‘Turn the lantern low,’ Lockwood whispered.
George hit the switch; the room went almost black. Light enough to see by, dark enough for our psychic senses to stay strong. Without words we fanned out in the old Plan D positions: me to the right of the door, pressed close against the wall; George to its left, slightly further out, so that he was clear if spectral forces smashed the door aside. Lockwood stood directly in front, ready to face the main attack. We each drew our rapiers. I wiped my left hand on my leggings, removing sudden perspiration. This is the worst part: when the Visitor’s still concealed. When you know it’s coming, but the full horror has yet to hit you. It’s a time for the mind to play its tricks, for paralysing fear to set in. To distract myself I ran my hand across the pouches in my belt, counting, memorizing, making sure everything was ready.
The soft, soft noises drew close. Through the crack in the door came a palely spreading light. In its heart a shadow swelled and gathered.
Lockwood’s arm moved back; the metal glinted. I raised my sword.
19
An unseen force struck the door, which was thrown violently back to hit George in the face. A fizz, a crack – a dark shape sprang into the room. Lockwood danced forward, swung his rapier. There was a strangled squawk of alarm.
For an instant nothing moved; Lockwood seemed frozen. My rapier too hung halfway through its arc; my muscles had locked as soon as I heard the breaking canister, and smelled the salt and iron scattered around me on the floor.
I plucked out my torch, switched it full on, illuminating Lockwood in mid attack position, the point of his rapier inches from Quill Kipps’s throat. Kipps had one leg slightly raised; he was leaning backwards with a goggling expression on his face, his chest going rapidly up and down. His own rapier-tip was wobbling in mid-air a short distance from Lockwood’s stomach.
Crowded in the doorway behind stood Kat Godwin, holding a night lantern, and Ned Shaw, clasping another salt bomb. Little Bobby Vernon’s startled eyes peered from the darkness somewhere south of Shaw’s left armpit. Each unlovely visage displayed mingled bafflement and terror.
Silence reigned, except for George’s muffled swearing behind the door.
All at once Lockwood and Kipps jumped away from one another with exclamations of disgust.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ Kipps croaked.
‘I might ask you the same thing.’
‘That’s none of your business.’
‘It’s precisely my business,’ Lockwood said. He ran his hand irritably through his hair. ‘It’s my business that you’re on. You’re living dangerously, Kipps. You almost got a rapier in the neck there.’
‘Me? We thought you were a Visitor. If it wasn’t for my bullet-speed reactions I’d have completely disembowelled you.’
Lockwood raised an eyebrow. ‘Hardly. It was only because I could already see that you saw who I was that I stopped myself driving the pommel of your own sword sharply back into your abdomen using the Baedecker-Flynn reverse-strike manoeuvre. Lucky for you that I did, and so didn’t.’
There was a pause. ‘Well,’ Kipps said, ‘if I understood what you were talking about I’d no doubt have a neat retort.’ He returned his rapier to his belt. Lockwood stowed his too. Ned Shaw, Bobby Vernon and Kat Godwin loped scowlingly into the room. George emerged from behind the door, rubbing a nose that seemed even smaller and stubbier than before. For a while no one said much, but there was a great deal of assertive clinking as rapiers and other weapons were grudgingly put away.
‘So,’ Lockwood said, ‘you’ve resorted to simply following us about, have you? That’s pretty low.’
‘Following you?’ Kipps gave a derisory laugh. ‘We, my friend, are following the leads young Bobby Vernon here uncovered in the Archives. It wouldn’t surprise me if you were following us.’
‘No need for that. George’s research is doing us just fine.’
Bobby Vernon tittered. ‘Really? After that display on Wimbledon Common I’m surprised Cubbins still has a job.’
Lockwood frowned. ‘It’s going to be a pleasure to win this contest, Quill. By the way, your advert in The Times doesn’t have to be too large. A plainly written half-page admission of defeat will do absolutely fine.’
‘That’s assuming Kipps can actually read and write,’ George said.
Ned Shaw stirred. ‘Careful what you say, Cubbins.’
‘I’m sorry. Let me rephrase it. I’ll bet there are apes in the Borneo rainforests with a better grasp of literacy than him.’
Shaw’s eyes bulged; he fumbled at his belt. ‘Right, that’s it—’
Lockwood flicked his coat aside, put his hand to his sword. At once Kipps, George and Godwin did the same.
‘Stop this!’ I cried. ‘Stop this nonsense, all of you!’
Six faces turned to me.
I’d raised my voice. I’d clenched my fists. I may even have stamped a foot. I did what was necessary to snap them out of it. Their rage was escalating out of control, and with it the danger hanging over us grew dark and palpable. Negative emotions in haunted places are never a good idea – and anger’s probably the worst of all.
‘Can’t you feel it?’ I hissed. ‘The atmosphere’s changing. You’re stirring up the energies in the house. You’ve got to shut up, right now.’
There was a silence. They were variously concerned, disgruntled and embarrassed, but they did as I told them.
Lockwood took a deep breath. ‘Thanks, Luce,’ he said. ‘You’re right.’
The others nodded. ‘I know anger’s out,’ George said. ‘But what about sarcasm? Is that a no-no too?’
‘Hush.’
We waited. Tension hung heavy in the air.
‘Think we stopped it?’ Quill Kipps said at last. ‘Think we were just in time?’
Even as he spoke, the element in Kat Godwin’s night lantern flickered, dwindled, flared again. George unclipped his thermometer and switched on the dial. ‘Temp’s dropping. Ten degrees now. It was fourteen here when we came in.’
‘The air’s getting thick,’ Bobby Vernon muttered. ‘There’s a miasma building.’
I nodded. ‘I’m getting aural phenomena. A rustling.’
Kat Godwin could hear it too; her face was grey and drawn. ‘It sounds like . . . like . . .’
Like lots of little rushing things with scaly tails and scaly claws, hurrying through the house towards us. Brushing against walls, squeezing under doors, pattering through pipes and under floorboards, converging ever closer on that hateful airless room. That, to be frank, is what it sounded like. Kat Godwin didn’t say this, and she didn’t say the fateful word. She didn’t need to. Everybody guessed.
‘Chains out,’ Lockwood said. ‘Let’s all think happy thoughts.’
‘Do it,’ Kipps said.
They may have had the social graces of hungry jackals, but give them their due: Fittes agents are well trained. They had their kitbags opened faster than us, and a decent double circle of chains laid out in twenty seconds flat. Ned Shaw was still scowling at us, but the others were calm and matter-of-fact now. The priority was survival. We all squeezed in.
‘This is cosy,’ George said. ‘Nice cologne, Kipps. I’m being genuine there.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Shut up now,’ I said. ‘We need to listen.’
So we stood there silently, seven agents squashed inside the circle. The lantern-light continued to flicker wildly. I could see nothing, but the rustling, scraping, scampering sound grew nearer, nearer . . . Now it was all around us, as if a terrible, pell-mell chase was going on, just out of eyeshot in the dark. From Kat Godwin’s constricted breathing I knew she heard it; whether the others did, I couldn’t tell. The tumult rose around me. It was as if the frantic chase continued up the walls. It kept on rising till it reached the ceiling. Claws skittered and slid on plaster just above our heads. Still it rose. The sound merged into the ceiling; the terrible rustling vanished away into the fabric of the house.