Jonathan Stroud - The Creeping Shadow

I stood up with a start. I thought I’d heard a noise along the side passage where the Rotwell group had gone. “Lockwood…” I said. “It’s really time we left.”

“Just leave him be. You make too much of him. Always have. He is replaceable, you know. Hey, if you close your eyes or switch out the light, I might be Lockwood.”

I didn’t honor that comment with a reply. I was worried. Lockwood had an odd dreamy expression and was smiling faintly. I didn’t like the look. He had the same bright light in his eyes that I’d noticed during the argument with Kipps. It was like he was looking at something far away. Certainly he was disconnected from what was around him, for now there was no doubt about it—sounds were coming from the passage. I left the backpack lying. Stepping over quickly, I grabbed at Lockwood’s arm. “Wake up!” I said. “They’re coming!”

He blinked. “What? Yes, of course. We’ll go. Make for the lab—”

But we couldn’t go back the way we had come. There were noises from behind the crates, too. The creak of an opening door.

And from the side passage came footsteps, voices, the hum of the electric cart.

I pulled at Lockwood again. “Quickly, then. The open doors at the end…”

But I’d forgotten the Rotwell agents we’d seen standing outside the double doors. When we started around the circle and got a clear view down the building, we saw they were still there.

We skidded backward. “Trapped,” I said. “There’s nowhere. Nowhere to go.”

“Nowhere….” That was the skull calling from my open rucksack by the wall. “You’re precisely right. Nowhere’s your only option now.”

“What does that mean?” And then the lightbulb went on. “Oh. No. No way.”

“Then say hello to Mr. Rotwell.”

“Lockwood,” I began, “these spirit-capes…how good do you think they are?”

But he’d had the same thought, and with a shock I realized that it pleased him. He was already looking toward the iron chain. “Quick, Luce,” he said, “follow me.”

“I need to get my backpack! I don’t have the skull!”

“Luce, there’s no time! Hold on to the chain. Follow me, and don’t let go.”

“Oh, God. Oh no.”

I’d followed Lockwood into many haunted rooms. I’d jumped off buildings with him, too. But taking those few steps toward the circle, with its icy supernatural cold beating against me, and the gray shapes swirling faster as if in welcome— that was the hardest leap of faith I’d ever had to make. I clasped the iron chain, pulled the spirit-cape tight around me. Behind came the voices of the Rotwell crew as they entered the hangar. The psychic roar of the ghosts screamed around me like a hurricane. The chain was freezing even through my gloves. Hand over hand…Nearer, nearer, up and over the heap of great black chains. Lockwood was first; he crossed the circle and disappeared from sight.

“See you on the other side,” the skull’s voice said.

One step, two steps…I closed my eyes tight.

“Lucy,” Lockwood said.

“What?”

“You can open your eyes.”

“Is it all right?”

“Er, I wouldn’t quite say that. But we’re okay now. We’re okay. Just don’t let go of the chain.”

I opened my eyes. The first thing I saw was Lockwood. He was standing very close, facing me, the top of his hood almost meeting mine. He, like me, was gripping the iron links for dear life. Ice was forming on the outside of our gloves; the whole chain was crusted with it. Icicles hung beside us in the frigid air.

Ice was spreading over the outside of Lockwood’s cape, too; crystals grew between the shining feathers, and I could hear it doing the same on mine. But the funny thing was, the underside of the cape was downy warm. It cocooned my body in a bulb of warmth and stillness, and kept the chaos all around at bay.

Chaos…

We stood together in the center of a vortex of whirling plasm. Shadows swirled past us, swimming close, darting back again. Clutching fingers reached out toward Lockwood, shriveled to powder, and were carried back into the maelstrom. At our feet were scattered many Sources, and only the power of the capes—and the iron chain—thrust the ravenous spirits away. The capes’ effect extended to the sounds inside the circle, too. Close beside us, ghostly faces howled and gibbered, yet I scarcely heard them. If I had, I think I would have been driven mad.

“Well, this is jolly,” Lockwood said. “I’ve got to hand it to those witch doctors—they knew what they were doing. That’s how they went into those spirit huts and survived. These capes are only made of feathers and silver thread, but they’re just as effective as the Creeping Shadow’s suit of armor. More so—because they’re so much lighter. Together with the chain, they’ll keep us safe for as long as we hide in here.”

A vast shape drifted out of the murk behind him; it was a silhouette only, buried behind other rushing forms, but I recognized it at once. It extended a colossal hand toward us, was caught up by the remorseless flow of energy, and swept sideways and away.

Lockwood caught my look of terror. “Seen old Guppy?” he said. “Yes, he’s here. There are some other pretty horrific things, too. I wouldn’t look at any of them, Luce, if you want to sleep tonight. Stay focused on me and the chain.”

Just below shoulder height, the chain ran on past Lockwood and was lost in the mist beyond.

“Where’s the other post?” I said. “Where’s it tethered?”

“Looks like it goes straight through and out the other side of the circle. That’s fine. We’ll give Rotwell enough time to finish whatever he’s doing, and then creep out again, one side or the other.”

My attention was caught by a familiar face, red-eyed, jawless, spun about with smoke-like hair; it thrust forward from the vortex, glared at me, and retreated. So the skull had been right: the witch, Emma Marchment, was here, too.

“Lockwood,” I said, “where do you think we are?”

His face was close to mine. He’d been staring out beyond me, narrowing his eyes as he always did when using his Talent. “Oh, we’re still in the circle. Look, you can see the double doors over there, through the mist, and there’s the outline of the crates where we first came in. And there’s the pile of jars and boxes where you left the skull. It’s some optical illusion that makes everything so faint and gray….” His voice trailed off.

“An optical illusion?”

“Of course. That’s all it is. Caused by all these Sources piled around us.”

“I guess….” It was true that you could sense the structure of the building, hovering beyond the swirling mist. The doors, the crates, the metal post, the platform at the end, were all just barely discernable in a faint and curiously flat way.

And yet…

It was the chain that really got me. The iron chain.

You know when you look at a drinking straw in a glass of lemonade? How it seems to bend at the point where it enters the liquid? That’s refraction, according to George, and the weird thing was, the metal chain was doing precisely that. There was its line, right next to us, the links covered in ice. You could follow it, stretching out toward the metal post, to where the guy in the suit had collapsed. It was a straight line—I knew that because I’d walked along it—but it didn’t look that way. At the point where it crossed over the ring of objects, it seemed to veer sideways, and also grow an awful lot fainter.

Why did it do that? It bothered me.

And where were the Rotwell people? We’d just heard them coming in. That’s why we were standing there, by an icy chain, surrounded by a host of angry spirits, in the middle of that stupid building.