Jonathan Stroud - The Creeping Shadow

“Are you doubting my word?” Danny Skinner asked. That vein throbbed. “Are you?”

“No, I’m doubting you’re giving us all the necessary information. You’re skirting around the central issue. All these ghosts you mentioned—it sounds grim, but you said there was something worse out there. What is it?”

Our guest looked down at his lap. “Yeah, there is something else. I didn’t want to tell you straight off, in case you wet your collective pants and were too frightened to come down. I was going to tell you on the train.”

At this, there was a certain amount of stretching of eyes. Lockwood spoke gently. “Well, since we aren’t coming on the train, Mr. Skinner, certainly not today and perhaps never, maybe you’d be so good as to tell us about this very frightening thing. We’ll try to contain ourselves as best we can.”

The kid shook his head. “You know, I only came to Lockwood and Co. because you’re young, like me. I thought you’d treat me right….Well, the truth is, there is something else that walks by night in the village of Aldbury Castle.” He shuddered, then drew his shoulders in and fiddled with his collar as if he suddenly felt cold. “No one knows what it is, or what its nature might be. But it has a local name.” He took a deep breath, then spoke in a voice of guttural dread. “We call it…the Creeping Shadow.”

He sat back and surveyed us with triumphant, hard-eyed finality, as if expecting us to utter groans and gasps of terror, throw ourselves off our seats, and roll on the floor in panic with our legs wiggling in the air. It didn’t work out that way. Lockwood raised a polite eyebrow; Holly scribbled briefly in her notebook, then scratched a decorative knee. I took another bite of cake.

George stared at the boy from over his glasses. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why give it that name? Or any name, come to think of it? None of the other apparitions you’ve mentioned were called anything special. What makes this ghost so terrifying?”

“Creeping Shadows are a dime a dozen around here,” Holly added as the boy frowned indignantly. “Almost every Shade or Lurker could be described like that.”

“You need to give us more information,” Lockwood said. “Prove it’ll be worth our while.”

“Worth your while?!” The boy gave a cry of rage. He banged his fist on the arm of his chair, making us all jump. “You agents think you’ve seen it all, with your precious certainties that make you turn up your noses at me! Those Rotwell agents were just the same. Well, I’ll shake you up.” He glared around at us, a hostile, white-nosed imp of fury. “The Creeping Shadow isn’t like any other ghost you’ve seen. There’s its size, for one thing.”

“Well, how big is it?” Lockwood asked.

“It’s a giant. Seven feet tall, or maybe taller, with a massive body, and bloated arms and legs. It wasn’t a naturally sized man, whatever it was in life.”

“The Limbless are often bloated,” I said. “Might be a Limbless.”

“I said it had legs and arms, didn’t I?” Danny Skinner growled. “Are you deaf? How else could it creep? I saw it myself, in the pheasant woods below Gunner’s Top. Came stealing through the trees, head lowered, creeping, creeping, with smoke or mist or whatnot pouring off it.”

“Ghost-fog, you mean,” Holly said.

“No.” The boy shook his head. “I know what ghost-fog is. We get plenty of it on the green; the village is choked with it some nights. This is different. This stuff streams off the spirit as it moves. It trails behind it like a cloak, like a comet’s tail. Almost like it’s on fire. You never saw a Limbless like that.”

George brushed some crumbs off his lap. “I admit you do interest me a little now. So there are flames on this shadow?”

“The edge flickers. If it’s flames, it’s the cold flames of hell.”

“Describe the apparition. What details do you see when you look at it? Its face? Its clothes?”

“Nothing—just a black outline.” The kid rolled his eyes. “Jeez. Why do you think we call it a shadow?”

“All right, all right,” Lockwood said. “A bit of feistiness is all very well, but if you don’t dial it down pronto, you’ll find yourself booted out into the street. By Holly here, which will be super-embarrassing.”

“What else can you tell us?” I said.

Danny Skinner looked at me. “I thought you were a client.”

“Oh…yes. Yes, I am. I’m just watching. Don’t mind me.”

Whether it was inherent in him, or something built up by terrible experiences, anger pulsed through the kid in waves. You could see it flare up, then just as quickly subside. “The way it moves,” he said; “the shape of the head, how it sort of rolls awkwardly along—I think it’s deformed. Cold rolls off it, too; I near froze with fear.”

“You saw it in the woods?”

“ I did, but kids have seen it in other places. In Church Lane, skulking in the graveyard, and up on the barrows, other side of the green.”

Lockwood frowned. “Sounds like it travels far and wide. That is unusual. Aside from general creeping about, do you get a sense of any purpose? What does it do?”

The boy shrugged. “I know what it does. It gathers people’s souls.”

This time the pause following his announcement was met with a more attentive silence. It wasn’t that we were awed or scared. All of us were watching his face, trying to decide how to respond. With open incredulity? (My inclination.) With scathing disbelief? (George somehow turned a hog-like snort into a sort-of sneeze.) Or calmly, quizzically, as Holly and Lockwood did? “Can you expand on that?” Lockwood asked.

“There’s a cross in the churchyard,” Danny Skinner said. “It’s very old. They think it dates from Viking times. There are carvings on it, very worn and weathered; most of them you can’t make heads or tails of now—but one still has its shape. The old folk call it the Gatherer of Souls. It’s a figure standing in a field of bones and skulls, and there are people arranged behind it, all pressed close together, like they’ve been collected up by it, you know. Well, I saw the Shadow. It’s the same thing.”

“You’re saying that this Creeping Shadow is the same as the figure on the ancient cross?”

“Yes. They carved it like a giant, just like the shape I saw.”

“When did the Shadow first appear?”

“Three months ago. Midwinter’s Day.”

“And there’s no record of it turning up before then, not even in village legend?”

“Not as far as I know.”

Lockwood shook his head. “Sorry, I don’t see any link between the ghost and this old carving. They may both be big and bulky—but that’s not enough to make a connection.”

“Wrong. There is a connection.”

“How? In what way?”

Danny Skinner spoke quietly. “It was three months ago that the curse on the village started. That’s when the ghosts erupted. That’s when the adults started dying of ghost-touch. Why? Because the Shadow stirs up the dead. They rise from their graves to follow him, like on the cross. You ain’t seen anything like it, sir, till you’ve seen that. You have to come and witness it—and help us while you’re there.” The stork chick look was back, the big-eyed, big-eared waif, gazing beseechingly around at us. “You have to.”

“Well, that was fun,” Holly said as we sat in the kitchen later. “I thought he was going to physically assault you at the end there, Lockwood. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so mad.”

Lockwood blew out his cheeks. “I know. It’s not as if we even gave him an outright no . If we get a chance, we might run down sometime next week. There were actually points of interest in what he said. But I’m simply not dropping everything for the wild claims of some hysterical kid.”