant file. I went to a remote alcove and sat there with the folder on my knee.

The death of Miss Jessica Lockwood (15), daughter of late psychic researchers Celia and Donald Lockwood, has been reported by St. Pancras Coroners. In the latest tragic incident to hit the family, she was ghost-touched in an accident at her home in Marylebone, last Thursday night. Her younger brother was unable to stop the attack, and she was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. Funeral arrangements will be announced. The family requests that no flowers be sent.

That was it, just the scantiest mention, but it contained enough to keep me sitting there, unmoving. Many things to think about, and one most of all. The way I remembered it, when we’d talked about his sister, Lockwood had definitely implied that he hadn’t been around when the accident took place.

This article implied that he had.