Lockwood & Co: The Screaming Staircase

4

Ever since Marissa Fittes and Tom Rotwell conducted their celebrated investigations, way back in the first years of the Problem, finding the Source of a haunting has been central to every agent’s job. Yes, we do other stuff as well: we help create defences for worried households and we advise individuals on their personal protection. We can rig up salt traps in gardens, lay iron strips on thresholds, hang wards above cradles, and stock you with any number of lavender sticks, ghost-lights and other day-to-day items of security. But the essence of our role, the reason for our being, is always the same: to locate the specific place or object connected to a particular member of the restless dead.

No one really knows how these ‘Sources’ function. Some claim the Visitors are actually contained within them, others that they mark points where the boundary between worlds has been worn thin by violence or extreme emotion. Agents don’t have time to speculate either way. We’re too busy trying to avoid being ghost-touched to worry about philosophy.

As Lockwood said, a Source might be many things. The exact location of a crime, perhaps, or an object intimately connected to a sudden death, or maybe a prized possession of the Visitor when alive. Most often, though (73 per cent, according to research conducted by the Rotwell Institute), it’s associated with what the Fittes Manual calls ‘personal organic remains’. You can guess what that means. The point is, you never know until you look.

Which is what we were doing now.

Five minutes in, we’d almost stripped the central slab of wall. The paper was decades old, its glue dry and turned to dust. We could slip our knives under it and cut away great curls with ease. Some practically disintegrated in our hands; others flopped over our arms like giant folds of skin. The plaster of the wall beneath was pinkish-white and mottled, and speckled with orange-brown fragments of paste. It reminded me of breaded ham.

Lockwood took one of the lanterns and made a closer inspection, running his hand along the uneven surface. He moved the lantern at different heights and angles, watching the play of shadows on the wall.

‘There was a cavity here at some point,’ he said. ‘A big one. Someone’s filled it in. See how the plaster’s a different colour, Luce?’

‘I see it. Think we can break inside?’

‘Shouldn’t be too difficult.’ He hefted his crowbar. ‘Everything quiet?’

I glanced over my shoulder. Beyond the little circle of lantern-light, the rest of the room was invisible. We were an illuminated island in a sea of blackness. I listened and heard nothing, but there was a steadily mounting pressure in the silence: I could feel it building in my ear. ‘We’re OK for the moment,’ I said. ‘But it won’t last long.’

‘Better get on with it, then.’ His bar swung, crunched into the plaster. A shower of pieces cascaded to the floor.

Twenty minutes later the fronts of our clothes were spotted white, the toecaps of our boots smothered by the heap of fragments ranged beneath the wall. The hole we’d made was half my height and wide as a man. There was rough, dark wood behind it, studded with old nails.

‘Some kind of boards,’ Lockwood said. Sweat gleamed on his forehead; he spoke with forced carelessness. ‘The front of a box or cupboard or something. Looks like it fills the whole wall space, Lucy.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Mind the filings.’ He’d stepped back too far, kicking them out of position. That was what we had to focus on. Keep to the rules, keep ourselves safe. If we’d had the chains it wouldn’t have been so difficult, but filings were treacherous, their line easily broken. I crouched down, got the brush and, with small, methodical movements, began to fix the break. Above me, Lockwood took a deep breath. Then came the soft crack of his crowbar biting into wood.

With the line repaired, I scooped away several handfuls of plaster that threatened to spill over the barrier at the front. This done, I remained there, crouching, the fingertips of one hand pressed firmly on the floorboards. I stayed like that for a minute, maybe more.

When I got to my feet, Lockwood had done some damage to one of the planks, but hadn’t broken through. I tapped him on the arm.

‘What?’ He struck the wall again.

‘She’s back,’ I said.

The sounds had been so faint that at first it had merged into the noise we made, and it was only by the vibrations in the floor that I’d noticed it at all. But even as I spoke, they began to rise in volume: three quick impacts – the last a dreadful soft-hard thud – then silence, before the sequence started over. It was an endless loop, identical each time. The sound-memory of Mr Hope falling down the stairs.

I told Lockwood what I heard.

He nodded brusquely. ‘OK. Doesn’t change anything. Keep watch, and don’t let it unsettle you. That’s what she’s aiming for. She recognizes you’re the weak one.’

I blinked. ‘Sorry? What are you saying?’

‘Luce, this isn’t the time. I just mean emotionally.’

‘What? Like that’s any better.’

He took a deep breath. ‘All I’m saying is . . . is that your kind of Talent is much more sensitive than mine, but ironically that very sensitivity leaves you more exposed to supernatural influences, which in cases like this might be a problem. OK?’

I stared at him. ‘For a minute there I thought you’d been listening to George.’

‘Lucy, I’ve not been listening to George.’

We turned away from each other: Lockwood to the wall, me to face the room.

I drew my rapier, waited. The study was dark and still. Thud, thud . . . THUD went the echo in my ears.

A cracking sound told me Lockwood had the crowbar wedged between the boards. He was pushing sideways with all his strength. Wood creaked, black nails shifted.

Very slowly, one of our lanterns began to die. It flickered, faltered, became pale and small, as if something were crushing out its life. Even as it did so, the other lantern flared. The balance of light in the room shifted; our shadows swung oddly across the floor.

A gust of cold air blew through the study. I heard papers moving on the desk.

‘You’d think she’d want us to do this,’ Lockwood panted. ‘You’d think she’d want to be found.’

Out on the landing, a door banged.

‘Doesn’t seem so,’ I said.

Other doors slammed, elsewhere in the house, one after the other, seven in a row. I heard the distant sound of breaking glass.

‘Boring!’ Lockwood snarled. ‘You’ve done that! Try something else.’

There was a sudden silence.

‘How many times,’ I said, ‘have I told you not to taunt them? It never ends well.’

‘Well, she was repeating herself. Get a seal ready. We’re almost there.’

I bent down, rummaged in my bag. In the pockets we carry a wide range of products designed to neutralize any given Source. All are made of those key metals Visitors can’t abide: silver and iron. Shapes and decorations vary. There are boxes, tubes, nails and nets, pendants, bands and chains. Rotwell’s and Fittes have theirs specially stamped with their company logos, while Lockwood uses ones that are simple and unadorned. But the crucial thing is to select the right size for your Visitor, the minimum grade necessary to block its passage through.

I chose a chain-net, delicate but potent, made of tightly fused links of silver. It was still carefully folded; when shaken loose it could be draped over objects of considerable size, but for now I could clasp it in my palm. I stood up and checked on progress at the wall.

Lockwood had succeeded in forcing out one of the boards a little way. Behind it was a slender wedge of darkness. He heaved and strained, leaning back, grimacing with effort. His boots dug perilously close to our ridge of iron filings.

‘It’s coming,’ he said.

‘Good.’ I turned back to face the room.

Where the dead girl stood beside me, just beyond the iron line.

So clear was she, she might have been alive and breathing, gazing out upon a sunlit day. The cold, dim light shone full upon her face. I saw her as she must have been – once, long ago, before it happened. She was prettier than me, round-cheeked, small-nosed, with a full-lipped mouth and large, imploring eyes. She looked to be the kind of girl I’d always instinctively disliked – soft and silly, passive when it mattered and, when it didn’t, reliant on her charms to get her way. We stood there, head-to-head, her long hair blonde, my dark hair pale with plaster dust; she bare-legged in her little summer dress, me red-nosed and shivering in my skirt, leggings and padded parka. Without the iron line and what it represented, we might have reached out and touched each other’s faces. Who knows, perhaps that’s what she wanted. Perhaps that severance drove her rage. Her face was blank and without emotion, but the force of her fury broke against me like a wave.

I raised the folded chain-net in a kind of ironic salute. In answer, bitter air whipped out of the darkness, scouring my face, slapping my hair against my cheeks. It struck hard against the iron barrier, making the filings shift.

‘Could do with finishing this,’ I said.

Lockwood gave a gasp of effort. There was a crack as wood grains tore.

All across the study came a sudden rustling: magazines flipping open, books moving, dusty papers lifting off their piles like flocks of rising birds. My coat was pressed against me. Wind howled around the margins of the room. The ghost-girl’s hair and dress were motionless. She stood staring through me, like I was the one made of memory and air.

Beside my boots the filings began to drift and scatter.

‘Hurry it up,’ I said.

‘Got it! Give me the seal.’

I turned as quickly as I dared – the key thing now was not to cross the iron line – and offered him the folded net. Just as I did so, Lockwood gave a final heave upon the crowbar and the board gave way. It cracked across its width, near the bottom of our hole, and ruptured forward, carrying with it two others that were nailed to it by connecting spurs of wood. The crowbar slipped from its recess, and suddenly came free. Lockwood lost his balance; he fell sideways and would have tumbled right out of our circle, had I not lunged across to steady him.

We clung together for a moment, teetering above the filings. ‘Thanks, Luce,’ Lockwood said. ‘That was almost bad.’ He grinned. I nodded in relief.

At which point the broken boards fell out towards us, revealing the contents of the wall.

We’d known. Of course we’d known, but it was still a shock. And shocks that make you both jerk backwards are never the best when you’re already off-balance; when the two of you are already on the brink. So it was that I didn’t get much of a look inside the cavity before we toppled over together, arms locked, legs tangled, Lockwood above and me below, beyond the protection of the iron.

But I’d seen enough. Enough to have the image seared upon my mind.

She still had her blonde hair; that was the same, though so smirched with soot and dust, so choked up with cobwebs that it was impossible to tell where it finished or began. The rest was harder to recognize: a thing of bones, bared teeth and shrunken skin, dark and twisted as burned wood, and still propped snugly in the bed of bricks where it had rested maybe fifty years. The straps of the pretty summer dress hung loose upon the jutting bones. Orange-yellow sunflowers glinted dimly within a shroud of webs.

I hit the floor. The back of my head struck wood and the dark was seared by light. Then Lockwood’s weight drove down onto me. My breath burst through my mouth.

The brightness faded. My mind cleared, my eyes opened. I was lying on my back with the silver chain-net still clutched tightly in one hand. That was the good news.

I’d also dropped my rapier again.

Lockwood had already rolled off me and away. I rolled too, knelt back into a crouch, looked frantically for my blade.

What did I see instead? A mess of iron filings, scattered by our fall. Lockwood kneeling, head down, hair flopped forward, struggling to pull his sword clear of his long, heavy greatcoat.

And the ghost-girl, floating silently above him.

‘Lockwood!’ His head jerked up. His coat had got twisted tight beneath his knees, and was preventing access to his belt. He couldn’t free his sword in time.

The girl dropped low, trailing wreaths of other-light. Long pale hands stretched out towards his face.

I tore a canister from my belt and hurled it without a thought. It passed straight through the stooping shape and struck the wall behind. The glass tab broke; sheets of magnesium fire licked out and sliced across the girl, who vanished in billowing plumes of mist. Lockwood threw himself sideways, iron sparks flickering in his hair.

Greek Fire’s good stuff, no question. The mix of iron, magnesium and salt hits your Visitor three ways at once. Red-hot iron and salt cut through its substance, while the searing light of the ignited magnesium causes it intolerable pain. But (and here’s the snag) even though it burns out fast, it has a tendency to set other things on fire as well. Which is why the Fittes Manual advises against its use indoors, except in controlled conditions.

The present conditions involved a study filled with papers and a very vengeful Spectre. Would you call that even the slightest bit ‘controlled’?

Not really.

Something somewhere wailed with pain and fury. The wind in the study, which had perhaps died back a little, suddenly redoubled. Burning papers, ignited by the first surge from the canister, were plucked aloft, blown directly at my face. I batted them away, watched them whirl off, willed by something unseen. They blew in squalls across the room, landed on books and shelves, on desk and curtains, on curls of wallpaper, on bone-dry files and letters, on dusty cushions on the chair . . .

Like stars at dusk, hundreds of little fires winked into being, one after the other, high, low and all around.

Lockwood had risen to his feet, hair and coat both smoking. He flicked his coat aside. A flash of silver: the rapier was in his hand. His eyes were fixed past me on a shadowed corner of the room. Here, in the midst of whirling papers, a shape was starting to re-form.

‘Lucy!’ His voice was hard to make out against the howling wind. ‘Plan E! We follow Plan E!’

Plan E? What the devil was Plan E? Lockwood had so many. And it was hard to think straight with every other stack of magazines going up in flames, and those flames leaping higher, and the way back to the landing suddenly blocked by smoke and flaring light.

‘Lockwood!’ I cried. ‘The door—’

‘No time! I’ll draw her off! You do the Source!’

Oh yes. That was Plan E. Luring the Visitor away from where the crucial action was. And already Lockwood was dancing through the smoke, moving with insolent confidence towards the waiting shape. Burning fragments blew about his head; he ignored them, kept his rapier lowered at his side. He seemed unprotected. The girl made a sudden rush; Lockwood leaped back, rapier swinging up at the last minute to parry an outstretched spectral hand. Her long blonde hair, blending with the smoke, curled round at him from either side; he ducked and feinted, slicing the misty tendrils into nothing. His sword was a blur of movement. Safe behind its flashing steel, he steadily retreated, leading the ghost ever further from the chimney breast and the broken wall.

In other words, giving me my chance. I plunged forward, fighting against the raging wind. Air slammed into me, screaming with a human voice. Sparks spat against my face; the breath was driven from my lungs. Flames rose up on every side, reaching out as I passed by. The wrath of the air redoubled. I was slowed almost to a standstill, but ploughed my way onwards, step by step.

Beside the chimney the bookshelves had erupted into walls of flame; trails of racing fire ran like mercury along the floor. Ahead of me the plaster surface swam with orange light. The hole itself was a pool of darkness, the object inside it scarcely visible. Behind the veil of webs, I glimpsed its lip-less smile.

It’s never good to see such things directly. They distract you from the job. I shook the chain-net loose, held it trailing in my hand.

Nearer, nearer . . . step by step . . . Now I was close. Now I could have looked at her, if I’d chosen, but I kept my eyes averted from the face. I saw the little spiders clustering on the cobwebs, as they always do. I saw the bony neck, the flowery cotton dress gaping. I also saw a sudden glint of gold – something hanging beneath the throat.

A little golden chain.

I reached the hole, stood with the net held ready, amid the roar of the wind and fire. And just for a moment, I hesitated, staring at the delicate golden necklace that hung there in the dark. It ended in a pendant of some kind: I could just see it sparkling in the horrid gap between the dress and bony chest. Once, that girl’s living hands had fixed it around her neck, thinking to make herself look lovelier for the day. And still it hung there, decades later, and still it shone, though the flesh beneath was blackened, shrunken and dead.

A rush of pity filled my heart. ‘Who did this to you?’ I said.

‘Lucy!’ Lockwood’s cry rose above the howling wind. I turned my head; saw the ghost-girl rushing at me through the rising flames. The face was blank, the eyes bore into mine; her arms stretched out as if in greeting or embrace.

It wasn’t the type of embrace I fancied. Blindly, I thrust both hands in through the mess of cobwebs, sending the spiders racing. I sought to lower the net – but it had caught on a snag of wood in the mouth of the hole. The girl was almost upon me. I gave a frantic heave; the splinter broke. With a sob I draped the chain-net over the dry, soft, dusty hair. Iron-and-silver folds dropped down across the head and torso, encasing them as securely as a cage.

At once the girl’s momentum stalled; she was frozen in mid-air. A sigh, a moan, a shudder. Her hair fell forward and hid her face. Her other-light grew dim, dim, dimmer . . . Gone. She winked out of existence as if she’d never been.

And, with her, the force that filled the house went too. There was a sudden release of pressure. My ears popped. Wind died. The room was full of burning scraps of paper, drifting slowly to the floor.

Just like that. It’s what happens when you successfully neutralize a Source.

I took a deep breath, listened . . .

Yes. The house was quiet. The girl had gone.

Of course, when I say it was quiet, I only mean on a psychic level. Fires raged throughout the study. The floor was alight, smoke hid the ceiling. The piles of papers we’d dumped beside the door roared white, and the whole landing was aflame. There was no way out in that direction.

On the other side of the room, Lockwood waved urgently, pointing to the window.

I nodded. No time to waste. The house was going up. But first, almost without thinking, I turned back to the hole, reached under the net, and (closing my mind to what else I touched there) grasped the little gold necklace – that one uncorrupted reminder of what the living girl had been. When I pulled, the chain came free as easily as if it had been unclasped. I stuffed it all – chain and pendant, webs and dust – into the pocket of my coat. Then, turning, I zigzagged between the fires to the desk below the window.

Lockwood had already vaulted onto it, booting a stack of burning papers to the floor. He tried the window. No go – stiff or locked, it didn’t matter which. He kicked it open, splintering the latch. I jumped up beside him. For the first time in hours we breathed in fresh, wet, foggy air.

We knelt there on the windowsill, side by side. Around us, curtains hissed, went up in flames. Out in the garden our silhouettes crouched in a square of swirling light.

‘You all right?’ Lockwood said. ‘Something happen by the hole?’

‘No. Nothing. I’m fine.’ I smiled wanly at him. ‘Well, another case solved.’

‘Yes. Won’t Mrs Hope be pleased? True, her house will have burned down, but at least it’s ghost-free . . .’ He looked at me. ‘So . . .’

‘So . . .’ I peered over the sill, hunting vainly for the ground. It was too dark and too distant to be seen.

‘It’ll be fine,’ Lockwood said. ‘I’m almost sure there are some whopping bushes down there.’

‘Good.’

‘That and a concrete patio.’ He patted my arm. ‘Come on, Lucy. Turn and drop. It’s not like we have a choice.’

Well, he was right about that bit. When I glanced back into the room, the flames had spread across the floor. They’d already reached the chimney breast. The hole – and its contents – were being greedily consumed by tongues of fire. I gave a little sigh. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘If you say so.’

Lockwood grinned a sooty grin. ‘In six months, when have I ever let you down?’

I was just opening my mouth to start the list when the ceiling above the desk gave way. Burning spears of wood and chunks of plaster crashed down behind us. Something struck me on the back. It knocked me out and over the windowsill. Lockwood tried to grab me as I fell. He lost his balance; our hands snapped shut on air. We seemed to hang there for a moment, suspended together between heat and cold, between life and death – then we both toppled forward into the night, and there was nothing but rushing darkness all around.