Jonathan Stroud - The Creeping Shadow

I waited. Just the rustling again, a little louder.

Now George flinched too. “I can’t see the face yet. Can you see the face yet, Hol?”

“No. No, I can’t. Lucy—”

“Steady,” I said. I felt what they did, the swell of panic. It jangled down the nerve endings of my arms and sloshed in the liquid of my belly. “Steady, both of you. I’m getting something.”

“Look at all that blood. ”

“Getting something…”

A voice like dry leaves, whispered through sandpaper lips. This time I heard it.

Oh.

“My eyes. Have you seen my eyes?”

The figure lifted its head. The hair fell back.

I don’t know if it was George or Holly who screamed the loudest. Either way, they drowned out my own cry. Whether the Visitor actually lunged toward us, I don’t remember. Certainly I slashed at it with my sword. Then we were back through the gate and away across the green. We ran as far as the market cross and halted, lungs raking air, gasping, cursing.

“Is it coming?” Holly asked. “Is it after us?”

I peeked back through the blackness of the night. “No.”

“I’m so pleased.”

“ Why did it have to be its eyes?” George said. “Why couldn’t it have been a less significant body part? Its thumb, say, or even an ear. That wouldn’t have been so bad.”

“Where did that ghost come from, Lucy? It wasn’t on the map.”

“Must be a new one. I don’t know.”

“Its toes! It might have lost its toes! You can’t walk without toes. Then, if it went for us, it would just have fallen over.”

“George,” I said. “You’re burbling.”

“I am, yes. But, you know, I happen to think it’s justified.”

I made a decision. Everyone needed a rest. I led them back to the inn.

As it happened, Lockwood and Kipps were already there. Lockwood leaned against the bar, scribbling in his notebook. Kipps, with a Coke in his hand and the Fairfax goggles still enveloping his head, was striding exultantly around the taproom.

“Two Specters!” he called. “Two Specters and a Wisp! I saw them all! I saw them and I dealt with them, quick as anything! Ask Lockwood, he’ll tell you.”

“He’s been yelping in my ear all night,” Lockwood said. “I’m beginning to be sorry we gave those things to him. All the same, we’ve done okay so far. What about you all?”

We told him. “Lockwood,” I said, when we were finished, “there’s an odd atmosphere hanging over the village, some distant psychic disturbance. I can just about hear it—it’s like a background hum. I’ve heard this sort of thing before, under Aickmere’s—and the bone glass was similar, too.”

Lockwood tapped his pen on the bar; he didn’t speak for a moment. Then he said, “I’d like to swap things around a little. Holly, could you take Kipps and George and go back to deal with that eyeless girl? Then continue where you left off. Lucy, I want you to come with me. We’ll see if we can’t pinpoint this disturbance of yours.”

Lockwood and I took a walk around the village. The moon gleamed over the eastern woods now. You could see the smooth tops of the hills shining just behind the trees, silver crescents suspended in the dark. There was beauty to it, but it was a still night and the silence was oppressive; I longed for an owl hoot, or the ring of a corpse-bell, a human cry— something other than the distant psychic hubbub buzzing in my mind.

Every hundred yards or so, we stopped and I tried to get a fix on it. No good; it never varied. Perhaps it was too far away.

“We’ll try up by the woods,” Lockwood said.

Our boots thumped on the hard dirt of the lane. We’d done a looping circuit and were coming level with the church now.

“Hope they manage to snare that Specter,” I said. “Hope George copes with it.”

Lockwood grinned. “He’s got a hang-up about girls with parts missing. I have a feeling Kipps will fix it, though. He’s champing at the bit, now that he’s got those new specs. And Holly did okay, too, you say?”

“She was very good.”

“I’ve been encouraging her to trust her Talents more. Her time with that oaf Rotwell didn’t do her any favors. She sort of crumpled up inside, lost faith in her own abilities. It’s nice to get her out in the field. You’re a great role model for her, Luce.”

“Well, I don’t know about that….” I drew to a sudden halt; for the first time I felt a change in the background disturbance. It had lessened, then flared. We had passed the rusty ghost-lamp on its little mound and were below the embankment by the churchyard. The boundary thicket was above us. “Can we just nip up to the church a moment? I thought I felt something.”

“Sure.” Lockwood grabbed my arm, helped me up the steep slope. “Might be worth taking a look. If Danny Skinner’s to be believed, the dead ought to be rising from their graves just about now.”

But the churchyard was quite still, a mouthful of crooked stone teeth shining under the moon. From where we stood by the hedge, at the top of the earth bank, we could see its whole extent, from the stubby church itself to the lych-gate leading to the lane. I listened. Yes, the hum was pulsing. It had a different quality now.

“Quick question for you, Luce,” Lockwood said. “It’s about us. Are you still my client? Or should I be paying you for tonight? I’m confused.”

“To be honest, I’ve lost track of that, too….” But my heartbeat was getting faster, responding to the pulsing of the distant hum. My mouth was suddenly dry. Why? All across the graveyard nothing stirred.

“We’ll have to come to some kind of arrangement,” Lockwood went on. “Technically, we’re each helping each other right now. I’m helping you with the skull and the whole Winkman thing; you’re helping me here at the village. Two things are taking place at once. We’re going to have to figure out a very complicated client-agent relationship. Or”—he looked at me—“we could always do something much simpler….”

I wasn’t listening. I shook my head, held up a hand.

The moon glinted on the black stones in the dumpy tower. The animal rustlings in the hedges had ceased, the wind had dropped utterly. A silence lay over the moonlit gravestones, and I suddenly knew that we were not alone. From the quality of Lockwood’s silence, I realized he’d had the exact same feeling.

We looked down on the churchyard.

Something was coming toward us from between the stones.

Far off we saw it first, moving among the tilted crosses. So slowly did it approach that to begin with I thought it was the shadow of one of the twisted yew trees that fringed the churchyard wall. It was very faint, bent-backed and stooping, with massive rolling shoulders and a shapeless, questing head that swung from side to side. The arms were outstretched; great legs moved with furtive deliberation, one step, then another, plowing through the dark. Cold air swept over the wall like a salt wave, crashing against us, making us gasp.

“Look how big it is,” Lockwood breathed.

The ghost of the Ealing Cannibal had been large. Even glimpsed through the kitchen door, its unnatural size and strength had been obvious. This thing was larger still: taller, reaching the top of the some of the tilted crosses; bulkier, with strange, stiff limbs grinding their way forward as if wading through treacle. The movement was awkward, and curiously mesmerizing. I’ve watched Raw-bones scrabble after me up concrete slopes; I’ve stood on high-rise apartment roofs while Screaming Spirits swirled around me like tattered hawks. I’ve seen stuff. But this giant figure in the churchyard—I’d never seen anything quite so alien and strange.