Jonathan Stroud - The Creeping Shadow

Lockwood knew what I was thinking, of course. “You mustn’t be too upset, Lucy,” he said. “We don’t know that the skull’s lost for good. There’s still hope—and that brings me to the really big result of the night…namely the sinister Mr. Johnson of the Rotwell Institute. You recognizing him there was huge . If you were still a member of Lockwood and Company, I’d give you a raise. As it is—”

“You’ll give me one?” George suggested.

“No. But I will go so far as to say it’s the most significant bit of work anyone’s done since the Chelsea Outbreak. You’re an amazing agent, Lucy.”

Well, you can guess that made me feel a bit better. While I was digesting it, Lockwood got up and walked around the front of his desk; he leaned back against it, tall and slim and full of life and purpose. I had a sudden sense that everything was possible, that fortune and our assembled Talents would favor us. I could feel my despondency lifting. It was the Lockwood effect.

“The implications are incredible,” he went on. “With one stroke, Luce, you made a connection between the black market and one of the most famous institutions in London. Holly—what can you tell us about the institute?”

Before coming to work at Lockwood’s, Holly Munro had been an agent at Rotwell’s—and then a personal assistant to Steve Rotwell, its chairman. She had not greatly enjoyed that particular job, Mr. Rotwell being a bullish, aggressive individual, but she had always spoken highly of the company in general. She certainly knew more than most about the way it was run.

“The institute is the agency’s research wing,” she said. “It keeps itself separate from the rest of the company. No ordinary operatives work for it. It’s all adult scientists investigating the mechanics of the Problem.”

“And making lots of lousy products in the process,” I said. “Like George’s silver bell thing we used at the Guppy house.”

George gave a shrill cry. “Hey, that worked! Just a little too late , was all.”

Holly nodded. “The institute’s got a long history of inventing new defenses.”

“And marketing them very successfully,” Lockwood said. “Holly, when you were at Rotwell, did you know this Johnson?”

“Saul Johnson. Yes, I knew of him. He was one of the directors of the institute.”

“And did he ever get involved with ordinary ghost hunts? Lucy first saw him when she was out on a case with Rotwell’s.”

“No. I never remember that happening before. The institute scientists kept to themselves. They were usually off at their labs somewhere.”

“Right, so it looks to me,” Lockwood said, “as if something new and special is going on. Johnson—and presumably the institute generally—is out collecting powerful Sources, despite DEPRAC’s directives against doing precisely that. The mummified head you found last week, Lucy—Johnson will have seen that, clocked it, and given immediate orders to Harold Mailer to save it at the furnaces, ready for the marketeers to spirit away.”

“Looks as if everything important is being kept back now,” I said. “The Source from the Ealing Cannibal case was sitting on Johnson’s table last night, too.”

“Which raises the question,” George said, “of why .”

He said this in the kind of slow, deliberate way that made you feel a sudden thrill of excitement; you knew he had the answer and was about to reveal it in long words you only barely understood.

“Care to fill us in?” Lockwood said.

George paused. “Do I have to get up and come around to lean against the table in a cool, leaderish way like you?”

“That’s entirely optional.”

“Good, because my legs are too short to do it comfortably. My buttocks would keep sliding off. Think I’ll stay sitting here, if it’s all the same to you. Do you remember,” George went on, “what we found in the tunnels beneath Aickmere’s? Aside from a massive pile of human bones.”

“I found Lucy,” Lockwood said. His smile made me feel a little flushed. He’d had to climb down into the tunnels after the Poltergeist pulled me in.

“Aside from the bones and Lucy,” George said, “we found evidence that someone had been conducting some kind of weird experiments down there. There was a cleared circle in the middle of the bones, and candles set up around the edge, and marks where something metal had been pulled across the floor. And there was a massive ectoplasm burn mark in the very center of the circle. The bones were all psychically active, and we reckoned someone was using them as a single massive Source. Now we know that ordinary Sources represent weak points, where Visitors can slip through from”—he hesitated—“from wherever it is they ought to be. Imagine them as holes worn in old fabric. Like when the seat of your jeans wears through, Lockwood, that sort of thing.”

“I don’t get worn patches on the seats of my trousers,” Lockwood said. “And I don’t have any jeans.”

“Well, think of mine, then. I have plenty of old pairs. The fabric gets thin, then stringy, then widens to an actual hole. All of a sudden it’s embarrassing when you bend over. It’s the same here, except that it’s not your underwear showing—something else comes through.”

“This metaphor is disturbing in a number of ways,” Lockwood said. “Right now I’m actually less worried about the ghosts than about the other images you’re conjuring up. But go on. If you create a giant Source, therefore—”

“The weak point would be correspondingly bigger,” George continued. “It would create a bigger hole, for want of a better word. We saw that with the bone glass, too.” He was referring to an unpleasant artifact we’d once discovered—a mirror made of numerous haunted bones, designed by its maker to be a window to the Other Side. Whether it actually worked or not was unclear, since anyone who gazed into it invariably died, but the psychic frisson it gave off had certainly been strange and sinister. “I think whoever was behind the Aickmere’s thing was trying to make a window like the bone glass,” George said. “To do that, they needed a giant Source. Now Johnson seems to be out and about collecting powerful Sources—I reckon he’s up to the same game.”

“You think the Rotwell Institute was behind the Aickmere’s incident, too?” I asked.

“Maybe. Remember how quickly their teams turned up to clear the site after we’d discovered it? But it’s impossible to say. There was no clue as to who it was.”

“We found a cigarette butt, didn’t we?” Holly pointed out.

“Yep,” George said. “A Persian Light. Quite a rare brand.”

I sat up. “Hey, Johnson was smoking cigarettes.”

George looked at me. “What? Were they Persian Lights?”

“I don’t know.”

He slapped the side of his forehead. “Oh, Luce. That was a missed opportunity. Didn’t you sniff it? They’ve got a very distinctive aroma, like burned toast and caramel.”

“No, as it happens I didn’t take time out to taste his cigarette smoke, George. I was too busy trying to avoid being killed.”

George slouched back in his seat. “You could have taken a quick whiff while running for your life, Luce. Where’s your dedication?”

Lockwood had been thinking. He tapped his fingers on the desktop. “Did Steve Rotwell have much to do with the institute, Holly?”

She frowned. “I assumed that he was in charge of it. He was always heading off to see them.”

“So he probably knows. Question is: What can we do about it?”

“Not a lot,” George said. “Still can’t really tell Barnes, can we? There’s not a shred of proof.”