Lockwood & Co: The Whispering Skull

16

Let’s just freeze-frame that scene a moment: me, standing by the oven, staring at the jar. The ghost grinning back at me. Lockwood staring, George staring. Four sets of goggle-eyes, four mouths hanging open. OK, the face in the jar is still the most disgusting, but for a second it was a close-run thing. It was also precisely what I’d been hoping for all those long, frustrating months: my moment of vindication.

‘It’s talking!’ I gasped. ‘I can hear it! It’s just been talking now!’

‘Right now?’ This was George or Lockwood – one of them, both of them, I couldn’t tell. They clustered at my side.

‘Not just that! It claims it knows about Bickerstaff. It says it was there! That it knows how he died!’

‘It says what?’ Lockwood’s face was pale and intense; his eyes glittered. He brushed past me, bent beside the oven. The greenish radiance fell upon him as he stared into the jar. The face glared hideously back. ‘No. That’s impossible . . .’

‘You’re not the only one to have secrets,’ the ghost said.

Lockwood looked at me. ‘Did it speak? I couldn’t hear the words, but I felt . . . something. A connection of some kind. My skin just crawled. What did it say to you?’

I cleared my throat. ‘It said . . . it said you’re not the only one to have secrets. Sorry.’

He stared at me; for a moment I thought he was going to get angry. Instead he sprang upright with sudden energy. ‘Let’s get it out onto the table,’ he said. ‘Quick, give me a hand here, George.’

Together they wrestled it free. As George took hold of the jar, the ghost’s face adopted a series of repulsive grimaces, each more menacing than the last.

‘Torturer . . .’ it whispered. ‘I’ll suck the life from your bones.’

‘Something else?’ Again Lockwood had caught the psychic disturbance, but none of the details.

‘It . . . well, it doesn’t like George, basically.’

‘And who can blame it? Clear a place, Luce – that’s it, shove the plates aside. Right, George, set it down there. That’s fine.’

We stood back, looked at the ghost-jar. The plasm foamed this way and that, a violent green storm contained within the walls of glass. And the face was riding upon it, sliding up and down, rotating, sometimes spinning upside-down, but always fixing us with its horrid gaze. Its eyes were notches in the smoke, its nose a billowing spout. The lips were horizontal twists of rushing substance that split, drew apart, re-joined. They moved continuously. I heard the spectral laughter again, muffled and distorted, as if the sound came from deep underwater and I was helplessly dropping down to join it. My stomach turned.

‘You think we can talk to it?’ Lockwood said. ‘Ask it questions?’

I took a deep breath. ‘I don’t know. It’s never done anything like this before.’

‘We’ve got to try.’ George’s body was rigid with excitement; he bent close to the glass, blinking through his spectacles at the face, which in response turned its eyeballs inside out, perhaps as a gesture of disdain. ‘Lucy,’ he said. ‘Do you know how remarkable you are? You’re the first person since Marissa Fittes to categorically discover a Type Three. This is sensational. We have to communicate with it. Who knows what we might learn – about the secrets of Death, about the Other Side . . .’

‘And about Bickerstaff too,’ I said. ‘Assuming it’s not lying.’

Lockwood nodded. ‘Which it almost certainly is.’

The face in the jar gaped in mock outrage. In my ear came a sibilant whisper: ‘Oh, that’s rich, coming from you.’

‘Lucy?’ Again Lockwood sensed the contact. George hadn’t felt a thing.

‘It said: “That’s rich coming from you.”’ I beckoned to them both. ‘Listen, can I have a word?’

We retreated to the other side of the room, out of earshot of the jar.

‘If we’re going to talk to it we have to be on our guard,’ I breathed. ‘No getting snippy with each other. It’ll try to cause trouble. I know it will. It’ll be rude to you both, like it was before. You’ll hear the words from my mouth, but remember I’m not the one insulting you.’

Lockwood nodded. ‘Fine. We’ll be careful.’

‘Like if it calls George “fat” again.’

‘Right.’

‘Or Specky Four-Eyes or something.’

‘OK, OK.’ George scowled. ‘Thank you. We get the point.’

‘Just don’t get mad at me. Are we ready, then? Let’s go.’

The room was dark – the lamps on the worktops turned down low, the blinds closed fast against the coming dawn. The kitchen units rose like columns in the shadows, and through the air came drifting scents of the night’s horror: iron, salt, the taint of blood. Green light spilled across the room. At its centre, on the kitchen table, the ghost-jar sat like a terrible idol on an altar, glowing with spectral force. Swirling ichor pulsed and flowed within it, but the hideous face with its sightless eyes hung motionless beneath the glass.

George had found some salt-and-vinegar crisps and tossed us each a packet. We assembled ourselves in chairs around the table.

Lockwood was calm, impassive, hands quietly folded in his lap. He surveyed the ghost-jar with a cool and sceptical gaze. George carried his notebook; he sat forward, almost doubled over in his eagerness. Me? As usual, I tried to follow Lockwood’s lead, but it was tough. My heart was going too fast.

What had Marissa Fittes recommended in such circumstances? Be polite. Be calm. Be wary. Spirits were deceitful, dangerous and guileful, and they did not have our interests at heart. I could vouch for that. I cast a sidelong look at Lockwood. The last time this ghost had spoken, it had succeeded in driving all kinds of silly doubts into my mind. And now we were planning to talk to it together? It suddenly struck me what a perilous thing this was to do.

Marissa Fittes had also warned that prolonged communication with Visitors might drive a person mad.

‘Hello, spirit,’ I said.

The eyes opened. The ghost in the jar gazed out at me.

‘Do you wish to speak to us?’

‘Aren’t we polite?’ the voice whispered. ‘What, not planning to roast me at a hundred degrees today?’

I repeated this word for word. ‘One hundred and fifty degrees, actually,’ George said cheerfully. He was scribbling the response down.

The ghost’s eyes flicked in his direction; to my ears came a sound like a hungry champing of teeth.

‘On behalf of Lockwood and Company,’ Lockwood said, ‘I humbly apologize for such discourtesy and welcome the opportunity to talk with a Visitor from the Other Side. Say that to it, Luce.’

I knew perfectly well that the ghost could hear Lockwood just as well as me. It was the open valve in the jar’s bung that did it: somehow, sound could pass right through. Still, I was the official intermediary. I opened my mouth to speak – but before I could do so, the ghost gave its response. It was brief, pungent, and to the point.

I passed it on.

Lockwood started. ‘Charming! Hold on – was that from you or the ghost?’

‘The ghost, of course.’

George whistled. ‘I’m not sure I should write that down.’

‘There’s no use being polite,’ I said. ‘Trust me. It’s a foul thing and there’s no point pretending otherwise. So you knew Bickerstaff, did you?’ I said to the jar. ‘Why should we believe you?’

‘Yes,’ the whisper came. ‘I knew him.’

‘He says he knew him. How? You were his friend?’

‘He was my master.’

‘He was his master.’

‘Like Lockwood is yours.’

‘Like . . .’ I halted. ‘Well, that’s not worth reporting, either.’

‘Come on, Luce,’ Lockwood said. ‘Spit it out.’

George’s pencil was hovering. ‘Yeah, got to record it all.’

‘Like Lockwood is my master. Happy now? I mean, this skull’s an idiot.’ I scowled over at them; Lockwood was scratching his nose as if he hadn’t heard, but George was grinning as he wrote. ‘George,’ I said tartly, ‘just remind me. What were the names of Bickerstaff’s companions? Simon Wilberforce and . . .’

‘Dulac. Mary Dulac.’

‘Spirit! Are you Mary Dulac? Or Simon Wilberforce? What is your name?’

A sudden burst of psychic energy made me jerk back in my chair. The plasm frothed; green light coursed around the room. The mouth contorted.

‘You think I might be a girl?’ the voice spat. ‘What a cheek. No! I’m neither of those fools.’

‘Neither of those fools, apparently,’ I said. ‘Then who?’

I waited. The voice was silent. In the jar, the apparition had become less distinct, the outlines of the face fainter; they merged with the swirling plasm.

George took a handful of crisps. ‘If it’s gone shy all of a sudden, ask it about the bone glass, about what Bickerstaff was doing. That’s the important thing.’

‘Yes. For instance, was he actually a grave-robber?’ Lockwood said. ‘If so, why? And how exactly did he die?’

I rubbed my face with my hands. ‘Give me a chance. I can’t ask all that. Let’s take it one step at a—’

‘No!’ The voice was urgent, intimate, as if whispering directly into my ear. ‘Bickerstaff was no grave-robber! He was a great man. A visionary! He came to a sad end.’

‘What end? The rats?’

‘Hold it, Lucy . . .’ Lockwood touched my arm. ‘We didn’t hear what it said.’

‘Oh, sorry. He was a great man who came to a sad end.’

‘I said he was a visionary too. You forgot that bit.’

‘Oh yeah. And a visionary. Sorry.’ I blinked in annoyance, then glared at the skull. ‘Why am I apologizing to you? You’re making some pretty big claims about a man who kept sacks of human bones in his basement.’

‘Not in his basement. In a workroom behind a secret wall.’

‘It wasn’t his basement. It was a workroom behind a secret wall . . .’ I looked at the others. ‘Did we know that?’

‘Yes,’ Lockwood said. ‘We did. It overheard George telling us that earlier this evening. It’s giving us nothing new or original, in other words. It’s making all this up.’

‘You know that the door on Lockwood’s landing is lined with iron strips,’ the voice said suddenly. ‘On the inside. Why do you think that is, Lucy? What do you think he’s got in there?’

There was a silence, in which I felt a rush of blood to my ears, and the room seemed to tilt. I noticed Lockwood and George watching me expectantly.

‘Nothing,’ I said hastily. ‘It didn’t say anything then.’

‘Ooh, you little liar. Go on, tell them what I said.’

I kept silent. The ghost’s laughter rang in my ears.

‘Seems we’re all at it now, aren’t we?’ the whispering voice said. ‘Well, believe me or not as you please, but yes, I saw the bone glass, though I never saw it used. The master wouldn’t show me. It wasn’t for my eyes, he said. I wept, for it was a wonderful thing.’

I repeated this to the others as best I could; it was hard, for the voice had grown soft and wistful, and was difficult to hear.

‘All very well,’ Lockwood said, ‘but what does the bone glass do?’

‘It gives knowledge,’ the voice said. ‘It gives enlightenment. Ah, but I could have spied on him. I knew where he kept his precious notes, hidden under the floorboards of his study. See how I held the key to his secrets in my hand? I could have learned them all. But he was a great man. He trusted me. I was tempted but I never looked.’ The eyes glinted at me from the depths of the jar. ‘You know all about that too – don’t you, Lucy?’

I didn’t repeat that last bit; it was all I could do to remember the rest without getting distracted by unnecessary details.

‘He was a great man,’ the ghost said softly. ‘And his legacy is with you today, though you’re too blind to see it. All of you, too blind . . .’

‘Ask him his name again,’ Lockwood said, when I’d reported this. ‘All this counts for nothing unless we get some concrete details.’

I asked the question. No answer came, and the pressure in my mind felt suddenly less acute. The face in the jar was scarcely detectable. The plasm moved more sluggishly, and the spectral light was fading.

‘It’s going,’ I said.

‘Its name,’ Lockwood said again.

‘No,’ George said. ‘Ask him about the Other Side! Quick, Luce—’

‘Too blind . . .’

The whisper faded. The glass was clear, the ghost had gone.

An old brown skull sat clamped to the bottom of the jar.

George swore softly, took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Lockwood clapped his hands on his knees and rolled his neck as if it hurt him. I realized that my back ached too, all over – it was a solid knot of tension. We sat staring at the jar.

‘Well, I make that one murder victim, one police interrogation and one conversation with a ghost,’ George said. ‘Now that’s what I call a busy evening.’

Lockwood nodded. ‘To think some people just watch television.’

Our encounter with the skull made it an all-nighter, of course. We couldn’t go straight to bed after that. Despite our frustrations with its lack of co-operation, we were all too excited to rest, too pepped by the rarity of the event. According to George, this was indeed the first confirmed Type Three since Marissa Fittes had died. There’d been reports of others down the years; but the agents involved had all either died soon afterwards or been certified insane, and sometimes both. Certainly no one had been able to provide a proper witness, as he and Lockwood had just done. I was unique, my gift was something to be prized, and it would make all our fortunes if we played our cards right. Lockwood was no less thrilled; he made us all a round of bacon sandwiches (an event almost as rare as chatting with Type Threes) and, while we ate them, talked about how we might proceed. The question was whether to go public straight away, or try to get the skull to speak again, perhaps in front of other independent witnesses. He was sure many of our rivals would be reluctant to believe our story.

I didn’t play too much part in the debate. I was pleased – of course – with my success, and with all the praise I was getting, but I felt exhausted too. The effort of listening to the skull had quite worn me out. All I wanted to do was sleep. So I let the others talk, and when Lockwood moved on to discuss the one possible hard bit of information he felt we’d got from the ghost, I didn’t join in that conversation either. But Lockwood and George read and re-read George’s scribbled notes, and the more they read, the more energized and talkative they became.

The skull had mentioned something no one else knew, you see. Bickerstaff hiding papers under the floorboards of his study. Secret papers.

Papers that might hold the key to the riddle of the bone glass.

Papers that might, conceivably, still be lying there, in the deserted house on the edge of Hampstead Heath.

Now that was interesting.

As Lockwood said, the ghost was almost certainly fibbing. The chances of it truly having a close connection to Bickerstaff and the bone glass were not high. Even if it was telling the truth, those secret papers might well have disintegrated or even been eaten (how we laughed at this) by rats. But there was a chance. They might be there. He wondered if it was worth checking. George felt it was, and I was too tired to disagree. Before we went to bed (it was already dawn), we had our plans in place. The following day, assuming there were no other developments, we would mount an expedition.

The birds were singing outside the windows when I finally left the kitchen; it was going to be another lovely morning.

As I closed the door, I glanced back into the room. The ghost-jar still sat where we’d left it on the table – quiet and peaceful, the plasm almost translucent . . .

The skull was grinning at me, as skulls do.