Lockwood & Co: The Whispering Skull

17

When visiting a property with such a chequered history as the Bickerstaff ruin, you might think it was safest to stick to daylight hours. This (the sensible option) was sadly impractical for us, for a number of reasons. The first was that, after a night like we’d just had, we didn’t get out of bed till noon, and it took much of the afternoon to prepare our supplies and ring the appropriate authorities to get access to the deserted house. The second was George’s insistence on nipping down to the Chertsey Records Office in search of ‘The Confessions of Mary Dulac’, that old document by one of Bickerstaff’s associates. George wanted to do this as soon as possible; he hoped it might give us some insight into the horror that had taken place at Bickerstaff’s place all those years ago. Also, he figured it was only a matter of time before Bobby Vernon read the same old newspapers he’d found, and made precisely the same connections.

The final (and most important) reason why we didn’t get there until after sundown was me – or rather the question of my peculiar Talents. After our chat with the skull, Lockwood’s faith in these was now sky-high. He told me as much as we worked in the office together, collecting equipment for the operation.

‘There’s no question about it, Luce,’ he said, setting out a neat row of salt bombs along the floor. ‘Your Sensitivity is phenomenal, and we’ve got to give you every chance to use it. Who knows what you might pick up in the Bickerstaff house after dark? And I don’t just mean by Listening – you could use your sense of Touch as well.’

‘Yeah,’ I said heavily. ‘Maybe.’ You might detect that I didn’t speak with wild enthusiasm. It’s true that I can sometimes pick up impressions of the past by touching objects that possess a psychic residue, but that doesn’t mean it’s always a pleasant thing to do. It was pretty clear that the Bickerstaff residence was unlikely to provide me with many jolly experiences, no matter how chirpy Lockwood might be right now.

I couldn’t share much of his good humour that afternoon, anyway. Once again the daylight had had the effect of lessening the thrill of the whispering skull’s words, and I found myself increasingly uncomfortable that we were following a trail it had set for us. The first things I did when I came downstairs were to close the valve in the bung, and cover the jar with a cloth. I didn’t want the ghost to hear or see us unless we willed it. Even so, I couldn’t help feeling that the damage had already been done.

I finished emptying our work-belts onto my desk, and began sorting through the thermometers and torches, the candles and matchboxes, the vials of lavender water and all the rest, making sure everything was in working order. Lockwood was humming peaceably to himself as he set about restocking our supplies of iron. That was the other thing about the skull: almost in the same breath as mentioning Bickerstaff’s secret papers, it had made new insinuations about Lockwood’s room upstairs.

I turned to look out of the office window into the basement yard. Iron bands across the inside of the door? There was only one reason anyone might do that . . . No, clearly the claim was ridiculous. Yet how could I take one of the ghost’s comments on trust and disbelieve the other?

‘Lucy,’ Lockwood said – it was almost as if he’d been reading my thoughts – ‘I’ve been thinking about our friend the skull. You’re the one who talks to it. You’ve got a sense of its personality. Why do you think it’s suddenly started speaking?’

I paused a moment before answering. ‘I really don’t know. To be honest, I don’t trust anything it says, but I do think there must be something about the Bickerstaff case that attracts it. You remember when it spoke, the first night – after we’d got back from the cemetery? I think we’d been talking about Bickerstaff, just as we were last night. It’s overheard us talk about dozens of other cases these last few months, and it’s never got involved before. Now it has twice in three days. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.’

Lockwood was filling up a canister of iron filings. He nodded slowly. ‘You’re right. We’ve got to tread carefully until we understand what it wants. And there was one other thing it said. It claimed that Bickerstaff’s mirror – this bone glass – gives you knowledge and enlightenment. What do you think that means?’

‘Not a clue.’

‘It’s just that George has looked in the glass. Only briefly, of course, but still . . .’ He glanced up at me. ‘How does he seem to you, Lucy? Do you think he’s OK?’

‘He seems a little distracted sometimes, but that’s hardly new.’

‘Well, we’ll keep an eye on him.’ He grinned; it was that warm smile that made everything seem simpler, ready to click perfectly into place. ‘With luck, he’ll bring us back some info on Bickerstaff today. Hopefully we’ll hear from Flo soon as well. If we can get word of Winkman’s auction too, that’ll really put the wind in our sails.’

But Lockwood’s optimism was misplaced. Flo Bones did not appear that day, and we had to wait till almost five o’clock before George returned, very weary and out of sorts.

‘There’s strange things going on in Chertsey,’ he said as he collapsed into a chair. ‘I went to the Records Office, and they confirmed that “The Confessions of Mary Dulac” was a real document from their archives. But when they went to get it – guess what? It was gone. Stolen. They can’t say when, or how long ago. And there’s no telling whether other copies even exist. Ah! It’s so frustrating!’

‘Was it little Bobby Vernon?’ I asked. ‘Maybe he’s ahead of you.’

George scowled. ‘Wrong. I’m ahead of him – he’s made an appointment in Chertsey for tomorrow. No, someone else thought it was worth stealing . . . Well, we’ll see. I rang Albert Joplin on the way home, asked him if he had any ideas about where another copy might be. He’s an excellent researcher. Might be able to help us here.’

Lockwood frowned. ‘Joplin? You shouldn’t let anyone know what we’re up to. What if he tells Kipps?’

‘Oh, Albert’s all right. He likes me. Tell you what, though, he’s fallen out with Mr Saunders. Saunders is furious about all the trouble at Kensal Green; he’s suspended operations, sent most of the night watch home without pay. Joplin’s very annoyed about it . . .’ He adjusted his glasses, and looked round at us. ‘So, that’s my news. What’s been going on back here?’

‘I spoke to the Hampstead authorities,’ Lockwood said. ‘The site of the Green Gates Sanatorium is still derelict, cordoned off from the rest of the Heath, but accessible from a street called Whitestone Lane. Luce, you check the A-to-Z; we’ll get the last bus before curfew. Bickerstaff’s house is on the edge of the site; open and unlocked. No keys ever required because no one in their right mind goes there, apparently.’

‘Sounds just our kind of place,’ I said.

Lockwood got up; he stretched lazily. ‘Well, it’s that time of the afternoon. I’m going to stick a sword into a straw woman. Then I’m off to rest. If half the stories we’ve heard about this house are true, it’s going to be an active night.’

Hampstead Hill, a leafy suburb in the north of London, is a pretty genteel sort of place, at least during the hours of daylight, and if our walk that evening was anything to go by, the streets on the western edge of Hampstead Heath are the cushiest of all. Wide avenues, lined with trees and rows of ghost-lamps, curved gently round the contours of the hill. Swanky properties, sprawling and detached, nestled in large gardens. Even the dusk that settled rapidly around us had a prosperous, well-fed feel.

This impression was maintained for most of the way along Whitestone Lane, a short, broad cul-de-sac of heavily built mid-Victorian villas lying right on the margins of the Heath. Well-kept lawns, verdant borders, rhododendrons as plump and bushy as a beggar’s beard: the first few houses easily kept up the Hampstead standard. Towards the end of the road, however, things became shabbier, and the last two residences were empty and unoccupied. Beyond them the road ended at a pair of iron gates, high, rusted and topped by rolls of barbed wire. Triangular DEPRAC warning posters, fringed with fluorescent orange, signalled it as a no-go zone. This was the entrance to the site of the Green Gates Sanatorium, burned down a century ago, and abandoned ever since.

A coil of rusted chain had been wound round the gates to secure them. There wasn’t any padlock. There wasn’t any need for one.

With gloved hands, Lockwood began to untie the chain; the links were stiff and fused. ‘You said they tried building a housing development here once, George,’ he said. ‘But they had to abandon it because of “disturbances”. What was the story there?’

George had been staring through the gate bars into the darkness of the Heath. Despite the evening’s warmth, he wore a woolly hat and a pair of fingerless gloves. He also had on his dark night-jacket, jeans and workboots; an extra strap, laden with canisters and salt bombs, was looped across his torso. To my surprise, he had also opted for an extra-large rucksack, different from the one I’d prepared for him. It was clearly heavy; his face was lined with perspiration. ‘The usual,’ he said. ‘You know the kind of thing.’

Lockwood pulled the chain free, pushed sharply on the metal. With a crack like bones breaking, the gates sprang open. One after another, we slipped through. George and I switched on our torches. Almost directly beneath our feet, the road’s fissured tarmac was swallowed under a layer of long, waving grass. Our lights danced and flitted over uneven, lumpy ground. Here and there, tall beeches rose, and clumps of young oaks and silver birch. The line of the road curled away to the left amongst the trees.

‘We follow the track to the site of the sanatorium,’ George said. ‘Half a mile, a bit higher on the hill.’

Lockwood nodded. ‘Fine. We’ll follow you.’

We went in silence, single file, legs brushing through grasses. The last heat of the day still radiated from the earth. The moon had risen, and a cool silvered light bathed the undulating wasteland. Banks of white cloud towered like castles in the sky.

‘When you say “the usual”, George,’ I said finally, ‘you mean Shades?’

‘Yeah, Shades and Glimmers, mainly. Half-seen presences, dim lights floating in the air. And the sanatorium’s isolated on the hill, remember. No one wanted to stay up there.’

‘Nothing too dangerous, though?’

‘Not in the sanatorium ruins itself. The Bickerstaff house is perhaps another matter.’

We had climbed a little way along the contour of the hill. The lights of London stretched below us like a glittering neon sea. It was very silent. Curfew had already sounded, and the city had turned inwards on itself, shutting out the night.

‘Do you mind if we stop for a bit?’ George said. ‘I need a breather.’

He slung his rucksack aside and collapsed upon the ground. It really was a monster pack, and the shape was odd – quite hard and curved; not blobby like you get with chains. ‘What exactly do you have in there, George?’ I said.

‘Oh, just some extra supplies. Don’t worry about me. The exercise will do me good.’

I stared at it, my frown deepening. ‘Since when have you cared about . . .?’ And then I knew. I recognized the shape. I strode across and flicked open the rucksack top, loosened the drawstring. I shone my torch on the plastic bung, the smoothly curving sides of a familiar silver-glass jar.

‘The skull?’ I cried. ‘You brought the skull! You snuck it along with us!’

George looked pained. ‘“Snuck” makes it sound easy. It’s quite an effort, actually. I know ectoplasm technically weighs nothing, but you wouldn’t think so to feel this. My poor old back—’

‘And you were going to tell me this when?’

‘Hopefully never. It’s just we don’t know exactly where Bickerstaff’s study is, do we? But the skull does. And if we couldn’t figure it out, Lockwood thought—’

‘What?!’ I spun round upon our leader, who had been doing a good impression of someone utterly fascinated by a nearby patch of nettles. ‘Lockwood! You knew about this?’

He cleared his throat. ‘Well . . .’

‘He suggested it,’ George said promptly. ‘It was his idea. Which makes me think he should be doing some of the carrying, come to mention it. I’ve been lugging this since Marylebone, and my poor old back—’

‘Will you shut up about your poor old back? This is crazy! You want me to talk with a dangerous Type Three ghost inside another haunted zone, with who knows what other Visitors around? Are you both mad? You expected me to agree to that?’

‘No,’ George said. ‘We didn’t. Which is why we didn’t tell you.’

I gave a cry of disgust. ‘Forget it! What happened to us treading carefully, Lockwood? I’ve a good mind to go back home.’

‘Please, Lucy,’ Lockwood said. ‘Don’t over-react. It’s not dangerous. We’re keeping the jar in the sack; the bung is closed – the ghost can’t affect you, or communicate in any way. But we do have it as back-up – if we’re stuck and unable to find these papers.’

‘Papers that almost certainly don’t exist,’ I growled. ‘Don’t forget we’re following a clue given to us by a malicious ghost-head in a jar. It’s not reliable!’

‘I’m not saying it is. But since it claims to have worked with Bickerstaff, taking it back to this house might be a good way of encouraging it to speak some more.’

I didn’t look at him; if I had, he would have given me the smile, and I wasn’t in the mood for that. ‘You’re taking me for granted,’ I said. ‘Me and this house.’

‘Terrible things happened up there,’ Lockwood said, ‘but that doesn’t mean the place is haunted now. Bickerstaff’s ghost was at the cemetery, remember? He’s not here. The bone glass isn’t here. Well, then! What’s left to harm us?’

He knew better than that. We all did. Things were never that simple. I didn’t answer, but just shouldered my pack and set off up the path, leaving the others to follow.

The trail cut in amongst the trees, leaving the London lights behind. The humps beneath the grass grew larger, and at last broke upwards into stretches of crumbled wall, most low and tangled with moss and grass, some still rising to second-storey height. It was the remains of the burned sanatorium. My instincts prickled; I sensed the presence of unwelcome things. Great pale moths fluttered lazily among the ruins. I looked at them with suspicion, but they seemed natural enough. We went on cautiously.

‘I see death-glows,’ Lockwood said. ‘Faint ones in the ruins.’

For a moment, when I listened, I thought I heard the faint crackling of flames, shouts and distant screams . . . Then the sounds faded. All I could hear was the wind sighing gently among the leaves.

We walked a little further. As we passed close to the tallest remaining stretch of wall, a faint grey shape, only visible from the corner of the eye, appeared in the shadows of a broken doorway and stood there, watching us. I felt the cold brush of its attention.

‘Type One,’ Lockwood said. ‘A Shade or Lurker. Nothing to worry about. What’s that up there?’ He stopped, pointed towards the crown of the hill.

‘That’ll be it,’ George said. ‘The Bickerstaff house.’

The building rose stark and black against the silvered sky, distant from the tangled mess of ruins. It was set within its own little boundary wall, a large, ugly, raw-boned construction, made of awkward-looking bricks that seemed somehow out of proportion. In sunlight, I guessed they’d be dark grey. The roof had many chimneys, many steeply sloping planes of slate, some of which had fallen away. I could see roof beams jutting through like ribs. There were plenty of large windows, all empty, black and watchful, the typical eyes of a deserted house. A gravel path led ruler-straight towards the door, up the incline of the hill. The garden was overgrown, the grass high as our thighs.

We stood at the gate, hands on rapier hilts, considering it coolly. George took a packet of mints from his pocket and passed them round.

‘Well, I’ll admit it looks pretty bad,’ Lockwood said, sucking on his mint. ‘But since when has a house’s appearance meant anything? Remember that slaughterhouse in Deptford? That was a terrible-looking place. But nothing happened there.’

‘Nothing happened to you,’ I corrected him. ‘Because you were upstairs hobnobbing with the owner. It was George and I who got jumped by a Limbless in the basement.’

‘Oh, yes. Maybe I’m thinking of somewhere else. What I mean is, we’re not necessarily going to run into trouble here. Despite its history of violent death. Pass us another mint, would you, George?’

As reassuring speeches went, I’d heard better. Still, Lockwood & Co. hadn’t earned its city-wide reputation by dawdling outside haunted houses. That wasn’t why Barnes had put us on this case, wasn’t why we were going to beat Kipps to the solution. Come to think of it, it wasn’t why Penelope Fittes had invited us to her party. Squaring our shoulders, we set off up the path.

‘Just remember,’ Lockwood said, cheerfully breaking the night’s silence and disturbing our morbid thoughts, ‘we’ve got two set objectives here. We look for those papers the skull mentioned. We try to pick up any psychic traces left by Bickerstaff and his friends. Simple, clean, efficient. We go straight in, we come straight out. Easy. There won’t be any problems.’

We halted at the end of the path. I contemplated the mouldering steps, the wonky door, the shutters hanging askew against the broken windows, the little weather-beaten demons carved into the spiral pillars on either side of the porch. It has to be said, I didn’t wholly share his confidence.

There was a strong sweet scent coming from a climbing shrub that choked one wall. The air was warm and close. George had pattered up the steps; he squinted through the grimy bottle-glass window beside the door. ‘Can’t see anything,’ he said. ‘Who’s going in first?’

‘That’ll be Lucy,’ Lockwood said.

I frowned. ‘Again? It’s always me.’

‘No it isn’t. I did Mrs Barrett, didn’t I? George did the iron coffin.’

‘Yes, but before that I—’

‘No arguments, Luce. You’re in the hot seat tonight. Don’t worry, we’ll be right behind you. Besides, like I say, with any luck there’ll be nothing dangerous there. Just psychic memories and traces.’

‘Which is precisely what a Visitor is, Lockwood. An aggressive psychic memory . . . Oh, very well. Why can’t we ever do this at a more sensible time, like noon?’

I knew the answer to that, of course. It’s only after dark that you can detect the faint and hidden things. Only after dark do a house’s memories begin to stir.

I pushed at the door, expecting it to be warped shut, or locked, or both. It was none of those. The door opened soundlessly, unleashing stale air and a pervasive smell of decay.

And I have to say, my skin did crawl a little as I stood there, and the hairs on my neck did rise. Maybe Lockwood was right. Maybe the place would be free of actual Visitors. But this was a house where the previous proprietor had engaged in years of sinister occult research, where he’d probably tried to summon the spirits of the dead in a series of unsavoury experiments, and where he’d suffered a mysterious and solitary death. Let’s face it, we were talking trace memories that would need more than a squirt of air freshener to remove.

Still, I’m an agent, etc., etc. You know the deal.

Without (much) hesitation, I stepped inside.