Lockwood & Co: The Screaming Staircase

20

‘First things first,’ Lockwood said. ‘Wait here.’

He walked away across the lobby, boots tapping on the flagstones, under the gaze of the old lords and ladies of Combe Carey, to a small door beside the staircase. He opened the door and disappeared within. The door shut. There was a pause. George and I looked at each other. An oddly ceramic sound followed, then silence; then a toilet flushing. Lockwood emerged, wiping a hand on his greatcoat. He strolled back to us unhurriedly. ‘That’s better,’ he said. He was carrying a glistening wet packet under his arm.

‘What’s this?’ George asked.

Lockwood flourished the packet. ‘Seven of the strongest magnesium flares Satchell’s could provide,’ he said. ‘Strap them onto your belts as normal and off we go.’ He broke the tape seal around the bag and unfolded the wet plastic. When he tipped it, two bright silver canisters fell out onto his palm.

‘Lockwood . . .’ George began. ‘How did—’

‘You had the flares under your clothes!’ I cried. ‘You hid them when we arrived! While we were waiting outside with Starkins!’

He smiled; his teeth glinted dimly in the half-light. ‘That’s right. They were strapped to the lining of my coat. As soon as we got here I nipped to the loo and hid them in the cistern. Here you go, Lucy. Hold out your hands.’

I took comforting possession of the cylinders, and fixed them to my belt in their proper place. Lockwood tipped out two more and handed them to George.

‘I guessed Fairfax would frisk us, or check our kit eventually,’ he said, ‘and I wanted them stashed away and out of sight before that happened. I must admit, though, I didn’t think he’d have the cheek to rifle through our bags while we weren’t looking. But there you go, that’s a measure of the man he is.’

‘Why, what kind of a man is he?’ George said, staring at his canisters.

‘A dreadful one. Isn’t it obvious? And here are two for me . . .’

I shook my head, marvelling. ‘If Fairfax knew you’d done this . . .’

‘Ah, but he doesn’t.’ Lockwood wore his wolf-like smile. ‘And I’m not going to lose any sleep over deceiving him. He’s laid out the rules so far. This is where we start to adjust them in our favour.’

‘I’m not arguing, Lockwood,’ George said. ‘This is great work. But you know that if we set fire to so much as the leg of a Queen Anne chair, we won’t be getting the rest of our money. In fact Fairfax will probably sue us, like the Hopes did, so we’ll be right back where we started.’

‘Oh, he’d sue us, all right,’ Lockwood agreed. ‘But who cares? This Greek Fire might well save our lives. Remember what happened to the last group of agents who spent the night here? No one’s finding us stone-dead on the floor. Which brings me to my last little purchase yesterday . . .’

He tapped the upturned packet. Out rolled a seventh cylinder, slightly larger than the rest. Like the others, it had the Sunrise Corporation’s rising sun logo stamped on its side, but the paper wrapper was dark red instead of white. It had a long fuse at one end.

‘New type of flare,’ Lockwood said, fixing it beside the other canisters on his belt. ‘The guy at Satchell’s said Fittes and Rotwell agents have begun using them on cluster cases – Blitz victims, plague sites and so on. It sends out a broad blast-wave of silver, iron and magnesium. We’ll have to be well away when it goes up, because it’s industrial strength, apparently. I hope so; it cost enough. Now – where can I hide this rubbish?’ He crumpled up the wet packet, and stuffed it inside the opening of Fairfax’s Han vase. ‘Good,’ he said briskly. ‘Let’s get to work.’

We chose the library as our base of operations. It was close both to the main exit and to the door connecting to the safer wing, and its profusion of iron chairs would likely dampen Visitor activity. We dragged our bags inside and set up an electric lantern on one table. Lockwood turned it down low.

‘Well, we’ve had a quick look round already,’ he said. ‘Any thoughts?’

‘The whole place is heaving with them,’ I said.

George nodded. ‘Particularly?’

‘The corridor near the Red Room?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Did you hear anything, Lucy?’

‘In that corridor? A lot of whispering. It was too quiet to make out any of the words, but the voices were . . . wicked, I think. Everywhere else, just silence. But it’s a silence that I know is going to break as the night goes on.’ I gave an apologetic smile. ‘Sorry, that doesn’t make much sense, does it?’

Lockwood nodded. ‘Actually, it does. It’s just the same with me. I can sense death-glows everywhere, but I can’t quite see them yet. What about you, George?’

‘I’m not as tuned in as you two,’ he said, ‘but one thing I have noticed.’ He unclipped his thermometer and held the reading towards us. ‘When we were in the library, with Fairfax, the temperature was sixteen degrees. It’s down to thirteen now. That’s dropping fast.’

‘It’ll go a lot lower yet,’ Lockwood said. ‘All right, we’ll be systematic. We’ll map temperatures and record sensations. Ground floor first, including the staircase – then the cellars. Then we’ll take a break. After that: the other floors. The night’s long, and it’s a big house. We stick together at all times. No one wanders off alone. For any reason. If you need to take a leak, we all go. Simple as that.’

‘No more tea for me, then,’ I said.

I was right. The place was heaving with them. And it wasn’t long before the ghosts began to show themselves.

Thanks to the iron furniture, the library – where we started – had relatively few paranormal traces. But even here, with the lantern briefly switched off and us standing in darkness, we started to notice little flecks and threads of light darting across our vision. They were too faint and fleeting to build into a true manifestation, but they were plasmic traces all the same. Following the traditional Fittes technique, George took temperature readings in all four corners and in the centre of the room. He noted them carefully on his floor-plan. I stood guard with the rapier while he did so; Lockwood and I then used our Talents to check sensations. We didn’t pick up much. The silence blanketed my ears. Lockwood reported some faint illuminations that he guessed were ancient death-glows. He seemed more interested in the cheesy theatrical photos on the wall.

In the lobby, George’s readings gave an average of eleven degrees. The flecks of plasm were noticeably stronger now, shooting around us like fireflies in the dark. Here too came the first glimpse of green-white ghost-fog, a haze so subtle that trying to focus on it hurt your eyes. It clung close to the floor and built slowly in the margins of the room.

And now the other phenomena began to gather pace. When I concentrated, I began to hear a low-lying crackling sound, like radio static, at the far edge of perception. It died and swelled repeatedly, forever threatening to cohere into meaningful noise, but never quite doing so. For some reason its obscurity disturbed me. I did my best to shut it out.

Meanwhile Lockwood had detected three death-glows in the lobby, each one disconcertingly bright.

‘Recent, you think?’ I said.

He took off his sunglasses and clipped them to his coat. ‘Or a record of an old but horribly traumatic event. Impossible to say.’

The great staircase itself provided surprisingly low-key readings. Its temperature (George made measurements on several steps, then took the average) was no different from the lobby. I detected no variation in the underlying sounds there, and certainly no screaming. When (rather tentatively) I touched its stonework and sought psychic impressions, I got nothing except a sensation of strong unease, which – speaking frankly – I was already feeling anyway.

In the Long Gallery the far wall was lost in shadows and the air was chill. The roaring fire in the grate had shrunk down to a single palsied flame; it shook and quivered, but never quite went out. George consulted the thermometer again. ‘Eight degrees,’ he said, ‘and falling.’

‘I’m starting to detect malaise,’ I said. ‘Anyone else pick that up?’

They nodded. Yes, it was starting. That old familiar drooping of the spirits, that leaden weight pressing cruelly on your heart, so that all you wanted to do was curl up in a ball and close your eyes . . .

We drew close, hands on rapiers, and walked together down the room.

The feelings of despair grew stronger as we proceeded, past the tea table and the fireplace, towards the faded tapestry at the far end of the gallery. The temperature dropped fast. Ghost-fog drifted at our ankles and lapped against the sofas. And now, when we looked back, the first true apparitions came into view, dim figures standing in the centre of the lobby.

By the peculiar rule of weak Type Ones, they were clearest when viewed out of the corner of your eyes, granular notches of grey and black that flickered briefly and melted into nothing. Two were child-size, one was adult: aside from that you couldn’t tell anything about them.

Ignoring them as best we could, we took turns standing guard while we did our readings at the furthest wall. It was noticeably colder here. Lockwood raised a corner of the tapestry and looked beneath it.

‘I wondered about that too,’ George said. ‘Anything?’

Lockwood let the tapestry drop. ‘Just stone. This is a cold spot, though.’

‘Yeah. Six degrees, going on five. OK, we’re done here. Let’s keep going.’

By the time we’d finished with the ground floor and arrived back at the staircase, we’d been exposed to a whole range of sinister mists, sounds and odours, not all of them courtesy of George. Nowhere else had proved to be quite as chilly as the Long Gallery, or so baleful in atmosphere, but supernatural phenomena extended throughout the wing. The malignant static noise had grown louder. Several other death-glows had been mapped. Apparitions were frequent. They never came close to us, but always materialized at the far ends of corridors, in places we’d just been, or were just about to go to. Their details could not be picked out, though some were clearly children. The impression they gave was typical of your standard Type Ones: unresponsive, unaggressive, just a little sad.

‘They’re the small stuff,’ George said as, with the frail orb of Lockwood’s candle out in front, we descended the narrow cellar stairs. ‘Shades, Lurkers, Hazes . . . They’re just the outlying manifestations that have gathered around the original, deeper haunting. Nothing we’ve seen so far is the Source itself, or even close to it, except maybe the cold spot by the tapestry. And you know what room that’s directly under, don’t you?’

I didn’t answer. None of us had mentioned the Red Room for over an hour, even though it was clear to all where our investigation was likely to lead.

It was pitch-black in the cellars and there was a nasty draught. The candle blew out almost immediately and we had to resort to electric torches. The beams picked out a spreading complex of vaulted passageways, grey stones, ancient pillars, and an unevenly flagstoned floor across which the ghost-fog curled. Some of the alcoves were filled with broken casks and empty racks once used for storing wine; the rest contained firewood, lumber, spiders’ webs and rats. As we scuffed our way ever further in, the cobwebs grew thicker and the ghost-fog brighter. The temperature kept going down.

The last room ended in a blank stone wall.

‘Same pattern as above,’ George said, scribbling on his map while I held the torch. Lockwood stood beside us with the rapier. ‘We’re directly below the far end of the Long Gallery, and again we’ve hit a cold spot. It’s five degrees here too: that’s the coldest reading in the cellars. Look at the webs up there . . . There’s something about this wall that— Ow!’

Lockwood had shoved us aside. He sliced frantically downward with his rapier. The tip struck the stonework of the end wall; yellow sparks ignited in the dark.

He gave a curse. ‘Missed!’ he snarled. ‘It’s gone.’

I had my sword out; George, overbalanced by his rucksack and chain, had capsized on the flagstones. Both of us stared wildly all around. My torchlight spun in crazy circles. It was like we were surrounded by a thin grey hoop of rushing stone.

‘What was it?’ I said. ‘Lockwood—’

He brushed his hair out of his eyes, breathing hard. ‘Didn’t you see?’

‘No.’

‘It was there. Standing right beside you. God, it was quick.’

‘Lockwood . . .’

‘A man – swimming out of the dark beside the wall. Just a face and hand. It was like he was reaching out to grab you, Lucy. It was a monk, I think. The top of his head was bald. His hair was cut in one of those tonsil things.’

‘Tonsure,’ George said, from the floor.

‘Tonsil, tonsure, whatever. I didn’t like his face.’

We returned upstairs. A few coils of ghost-fog had penetrated a little distance into the library, but the lantern still gleamed strongly and the apparitions had been kept at bay. Lockwood turned the light up a little. We took off our loops of iron chain to give our backs a rest, laid our flasks and rations out on Fairfax’s reading desks, and sat together in silence. It was a little after ten p.m.

For some while I’d been conscious of a cold weight pressing on my chest, and I took the opportunity of pulling the silver-glass case out from beneath my coat. A faint blue gleam shone from within: the first time I’d seen the ghost-girl’s locket give a spectral glow. Clearly her spirit was still active. Perhaps she was responding to the strength of Visitor activity all around; perhaps there was some other reason for the light. When it came to Visitors, it was all guesswork. Even after fifty years, there was so much we didn’t know.

George had his floor-plans spread out on his ample knee; with his pencil he tapped an irritating rhythm on his teeth as he considered our annotations. Lockwood finished his biscuits; torch in hand, he got up to inspect the bookshelves. Out in the lobby a solitary ghost stood shrouded in the darkness, flickered suddenly and was gone.

‘Got it,’ George said.

I tucked the glass case out of sight. ‘Got what?’

‘The Source. I know where it is.’

‘I think we can all guess that,’ I said. ‘The Red Room.’ It was time someone brought it up. After we’d rested we were due to go upstairs.

‘Possibly,’ George said. ‘And possibly not.’ He had his glasses off, so he could rub his tired eyes. Now he put them back on. It’s a curious thing with George. With his glasses off, his eyes look small and weak – blinky and a bit baffled, like an unintelligent sheep that’s taken a wrong turn. But put them on again, and they go all sharp and steely, more like the eyes of an eagle that eats dumb sheep for breakfast. They did that now. ‘Something’s just occurred to me,’ he said. ‘It’s been staring us in the face in these old floor-plans all this time. But our readings confirm it, I think. Look here . . .’

He positioned the two plans together on the table.

‘Here’s the old sketch of the priory ruins,’ he said, ‘done in medieval times. Here’s the refectory, which becomes the Long Gallery. Upstairs, these rooms here are the monks’ dormitories. Many of them have gone, but this one still exists – it’s now known as the Red Room.’

‘Lockwood,’ I said suddenly, ‘are you listening to this?’

‘Mm. Yes . . .’ Lockwood was standing by Fairfax’s wall of photographs. He’d got a large book from the shelves and was flipping through it idly.

‘The medieval sketch,’ George went on, ‘shows passages beyond the Red Room, and beyond the Long Gallery too, which have since been knocked down. They led to a series of rooms on both levels – more dormitories perhaps, or stores, or chapels for praying in. There was probably an extension on the cellar level too – I don’t know, that’s not shown on the plans. But when you look at the nineteenth-century floor-plan, those extra areas are gone. It shows the wing as it ends today – with that big stone wall, where the cold spots are.’

‘It’s a very sturdy wall, isn’t it?’ I said.

‘It’s a very thick wall,’ George said. ‘And that’s the point. It’s much thicker than the wall shown on the original plan. It extends out across where those earlier passages were.’

A tremor of excitement, like a little electric surge, ran through my chest and prickled the muscles of my arms. ‘You think . . .’

His glasses glinted. ‘Yeah. I think we’re talking secret rooms.’

‘So . . . when the rest was destroyed, they might have sealed up some of the connecting passages? I guess it’s possible. What do you say, Lockwood?’

No answer. When I looked back, Lockwood had taken several other volumes from the shelves and was deeply engrossed in them. He had his back to us, his thermos balanced on the stack of books. As I watched, he took a leisurely sip of tea.

‘Lockwood! What the hell are you doing?’

He turned; his eyes had that same detached look I’d noticed before during the past few days. It was like he was seeing something far away. ‘Sorry, Lucy. Did you speak?’

‘It was more of a yell. What are you doing? George is on to something here.’

‘Is he? Excellent . . . I was just looking through Fairfax’s scrapbooks. He’s kept a record of all the plays he acted in when he was young: programmes, tickets, reviews . . . that sort of thing. It’s fascinating. He was quite the actor, once upon a time.’

I stared at him. ‘Who cares? Why is that relevant? What’s it got to do with us finding the Source?’

‘Nothing . . . I’m just trying to put my finger on something. It’s close, but it keeps slipping out of reach . . .’ A switch flicked in him; his face cleared. ‘And you’re right – it’s not the priority quite yet.’ He bounded over, sat down next to us, gave George a friendly slap on the back. ‘You were saying, George? Secret rooms in the far wall?’

‘Rooms or passages, yes.’ George adjusted his spectacles; he spoke quickly. ‘You remember Fairfax’s story about the doomed Fittes expedition thirty years ago? That settles it for me. Two agents were found dead in the Red Room. The third one – the boy – vanished. Far as we know, ghosts don’t eat their victims. So where is he?’ He prodded the floor-plan with a stubby finger. ‘Here. Somewhere in that unusually thick end wall. He found the entrance and went inside. A Visitor – perhaps the Visitor at the heart of all this – got him. He never returned. He’s in there still, and I’ll bet you three of Arif’s best chocolate doughnuts that’s where the Source is too.’

We sat looking at the plan in our little pool of lantern-light, the sea of ghost-fog lapping at its fringes. Lockwood had his head bowed, hands pressed tight together. He was deep in thought.

‘OK,’ he said at last, ‘I’ve something important to say.’

‘It’s not about Fairfax’s scrapbooks again, is it?’ I said.

‘No. Listen. George, as usual, has got it right. The Combe Carey Source is probably hidden in that wall. To find it we’d have to find the entrance, and that’s almost certainly in the Red Room. Now, some of the stories about the Hall might be bunkum – I don’t think there’s anything in that Screaming Staircase yarn, for instance – but the Red Room is clearly different. We all felt the atmosphere outside that door. It would be no small thing to go inside.’ He looked up, surveyed us each in turn. ‘But we don’t have to. Fairfax said so himself. We don’t have to go into that room. Just by turning up here this evening, we’ve earned the money to pay off the damages caused by the Sheen Road fire. Fairfax has already paid – I checked with the bank when we arrived. Sure, we can get more if we track down the Source, but that’s not essential. The company will survive without it.’

‘Will it, though?’ George said. ‘Exactly how many more cases are you expecting to get, Lockwood? Apart from Fairfax’s surprise offer, our reputation’s up in flames.’

Lockwood didn’t try to deny it. ‘Like I keep saying,’ he said quietly, ‘we need a big success to turn it all around. Solving the Annie Ward murder would do it, of course, and we’re close there, thanks to Lucy. But . . . it’s not guaranteed.’ He sighed. ‘I can’t quite make the final jump. As for finding the Source here – well, that’s certainly another option. But it’s a risky one. Whatever’s hidden in this place is frighteningly strong.’ He sat back and smiled – and this time it wasn’t the full megawatt version, the one you obeyed despite yourself; just a warm, companionable grin. ‘You know me,’ he said. ‘I think we’d be a match for it. But I’m not going to impose that belief on you. If you want to steer clear, that’s fine. I leave it up to you.’

George and I looked at each other. I waited for him to speak; he waited for me. And in my head the crackling ghostly static died away, as if the thing that controlled the house awaited my decision too.

Before that evening? I might have held back. I’d chosen wrongly too many times in crisis situations to fully trust my instincts now. But since stepping through the door, and particularly since we’d begun our explorations, my confidence had slowly risen. We’d worked well together; better than ever before. We’d been careful, rigorous, even competent . . . It showed me what Lockwood & Co. might one day become. This wasn’t something I wanted to give up lightly. I took a deep breath.

‘I vote we take a quick look,’ I said, ‘providing we keep an avenue of retreat open behind us. If things go bad, we leave and get out of the building as quickly as possible.’

Lockwood nodded. ‘Fair enough. And George?’

George puffed out his ample cheeks. ‘Amazingly, Lucy’s talked some sense for once. I feel exactly the same way. Provided’ – he patted the cylinders at his belt – ‘we’re allowed to use all our weapons if we have to.’

‘That’s settled, then,’ Lockwood said quietly. ‘Gather up the bags, and let’s go.’

Now we’d made the decision, we didn’t hang around – but we weren’t reckless, either. We made cautious progress up the stairs, always watching and listening a few steps ahead. As before, the phantoms kept their distance, but the ghost-fog billowed around our knees. Lockwood saw death-glows on the landing and beyond the bedroom doors. For my part the towering silence was back: it pressed tightly against my temples. The air felt thick and syrupy. The cloying sickly-sweet smell followed us from the landing.

Outside the defaced door the whispering had died away. When I looked back along the passage, I could sense the apparitions clustering beyond the fringes of the torchlight.

‘It’s like they’re waiting,’ I muttered. ‘It’s like they’re waiting for us to go in.’

‘Who’s got the mints?’ George said. ‘I just know we’re going to need the mints in there.’

Lockwood took the key from his pocket and put it in the lock. ‘Turns easily,’ he said. There was a single solid click. ‘OK, that’s done. Here we go. Like Lucy said, we take a quick look, and that’s all.’

George nodded. I did my best to smile.

‘Don’t worry,’ Lockwood said. ‘It’ll be fine.’

Then he took hold of the handle and pushed, and the horror of the night began.