Jonathan Stroud - The Creeping Shadow

As soon as I landed, I flung myself violently to the side. Something struck the asphalt roof where I’d just been lying and stuck there quivering. I tore a canister of iron from my belt, turned, and lobbed it hard. It smashed into the window, just above a protruding head. Shards of glass dropped like dislodged icicles; someone screamed, the head whipped back into the house, and I was up and away along the low, flat roof, reaching the corner in five quick strides.

From that corner, I could see a high wall extending away between two gardens, with expanses of grass stretching left and right like black and frozen seas. I didn’t relish being trapped in either garden, with no sure way out. The wall would do. It was three feet lower than the roof, and I had to turn and drop carefully onto the narrow crest of bricks. As I did so, I saw the first of my pursuers jumping from the ruined window.

Along the crest I ran, scampering as a cat would, looking straight ahead, ignoring the drop on either side. There were trees in the gardens; you could see silvery ghost-wards hanging from them, smell the lavender bushes out there in the dark. Behind I heard a shout; something flashed past my shoulder and was gone.

I got to a place where the wall split: it marked the end of the gardens of this street, and the beginnings of the ones on the next. To my right, a side wall sprouted off. To the left, a thick hedge stretched away. I looked back; one of the men had followed me along the wall, moving hesitantly, a small knife in his hand. Another had jumped down onto the lawn and was sprinting across the grass. He would have his work cut out for him, because the hedge would block his way. The third man was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he had been injured by the broken window. I hoped so.

I continued straight, following the line I was on. I wanted to reach the road beyond. Ahead of me: the next row of houses. There, too, glinting coldly in the moonlight, an all-glass conservatory, where my wall came to an end. Beyond, I could make out the low roof of a garage, and perhaps a gap leading to the street.

The conservatory roof was higher than the wall. As I slowed to consider it, something struck my forearm. I felt a sharp lance of pain, and the shock of it made me stumble. I almost toppled from my perch; instead, I pitched forward against the side of the conservatory. My arm stung as I pulled myself up onto its roof; when I touched the place, my fingers came away wet.

Over the glass roof I ran, leaning inward, boots slipping and sliding on the tilted panes. Up off the glass, onto the roof of the garage. The street wasn’t far away.

Another shout behind was answered by a second cry. I paused. Looking back, I saw the first pursuer had climbed onto the conservatory. He was bigger than I was, and considerably heavier; he couldn’t bring himself to run across it as I had. Dropping to a sitting position, he began to shuffle across the apex of the roof like a chubby-thighed kid riding a ghost-horse at the fair.

I waited until he was halfway across, out of reach of either end. Then I took a magnesium flare from my pocket.

It wasn’t a very nice thing to do, but I didn’t much care right then.

When I chucked it, the flare hit the conservatory roof just in front of the shuffling man, exploding in a blaze of searing white light, and showering him in fragments of hot iron. He gave a cry and lurched back, trying to protect his face. Even as he did so, the glass under his knees cracked, then shattered completely. The roof collapsed; with a scream the man pitched forward into the silvery smoke and disappeared.

Something bounced against the brickwork at my back; a knife spun past across the asphalt roof. The pursuer in the garden had broken through the hedge and was running over the lawn toward me.

I gave him a rude gesture, then scrabbled away across the roof, dropped over the far side onto a car hood, and bounced down onto a cobbled driveway. As I hit the ground I was already running. It was a small mews, possibly quite pretty, but I couldn’t hang around to admire the architecture. I was out of it in moments and sprinting full tilt through the silent streets of Clerkenwell.

It was only when I was a mile or so away, lost among the winding alleys near St. Pancras station, that I allowed myself to slow down a little. But I didn’t stop moving even then. My sleeve was wet, and the side of my arm felt numb. It was a cold night; to rest would have made me prey to shock and exhaustion. Plus, it might have set my mind working. And I really didn’t want to think about what had happened to me—and to Harold Mailer—right then.

One thing I did know, instinctively, without deliberation, was that I couldn’t go back home. The men who’d tried to silence me knew full well where I lived. My little studio in Tooting wouldn’t be a healthy place that night.

And so, by slow degrees, going by back roads, making a cautious loop through the northern districts of central London, I started on the long and painful journey toward the one refuge I could think of. The one place I knew I’d be safe.

I didn’t need to think hard about this one, either.

I was making for 35 Portland Row.

It’s only three miles as the crow flies from Clerkenwell to Marylebone, but it took me several hours to cover the distance. Weariness dragged at me, and I often lost my way. Also, I was wary of pursuit, and so kept off the main roads, making lengthy diversions to avoid encounters with the living. I saw a few vehicles in the distance—mostly agency cars and DEPRAC vans—and in my state of mind I trusted none of them. My paranoia kept me safe, and no ghosts detected me, which was another plus, but I was a slow and sorry figure by the time I reached the familiar street at last.

I trudged up the center of the road, past Arif’s corner store, past the rusty ghost-lamp, meandering listlessly between the silent chains of parked cars. Everything was quiet, dark, locked down. Midnight had come and gone. No one in their right mind was making house calls now—except for agents out on cases. It was only then, as I reached number 35 and saw its unlit windows, that I remembered it was quite possible—quite likely—that Lockwood and the others would not be home. The realization made me sway; but it was too late now. I crossed over to the gate.

It was still crooked, and they hadn’t changed the sign:

A. J. LOCKWOOD & CO., INVESTIGATORS.

AFTER DARK, RING BELL AND WAIT BEYOND THE IRON LINE.

I pushed it open, walked carefully up toward the house, over the uneven tiles. In the glow of the streetlight outside number 37, the iron barrier embedded halfway up the path glinted with a soft sheen. I could see the bell hanging from its post beside it. So many cases had begun with that bell clanging at odd hours of the night. Such different clients: the Slaine family’s doctor, calling us out after finding all six of them vanished from their beds; the one surviving member of the Bromley Wick shooting party…In the Bayswater Stalker affair, wicked old Crawford’s niece had pretty much swung from it in her desperation, with him floating behind her up the road.

One thing held true every time: it made a heck of a racket.

I reached for the clapper, looking back at the sleeping street—and for a moment a vestige of pride resurfaced. Perhaps I should wait until morning, for a more civilized hour. I could always find shelter somewhere, curl up on the step behind Arif’s store, maybe, and—

Nope, that stupid idea didn’t detain me long. I needed help, and I needed it now .