Jonathan Stroud - The Creeping Shadow

“Isn’t there a story about Marissa’s lantern?” True to form, Holly had piled her plate with salad, but I was pleased to see a little mound of spaghetti, too. She twirled her fork with a delicate motion of her wrist. “Didn’t she get it from a garden shed?”

George nodded. “From her parents’ summer house. She used it when the ghost’s psychic field began to mess around with the workings of her flashlight. They were good innovators, Tom and Marissa; they were the first to experiment with iron and silver. Tom also tried taking caged cats into haunted houses, to see if they worked as early warning systems. He gave it up, though. The cats went crazy.”

“Doesn’t sound like a very kind thing to do,” Holly said. “Poor cats.”

“Bet they were more effective than that bell thing you had, though, George,” I said.

George sucked in a string of spaghetti. “The PEWS device? Maybe—but at least Rotwell’s are still innovating. They’re trying to come up with new ideas, like Tom did. The Fittes Agency doesn’t bother with that so much. They just stick to rapiers and raw Talent, which was always Marissa’s policy.”

“Well, the founders were brilliant in different ways,” Holly said. “We’re all in their debt. They devoted their lives to keeping us safe.”

“Took its toll on them, though,” Lockwood said. “Both died young.”

I thought of the photographs of Marissa I’d seen at Fittes House, the wrinkled woman dressed in black. “Not that young, surely. I’ve seen pictures. She was pretty old.”

“Only in her forties. Prematurely aged.”

“Anyway, it’s interesting to see how the Problem has spread like any other epidemic,” George added. “It behaves like a disease, rippling out from an original reservoir or core area: first Kent, then the southeast, then London, then the country.”

“In spite of Fittes’s and Rotwell’s best efforts,” I said.

“Yeah,” George said, “in spite of them.”

At the end of the meal, Lockwood made an announcement. “You all know that tomorrow is the relic-men’s night-market,” he said, “and we assume the Winkmans will be on hand to buy up all the best stuff. From what Lucy’s told us, the whispering skull is likely to feature as one of the transactions, so we need to be there, too. The aim is to get in, snatch the skull, hopefully find out a little more about this mysterious black market collector that the Winkmans are working for, and get out again—all without being spotted, cornered, and gutted with a fish knife. Nothing too hard. Flo’s going to take us to the location, but to get inside, we’ll need something that’ll guarantee safe passage.”

“A Source, you mean?” Holly asked.

“Exactly. I think two of us will go—probably Lucy and me—and that means we need two top-notch psychic Sources.”

“Well, where would we get those?” George said. “The skull was one, but that’s been pinched. We’ve got some bits and pieces knocking around the office, like that shriveled pirate’s hand that Holly’s always wanting to trash. We could use that, I suppose. Mind you, I am fond of it. I know it’s black with tar, and one of its fingers is coming loose, but, well, it’s got sentimental value….”

“Relax. I’m not going to take the hand.” Lockwood sat back. “No, we need something that no one’s seen before—something so devilishly interesting, they won’t look closely at who’s bringing it. The good news is, I think I know where to find precisely that.” He looked at his watch. “It’s not yet dusk. We’ve got time. I’ll show you now.”

“Sorry,” I said, “but where are we going?”

Lockwood smiled around at us. His face was calm and set.

“It’s all right; you don’t need your coats. It’s in Jessica’s room, upstairs.”

Lockwood had never been very forthcoming about his past. Quite the opposite: since the day I first met him, mystery had clung to his vanished family and the circumstances of their departure from this world. Though the house he lived in—and its eclectic furniture and contents—were memorials to his parents, Lockwood rarely spoke about them, and he almost never mentioned his sister, Jessica, who had died in her bedroom so many years earlier. Despite this, a few details had gradually leaked out, and I knew enough to see how they affected him.

Jessica Lockwood, six years older than little Anthony, had looked after him in the years following his parents’ unexpected deaths. Then, when he was nine years old, she had died, too—victim to a Visitor that had attacked her in her room. Since then, Lockwood had shut his grief away, clamped it deep inside, where it still burned fiercely, fueling his remorseless pursuit of ghosts of all kinds. And the room had been shut away, too, a dark, closed-off portion of the house. It was partly an unvisited shrine to Jessica, partly a storeroom for all the mementos Lockwood had of his parents and his sister. It was also a containment zone, for a powerful death-glow still blazed where his sister had fallen. Iron sheeting coated the door and silver wards hung in the room, but they had not yet been necessary. Jessica had never come back.

Lockwood led the way upstairs, Holly following, George and I lingering behind.

“But hold on, George,” I whispered. “What about Holly? Does she know…?”

“About Jessica? Yeah, she knows.”

“He told her? Oh…okay.”

Obviously it was good that Lockwood was loosening up about his past, sharing his secrets a little. It had taken ages for him to open up to me. It was healthier that he could do it more easily now. Obviously it was good that Holly knew. Obviously I was pleased.

The curtains were drawn, the room was dark. Lockwood led us in.

I hadn’t been in the bedroom for months, but nothing had changed. Nothing ever changed in that cold square space. As ever, the death-glow, pale and oval, shone with piercing beauty above the bed. As before, the force of it rustled the roots of my hair and made my teeth ache. The boxes and crates that half filled the room in the perpetual dusk had their usual array of protective lavender pots, and the silver charms still hung, tinkling, from the ceiling.

Lockwood had put on his sunglasses to shield his eyes from the supernatural glow. He switched on the light. The glow vanished, but its power remained. He didn’t open the curtains, but patted the nearest box. “I’m thinking that we should find something in one of these,” he said, and his voice was soft. “You know that my parents were folkloric researchers, searching for an answer to the Problem. They traveled all over the place, studying the belief systems of other cultures. Wherever they went, they brought back junk. Their favorite pieces are on the walls downstairs, but there’re things up here that have never been opened. Some of these crates only arrived here after they died. All we have to do is choose something that would fascinate a black marketeer. So…Lucy, why don’t you pick a box?”

“Are you sure?” I kept my voice down, too. Somehow, none of us wanted to speak at full volume in Jessica’s room. “But Lockwood—this is your parents’ collection….”

He shrugged. “Yeah, and it’s gathering dust. Let’s put it to good use. Pick a box.”

Still I hesitated. I looked at the bed, at the white coverlet. Beneath that was the terrible black ectoplasm burn left in the mattress when Jessica died. It had happened while she was sorting through one of those very chests. “But isn’t that”—I spoke with extra care—“a little bit dangerous?”

Lockwood’s eyes were hidden, but I thought a flicker of impatience crossed his face. “No. It’s not dark yet. And, don’t forget, my mother and father packed these up originally. It was only because something was dropped—and its Seal broke—that the ghost got out at all.”