Lockwood had laid out a silver chain net on the basement tiles with, a little way off, a loop of iron chains. True to his word it was a capacious one, just right for two. As night set in, he and Holly retired to it, still chatting softly, while I had to trudge off to my lonely vigil at the other end of the stairs. Part of me knew I was being unreasonable. Nothing Lockwood was doing was essentially wrong. But the rightful pattern of events—of him and me working side by side—had been disrupted, and my disapproval chafed at my belly, as if I’d swallowed a bucketful of sharp stones.
Up on the attic landing, I sat inside my iron chains, between two shuttered lanterns, with my rapier set out in front of me like a dessert fork at a table. A chain net lay close by, in the center of the floor. I got out a book. I’d known I was in for a long wait, so this time I’d brought something to keep me occupied. It was a battered paperback thriller from Lockwood’s shelves. Perhaps it had once belonged to Jessica, or to his parents, Celia and Donald Lockwood, the eminent psychic researchers, who had died in some tragic incident long ago….
Anger surged through me. I shut the covers with a snap. In thirty seconds that single bald paragraph in the Archives had told me more than Lockwood had managed to in all the months I’d lived with him! The names of his parents! The circumstances of his sister’s death! It would have been funny if it weren’t so pathetic! What was he scared of? He seemed quite incapable of properly opening up, of giving me the trust that I deserved. Oh sure, he was charming enough, when he wanted to be. But it meant nothing. You could see it in his behavior now, the ease with which he mollycoddled his new assistant, while turning his back on me.
They were probably still chatting down in the darkness, side by side. Me, I had no one. I didn’t have George. Heck, I didn’t even have the skull (since Holly was unaware of my connection with it, we couldn’t easily bring it along this time). There was nobody here to talk to. I was entirely alone….
I shook the self-pity away. No, I was being stupid. Lockwood’s behavior didn’t mean anything. I turned the lantern up a notch and opened the book.
I didn’t care.
Even so, black thoughts lingered over me as I began to read.
And so the night progressed, following its familiar pattern. Across long hours, the atmosphere of the house declined, insensibly, like a noble family brought low, down the generations, to a state of inbred madness and decay. The air grew cold and clammy, bringing hints of foul sensations.
Everything was happening exactly as before.
I kept my head down, chewed gum, turned the pages of the book.
Midnight came. Doors opened between worlds. Presences arrived.
I waited. Only when the crash in the basement told me Lockwood’s lantern had blown over did I pick up my sword and get to my feet.
Silence rose through the building, pouring up over the stairwell, blanking everything out. I waited for what I knew was coming, rushing toward me up the stairs.
Waited…
Out went the candles on the flights below me. Out, out, out, out…one after the other, fast as you can blink. And up swept the shapes, just as before, the frail lad stumbling, and the monstrous hulk behind him, hand grasping for his flowing hair. This time I heard them as they came: the wrenching rasps of the pursuer, the despairing panting of the doomed boy. Up to the top; and here he was, framed for an instant in my sight: a lad no older than Lockwood, with a beautiful, bone-white face and lips drawn back in terror. I felt—in that moment—as if his eyes met mine, as if he looked out beyond the hideous replay of the chase and saw me. Then he was gone. The brutish shape behind fell on him as they reached the banister; bright streams of other-light enveloped them in the moment of their final struggle. A thrust, a scream that pierced my heart, and the landing went pitch-black. From further down came crashes, the splintering of wood as something hit an intervening level—then a sickening impact far below.
I took a handkerchief out of my pocket and wiped the sweat off my face. I was cold and shaking, sick with pity. I flicked the lanterns high—and stopped, looking at the floor.
There were bloodstained footprints all around my circle. Not over by the silver net, but close beside the chains. Thick and bloody, and overlapping, like someone was pacing there. Desperate to get in. Desperate for a connection….
When I closed my eyes, I still saw that poor pale face.
“I think it’s in the basement.” Lockwood spoke quite matter-of-factly; he seemed as calm and unmoved as ever. “I saw the figure hit the ground—not where my net was, in the middle of the tiles, but over by the wall where the arch leads to the kitchens. I don’t think we checked there. That’s where the Source must be. I’ll dig around.”
We’d rendezvoused in the room of paintings, where Lockwood had made us all a reviving cup of tea. Holly Munro looked like she needed it. Her customary smile was gone; her face was strained. “It was horrible,” she said. “From beginning to end. Quite horrible.”
I leaned against the table with my cup. “You saw something, eh?”
“It wasn’t what I saw; it’s what I felt. The presence of the thing.” She shuddered.
“Yeah, it gets you that way,” I said, “the first few times. What do you want me to do, Lockwood?” I didn’t look directly at him.
“Even if I don’t find anything downstairs, I’ll soak the area with salt solution, and lace it with iron. That should be enough, but I’d like you to salt-wash the attic landing too, please, Luce, just to be on the safe side. If I find the Source, all well and good. Otherwise we’ll treat the whole staircase the same way. You can stay here, Holly. You look exhausted.”
“I’ll do my share,” Holly said. Her voice was all weak and quavering. She made it sound like it was a big deal, like she had only one leg and we were making her dance a hornpipe up the stairs.
I rolled my eyes, drained my drink, and went off to get the job done.
On the attic landing I kicked my circle of chains to one side, got out my water bottle and a canister of salt, and began mixing some solution in a plastic bowl from one of my bags. Perhaps I stirred it harder than was strictly necessary. Some slopped over the sides and landed on one of the bloody marks, which fizzed and bubbled like soup on a hot stove. I found a cloth wipe, carried the bowl over to the head of the stairs. Then I got on my knees and, slapping the cloth around angrily, began wetting the floor.
Trouble was, this was Lockwood’s solution to every haunting. Eradicate the ghost. Don’t engage with it. Destroy it. Cooke’s ghost was dangerous, yes. We had to stamp it out. But that meant Little Tom had to go as well, without a second thought. I could talk to the foul skull in the jar till I was blue in the face, because it was safely constrained, but Lockwood would never let me try the same techniques in the field. It was such a waste.
I understood why he was so hard-line about it. Or did I, quite? Her younger brother was unable to stop the attack….Was it still grief that affected him? Or a deeper guilt?
I sat back on my heels and wiped my hair out of my eyes. It was then I noticed that the bloody footprints had vanished. All across the landing, at the head of the stairs, the boards were clean once more. I checked my watch. Yesterday it had taken more than fifty minutes longer for them to go. That was a clear shift in the pattern of the haunting. I listened, newly alert. And now, as I sat there, I felt a pricking in my fingers, and cold air gently brushing my face. And noises, too. Something breathing—
Or mimicking the sound of breathing. Remembering what it was like to be alive.