‘Not me.’ Lockwood tapped the sewn-up claw-marks on his coat front. ‘I did Mrs Barrett.’
‘Well, I did that trapdoor in Melmoth House. George?’
‘I did that secret room at the Savoy Hotel,’ George said. ‘You remember – the one with the ancient plague mark on the door. Ooh, that was eerie.’
‘No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t haunted or secret. It was a laundry room filled with pants.’
‘I didn’t know that when I went in, did I?’ George protested. ‘Tell you what, we’ll toss for it.’ He rummaged deep in his trousers, produced a dirty-looking coin. ‘What do you think, Luce? Heads or tails?’
‘I think—’
‘Heads? Interesting choice. Let’s see.’ There was a blur of movement, too fast for the eye to follow. ‘Ah, it’s tails. Unlucky, Luce. Here’s the crowbar.’
Lockwood grinned. ‘Nice try, George, but you’re doing it. Let’s fetch the tools and seals.’
Breathing a sigh of relief, I led the way to the duffel bags. George followed with ill grace. Soon the silver seals, the knives and crowbars, and all the rest of our equipment were in position beside the coffin.
‘This won’t be too tricky,’ Lockwood said. ‘Look – the lid’s hinged on this side. Opposite that, we’ve two latches – here and here – but one’s already snapped. There’s just the one by you, Lucy, still corroded shut. Quick bit of nifty crowbar-work from George, and we’re home free.’ He looked at us. ‘Any questions?’
‘Yes,’ George said. ‘Several. Where will you be standing? How far away? What weapons will you use to protect me when something horrible comes surging out?’
‘Lucy and I have everything covered. Now—’
‘Also, if I don’t make it back home, I’ve made a will. I’ll tell you where to find it. Under my bed in the far corner, behind the box of tissues.’
‘Please God it won’t come to that. Now, if you’re ready—’
‘Is that some kind of inscription on the lid?’ I said. Now we’d come to the point, I was really alert, all my senses firing. ‘See that bit of scratching there?’
Lockwood shook his head. ‘Can’t tell under all this mud, and I’m not going to start wiping it off now. Come on, let’s get this done.’
In fact, the lid of the coffin proved harder to force than Lockwood had anticipated. Quite apart from the corroded latch, the bloom of rust across the surface had bonded the top to the sides in several places, and it took twenty minutes of laborious chipping with pocket knives and chisels before the hinges were loosened and the lid freed.
‘Right . . .’ Lockwood was taking a final reading. ‘It’s looking good. Temperature’s still holding firm and the miasma isn’t any worse. Whatever’s in there is keeping surprisingly quiet. Well, there’s no time like the present. Lucy – let’s take our positions.’
He and I went to opposite ends of the coffin. I held our largest, strongest silver chain-net, four feet in diameter. I unfolded it, and let it hang ready in my hands. Lockwood unclasped his rapier and held it with an angled Western grip, ready for a quick attack.
‘George,’ he said, ‘it’s over to you.’
George nodded. He closed his eyes and composed himself. Then took up the crowbar. He flexed his fingers, rolled his shoulders and did something with his neck that made it click. He approached the coffin, bent close, set the end of the crowbar into the crack between the broken clamps. He widened his stance and waggled his bottom like a golfer about to take a swing. He took a deep breath – and pressed down on the bar. Nothing happened. He pressed again. No, the lid was twisted; perhaps its contortions had jammed it shut. George pressed down again.
With a clang, the lid shot up; George’s end of the bar shot down. George jerked backwards, lost his balance and landed heavily on his backside in the mud, with his glasses slightly askew. He sat himself up, stared stupidly down into the coffin.
And screamed.
‘Torch, Lucy!’ Lockwood had dived forward, shielding George with the blade of his rapier. But nothing had come out. No Visitor, no apparition. The gleam of the lanterns shone on the inside of the lid, and also on something in the coffin – something reflecting a darkly glittering light.
The torch was in my hand. I shone it full into the interior, on what was lying there.
If you’re easily icked-out, you might want to skip the next two paragraphs, because the body staring back at me wasn’t just bones, but a great deal more. That was the first surprise: there was much that hadn’t decayed away. Ever left a banana under a sofa and forgotten about it? Then you’ll know that it soon goes black, then black and gooey, then black and shrunk right down. This guy, entombed in iron, was like a banana midway between the second stage and the third. Torchlight glimmered on the dried and blackened skin, stretched tight above the cheekbones. In places it had cracked. There was a neat hole in the centre of his forehead, around which the skin had entirely peeled away.
Long hanks of white hair, colourless as glass, hung beside the head. The eye sockets were empty. Dried lips had shrunk back, revealing gums and teeth.
He wore the remnants of a purple cloak or cape, and beneath it an old-style black suit, stiff high collar, black Victorian cravat. His hands (bony, these) cradled something shrouded in tattered white cloth. Whether because of the angle of the burial, or because of the movement of the earth in the long years since, the object had slid from beneath the cloth, and was peeping out between the skeletal fingers. It was a piece of glass, perhaps the width of a human head, with an irregularly shaped rim. It was quite black with dirt and mould, and yet the glass still glinted – and the glinting caught my eye.
Look! Look . . .
What was that voice?
‘Lucy! Seal it up!’
Of course. It was Lockwood shouting.
With that I cast the silver chain-net, and the contents of the coffin were blotted out.
‘So what did you see, George?’ Lockwood asked.
We were standing on the path now, drinking tea and eating sandwiches, which some of Saunders’s team had brought. A decent crowd had gathered – Saunders, Joplin, several workmen and the night-watch kids – some because the fun was over, others possibly in delayed response to George’s scream. They all hung about the gravestones, staring at the pit, a safe distance from the chains. We’d shut the coffin lid; just a corner of the chain-net could be seen.
‘I mean, I know Bickerstaff looked bad,’ Lockwood went on, ‘but, let’s face it, we’ve seen nastier. Remember Putney Vale?’
George had been very subdued for the past few minutes. He had barely spoken, and there was an odd expression on his face. His eyes showed numb distress, but they also held a yearning, far-off look; he kept gazing back towards the pit as if he thought he had left something there. It worried me. It reminded me a little of ghost-lock, where the victim’s willpower is drained by an aggressive spirit; but we had sealed the Source with silver, and there was no ghost present now. Still, George seemed to be improving. The food was fast reviving him. He shook his head at Lockwood. ‘It wasn’t the body,’ he said slowly. ‘I’ve seen worse things in our fridge. It was the mirror that he held.’
‘You thought it was a mirror, then?’ I said. When I closed my eyes, I still saw that piece of glass, glinting, flashing, darker than dark.
‘I don’t know what it was. But my eyes were drawn to it. I saw in it . . . I don’t know what I saw. It was all black, basically, but there was something in that blackness, and it was awful. It made me scream – I felt like someone was sucking my insides out through my chest.’ George shuddered. ‘But at the same time, it was fascinating too – I couldn’t take my eyes away. I just wanted to gaze at it, even though it was doing me harm.’ He gave a long, heartfelt sigh. ‘I’d probably still be staring at it now, if Lucy hadn’t covered it with the net.’