Lockwood & Co. The Hollow Boy

“It’s amazing what you can come up with,” George said the following morning, “when you lie awake in bed. It’s such good thinking time. I’ve been working with the maps, and the documents Kipps gave me—you know, the ones that list all the Visitor encounters in Chelsea over the last few weeks. And I’ve been doing a lot of ferreting in the Archives. But it’s only when you lie there and let the information settle in your mind that you start to see the pattern.”

“And you have?” Lockwood asked.

“Oh yes, I see a pattern now.”

Breakfast time, and we were at the kitchen table. But the bowls and jam jars and sticky fragments of toast had been cleared away. We were suited and booted and ready for business; there wasn’t a bathrobe or rumpled T-shirt to be seen. Holly Munro, coming up from her early morning vacuuming of the office, had caught the expectant atmosphere. She produced newly baked honey biscuits from a tin and set them in the center of the Thinking Cloth. We had mugs, tea, and, in George’s case, a manila folder stuffed with documents. Everything was set for him.

It was fortunate, from my point of view, that his moment of inspiration had come now. It allowed me to relegate my experience of the night before to the back of my mind. Or try to. For whenever I looked at Lockwood, so coolly contained and self-assured, the memory of that desperate little voice came rushing back, and set me squirming in my seat. Nor could I forget the echo of that little boy’s violent grief, the fury that had instantly avenged his sister and—years later, in his every action—continued to avenge her.

Well, I’d wanted to understand him better, and now I did. Eavesdropping on his past had been effective. But as I should have expected, it didn’t exactly make me feel too good.

At least there were other things to distract me now.

George opened his folder and selected the topmost paper. This he unfolded and pushed along the table to us. “Here,” he said. “What do you think of this?”

It was a map of the Chelsea district, very similar to the one behind Barnes’s desk, only festooned with George’s indecipherable pencil scrawls. There was the Thames, there was the King’s Road, and there were all the hauntings that had taken place over the last few weeks. Unlike the DEPRAC map, George hadn’t color-coded them. Each was marked with a neat red circle, dozens and dozens of them. In some areas the streets were almost completely obscured by overlapping dots, which merged together like spreading stains.

We stared at it. “Well…” I said at last, “it’s spotty.”

“I looked a bit like that once,” Lockwood remarked, “when I had hives one time. George, I’m sorry. I can’t make out anything there.”

George adjusted his spectacles and grinned. “Of course you can’t. Which is just one of the reasons why poor old Barnes has got things so wrong. So—this is a summary of every supernatural incident that’s been recorded in Chelsea up until a couple of nights ago. Impossible to see a pattern, I agree. The only thing you can hope to do is pinpoint the geographical center—that’s Sydney Street—and hunt there. But we know that’s been a red herring.”

He paused to take one of Holly’s biscuits. Our fragrant assistant was listening to George with rapt attention. We all were. Despite his untucked state, his slouching posture, despite the apparently leisurely manner with which he dunked the biscuit in his tea, excitement crackled around him like forked lightning. The charge had built up in him over weeks of solitary work; now it sprang into all of us unbidden. He pointed at the map with a stubby finger. We leaned helplessly forward.

“One thing you might notice,” George said, “is the shape of the spotty super-cluster. It’s kind of like a squashed rectangle: narrow to the west and wider in the east, like a shoebox that’s been stepped on. And the reason for that is the first clue to what’s going on here. First off, here’s the Thames: the largest mass of running water in London. We know that no ghosts can cross it—so that’s the southern border of the cluster.”

“I think even Barnes knows that,” I said.

“Sure, but look to the north. See here, along the Fulham Road? What’s along here?”

“I know that!” Holly Munro exclaimed. “Iron foundries for the Sunrise Corporation! When I worked for Rotwell, senior management often attended meetings there. I sometimes went with them. There’s a number of small ironworks there.”

“Exactly,” George said. “And not just Sunrise. I think Fairfax Iron’s got some factories in Fulham, too. So the smoke that discharges from all those chimneys settles over that part of London, taking with it tiny particles of iron. And that’s why spectral activity is blocked here. The super-cluster stops at this northern boundary.”

Lockwood whistled. “I see where this is going….So here in the west, down at the squashed end of the rectangle, there’s got to be something else, too, something plugging the gap, stopping the contamination from spreading….”

And then I had it. “The Brompton lavender works!” I said.

We all knew the site. It was the biggest in the city, where they shipped in fresh stuff from the north of England and worked it into perfumes and ointments, or dried it nicely for cushions, displays, and other home defenses. “But it’s down here at Sand’s End, isn’t it?” I went on. I pointed at a great bend, where the river turned south. “There’s a gap between it and the Fulham ironworks. Why can’t the outbreak get through?”

“Because the wind blows off the river and spreads the lavender scent inland,” George said. He chuckled. “It closes off the gap perfectly. So you’ve got the Thames to the south, the iron district to the north, and the lavender factory in the west: three strong geographical influences that stop the haunting from spreading. They act as a kind of funnel that distorts the shape of the cluster. And if the cluster’s distorted, there’s no point in looking for a conventional center to it, is there? Which brings me to this….”

He got out another map and spread it on the table. Lockwood pushed our cups out of the way to make room; Holly put the plate of biscuits on the floor.

It was similar to the first, except that the dots were colored orange, and there were far fewer of them, particularly to the north and east.

“This is the situation one month ago,” George said. “It was already bad, but not nearly as crazy as now. I got most of this from that report Kipps gave me. See how there’s already plenty going on in the middle of the King’s Road? But also in the west, too. And if we go even farther back…” He produced yet another map, this one with only the smallest smattering of green dots. “This is six weeks ago, when it all officially began. See where the center of activity is now?”

“Looks like it’s shifted farther west,” I said, “back along the King’s Road. There’s not so much going on, though.”

“No, it was only just getting started. But here’s the clincher.”

A fourth map. It had the fewest dots of all—just seven, in fact. They were all dark blue, like spots of ice, and all were set in a little bow-shaped arc around the western tip of the King’s Road. “This is two months ago,” George said, “before the whole thing blew up. Nothing special—just a Shade in a launderette, a couple of Tom O’Shadows, a patch or two of Gray Haze….Incredibly minor stuff, scarcely made the local papers at the time—I had to really grub about to find reports of ’em—and they aren’t included in DEPRAC’s tally. Barnes probably wouldn’t consider them to be part of the outbreak at all.” He looked around at us. “But I do. If you start here, and then look at the others in sequence, you’ll see the pattern I’m talking about.”

“It’s a wave,” I said.

“Right. A ripple of supernatural activity spreading from a single focus, flowing out along the only channel available to it, through the heart of Chelsea.”

“And that focus—” Lockwood prompted.

“Is just about here.” George stabbed his finger at a blank portion of the map, around which the seven blue dots circled like an arc of orbiting moons. It was a block on the south side of the King’s Road, right at its western tip, not far from the river and the lavender works. It seemed to be a single large building.

There was a respectful silence. Lockwood exhaled slowly. “You’re a genius, George. I’ve said it before.”

George selected a giant biscuit from Holly’s plate. “You can say it again if you like.”

“Why DEPRAC hasn’t figured this out,” I said, “is beyond me. What idiots they are.”

“I actually might not have noticed the pattern myself,” George admitted, “without Flo Bones’s help. She’s been patroling Chelsea’s river edge for days. She confirms that the strongest supernatural activity she’s noticed is all down in that corner. She’s seen masses of spirits swirling about, displaying signs of agitation. That’s where the psychic wave breaks most heavily on the shore.” He prodded the map in the same place again. “No question about it. The power’s emanating from there.”

“So what is this place,” I asked, “at the end of the King’s Road, and why haven’t we heard of it? And why, if it’s the focus”—I gestured at the maps—“aren’t there any dots on it at all?”

“Good questions.” Taking his time, in the manner of a plump magician producing a rabbit from a hat, George reached into his folder once more. He pulled out a picture, a black-and-white copy of a photograph taken from a newspaper clipping.

It showed the front of an imposing building, twice the height of the shops around it; a brooding, square construction in a heavy, classical style. Flags flew from the parapet. Squared columns were inset into the walls. It had a lot of windows, tall, rectangular, reflecting the blank sky. The ground-floor windows were shaded beneath awnings; people in old-fashioned clothes walked the sidewalks there, past indistinct but intricate displays. In the center, a darkly uniformed figure could be seen standing outside a rank of broad glass doors.

“That, my friends,” George said, “is Aickmere Brothers department store, once world famous, still celebrated, and now—in my opinion—the probable focus of the Chelsea hauntings.”

“Never heard of it,” I said.

“I have.” Lockwood twisted the photograph to face him. “I went there once as a little kid, I think. It used to have a great toy department.”

At his side, Holly Munro was nodding. “Me too. My mother took me to Aickmere Brothers to look at the silver jewelry. I remember it being very ornate and splendid, but also a bit shabby.”

“That would be right,” George said. “It’s the largest department store outside central London, and one of the oldest and grandest anywhere. It was originally built in 1872, and expanded greatly between 1910 and 1912. When its Arabian Hall, known as the ‘Hall of Wonders,’ was unveiled a hundred years or so ago, it supposedly featured fire-eaters, belly dancers, and a live tiger in a cage. Those glory days, I think, are long gone. But people still go there—to this very day, in fact—because that side of Chelsea hasn’t been evacuated. It’s a couple of blocks from one of the DEPRAC cordons. And there have been no reported hauntings in the store at all.”

“If your theory’s correct,” Lockwood said, “that’s more than a little odd.”

“Isn’t it? All the more so when you uncover its past history. I’ve been looking back for historical mentions of this part of Chelsea, to see if there’s been any ghostly activity. When I became interested in Aickmere’s, I honed in on that specific site.” George took a bite of biscuit. “Well…I found things.”

I looked at him. “Bad?”

“You remember Combe Carey Hall?”

Lockwood and I exchanged looks. “The most haunted house in England? Yes.”

“It’s not as bad as that.”

“Thank God.”

“Thing is, I can’t imagine why.” George patted the plump manila folder. “Turns out, you see, this end of the King’s Road is an historic black spot. Half the worst possible things you can think of took place just about there.”

I took a punt. “Plague?”

“Yup. The Black Death swept through in the 1340s. See how the road swerves just beside Aickmere’s? That’s because there was a plague pit there, where they piled the bodies and dosed them with quicklime. Used to be a little mound on the spot, and a circle of stones, but the Victorians leveled it when they were widening the thoroughfare.”

“There are plenty of other plague pits in London,” Lockwood objected. “Sure, they’ve had cluster hauntings associated with them, but nothing on the scale of this.”

“I know,” George said, “and I can’t begin to explain why this has stirred things up so much. I’m just giving you the facts. So we’ve got plague. What else d’you reckon?”

“War,” I said. “Battle or skirmish.”

“Another point to Lucy. She’s good at playing Atrocities. Yes, it’s a Blitz bombing. In 1944, Aickmere Brothers was closed for six months after a doodlebug landed on the building next to it, pulling down the side wall and part of the roof. Twelve people were killed, including air raid wardens stationed on that roof. Twelve years ago, store management called in agents after those wardens were seen reenacting their shrieking death-falls through several floors: they fell straight through Haberdashery and Home Furnishings and landed in Cosmetics.”

“Was the Source found?” Holly Munro asked.

“I believe bone fragments were discovered and store defenses were improved.”

Lockwood pulled doubtfully at his collar. “I don’t know, George….None of this strikes me as anything particularly special. And if those Visitors were dealt with—”

“I’m just getting warmed up. There’s a big one you haven’t thought of yet.”

“Executions!” I said. “Murders, hangings, garrottings! Um, torture in general! Um…”

“All right, all right, hold on. Yes to all of that, but you need to be more exact.”

“Suspected occult activities!”

“No. Go back to the last bunch. Where, historically, would you find all those nasty things taking place?”

“Prison,” Holly Munro said. She flicked an imaginary piece of fluff off the hem of her dress.

“Bingo.” George looked around at us. “Prison. The King’s Prison, to be exact, a notorious hellhole first constructed in 1213 by order of King John. It’s said they put it well outside the city, so that no one could overhear the awful sounds from inside.”

I pointed to the map, at the blank rectangle that marked Aickmere’s department store. “You’re saying it was right here?”

“No one knows the exact site. It was pulled down in Tudor times. But it was supposed to be at the western end of the King’s Road somewhere, and we do know the plague pit was dug outside it. So…”

“So now we’re definitely on to something!” There was a light in Lockwood’s eyes; he rubbed his hands. “Okay, now I am interested. If Aickmere’s is on roughly the same spot as an old medieval prison…”

“It wasn’t even a nice medieval prison,” George put in. “Other medieval prisons looked down on it, it was so foul. It was a place where anyone who’d displeased the sovereign was put away, and there weren’t too many rules about what happened to them after that. It had an unlucky history. It was burned down twice, and sacked during the Peasants’ Revolt, when a troop of soldiers was ambushed and put to the sword. In those days the whole region was marshy, an unhealthy tract of mud and tributaries of the Thames, and a fearsome breeding ground for disease. Lots of inmates died and their bodies were just chucked in the river. It was famous for its appalling overcrowding, too. By the end it was more of a hospital than a prison—most of the inmates were lepers and other outcasts with terrible diseases. The Tudor authorities drove them out and knocked the whole place down, and I don’t think anyone was too upset to see the last of the King’s Prison.”

We contemplated this. “So, not a good place to choose for a holiday break,” I said. “We get the message.”

“But a very good place,” Lockwood said, “to generate Visitors, though the question must remain why the store itself isn’t having any current trouble. That’s brilliant, George—well done. Well, we’ll have to go and check it out.” He smiled around at us. “And we’re going to need backup. If it’s even half the place George thinks it is, three of us certainly won’t be enough.”

I looked at him. “You’re saying you want Holly to come too, I suppose?”

“Be glad to,” Holly Munro said.

Lockwood hesitated. “Well, if you want to, Holly—why not? That’s a great idea, Luce. But actually I was thinking of a much bigger unit, so we can separate into smaller teams, cover ground more quickly. It’ll mean asking DEPRAC to loan us some agents—ten or twenty, maybe—but that won’t be a problem.” He pushed his chair back. “Holly, if you can stay and get our supplies ready, we’ll get cracking and see Barnes now.”

“You think he’ll play ball?” George asked.

“Barnes may be grumpy,” Lockwood said, “but when I show him your findings, he’ll act soon enough. He knows how good we are.” He winked at us. “Don’t worry. I know we have our differences, but there’s a lot of mutual respect there. If he hesitates, I’ll sweet-talk him. He won’t let us down.”

“That total and utter idiot,” Lockwood growled. “That mustachioed imbecile. That benighted, blinkered jobsworth. He’s a clown! A fraud! An oaf! I hate him.”

“How’s the mutual respect thing going?” George said.

We were in Sloane Square, outside the Chelsea Working Men’s Club, in the heart of DEPRAC operations. Lockwood had gone inside to talk to Barnes; George and I were settled at a plastic table near the catering vans, and we were just tucking in to our first round of tea and hot dogs when Lockwood returned. Jaw clenched, cheeks flushed, he threw himself into a chair.

“He’s not interested,” he said. “He doesn’t want to know.”

George stared at him. “So what’s his take on Aickmere Brothers? What’s he think of my presentation?”

“Nothing. He didn’t even look at it.”

“He didn’t look at my lovely dotted maps?” George set his hot dog down. “How can he have a valid counterargument, then?”

“He doesn’t. Didn’t even look me in the eye. Basically he cut me off as soon as I told him the address. He said there’s another big push going on in central Chelsea tonight, and he can’t spare anyone to ‘fool around’ in the outlying areas. That’s a direct quote.”

“I’m surprised,” I said. “We know he’s a twit, but he’s normally a conscientious one.”

Lockwood drove his hands into his trouser pockets and stared balefully at the DEPRAC agents hurrying all around. “I’d have thought he would at least have heard me out. It’s not like I even mentioned George’s name, or did anything else stupid to annoy him. I don’t get it. This whole outbreak’s a disaster. He should be dying for any new idea we could come up with. As it is, we’re stymied. I just don’t see that we can go to Aickmere’s on our—” He gave a start, and shrank down in his chair. “Oh no…Don’t look now. It’s Kipps. I saw him skulking nearby when I was speaking to Barnes. He must have heard the whole thing.”

Sure enough, here was Quill Kipps, jeweled rapier glinting, mincing across the square in our direction. George and I glared at him as he drew near. Lockwood looked away.

Kipps halted. He did disdainful things with his eyebrows. “Well, that’s charming,” he said. “I’ve had warmer welcomes in newly opened tombs. Now, Tony…I happened to overhear what went on in there between you and Barnes—”

A muscle moved in Lockwood’s cheek. “Did you?”

“I heard him giving you the brush-off yet again.”

Lockwood moved a paper cup from one part of the table to the other.

“If you’re wondering why,” Kipps went on, “it’s because right now Barnes isn’t his own man. He’s got high-up people from Fittes and Rotwell who are advising him, and they keep telling him the center of the cluster’s in the heart of Chelsea. He’s got to do what he’s told. There’s no mystery about it. That’s how DEPRAC works.”

I frowned at him. “DEPRAC monitors the agencies. Not the other way around.”

Kipps’s thin face quivered with amusement. “Do you think so? You’re so adorable, Carlyle.”

“And so you’ve come to crow about it,” Lockwood said.

“Well, yes—but also to see whether you wanted any extra personnel for your investigation.”

There was a pause in which the three of us sat frowningly, trying to decipher the insult hidden in this statement. We couldn’t find one, which made us frown all the more. Lockwood picked up the cup and moved it back to its original position. “You’re offering to help us?”

Kipps winced as if he’d just found something disagreeable stuck to the bottom of his shoe. “Not quite. I’m offering to take part. It would be me, Kate Godwin, and Bobby Vernon. You know my team.”

Lockwood stared. “I thought you were working for Barnes.”

“Not any longer. I’ve applied to transfer to other duties.”

“Because—”

“May I?” Kipps took a chair, folded himself in to it. He glanced back at the King’s Road barriers. “No matter what Barnes says, no one has a clue what’s going on in there. It’s a free-for-all, chaos every night, and it’s already cost me the life of one agent. It’s not going to cost me another. Nor do I want to sit quietly back, doing nothing. If you’ve got a worthwhile lead, I’ll work on it with you. That’s all.”

George, Lockwood, and I sat silent. It isn’t often we’re all lost for words, but it happened now. I kept alternating between staring at a pool of spilled coffee on the tabletop and glancing at Kipps. Ordinarily the coffee would have interested me more. Now I couldn’t help returning to our rival: to his oiled-back hair, his too-tight trousers and flawless jacket, the look-at-me jeweled pommel of his sword. Clearly his proposal was absurd. Of course it was. And yet…

“Well, it’s good of you,” Lockwood said, “but I’m sorry. It wouldn’t work. Teams have to work seamlessly, with absolute trust between agents. You can’t have endless bickering, and—Yes, George?”

George had raised a hand. “Surely a bit of bickering’s all right, now and again.”

“Hardly.”

“We do it.”

“No, actually we don’t. At least not very often. Or not at the key moments…Look, will you just shut up? I’ve forgotten what I was saying.” Lockwood ruffled his hair distractedly. “The point really is that bad things happen to disjointed teams. It’s dangerous out there.”

“Bad things can happen to any team,” Kipps said, after a silence. “As for the dangers, I can assure you I’m well aware of them.”

Lockwood held his gaze a moment. “Yes, of course you are,” he said. “I’m sorry. Look, it’s a kind offer, and I appreciate it, but I don’t think it would work.”

“I somehow didn’t think you would,” Kipps said. He stood. “Good day to you.”

He began to stalk away.

“Lockwood—” George began.

“Wait!” And that was me, pushing my chair back, standing up and glaring down at Lockwood. Why did I do it? On any other occasion I’d just have sat there, quietly going along with him. Not now. Not, somehow, after the previous night. A tension rose up inside me, needing to find expression, needing to get out. In part I just wanted to do something—to throw myself into a job that wasn’t merely the usual grind. I knew Holly had a host of new cases ready; I knew we’d be splitting up to deal with them. This was different: bigger, odder, perhaps more dangerous, and I didn’t want Lockwood’s pride preventing us from giving it a go.

And that was the other thing: his pride. It was a fundamental part of him, just like his ability to close off from me, from others, from common sense. I couldn’t challenge him about his sister or his past, but I could challenge him on this.

“I think we should take Kipps up on his offer,” I said. “There are people dying out there, Lockwood, and we can’t stand back from it. We need to act. We need to engage, even if that does mean making compromises. That department store is massive: even if we’re just doing a reconnaissance, we need a proper team. And Kipps’s team is good—we know that. If we have faith in George,” I said, “in all the work he’s done, we should do this. We owe it to him. More than that, we owe it to ourselves.”

Lockwood gazed at me. I suddenly felt very hot and red in the face. “I just don’t think we have any choice,” I said. I sat down hurriedly. George was doing the thing with the pool of coffee, alternating between staring at it and me. Kipps, displaying a sensitivity I wouldn’t have associated with him, stood a short way off, seemingly engrossed in the attempts of two tiny Bunce agents to carry a massive sack of iron filings out of a nearby tent store. All around us rushed the DEPRAC staff and agents on their busy, busy errands; the noise of the square cocooned us. Lockwood just gazed at me. I waited to hear what he would say.