And all the while we fought, the voice of Edmund Bickerstaff was calling, calling in my mind – urging me to look, promising me my heart’s desire. It was the same old message. He had no other. And though his ghost was very terrible, though its madness and its malice made it strong, I found myself growing ever calmer and more confident. I stood there, dirty, tired and (because of the plasm) gently steaming, protecting my rival from death. And as I stared at the apparition, I saw that the cowl had drawn back, leaving the doctor’s face exposed. Yes, it was hideous and snarling; yes, the teeth were sharp and the eyes were like black coins, but – with the hood off – it was just a man’s face, after all. A stupid, obsessive man who, to make himself feel important, had liked to dress in eerie robes. Who had sought answers to things he shouldn’t know, but had been too scared to look himself. Who had used others – both in life, and now in death. Was his voice hypnotic? Yeah – perhaps to some, but not to me.
I’d had enough of him.
I changed my posture from defence to attack. As the ghost recoiled from a high swing of the iron, I stepped in close, adjusted my arms, and brought the chain up and over my head like a fisherman casting his line. The iron cut straight down through the centre of Bickerstaff, from hood to floor, slicing him neatly in two.
A sigh, a gasp – the apparition vanished. A thread of plasm whipped across the floor and was sucked back into the body; with a snap of air, it was gone.
Steam rose from the tip of the iron chains. I let them drop. Kipps was sitting rigid in the chair, with a slightly harrowed look upon his face.
‘I’ve driven it back,’ I said. ‘Shouldn’t re-form for a while.’
‘Right,’ he said. He moistened his lips. ‘Thanks. Though you didn’t need to give me a buzz-cut too. Now set me free.’
‘Not yet.’ I looked across the room. ‘There’s one more thing to finish.’
While I’d faced the ghost, the fight between George and Joplin had also been resolved. Having rolled and tumbled their way across the chamber, they had ended up in a flailing heap beside a pile of empty coffins. Joplin was on top: with a cry, he tore himself from George’s grasp, and tottered to his feet. George could not respond, but collapsed, exhausted, against the wall.
Joplin’s shirt was ripped, his jacket half off; he seemed entirely dazed. Yet still there was only one thing on his mind. He stared back across the floor to where the bone mirror lay, face down. He started staggering towards it.
No. No way. It was time to end this.
Even in my weary state I was faster than the archivist. I walked across, I reached the mirror. Seven figures still hovered above it, faint and mournful. I bent down, picked it up, and then – ignoring the clustering spirits, ignoring Joplin’s shout – carried it over to the table.
It was icy cold in my hand. The bones felt smooth; they tingled to the touch. The buzzing noise was very loud. I took care to hold the disc with the mirror side down. When I looked up, the group of shapes were all around me – near, but also distant. They were focused on the mirror. I felt no threat from them. Their faces were blank and smudged, like photos left out in the rain.
All around me their faint cries sounded: ‘Give us back our bones . . .’
‘OK, OK,’ I said. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
The first thing I did, when I got to the table, was pick my rapier up off the floor. Then I scanned the mess scattered across the table top, noting certain tools belonging to Joplin: crowbar, chisel, mallet. I didn’t like to think what he had used them for.
Joplin had come to a halt on the other side of the table. He had the same look of dull intensity in his eyes. ‘No!’ he croaked. ‘It’s mine! Don’t!’
I ignored him. I looked back towards the catacombs, to the passage I’d entered from. A faint green glow could just be seen there, a grumpy face peering from my backpack.
‘Skull!’ I said. ‘Now’s the time! I have the mirror here. Talk!’
The faint voice was uneasy. ‘Talk about what?’
‘You were there when it was made. Tell me how to destroy it. I want to free these poor trapped spirits here.’
‘Who cares about them? They’re useless. Look at them – they could ghost-touch you in seconds, yet all they do is float about, groaning. They’re rubbish. They deserve to be trapped. Now, as for me—’
‘Speak! Remember what I’ll do to you if you don’t!’
Across the table, Joplin suddenly lurched towards me. I raised my rapier and warded him off. But as I did so, my grip on the mirror loosened. It slipped in my other hand and twisted, so that I caught a flash of the jet-black glass . . .
Too late, I slammed it face-down on the table and squeezed my eyes tight shut. A sudden appalling pain speared through my gut; I felt as if I was slowly being turned inside out. And with that pain came a burning desire to look in the glass again. It was an overwhelming urge. Suddenly I knew that the mirror would solve everything. It would give me bliss. My body was parched, but the glass would quench my thirst. I was famished, but the glass would give me food. Everything outside the mirror was dull and worthless – nothing was of consequence but the shimmering, gleaming blackness. I could see it, I could join it, if only I turned the mirror over and gave myself up to it. It was laughably easy. I set my rapier down, began to move my hand . . .
‘Poor stupid Lucy . . .’ It was the skull’s voice breaking harshly through my dream. ‘A fool like all the rest. Can’t take her eyes away, when all she has to do is smash the glass.’
Smash it . . .? And then the one tiny piece of me that remained wedded to life and light and living things recoiled in horror.
I snatched up the mallet and drove it down on the back of the mirror.
There was a terrific crack, a burst of released air; and the buzzing noise – which had remained constant in my ears all this time – suddenly cut out. From the seven spirits came a sighing – a sound almost of ecstasy. They blurred, shuddered, and vanished from sight. Beneath my hands, the mirror was a wonky mess of bones and twine; flakes of black glass lay across the table. I felt no more pain or desire.
For a moment, in that silent chamber, no one moved.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘That’s that.’
Joplin had been transfixed; now he gave a hollow groan. ‘How dare you?’ he cried. ‘That was invaluable! That was mine!’ Darting forwards, he rummaged on the table top and drew out an enormous flintlock pistol, rusted, cumbersome, with hammers raised.
He pointed the gun at me.
A polite cough sounded beside us. I looked up; Joplin turned.
Anthony Lockwood stood there. He was covered in grave-dust, and there were cobwebs on his collar and in his hair. His trousers were torn at the knees, his fingers bleeding. He’d looked smarter in his time, but I can’t say he’d ever looked better to me. He held his rapier casually in one hand.
‘Step back!’ Joplin cried. ‘I’m armed!’
‘Hi, Lucy,’ Lockwood said. ‘Hello, George. Sorry I’ve taken a while.’
‘That’s all right.’
‘Have I missed anything?’
‘Step back, I say!’
‘Not much. I rescued George – or, I should say, he rescued me. Kipps is here too. I’ve got the bone mirror – or what’s left of it. Mr Joplin was just threatening me with this antique gun thing.’
‘Looks like a mid-eighteenth-century British army pistol,’ Lockwood said. ‘Two bullets, flintlock action. Quite a rare model, I think. They phased it out after two years.’