Jonathan Stroud - The Creeping Shadow

No answer. I’d had enough of this. The skull had been silent ever since our arrival. I took the jar out of the backpack. The ghost’s face floated in the green ichor. It still wore its haughty expression; as I watched, it slowly but studiedly rotated away from me. I set the jar on the floor beside the chains and walked around it to catch up with the face. “Didn’t you hear?” I demanded. “The phenomena are increasing. What’s your take on them?”

The ghost stopped rotating. It looked blankly left and right, as if suddenly aware of me. “Oh, you’re talking to me now?”

“Yes, I am. There’s something building here, and I sense mortal danger. I’m wondering if you have any perspective on it.”

The ghost adopted an expression of enormous unconcern. Its nostrils dilated; I heard a dismissive sniff. “Like you care a bean what I think.”

I looked around the moonlit kitchen, silent, seemingly innocuous, but drenched in evil. “Dear old skull. I do care, and I’m asking you as a…as a…”

“I detect hesitation,” the skull said. “As a friend?”

I scowled. “Well, no. Obviously not.”

“As a respected colleague, then?”

“Even that would be stretching it. No, I’m asking you as someone who genuinely values your opinion, despite your wicked nature, your vicious temperament, and my better judgment.”

The face regarded me. “Ooh, okay…I see you’re going for the virtues of simple honesty here, rather than the honeyed words of flattery. Correct?”

“Yes.”

“Well, go boil your backside in a bucket. It’s not good enough. You’re not getting a word of wisdom out of me.”

I gave a cry of rage. “You are so huffy! George said you were jealous, and I’m beginning to think he was right.” I bent down and twisted the dial closed.

At that moment I heard a soft bubbling noise. A rattle and a popping. I turned around.

An old black-and-white stove sat in one corner of the kitchen. It was dark; no gas flames had been lit in it for thirty years. Nevertheless, there was something moving on top of it now, something rattling on a dusty burner.

It was a saucepan, a big one. I took a slow step toward it. The pan jerked and shook vigorously; whatever was inside was coming to a boil. Water fizzed and spat; a ring of small bubbles stacked themselves against the greasy rim.

I didn’t want to look, but I had to see. I had to see what was cooking in the pan.

I started toward it. Slowly, slowly I crept across the kitchen. The side of the pan shone silver in the moonlight, but the interior was black. Something roundish sat there; the bubbles crowned and cradled it. There was a rich, gamey scent, carried on hot, wet air.

Closer, closer. Rattle , rattle went the pan. I unclipped my flashlight from my belt, and lifted it toward the burner….

“Lucy!”

“Ah!” Next thing—me spinning around, flashlight turning on in Lockwood’s face. He gasped and held up his arm, blocking the light with his cuff.

“What are you doing, Luce? Put out that light.”

“What am I doing? Don’t you see the—” I turned, raised the flashlight, shone the beam hard across the space. But the stovetop was empty. The pan was gone, and the air was clear and quiet. Moonlight shone through the window. I switched off the flashlight, stowed it away.

Lockwood had moved between me and the stove. “What did you see?”

“Something cooking,” I said. “Something cooking on the stove. It’s gone now,” I added, needlessly.

He pushed his hair back and frowned at me. “I saw your face—you were mesmerized by it. It had snared you. It was drawing you in.”

“I wasn’t snared at all. I just wanted to see—”

“Exactly. I’ve seen you look like that before. All the phenomena are concentrated on you, Lucy. No one else is getting anything. I’m worried. Maybe we should call this off.”

I stared at him, feeling a surge of irritation. “That’s why I’m here, Lockwood,” I said. “I sense things; I draw them out. You have to trust me, that’s all.”

“Of course I trust you.” He held my gaze. “It still concerns me.”

“Well, it needn’t.” I looked away. There on the butcher-block table was George’s bell, sparkling in the moonlight. It was a useless object. We’d had a visitation a few feet away, and it hadn’t done a thing. “I can cope with all that,” I said. “As you should know. If you actually want me here.”

There was a pause. “Of course I do,” Lockwood said. “I asked you, didn’t I?”

“Yes, you asked me. But it was Penelope Fittes who asked for me, and that’s the difference.”

“Lucy, what on earth are you—?” Lockwood said, and in the next instant he whirled around: the door to the hall had crashed open.

“George!”

He careered forward, glasses crooked, eyes wild. “Lucy, Lockwood, quick, come and look! Here, the basement.”

We pushed past him, into the hall, where the entrance to the basement gaped wide. Lockwood shone his flashlight down the steep flight. The light made a yellow oval on the concrete floor. “What is it? Where?”

“Bones! Bones and—and bits and pieces. All lying in a muddle at the bottom of the stairs!”

We stared down at the concrete, rough and bare and blank. “Where?”

George gestured wildly. “Well, of course they’re gone now , aren’t they? Too much to hope that they’d stay put while I was getting you!”

“Maybe they’re not gone,” I said. “Lockwood, your Sight’s best of all. If you go down—”

A shrill cry echoed through the house. That was Holly. Lockwood, George, and I took one look at each other and ran back through the kitchen into the little dining room. There stood Holly, elegantly distraught, staring at a blank space in front of the window.

We had our rapiers ready. “Solomon Guppy?”

She shook her head, face pale in the moonlight. “No.”

“Well, what did you see?”

“Nothing, just a table. But on it—”

“Yes?”

“It was too dark to make out. Plates, cutlery.” She shuddered. “Some kind of roast. ”

“Oh, yuck,” George said. “And I think I just saw the off-cuts in the basement.”

“You want to know the worst of it?” Holly’s voice was faint; she cleared her throat and spoke more calmly. “There was this little white napkin, neatly folded beside the plate. I don’t know why, but that detail…it really got to me. The whole thing was just a snapshot. Lasted a fraction of a second, then it was gone.”

“The problem with all these snapshots,” George said fiercely, “is there’s nothing to stick a sword into. There’s no clue to where the Source could—Lucy?” I’d gone rigid. “Luce? What is it? You hear him again?”

They stood beside me, the three of them in the darkness of the dining room, waiting for my word. “Not exactly him ,” I said slowly, “but…yes. Yes, I do.”

From the shadows had come the creak of settling wood. Someone heavy easing their weight into a chair.

“Is he in here?” George whispered.

I shook my head. “It’s just sounds, echoes from the past….” All the same, my heart was beating fast; my head felt light and my limbs heavy. Fear pressed in on us. Now I could hear a familiar sound, very polite and delicate. The sound of knife and fork on china. “I think I hear him eating.”

Someone coughed in the dark. Someone smacked their lips.

“Can we go out for a minute?” I said. “I need to get some air.”

“Agreed,” Lockwood said. “It’s hot in here, isn’t it?