Jonathan Stroud - The Creeping Shadow

We double-checked the iron chains in the center of the room and relit some candles that had blown out. Holly turned the lantern down low. Then we gathered by the butcher block. Lockwood inserted his crowbar into a narrow space between a countertop and the cupboard below.

“Kipps and I will start,” he said. “The rest of you keep watch.”

He heaved up the crowbar.

Lockwood said this was no real crime, given what had been done here. Even so, my nerves jangled as the old wood splintered. Maybe it was rotten; certainly it came apart easily, with a single great crack that echoed around the room. I imagined that sound reverberating through the rest of the house.

Maybe we all imagined that, because for a moment, no one moved. Even Lockwood paused with the crowbar still embedded in the countertop.

Nothing but silence.

So he went to work again, ripping into the brittle particleboard, forcing it back on itself so that it burst in a shower of splinters. After a bit he moved back and let Kipps take over with the mallet. Drawers fractured; shelves snapped like broken bones. Already a great hole had opened to the left of the metal sink, and the kitchen that had remained untouched for thirty years was altered irrevocably.

Kipps took a swig of water. We listened. The house was quiet. He began again.

While the mallet swung, I moved away across the room, out of Kipps’s sight. I felt in my backpack, and twisted the lever of the ghost-jar.

“Ooh, the tension,” whispered the voice. “Even I’m nervous, and I’m a ghost. Five fools trying their damnedest to rouse a monster. But what will you do if he comes?”

“Skull,” I whispered, “it’s your last chance. You’ve been useless this evening. Swallow your pride and give me some help here, or I swear next time I’ll leave you at home under the bed.”

There was a faint, dry chuckle. “Oh, next time? But there won’t be a next time with Lockwood and Company, remember? It’ll just be you and me, mucking along together as before. That’s our future, clear as day!”

“Yeah? Here’s another future,” I snarled. “See this crowbar? I’ll smash you and your jar with that and bury the pieces in the garden if you don’t help me out.”

The chuckling stopped. “Bit harsh.” The voice grew thoughtful. “One day, Lucy, I’ll have you in my power, and we’ll see who dances to whose tune. Well, what can I tell you that you don’t already know? The creature infests the house; his essence was drawn into the walls by sweat and blood and hideous obsession. Years pass; his awareness comes and goes. I felt it when we entered, then it drew back. He is sluggish. He dozes; perhaps you have seen his dreams.”

“But now—” I said, then stopped as an immense effort from Kipps broke a mustard-colored panel and sent it flying across the room.

“Congratulations. You’ve woken him, and he’s not happy.”

Kipps was standing upright, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. Lockwood had pulled some fragments of particleboard clear. He lifted his crowbar, ready to resume. I held up my hand to pause them.

Far off in the house, I heard it.

Click-click-click.

And all at once I knew what it was.

It was sound of teeth being tapped together.

Click-click-click…

It was a habit he’d had. He did it as he shuffled slowly around the house, looking in his recipe books, watching his neighbors from his windows.

Click-click-click…Click-click-click…

Watching, watching…Eventually selecting one.

“Got company,” I said.

For a moment, none of us moved. Four pale faces stared at me in the swirling candlelight of the ruined kitchen. Kipps and Lockwood stood ankle-deep in shattered wood. They were covered in sawdust, glistening with sweat; they were as pale and hideous as Bone Men. Holly looked like a particularly anxious Floating Bride. George, hair disarranged, glasses shining like headlights, might have passed for some unhinged spirit manifesting as an owl. We looked and listened.

I pointed upward. The lightbulb in the ceiling juddered as heavy, shuffling footsteps crossed the room upstairs.

“Excellent,” Lockwood said. “If he’s stirring, we’re on the right track. That means he definitely doesn’t like it when we do something like this !” He swung the crowbar level with his head and smashed in the side of a cupboard halfway up the wall.

Click-click-click…

Something was walking along the landing, heading for the stairs.

“Come on, Guppy. You can move faster than that.” Lockwood wrenched at a spar of wood that jutted up from the floor. The units beside the sink had been completely destroyed, exposing bare brick and moldy floor. He struck the sink’s metal support, snapping it in two. He was aflame with sudden defiant energy, swooping and darting like quicksilver, tugging and striking and kicking away the debris. Even Kipps moved back to give him space; the rest of us could do little but watch as he sought to summon a horror by the application of pure will.

George sidled close to me. “What does Lockwood plan to do when it…arrives?”

“I have no idea.”

Heavy footsteps on the stairs; I heard steps creaking as immense pressure weighed them down.

“Lucy,” George whispered, “can I share something personal with you?”

“Yes.”

“If you’d rather I didn’t, you being a free agent and all, you only have to say.”

“It’s still me, isn’t it? Just spit it out.”

“Okay…” He nodded, took a short breath. “I really don’t want to see this one.”

“Guppy?”

“Right. I mean, I’ve seen a lot of apparitions in my time,” George said, “and some of them have been…pretty grisly, you know. You remember that wormy girl we saw near Hackney Gardens? I couldn’t eat Swiss cheese for months after that. But there’s something about this one—”

I nodded. “I know. You don’t have to say it. Me, too.”

As I spoke, I was staring at the glazed glass panels in the kitchen door. They were fairly opaque, but you could see the glow of the lantern on the distant porch and the snuff-lights on the stairs. This light was stirring violently, and dimming, and now a great dark shape moved slowly into view at the far end of the hall. Holly gave a little squeal.

“Apparition’s in sight, Lockwood,” George said. “What do we do?”

“Exactly what we’re already doing.” Lockwood was grinning, his hair flopping over his face. “We bring him to us, and we wipe him out. Stand firm. He’s trying to break us all with fear.”

And making a pretty good job of it, if my own ghost-lock was anything to go by. I could barely move, but I edged to the back corner of the room. The shape was growing. Teeth clicked, lips smacked together. I could hear feet in carpet slippers shuffling along the hall.

I stepped away, turning my back on Kipps again. “Skull,” I hissed, “now would be a terrific opportunity to prove your worth. There’ll be no more talk of crowbars from me if you can spot the Source.”

“I see….First it’s threats, then sweet words. Have you no dignity?”

“Not right now. Can you sense where it is?”

“Well, from the efforts it’s making to get to you, I’d say it thinks you’re on to something.”

“The Source is near!” I called. I sprang across to the mess of shattered wood. “What’s behind those broken cabinets? Keep an eye out for anything!”

Crouching beside the ruined sink, I began to hurl aside pieces of wood. Kipps and Lockwood joined me at once, but Holly and George stood transfixed, staring at the door. In moments a small space was cleared. I peered under the sink. The floorboards were rotten at the back, and in places didn’t reach the wall. Loops of pipework dangled in the shadows like exposed intestines. I shone my torch around the darkened recess.