Lockwood & Co: The Screaming Staircase (5 page)

When we’d cleared a big enough area, I opened the bags and poured out another plastic pot of filings in a curving line across the floor. It formed a rough semicircle that extended outwards from the crucial section of the wall. I joined up the two ends with a straight line running along the base of the wall, keeping a yard or so back from it so that the iron wouldn’t be messed up by all the falling plaster. Once I’d finished there was enough room inside the lines for us both to stand,
and
have our duffel bags too. It would be pretty safe, though not as secure as if we’d used some chains.

I also checked the original circle in the centre of the room. A few filings had got scattered by our feet as we’d tramped past, but I brushed them back into position.

Lockwood removed the geological map and propped it against the desk. Then he went down to the kitchen and returned with a couple of lanterns. The time for watching in the dark was past; action was required now, and for that we needed proper light. He set the lanterns on the floor inside our semicircle and switched them on low, directing the beams towards the empty wall. The light illuminated it like a little stage.

All this took about a quarter of an hour. At last we stood together inside the iron, pocket-knives and crowbars ready,
looking at the wall. ‘Want to hear my theory?’ Lockwood said.

‘Thrill me.’

‘She was killed in the house decades ago – so long back she at last grew quiet. Then Mr Hope set up his study in this room, and that’s triggered her somehow. It stands to reason that something of hers must be concealed here; something she cares about, that makes her linger on. Clothes, maybe, or possessions; or a gift she promised another. Or—’

‘Or something else,’ I said.

‘Yes.’

We stood and looked at the wall.

Ever since Marissa Fittes and Tom Rotwell conducted their celebrated investigations, way back in the first years of the Problem, finding the Source of a haunting has been central to every agent’s job. Yes, we do other stuff as well: we help create defences for worried households and we advise individuals on their personal protection. We can rig up salt traps in gardens, lay iron strips on thresholds, hang wards above cradles, and stock you with any number of lavender sticks, ghost-lights and other day-to-day items of security. But the essence of our role, the reason for our being, is always the same: to locate the specific place or object connected to a particular member of the restless dead.

No one really knows how these ‘Sources’ function. Some
claim the Visitors are actually contained within them, others that they mark points where the boundary between worlds has been worn thin by violence or extreme emotion. Agents don’t have time to speculate either way. We’re too busy trying to avoid being ghost-touched to worry about philosophy.

As Lockwood said, a Source might be many things. The exact location of a crime, perhaps, or an object intimately connected to a sudden death, or maybe a prized possession of the Visitor when alive. Most often, though (73 per cent, according to research conducted by the Rotwell Institute), it’s associated with what the
Fittes Manual
calls ‘personal organic remains’. You can guess what
that
means. The point is, you never know until you look.

Which is what we were doing now.

Five minutes in, we’d almost stripped the central slab of wall. The paper was decades old, its glue dry and turned to dust. We could slip our knives under it and cut away great curls with ease. Some practically disintegrated in our hands; others flopped over our arms like giant folds of skin. The plaster of the wall beneath was pinkish-white and mottled, and speckled with orange-brown fragments of paste. It reminded me of breaded ham.

Lockwood took one of the lanterns and made a closer inspection, running his hand along the uneven surface. He moved the lantern at different heights and angles, watching the play of shadows on the wall.

‘There
was
a cavity here at some point,’ he said. ‘A big one. Someone’s filled it in. See how the plaster’s a different colour, Luce?’

‘I see it. Think we can break inside?’

‘Shouldn’t be too difficult.’ He hefted his crowbar. ‘Everything quiet?’

I glanced over my shoulder. Beyond the little circle of lantern-light, the rest of the room was invisible. We were an illuminated island in a sea of blackness. I listened and heard nothing, but there was a steadily mounting pressure in the silence: I could feel it building in my ear. ‘We’re OK for the moment,’ I said. ‘But it won’t last long.’

‘Better get on with it, then.’ His bar swung, crunched into the plaster. A shower of pieces cascaded to the floor.

Twenty minutes later the fronts of our clothes were spotted white, the toecaps of our boots smothered by the heap of fragments ranged beneath the wall. The hole we’d made was half my height and wide as a man. There was rough, dark wood behind it, studded with old nails.

‘Some kind of boards,’ Lockwood said. Sweat gleamed on his forehead; he spoke with forced carelessness. ‘The front of a box or cupboard or something. Looks like it fills the whole wall space, Lucy.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Mind the filings.’ He’d stepped back too far, kicking them out of position.
That
was what we had to focus on. Keep to the rules, keep ourselves safe. If we’d had
the chains it wouldn’t have been so difficult, but filings were treacherous, their line easily broken. I crouched down, got the brush and, with small, methodical movements, began to fix the break. Above me, Lockwood took a deep breath. Then came the soft crack of his crowbar biting into wood.

With the line repaired, I scooped away several handfuls of plaster that threatened to spill over the barrier at the front. This done, I remained there, crouching, the fingertips of one hand pressed firmly on the floorboards. I stayed like that for a minute, maybe more.

When I got to my feet, Lockwood had done some damage to one of the planks, but hadn’t broken through. I tapped him on the arm.

‘What?’ He struck the wall again.

‘She’s back,’ I said.

The sounds had been so faint that at first it had merged into the noise we made, and it was only by the vibrations in the floor that I’d noticed it at all. But even as I spoke, they began to rise in volume: three quick impacts – the last a dreadful soft-hard
thud
– then silence, before the sequence started over. It was an endless loop, identical each time. The sound-memory of Mr Hope falling down the stairs.

I told Lockwood what I heard.

He nodded brusquely. ‘OK. Doesn’t change anything. Keep watch, and don’t let it unsettle you. That’s what
she’s aiming for. She recognizes you’re the weak one.’

I blinked. ‘Sorry? What are you saying?’

‘Luce, this isn’t the time. I just mean emotionally.’

‘
What?
Like
that’s
any better.’

He took a deep breath. ‘All I’m saying is . . . is that your kind of Talent is
much
more sensitive than mine, but ironically that very sensitivity leaves you more exposed to supernatural influences, which in cases like this might be a problem. OK?’

I stared at him. ‘For a minute there I thought you’d been listening to George.’

‘Lucy, I’ve not been listening to George.’

We turned away from each other: Lockwood to the wall, me to face the room.

I drew my rapier, waited. The study was dark and still.
Thud, thud
. . .
THUD
went the echo in my ears.

A cracking sound told me Lockwood had the crowbar wedged between the boards. He was pushing sideways with all his strength. Wood creaked, black nails shifted.

Very slowly, one of our lanterns began to die. It flickered, faltered, became pale and small, as if something were crushing out its life. Even as it did so, the other lantern flared. The balance of light in the room shifted; our shadows swung oddly across the floor.

A gust of cold air blew through the study. I heard papers moving on the desk.

‘You’d think she’d
want
us to do this,’ Lockwood panted. ‘You’d think she’d
want
to be found.’

Out on the landing, a door banged.

‘Doesn’t seem so,’ I said.

Other doors slammed, elsewhere in the house, one after the other, seven in a row. I heard the distant sound of breaking glass.

‘Boring!’ Lockwood snarled. ‘You’ve done that! Try something else.’

There was a sudden silence.

‘How many times,’ I said, ‘have I told you not to taunt them? It never ends well.’

‘Well, she was repeating herself. Get a seal ready. We’re almost there.’

I bent down, rummaged in my bag. In the pockets we carry a wide range of products designed to neutralize any given Source. All are made of those key metals Visitors can’t abide: silver and iron. Shapes and decorations vary. There are boxes, tubes, nails and nets, pendants, bands and chains. Rotwell’s and Fittes have theirs specially stamped with their company logos, while Lockwood uses ones that are simple and unadorned. But the crucial thing is to select the right size for your Visitor, the minimum grade necessary to block its passage through.

I chose a chain-net, delicate but potent, made of tightly fused links of silver. It was still carefully folded; when shaken
loose it could be draped over objects of considerable size, but for now I could clasp it in my palm. I stood up and checked on progress at the wall.

Lockwood had succeeded in forcing out one of the boards a little way. Behind it was a slender wedge of darkness. He heaved and strained, leaning back, grimacing with effort. His boots dug perilously close to our ridge of iron filings.

‘It’s coming,’ he said.

‘Good.’ I turned back to face the room.

Where the dead girl stood beside me, just beyond the iron line.

So clear was she, she might have been alive and breathing, gazing out upon a sunlit day. The cold, dim light shone full upon her face. I saw her as she must have been – once, long ago, before it happened. She was prettier than me, round-cheeked, small-nosed, with a full-lipped mouth and large, imploring eyes. She looked to be the kind of girl I’d always instinctively disliked – soft and silly, passive when it mattered and, when it didn’t, reliant on her charms to get her way. We stood there, head-to-head, her long hair blonde, my dark hair pale with plaster dust; she bare-legged in her little summer dress, me red-nosed and shivering in my skirt, leggings and padded parka. Without the iron line and what it represented, we might have reached out and touched each other’s faces. Who knows, perhaps that’s what she wanted. Perhaps that severance drove her rage. Her face was blank
and without emotion, but the force of her fury broke against me like a wave.

I raised the folded chain-net in a kind of ironic salute. In answer, bitter air whipped out of the darkness, scouring my face, slapping my hair against my cheeks. It struck hard against the iron barrier, making the filings shift.

‘Could do with finishing this,’ I said.

Lockwood gave a gasp of effort. There was a crack as wood grains tore.

All across the study came a sudden rustling: magazines flipping open, books moving, dusty papers lifting off their piles like flocks of rising birds. My coat was pressed against me. Wind howled around the margins of the room. The ghost-girl’s hair and dress were motionless. She stood staring through me, like
I
was the one made of memory and air.

Beside my boots the filings began to drift and scatter.

‘Hurry it up,’ I said.

‘Got it! Give me the seal.’

I turned as quickly as I dared – the key thing now was not to cross the iron line – and offered him the folded net. Just as I did so, Lockwood gave a final heave upon the crowbar and the board gave way. It cracked across its width, near the bottom of our hole, and ruptured forward, carrying with it two others that were nailed to it by connecting spurs of wood. The crowbar slipped from its recess, and suddenly came free. Lockwood lost his balance; he fell sideways and
would have tumbled right out of our circle, had I not lunged across to steady him.

We clung together for a moment, teetering above the filings. ‘Thanks, Luce,’ Lockwood said. ‘That was almost bad.’ He grinned. I nodded in relief.