Jonathan Stroud - Lockwood & Co - The Screaming Staircase

‘This is it,’ I said. ‘This is where the Source is. Look at the temperature. And don’t you feel heavy, almost numb?’

Lockwood nodded. ‘Plus this is where Mrs Hope saw her legendary “moving shape”.’

A door slammed, loudly, somewhere below us in the house. Both of us jumped. ‘I think you’re right,’ Lockwood said. ‘This is the place. We should rig up a circle here.’

‘Filings or chains?’

‘Oh, filings. Filings will be fine.’

‘Are you sure? It’s not even nine o’clock, and its power’s already strong.’

‘Not that strong. Besides, whatever Mr Hope wants, I can’t believe he’s suddenly turned malevolent. Filings will be more than adequate.’ He hesitated. ‘Also . . .’

I looked at him. ‘Also what?’

‘I forgot to bring the chains. Don’t stare at me like that. You do weird things with your eyes.’

‘ You forgot to bring the chains? Lockwood—’

‘George took them out to oil them and I didn’t check he’d put them back. So it’s George’s fault, really. Listen, it doesn’t matter. We don’t need them for a job like this, do we? Get the iron set up while I scan the other rooms. Then we focus here.’

I had a lot more to say, but now wasn’t the time. I took a deep breath. ‘Well, don’t get into trouble,’ I said. ‘Last time you went wandering off during a case, you got yourself locked in the toilet.’

‘A ghost shut me in, I keep telling you.’

‘So you claim, but there was not a shred of evidence that—’

But he was already gone.

It didn’t take me long to carry out my task. I hauled several stacks of dusty yellowed paper over to the edges of the room to make space in the centre of the floor. Then I pulled the rug aside, and scattered the filings in a circle, giving it a fairly small radius, so as not to waste the iron. This would be our primary refuge, where we could retreat if necessary, but we might need other circles too, depending on what we found.

I went out onto the landing. ‘I’m just going down to get more iron.’

Lockwood’s voice echoed from a nearby bedroom. ‘Fine. Can you put the kettle on?’

‘Yeah.’ I crossed to the stairs, glancing at the open bathroom door. When I put my hands on the banister rail, the wood was freezing to the touch. I hesitated at the top, listening hard, then descended towards the grainy illumination of the hall. A few steps down I thought I heard a rushing noise behind me, but when I turned back I saw nothing. With my hand on my rapier hilt, I continued to the bottom, and walked along the hall to where the kitchen’s warm glow shone through a crack in the door. Dim as it was, the lantern-light made me screw up my eyes as I went in. I helped myself to a cheeky biscuit, rinsed out the mugs and put the kettle on again. Then I picked up the two duffel bags and, with some difficulty, prised the hall door open with my foot. I moved back out into the hall, which – thanks to the bright kitchen – seemed even darker than before. There was no sound in the house. I couldn’t hear anything of Lockwood; presumably he was still scanning the final bedrooms. I climbed the stairs slowly, from cool, to cold, to colder, holding the heavy bags awkwardly on either side.

I reached the landing and heaved the bags down with a little sigh. When I raised my head to call to Lockwood, I saw a girl standing there.

3

I froze; for a tightly packed string of heartbeats I couldn’t stir a muscle. In part, of course, this was down to simple shock, but there was a lot more to it than that. A cold weight pressed like a headstone on my chest; my limbs felt entombed in mud. An icy torpor crept through the roots of my brain. My mind was numbed, the workings of my body dulled; I felt I should never have the strength to move again. A mood stole over me that might have been despair, had I the energy to truly care about it one way or the other. Nothing mattered, least of all me. Silence and stillness and utter paralysis of movement were all I could aspire to, all that I deserved.

In other words I was experiencing ghost-lock , which is the effect Type Twos have when they choose to direct their power on you.

An ordinary person might have stood there, helpless, and let the Visitor work its will upon them. But I’m an agent. I’d dealt with this before. So I wrested savage, painful breaths from the frigid air, shook the mist clear of my brain. I forced myself to live. And my hands moved slowly towards the weapons at my belt.

The girl stood halfway across the floor of the study-bedroom, directly ahead of me. I could see her framed by the open door. She was fairly faint, but I saw she stood barefoot on the rolled-up rug – or, more precisely, in it, for her ankles were sunk inside the fabric as if she were paddling in the sea. She wore a pretty summer print dress, knee-length, decorated with large, rather garish orange sunflowers. It was not a modern design. The dress and her limbs and her long fair hair all shone with dim, pale other-light, as if lit by something far away. As for her face . . .

Her face was a solid wedge of darkness. No light reached it at all.

It was hard to tell, but I guessed she’d been eighteen or so. Older than me, but not by too many years. I stood there for a time wondering about this, with my eyes locked on the faceless girl and my hands inching to my belt.

Then I remembered I was not alone in the house.

‘Lockwood,’ I called. ‘Oh, Lockwood . . .’ I said it as lightly as I could. Showing signs of fear is best avoided where Visitors are concerned – fear, anger, and other strong emotions. They feed on it too easily; it makes them faster and more aggressive. No answer came, so I cleared my throat and tried again. ‘Oh, Lock wood . . .!’ I was using a merry singsong intonation here, as if I were speaking to a little babe or a cuddly pet or something. As I might as well have been, in fact, because he didn’t bloody respond.

I turned my head and called a little louder. ‘Oh, Lockwood, please come here . . .’

His voice sounded muffled back along the landing. ‘Hold on, Luce. I’ve got something . . .’

‘Jolly good! So have I . . .’

When I looked back, the girl was closer, almost out on the landing. The face was still in shadow, but the drifts of other-light that spun about her body shone brighter than before. Her bony wrists were tight against her side, the fingers bent like fishhooks. Her bare legs were very thin.

‘What do you want?’ I said.

I listened. Words brushed soft as spiders’ touch against my ear. ‘ I’m cold .’

Fragments. You seldom get more than fragments. The little voice was a whisper uttered at great distance, but also uncomfortably near at hand. It seemed an awful lot nearer to me than Lockwood’s reply had done.

‘Oh, Lockwood!’ I cooed again. ‘It’s urgent . . .’

Can you credit it? I detected a hint of annoyance in his answer. ‘Just wait a sec, Lucy. There’s something interesting here. I’ve picked up a death-glow – a really, really faint one. Something nasty happened in this front bedroom too! It’s so hazy I almost missed it, so it must’ve been a long while back. But, you know, I think it was traumatic . . . Which means – it’s only a theory, I’m just playing with ideas here – there might possibly have been two violent deaths in this house . . . What do you say to that?’