Jonathan Stroud - Lockwood & Co - The Whispering Skull

Lockwood grinned. ‘Well . . . you have at least two friends, haven’t you?’ He passed the plate across. ‘And that brings me to something I’ve been wanting to say.’

George looked at me. ‘He’s going to tick me off some more.’

‘I think he’s going to boast about the Winkman fight again. The fight we didn’t see.’

‘Yeah, he’ll have fought off four blokes single-handedly now.’

Lockwood held up his hand. ‘No, it’s still three, though one of them was quite big and hairy. The thing is,’ he said, ‘I’ve been thinking about this case. All through it, everyone’s been obsessed with the secrets of the mirror. Joplin, Kipps, us; we all got snared by it. Barnes too. Winkman’s actually the only one with any sense. He didn’t care about the glass, did he? He just tried to sell it. He understood that it was the mystery about it that made it valuable.’ He looked down at the table, as if marshalling his thoughts. ‘Anyway, to keep things brief—’

‘If you wouldn’t mind,’ I said. I winked at George, and crunched on the flapjack.

‘To keep things brief, I’ve decided secrets cause nothing but trouble. There’s a darn sight too many of them and they make things worse, not better. So. I’ve come to a decision. I want to show you both something.’

I stopped crunching.

‘Oh God, you haven’t got some dodgy tattoos, have you?’ George said. ‘I’ve only just got over Carver’s ones.’

‘No, it’s not tattoos,’ Lockwood said. He gave a smile, but there was sadness in it. ‘If you’re not doing anything, I could show you now.’

He got up, and crossed the room towards the arched doorway. George and I, suddenly quiet, rose and followed him. George’s eyes scanned mine. I realized that my hands were shaking.

We left the office, with its desks and streams of sunlight. We spiralled up the iron steps, above the washing baskets and strings of drying laundry; came out into the kitchen, where last night’s dishes lay undone. We went out into the hall, where a brand-new Arabian rug stretched towards the door. We walked below the hanging masks and ghost-catchers, turned at the foot of the stairs, and began to climb again. The messy coat-rack, the living room, the open library door . . . My senses were alive to it all. We passed through all the clutter of the house we shared – ordinary things, familiar things, that might in moments have their meanings changed, subtly and for ever, by whatever it was we were about to see.

The landing, which only has one narrow window, was as dim and shady as ever. The bedroom doors were closed. As usual, one of George’s damp bath-towels was draped unpleasantly over a radiator. From an open window somewhere came birdsong, very beautiful, very loud.

Lockwood stopped outside the forbidden door. He put his hands in his pockets. ‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘It’s been a while since I gave you both your tours, and . . . well, we never exactly completed them, did we? I thought you might like to see in here.’

We stared at the ordinary door, its faded label mark no different from before. ‘Well, yeah . . .’ I began. ‘But only if you . . .’

He nodded. ‘Just turn the handle, walk right in.’

‘Hasn’t it got some kind of secret lock?’ George said. ‘I always assumed there might be some clever man-trap built into it – maybe a guillotine thing that shoots down as you step through? No? Was I over-thinking it?’

‘I’m afraid you were. There’s nothing. I trusted you both, of course.’

We stared at the door.

‘Yes, but Lockwood,’ I said suddenly, ‘all that stuff about secrets works both ways. So what if we’re curious? If you’re not comfortable with it, there’s no reason why we have to know.’

It was the old Lockwood smile again; the landing grew much brighter. ‘It’s fine. I’ve been thinking about doing this for a while now. Somehow, I never got round to it. But when the skull started whispering to you about it, I knew the time had come. Anyway, let me do the honours for you.’

The skull, in so many things, was a liar and a cheat, but it could speak the truth too. It had told us the location of the Bickerstaff papers, casually forgetting to mention the ghost that waited there. At Kensal Green it had helped me access the catacombs, then crowed with delight when I almost died. Its truths, in other words, carried dangers. And it had told the truth about this room.

As Lockwood pulled open the door, we saw that its inner side was thickly lined with strips of iron, carefully nailed into the wood. They were there to block the psychic radiance that now burst out from inside.

A heavy curtain spanned the window opposite, muffling the daylight, keeping the bedroom dark. The air was close and strong, and smelled heavily of lavender.

At first it was difficult to make out anything at all. But as George and I stood there in the doorway, we began to see the glint of silver charms hanging on the walls.

Our eyes adjusted; we gazed at what was in the room. And then I felt the floor pitch under me, as if we were suddenly at sea. George cleared his throat. I put out my hand to clench his arm.

Lockwood stood slightly behind us, waiting.

‘Your parents?’ I was the first to find my voice.

‘Close,’ Anthony Lockwood said. ‘My sister.’

Glossary

fn1 indicates a Type Oneghost

fn2 indicates a Type Twoghost

Agency, Psychical Investigation

A business specializing in the containment and destruction of

ghosts

. There are more than a dozen agencies in London alone. The largest two (the Fittes Agency and the Rotwell Agency) have hundreds of employees; the smallest (Lockwood & Co.) has three. Most agencies are run by adult supervisors, but all rely heavily on children with strong psychic

Talent

.

Apparition

The shape formed by a

ghost

during a

manifestation

. Apparitions usually mimic the shape of the dead person, but animals and objects are also seen. Some can be quite unusual. The

Spectre

in the recent Limehouse Docks case manifested as a greenly glowing king cobra, while the infamous Bell Street Horror took the guise of a patchwork doll. Powerful or weak, most ghosts do not (or cannot) alter their appearance.

Aura

The radiance surrounding many

apparitions

. Most auras are fairly faint, and are best seen out of the corner of the eye. Strong, bright auras are known as

other-light

. A few ghosts, such as

Dark Spectres

, radiate black auras that are darker than the night around them.

Catacomb

An underground chamber used for burials. Never common in London, the few existing catacombs have fallen entirely into disuse since the outbreak of the

Problem

.

Catafalque

A hydraulic mechanism used to lower coffins into a

catacomb

.

Chain net

A net made of finely spun

silver

chains; a versatile variety of

seal

.

Chill

The sharp drop in temperature that occurs when a ghost is near. One of the four usual indicators of an imminent

manifestation

, the others being