Jonathan Stroud - The Creeping Shadow

Try as I might, I couldn’t see—or hear—them at all.

At least that meant they were unlikely to spot us, either.

“The armored man,” I said. “You really think he was the Creeping Shadow we saw in the churchyard?”

Lockwood nodded. “Yes. Though I don’t pretend to understand how, because when we saw him he was see-through, like a spirit. He wasn’t solid, was he? He was hardly there at all. And how does that jibe with him standing in here? We’re miles from Aldbury Castle. I don’t get it.”

I didn’t either.

“Just a few minutes more,” Lockwood said.

We stood there, surrounded by whirling horrors.

All of a sudden I needed to talk to him.

“Lockwood,” I said. “Me leaving.”

“What about it?”

“Really it was all your fault.”

He glanced at me from under his icy hood. “What? How d’you figure that?”

“Because”—I took a deep breath—“because you always risk yourself for me. You always do, don’t you? I realized I put you in danger by being part of the company. Then there was a ghost at Aickmere’s. It showed me the future—it was a future in which you’d died for me. I knew you’d end up killing yourself, and I couldn’t bear that, Lockwood. I just couldn’t bear it. So…” I spoke in a small voice. “I left. That’s why I did it. It’s better this way.”

“So it wasn’t because of Holly, then?”

“Ah! Surprisingly, no . It was because of you.”

“Okay…” He nodded slowly. “I see.”

I waited. Out in the murk, pale fingers reached for us. Clenching, they jerked away. “Well, aren’t you going to say anything?” I said.

He was looking at his icy gloves. “What is there to say? Maybe you’re right. This way we don’t see each other very often, and perhaps you extend my life. Although, let’s face it”—he glanced out at the circling spirits—“I’m not likely to last long in any case, at the rate I’m going.”

I touched his glove. “We’ll get out of this,” I said.

“Of course we will! But I don’t just mean tonight. Kipps was right about me, and Rotwell was, too, for that matter. I don’t hold back, do I? When I set out to do something, I never take the safest route. Sooner or later, I suppose my luck will run out.” He shrugged. “I’ve always been that way.”

I thought of the abandoned bedroom at Portland Row. “Why is that, do you think?”

He hesitated. His eyes met mine, then they slid away. “Don’t look behind you!” he said. “I can see Solomon Guppy’s spirit again. The other phantoms seem to want to avoid him, which shows even the dead have taste….Okay, he’s gone. Listen, thank you for telling me why you left. I should point out that, despite your excellent intentions, you’ve still ended up standing beside me surrounded by a tide of ghosts….”

“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t quite know how that happened.”

“I’m not complaining. Far from it. I’m glad you’re here with me. I think you keep me safe, if anything.”

Right then, the cape wasn’t the only thing that kept me warm. I smiled at him.

“And I’d like to say something else,” Lockwood said. “Back at Guppy’s house, you mentioned something about it being Penelope Fittes’s idea that I call on you. Don’t deny it. You did. Well, she may think it was her idea, but I’d been looking for an excuse to get you back all winter. I just knew that, unless I had a really good reason, you’d tell me to get lost. And you would have, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes.” When I nodded, ice cracked on the back of my hood. “I would have.”

“Fittes gave me the perfect opportunity,” Lockwood continued. “But we’ve moved on from all that. Anyway, I’d just like to add”—he cleared his throat—“that if you ever did want to come back to Lockwood and Company—I mean as a proper, permanent colleague, not just as a client, associate, or hanger-on, or whatever it is you are right now—we’d at least have the pleasure of each other’s company for a bit before my untimely end….” He looked at me.

I said nothing. Around us, ghosts screamed and unholy shapes contorted. We gazed at each other.

“Wouldn’t we?”

“I suppose.”

“Think about it.”

“I have….All right.”

“All right what?”

“I’m coming back. If you’ll have me, I mean. If the others will have me, too.”

“Oh, I’m sure they can be persuaded. Though George will have to find somewhere else to store his underwear. Great.” His eyes sparkled. He grinned at me. “We should stand together in a haunted circle more often. Get a few things ironed out….” His head jerked up. “Hold on….”

I’d felt it, too, through the fabric of my gloves. A vibration in the links. The chain jumped again.

We looked at one another. “The Shadow. It’s coming back in,” Lockwood said.

I peered along the chain, through the rushing ghosts. “I don’t see it.”

Lockwood cursed. “I’m not meeting it in here. Heaven knows what would happen. No choice, Luce. We’re going to have to make a dash for it. Let’s nip out the other side, run for those doors. If we’re fast enough, the men there will be caught off guard, and we’ll go straight out into the fields. Happy?”

And you know what? Given the circumstances, I sort of was. “Go, then,” I said. The chain bounced up and down; over my shoulder I saw a bulky shape swimming into view. It loomed beyond the ghosts. “Go!”

We ran along the chain as fast as we could, and again the capes had their effect—the Visitors parted for us, and we stepped over the circle and back out into the hangar.

“Run!” As Lockwood said it, he was gone, his spirit-cape flying out behind him. It looked as if he were about to take flight. He had his rapier in his hand. I let go of the icy chain—the other post was just ahead—and followed him down that long building, head down, arms pumping, and out through the open doors. No one tried to stop us; we plowed on, over gravel, through the gap left by the missing panel in the fence, and onto the black grass. We kept running, running across the field, but heard no signs of pursuit behind us. At last we slowed down and came to a breathless halt.

For the first time, we looked around us. The field had changed. It was covered with crystals of ice. All around us mists had formed, and the icy ground lay shimmering under a black sky.

It was very silent. The wind that had blown across the fields earlier was gone, and the night was bitterly cold. Thick wires and horseshoes of frost lay in the dents and ripples of the hard black earth; the whole land was white with it. A flat brightness lay over the field and the escarpment beyond, and on the dark trees at its top. The source of this brightness was hard to make out. There were no stars in the black sky, and no moon showing. We stood alone in the field, looking back at where we’d been.

“Well, no one seems to be after us,” Lockwood said. His voice sounded small; it didn’t carry well in the freezing air. “That’s good.”

“Were there men at the doors?” I said. I found it hard to speak. “I didn’t see any.”

“No. They must have left. Lucky for us.”

“Yeah. Lucky.”

Looking back, I saw that the floodlights had been turned off. You could see the poles hanging above the roofs like giant insects, bent and dead. The buildings showed like pieces of pale gray paper, stuck onto a dark-gray board. Even the lights in the hangar we’d just run from had been switched off. The institute was bathed in the same subdued, flat, gray glow that lit the field and trees.