Jonathan Stroud - The Creeping Shadow

None of us said anything. Yes, it had gotten out—and killed his sister. And Lockwood, still a little boy, had been the one who found her. Afterward, in his rage and grief, he had destroyed the ghost. I knew this because once, alone in this same room, my Talent had looped me back to the past, and I’d heard the echo of the tragedy. I couldn’t erase the memory from my mind.

“Even so, Lockwood,” George said, “we don’t want to mess around in here. What do the boxes contain?”

“Search me. The same sort of things as on the walls downstairs, I guess. Curios from other cultures; devices linked to dealing with spirits. Bound to be a lot of junk, but I bet there’s good stuff, too.” Lockwood removed a vase of lavender from the top of a crate, his movements swift and brittle. You could sense the anger still contained in him. His fingers tapped the wood. “You could try this box, look—or this—or one of those….Come on, Luce, it’s your skull we’re going after. You make a decision. Which would you like?”

“This one, then,” I said.

“Good choice, Luce…good choice. I like the look of it, too.” He took his knife from his belt, eased it into the crack beneath the crate lid, and began to work it around. “Just like opening a tin of sardines,” he said. “There we go. So then, let’s have a little gander at what’s in… here —”

A twist, a crack; Holly, George, and I all flinched. The lid came loose; Lockwood wrenched it back and let it drop behind the crate. A rich, resinous fragrance filled the air.

“That’s frankincense,” Holly murmured.

The crate was filled to the brim with yellow-brown wood shavings, acting as protective packing. Lockwood plunged his hand inside. “Aha…” He drew out a broad and bulky package, wrapped in something dry and papery that looked like straw. He held it gingerly, letting shavings fall onto the faded carpet at his feet.

“Careful,” Holly said.

“Don’t worry. We’re not doing this after dark. That was the mistake my sister made.”

I saw now that the wrapping was a kind of reed matting, very old and fragile, which disintegrated at Lockwood’s touch. He brushed it away. Beneath it was something bright and colorful that showed like flowers coming out from under melting snow.

“What is it?” I asked. “They look like—”

“Feathers.” Lockwood gave the object a shake. Like a tablecloth unfurling, it suddenly opened to an unexpected size: a cloth of blue and purple feathers that were small and neat and lovely, stitched so close together they appeared seamless. I didn’t know which species of bird they came from, but I could tell that it lived far away in some warm and forested land. The dowdy, derelict room was lit by it; we stared at it in wonder.

“The other side’s pretty nifty, too,” Lockwood said. He turned it in his hands, and we saw the framework of minute silver links, tight as chain mail, that fused the feathers together. There was a silver clasp halfway along one edge, with a dangling hood beside it.

“You put it around your neck,” George said. “It’s a cape.”

“A spirit-cape,” Lockwood said. “Witch doctors or shamans used to wear them.”

“It’s beautiful,” Holly murmured.

“More than that…it had a useful purpose.” Lockwood laid it out over the top of the nearest packing case. “The shamans were wise men; they spoke to their dead ancestors. They did this in spirit houses, where—”

“Sorry, what?” I asked. “A spirit house? And how do you know all this, anyway?”

“My parents,” Lockwood said. “They wrote articles about it. They thought the beliefs of other cultures might throw light on the Problem. Studied ideas about ghosts and spirits—saw what was different and what was the same. Whether it worked or not wasn’t the point. They wanted to find out what people believed . They were after clues. I’ve got their papers somewhere….” The edginess he had displayed since entering the room had left him, soothed, perhaps, by the loveliness of the cape.

“And did they?” George asked. “Did they come to any conclusions about the Problem?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know.” Lockwood took out another package wrapped in matting. “Looks like there might be another cape here….” He delved deeper and, taking out a small wooden box, looked inside. He shut it hastily. “Ooh, I’m not sure I want to get that out. Never touch a mummified body part if you don’t know where it’s been. That’s my motto.”

“Holds true with un-mummified ones, too,” George said. “That’s the motto I live by.”

“I don’t want to know about either of your mottos,” Holly said. “You were talking about spirit houses, Lockwood.”

“Oh, yes….Well, some of these cultures had more relaxed approaches to the dead. When an old person was near death, they were taken to one of these huts. They died there, and their bones were stored inside. In racks. The shaman would go there to talk to their spirits. When he did so, he wore a spirit-cape like this for protection. That’s the story, anyway. Why don’t we take the two capes tomorrow, Lucy? They’re not Sources, exactly, but I bet the Winkmans would buy them as curios.”

“Seems a shame to sacrifice them,” I said. “They’re so pretty. Why don’t you have another look in the crate?”

“All right….” Lockwood stuck his hand into the shavings again. “Okay…There’s something here—feels like glass. Might be a…Ah, yes….” He brought it out. His voice faded. “A photograph. Yes, it is.”

The simple wooden frame was discolored, and the photo stained, either by water or weather. It was a black-and-white picture, probably taken with some heavy, old-fashioned camera on a stand. There was a formality to the shot, despite the mud in the foreground and the jungle trees that formed the backdrop. It showed a group of people standing in a forest clearing. Most were tribesmen and -women, scantily clad, some with astounding birds’ feathers pluming from their hair like so much sculpted smoke. Everyone was grinning. In the center stood a man and a woman in European clothes: he with a crumpled jacket over a white shirt; she with a peasant blouse and long, sensible skirt. Both wore wide-brimmed hats that half hid their faces, but from the man’s long, slim chin and fluted mouth, and the woman’s gleaming smile, I knew full well who they were.

Lockwood didn’t say anything for a long while. When he did, his voice had a forced jollity. “I think this is New Guinea,” he said. “Soon after they got married. Must be the end of the trip. Look, my mother’s holding the spirit-mask that the old witch doctor’s just given her, the kind he wears when he’s communing with the dead. He’s the guy at the edge of the photo, the one with skin as wrinkled as a rhino’s jockstrap, with my mother’s binoculars hanging around his neck. She’s given them to him in return for the spirit-mask.”

The woman was holding up the mask and laughing; and you could tell the man beside her was looking at her, and her pleasure was making him smile, too. They were young, full of life and promise.

“I’ve still got the mask,” Lockwood said. “It’s the one on the shelf downstairs in the hall, next to the broken gourd. When I was very small I climbed up on the shelf and pulled it down and spent an hour looking through it, expecting to see ghosts all around. It didn’t do anything. Just plain cut-out holes in a mask. Not that my mother would have cared. They came back from every expedition with stuff like this: spirit-masks, ghost-catchers, bottles of holy mountain water that, if you drank it, supposedly gave you mystic visions. They were a pair of unworldly academics. Silly fools, really.” He set the photo facedown on the crate. “Luce, we’ll use the capes tomorrow. They’ll do nicely.”