Jonathan Stroud - The Creeping Shadow

I saw nothing, but the roar of flames echoed in my ears. When I stuck my hand out from under the spirit-cape, I gasped at the sudden supernatural cold.

“Flashlight off, Luce,” Lockwood said.

The recommendation when switching off a flashlight is always to keep your eyes closed for five full seconds—to give them a chance to get used to the dark. Just before I opened them, I heard Lockwood give a startled exclamation, and knew he was ahead of me. So I looked, too. There was a faint luminosity in the broken windows, and by this other-light it was possible to see that the seats of the ruined car were occupied after all.

Silhouetted heads showed in the darkness, bowed and still; long hair hung lankly above ragged collars and thin, thin necks. Skin as white as cave fish gleamed, and rows of coal-black eyes. Though their physical bodies had been removed long ago, the passengers of the train remained inside.

We stood there. Behind came sound of renewed pursuit, with Adelaide Winkman hallooing at the back.

“No choice, Luce,” Lockwood said. “We’ll have to go through.”

“Through the train? But Lockwood—”

“It’s either that or Winkman. We’ve got to trust in the capes.”

“But there are so many of them….”

“We’ve got to trust the capes.”

And do so right away, because now a flashlight beam speared us each in turn, and then another, and the tunnel mouth became a brutal blaze of merging lights and running forms.

A shot rang out; a small hole appeared in the metalwork at the end of the car.

I don’t remember how we climbed onto the train, who went first, or how we kept the capes around us as we scaled the rungs and squeezed through the narrow opening into the car. Fear blurred the experience—fear of what was behind and, mostly, fear of what sat in the seats around us now.

Fire had passed through the train, at considerable heat. The interior was stripped to its metal skeleton; the chair upholstery was gone, and some of the thinner metal struts were warped. Everything was black, the surfaces burned and thick with charcoal dust. Nevertheless, those sitting in the haze of other-light retained vestiges of old-style clothing, traces of suits, hats, and fancy dresses that weren’t entirely scorched. They sat bolt upright on facing seats, on either side of the narrow central aisle. Close-up, you could see that their skin, like their clothes, persisted only in papery flakes and sections. How dry and dusty they were—except for their eyes. Those were as big and bright and moist as the eyes of toads, and all were fixed directly on us.

Another bullet whined overhead and struck something deep inside the train. I was grateful for it. Without the prompting, I believe we’d never have taken another step. Now we gathered the capes around us and started to shuffle forward—first me, Lockwood behind—past the glowing forms of men and women in their metal tomb, the rows of resentful dead.

An old woman, bones beneath her shawl. A man with a bowler hat blending with his face. Two young men, heads propped against each other, merged and fused. I shut my ears to the eager whispering that rose around us.

The floor was crispy where some synthetic layer had become a kind of toast. It felt crunchy underfoot. We moved very slowly, inching down the aisle. Eyes watched us. The occupants of the car didn’t move.

As we progressed, we saw that not all the forms were burned and old. One or two had brighter auras and—I felt—jarringly modern clothes. A youth with an orange puffer jacket and dark blue jeans; a thin girl in a hoodie. They sat among the older ghosts like gold teeth in a rotting mouth. Newer passengers, too, Flo had said. She’d been right. It was not clear how they’d died.

We came to the center of the train, where the side had been blown away and the roof crushed low. We had to bend almost in half in order to progress, and there were ghosts here, too, squashed into appalling forms. I did my utmost not to take in the details. We passed into the second half of the train.

“Keep looking straight ahead,” Lockwood whispered. “Don’t meet their gaze.”

I nodded. “They want us with them.”

“And they’d have us, too, if it weren’t for the cloaks.”

As if in proof, an old man sitting by the aisle raised a withered hand as I passed by. His curled finger reached to touch me—but jerked away as the cape drew near.

At the far end of the train, there were fewer ghosts. We hastened on, made it to where the door hung open and the tunnel track stretched away. Legs watery with relief, we dropped through, stumbling on a few yards until we finally sank to our knees on the sharp gravel. Behind us was only silence.

“Hope the Winkmans try to come after us,” Lockwood said, once we could speak. “If they do, I reckon tomorrow night there might be a couple more passengers sitting in that train.”

I shuddered. “Don’t.”

“Come on. If we follow the tunnel for long enough, we’ll find a way out.” He adjusted the hood of his cape. “Better keep these on until we’re well away from here.”

We got slowly, stiffly to our feet. “Who would have thought Portland Row had such treasures in it?” I said. “We owe your parents, Lockwood. They’ve kept us safe.”

He didn’t answer. It wasn’t a place for conversation. With that, we set our backs to death and darkness. Walking side by side, we followed the train track slowly up toward the light.

Lockwood was satisfied with the result of our subterranean expedition, or at least as satisfied as it was possible to be given that we’d failed to retrieve the skull and had both nearly died. The fact that it had taken us nearly two hours to locate a safe way out of the Underground system and had almost been squashed by a moving train outside of Stockwell didn’t bother him much either.

“Look at it this way,” he said the following morning, when we were sitting with George and Holly in the basement office of Lockwood & Co. “The positives of last night massively outweigh the negatives. First, we went in search of an important psychic artifact and discovered that we actually owned two others.” He glanced up at the suit of armor that stood beside his desk. The spirit-capes hung from it, glittering, resplendent, and slowly drying. They’d got a bit sooty in the Tube tunnels, and we’d had to dab them clean. “That’s a major result,” he went on. “Okay, maybe we won’t want to wear them too much in public. People might think we were in some kind of novelty show. But those capes could really help us out in dangerous situations. Right, George?”

There was nothing George loved more than mysterious psychic artifacts; he’d hardly been able to keep his hands off the capes all morning. “Yep, they’re amazing objects,” he said. “Obviously the silver links in the lining help keep the ghosts at bay, but it’s possible the feathers do something, too. Could be their natural oil, or some special coating the witch doctors used…I’ll have to experiment. And, Lockwood”—his eyes gleamed—“we should really check to see what else is hidden away upstairs in that room.”

“Maybe someday,” Lockwood said. “When we’ve got time.”

George grunted. “I know what that means. But you can’t keep ignoring those boxes—can he, Luce?”

“I guess not.” My reaction had been more muted than the others’. I was happy about the capes, of course, but that didn’t resolve my disappointment about the whispering skull. I’d been so close to retrieving it. I’d actually had it in my hand. Once the adrenaline of our escape had faded, I’d been left feeling pretty empty inside.