Lockwood & Co.: The Creeping Shadow (22 page)

Lockwood ignored him. “Does DEPRAC know about this?”

“We’ve told them. They’ve done nothing.”

“Other agencies?”

“Worse than useless.” Danny Skinner looked around him in disgust. “Can I spit here?”

“We’d rather you didn’t.”

“Pity. Yeah, the Rotwell Agency has their institute just up the road. We’ve asked them to help; they even sent guys out to assess the situation. Said they couldn’t help. Said it wasn’t any worse than anywhere else these days—which is a
lie
.” A vein stood out on the kid’s neck; he seemed convulsed with an inner rage.

“You mentioned warriors, Mr. Skinner,” George said. “You mean there was a battle once at Aldbury Castle?”

“Yeah, there was a battle,” the kid said. “Vikings or some such. Long time ago.”

“That might be part of it, then,” Lockwood said. “Battle sites can be hot spots, can’t they, George?”

“Sure…” George tapped his notebook absently. “But the country’s pockmarked with sites of battles, plagues, and skirmishes, and they don’t all flare up like this. And I don’t know…Vikings? That’s
so
ancient. You wouldn’t expect
them
to stir up so much trouble.”

“Are you doubting my word?” Danny Skinner asked. That vein throbbed. “Are you?”

“No, I’m doubting you’re giving us all the necessary information. You’re skirting around the central issue. All these ghosts you mentioned—it sounds grim, but you said there was something
worse
out there. What is it?”

Our guest looked down at his lap. “Yeah, there
is
something else. I didn’t want to tell you straight off, in case you wet your collective pants and were too frightened to come down. I was going to tell you on the train.”

At this, there was a certain amount of stretching of eyes. Lockwood spoke gently. “Well, since we aren’t coming on the train, Mr. Skinner, certainly not today and perhaps never, maybe you’d be so good as to tell us about this very frightening thing. We’ll try to contain ourselves as best we can.”

The kid shook his head. “You know, I only came to Lockwood and Co. because you’re young, like me. I thought you’d treat me right….Well, the truth is, there
is
something else that walks by night in the village of Aldbury Castle.” He shuddered, then drew his shoulders in and fiddled with his collar as if he suddenly felt cold. “No one knows what it is, or what its nature might be. But it has a local name.” He took a deep breath, then spoke in a voice of guttural dread. “We call it…the Creeping Shadow.”

He sat back and surveyed us with triumphant, hard-eyed finality, as if expecting us to utter groans and gasps of terror, throw ourselves off our seats, and roll on the floor in panic with our legs wiggling in the air. It didn’t work out that way. Lockwood raised a polite eyebrow; Holly scribbled briefly in her notebook, then scratched a decorative knee. I took another bite of cake.

George stared at the boy from over his glasses. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why give it that name? Or
any
name, come to think of it? None of the other apparitions you’ve mentioned were called anything special. What makes
this
ghost so terrifying?”

“Creeping Shadows are a dime a dozen around here,” Holly added as the boy frowned indignantly. “Almost every Shade or Lurker could be described like that.”

“You need to give us more information,” Lockwood said. “Prove it’ll be worth our while.”

“Worth your while?!”
The boy gave a cry of rage. He banged his fist on the arm of his chair, making us all jump. “You agents think you’ve seen it all, with your precious certainties that make you turn up your noses at me! Those Rotwell agents were just the same. Well, I’ll shake you up.” He glared around at us, a hostile, white-nosed imp of fury. “The Creeping Shadow isn’t like any other ghost you’ve seen. There’s its size, for one thing.”

“Well, how big is it?” Lockwood asked.

“It’s a giant. Seven feet tall, or maybe taller, with a massive body, and bloated arms and legs. It wasn’t a naturally sized man, whatever it was in life.”

“The Limbless are often bloated,” I said. “Might be a Limbless.”

“I
said
it had legs and arms, didn’t I?” Danny Skinner growled. “Are you deaf? How else could it creep? I saw it myself, in the pheasant woods below Gunner’s Top. Came stealing through the trees, head lowered, creeping, creeping, with smoke or mist or whatnot pouring off it.”

“Ghost-fog, you mean,” Holly said.

“No.” The boy shook his head. “I know what ghost-fog is. We get plenty of it on the green; the village is choked with it some nights.
This
is different. This stuff streams off the spirit as it moves. It trails behind it like a cloak, like a comet’s tail. Almost like it’s on fire. You never saw a Limbless like that.”

George brushed some crumbs off his lap. “I admit you
do
interest me a little now. So there are flames on this shadow?”

“The edge flickers. If it’s flames, it’s the cold flames of hell.”

“Describe the apparition. What details do you see when you look at it? Its face? Its clothes?”

“Nothing—just a black outline.” The kid rolled his eyes. “Jeez. Why do you think we call it a shadow?”

“All right, all right,” Lockwood said. “A bit of feistiness is all very well, but if you don’t dial it down pronto, you’ll find yourself booted out into the street. By Holly here, which will be super-embarrassing.”

“What else can you tell us?” I said.

Danny Skinner looked at me. “I thought you were a client.”

“Oh…yes. Yes, I am. I’m just watching. Don’t mind me.”

Whether it was inherent in him, or something built up by terrible experiences, anger pulsed through the kid in waves. You could see it flare up, then just as quickly subside. “The way it moves,” he said; “the shape of the head, how it sort of rolls awkwardly along—I think it’s deformed. Cold rolls off it, too; I near froze with fear.”

“You saw it in the woods?”

“
I
did, but kids have seen it in other places. In Church Lane, skulking in the graveyard, and up on the barrows, other side of the green.”

Lockwood frowned. “Sounds like it travels far and wide. That
is
unusual. Aside from general creeping about, do you get a sense of any purpose? What does it do?”

The boy shrugged. “I know what it does. It gathers people’s souls.”

This time the pause following his announcement was met with a more attentive silence. It wasn’t that we were awed or scared. All of us were watching his face, trying to decide how to respond. With open incredulity? (My inclination.) With scathing disbelief? (George somehow turned a hog-like snort into a sort-of sneeze.) Or calmly, quizzically, as Holly and Lockwood did? “Can you expand on that?” Lockwood asked.

“There’s a cross in the churchyard,” Danny Skinner said. “It’s very old. They think it dates from Viking times. There are carvings on it, very worn and weathered; most of them you can’t make heads or tails of now—but one still has its shape. The old folk call it the Gatherer of Souls. It’s a figure standing in a field of bones and skulls, and there are people arranged behind it, all pressed close together, like they’ve been collected up by it, you know. Well, I saw the Shadow. It’s the same thing.”

“You’re saying that this Creeping Shadow is the same as the figure on the ancient cross?”

“Yes. They carved it like a giant, just like the shape I saw.”

“When did the Shadow first appear?”

“Three months ago. Midwinter’s Day.”

“And there’s no record of it turning up before then, not even in village legend?”

“Not as far as I know.”

Lockwood shook his head. “Sorry, I don’t see any link between the ghost and this old carving. They may both be big and bulky—but that’s not enough to make a connection.”

“Wrong. There
is
a connection.”

“How? In what way?”

Danny Skinner spoke quietly. “It was three months ago that the curse on the village started. That’s when the ghosts erupted. That’s when the adults started dying of ghost-touch. Why? Because the Shadow stirs up the dead. They rise from their graves to follow him, like on the cross. You ain’t seen anything like it, sir, till you’ve seen that. You
have
to come and witness it—and help us while you’re there.” The stork chick look was back, the big-eyed, big-eared waif, gazing beseechingly around at us. “You
have
to.”

“Well, that was fun,” Holly said as we sat in the kitchen later. “I thought he was going to physically assault you at the end there, Lockwood. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so mad.”

Lockwood blew out his cheeks. “I know. It’s not as if we even gave him an outright
no
. If we get a chance, we might run down sometime next week. There
were
actually points of interest in what he said. But I’m simply not dropping everything for the wild claims of some hysterical kid.”

“He was certainly over-egging it,” I said. “He really piled it on.”

“And here’s the clincher,” George said darkly. “Note how he didn’t eat his slice.”

“We can hardly dis someone on the grounds they turned down cake, George.”

“You bet we can. In my eyes, refusing cake is an immoral act. ‘I’m not a cakey person’—those were his actual words. Brrr.”

“And it was Holly’s homemade one, too,” Lockwood said. “Well, one way or another, we’re in agreement that he seemed a bit nuts. I’m sure it’s a bad cluster, but that Shadow business at the end was completely over the top. So, we’ll worry about Danny Skinner another day—
if
we get the time. For now, there are far more urgent things on our agenda, namely Lucy’s problem. And as to that”—he grinned at me—“I’ve just had a brilliant idea.”

P
recisely what Lockwood’s plan was, we didn’t immediately hear. He refused to be drawn out and, not long afterward, went off somewhere on his own. Physically, I was still recovering from my exertions of the previous forty-eight hours, so I was happy enough to stay at Portland Row. I made myself useful as best I could, helping George with the dishes; after that, when he and Holly went down to the office to start on company business, I wandered into the garden.

The gnarled old apple tree was budding, and the unkempt grass sparkled in the sunshine. I sat on the patio, among the weeds, staring at the backs of houses across the gardens. Flowers whose names I didn’t know were showing under the walls, and birds I didn’t recognize swooped low between the trees, filling the air with sound. Last summer, once or twice, when we weren’t out risking our lives, we’d sat here in the evenings. We’d always
said
we should do it more, but it never happened—we were just too busy. Besides, none of us really knew what to do with relaxation; it was so much more natural to just go out and stab something. So the garden was generally ignored.

It felt odd to have the time now to sit out there. I was in a kind of limbo, neither part of Lockwood & Co. nor entirely separated from it. And my emotions were similarly conflicted. Half of me still believed I should be somewhere else, holding fast to a solitary career that couldn’t imperil Lockwood and the others. This side of me felt deeply uneasy about asking them to help find the skull. It would be a dangerous job, no question about it. And yet…I couldn’t feel entirely guilty. Because right now I
needed
assistance. I
needed
some friends. And hadn’t George told me outside the Guppy house that Lockwood had been continually throwing himself into danger these last few months? So what did it matter if I asked him to help me do something tricky? Why should I feel bad about that? What would it actually change?

It was hard to make sense of what I was feeling. The only thing I
did
know for certain as I sat in the garden was that it was nice to be back, even if only for a short while.

Shortly after lunch, Lockwood returned, smelling vaguely of rotten wood and seaweed, so I knew he’d been to see Flo Bones. The first part of his plan was apparently under way.

“I had to promise her a year’s supply of licorice allsorts,” he said, “but I talked her into it. The next relic-men’s market is scheduled for tomorrow night. Flo’s going, so she’ll find out exactly when and where. She’ll get us to the door. Once there, guys built like gorillas will vet us. If we pass muster, we’ll be allowed into the meeting. If we don’t, we’ll be beaten senseless and our limp bodies will be tossed into the Thames. I think passing muster is the option to go for.”

“I agree,” I said. “So how are we going to do that?”

But Lockwood wouldn’t say.

The next thing that happened was that Lockwood and Holly made a trip back to my apartment in Tooting to fetch my clothes. I wasn’t allowed to come. In due course they returned, the visit having passed without incident, except that they’d bumped into my neighbor across the landing.

“He told us he’d heard noises last night,” Lockwood said. “They were coming from your room. He peeped through the spy-hole in his door and saw two men with flashlights standing in your doorway. One of them had a gun. When they saw the place was empty, they left. I’d say it was a good thing you came to us, Luce, and didn’t go back home.”