Lockwood & Co.: The Creeping Shadow (37 page)

“George,” Lockwood ordered, “cut us in.”

Snip, snip.
George put the wire cutters into operation. With deft precision he cut five or six strands of wire, close to the ground, so that a stiff flap was formed. He pushed it experimentally with a hand. “We can squeeze through,” he said. “Then it falls back. No one will see.”

“Needs to be bigger,” Lockwood whispered. “In case we have to exit in a hurry.”

“Psst!”
It was a sound like an elegant snake. That was Holly, giving the alarm. We flung ourselves flat again, covering our silver rapiers with our bodies. Boots crunched on gravel, coming around the side of the nearest building. We lay in the dark grass, faces pressed to the earth, while someone passed a few feet beyond the fence. The footsteps rounded a corner and faded.

Cautiously, I raised my head and pushed my curtain of hair aside. “All clear.”

The others levered themselves up. “Not bad, Cubbins,” Kipps breathed. “I never thought you could flatten yourself like that. At all, in fact.”

“I never thought you could make witty comments,” George said. “And I was right.” He resumed snipping at the wire. Soon he had cut free a mailbox-shaped patch of mesh, shoulder-width, just high enough to squeeze through with a backpack on. He dragged it aside. No sooner had he done so than Lockwood was wriggling through the space. Even with his coat, his slim, spare form slipped through without difficulty. In a moment he was up and crouching, looking all around. He gave the signal. One after the other, with varying degrees of deftness, we followed him onto forbidden ground.

“Memorize this spot,” Lockwood whispered. “The hole’s midway between those two black posts. Now—Lucy, any idea which way we should go?”

The psychic hum was louder than ever; I could feel it in the depths of my ears, in the soles of my feet, in everything in between. I took a few steps in one direction, then in the other, keeping my eyes closed, listening to the pattern of the sound.

“It’s nearby,” I said. “When I go to the left, it feels stronger.”

With infinite stealth we inched toward the left-hand corner of the building, where light from the center of the compound spilled across the gravel. The wall rose above us like a corrugated metal cliff, black, featureless, and cold. By unspoken assent, I was at the head of the line. When I reached the corner, I peered slowly around—and almost cried out in pain at the thrum of psychic power that struck me in the face.

Away across an expanse of lit gravel stood a construction that I immediately knew to be the heart of the complex. In some ways it was no different from the other buildings—like a monstrous metal barn with a broad curved roof. But a ribbed passageway ran to it from the shed we stood by, and I could see another beyond. They were like spokes running to a hub. The central hangar had no windows, but a pair of double doors stood open at one end, facing the fence. Out of those doors streamed a soft and hazy light—and, with it, that blast of psychic power. Three or four men in white lab coats stood in the light. They held things in their hands, but I could not tell what these were. None of them moved. No one came in or out.

I leaned back in; let Lockwood take a look. “That’s where it’s all happening,” I whispered. “Whatever
it
is.”

He squinted out into the dark. “There’s a gap in the boundary fence there—a missing panel—look, just beyond where the men are standing. What’s
that
for?”

“So they can drive something in?”

“Why not use the gate by the road?”

I didn’t have an answer to that. Craning my head around further, I noticed something else: a door in the building we stood by. It was made of smooth metal, with a tight rubber seal, and was just a few yards away. There was no clue as to what was behind it.

I showed Lockwood. “It’s an option.”

He hesitated. “I don’t know. Risky. Might be half the Rotwell team in there.”

“What, then? Can’t just stroll out under the floodlights, can we?”

“No….”

“Lockwood!” That was Holly, at the end of the line. She was indicating frantically behind her. Two men, dark-clothed, with equipment shining at their belts, had appeared around the far end of the building. Right now they were staring out into the night, where the pale lights of the Vikings flickered far out across the fields. They were talking, laughing, blissfully unaware of us—but the instant they looked our way, all that would change. We’d be silhouetted against the light.

“Quick, quick!” Lockwood was ushering us around the corner. We had the exact same problem here: the men by the open barn doors would see us if they chose to look up.

We collided against the door. Lockwood grasped the handle, turned it, pushed it open a crack.

“Quick! Quick! In, in, in!”

Ever seen a line of newly hatched ducklings jump one after the other into a stream? Not knowing what was coming, but with no choice but to follow the others, and to leap and hope? That was us, going through that door. Holly, Kipps, George—then Lockwood and me. We were through, fast as blinking, and the seal shut behind us.

It was the decisive action. Once through, we could never take it back.

T
he good news first. Our arrival caused no outcry, no sudden alarm or attack. We were in a dimly lit chamber and, though it had plenty of horrors in it, no one from the Rotwell Institute was there. The corrugated sides of the building rose in a gentle arch high overhead. Soft lights hung on the walls, electric wires trailing between them. The floor was boarded with cheap wood. A partition wall at the far end of the room opened to another room, but this one would do for now. It was a laboratory.

Three long metal tables ran the length of the space, with chairs and shelved carts between them. On these, neatly separated by lengths of chain, sat an extraordinary variety of apparatuses: silver-glass flasks, tubes and beakers, loops of iron piping, flaring Bunsen burners, crackling electromagnetic coils. Some of the flasks were small, others of colossal size, and all glowed with supernatural energy. You could see the Sources that powered them pressed against the dirty glass—yellowed jawbones, femurs, ribs, and craniums, and rusted lumps of metal that had once been helmets, sword hilts, or arm-rings. These were psychic artifacts of the battle that had taken place here, and the ghosts that clung to them were visible, too. Every container glowed with other-light, with eerie blues and yellows, with darkly sinister greens. The walls of the room swam with conflicting colors. And all the vessels were being experimented on—heated, compressed, electrocuted, frozen….Plasm swirled against silver-glass: I caught a glimpse of twisted faces, impossibly contorted, pluming around and around. The vessels were sealed; I could not
hear
the imprisoned voices, but I certainly sensed their screams.

“
Look
at all this…” Kipps said.

George whistled. “It’s like my bedroom.”

Lockwood peered at a bulbous glass beaker in which a violet plasm boiled and bubbled above a flame. “Can you tell what they’re doing here?”

“Ectoplasmic research, mainly,” George said. “They’re testing how it responds to stuff. To heat, to cold…This one’s suspended in a vacuum, look.
That’s
interesting: see how diffuse the plasm’s become….And they’re trying to galvanize
this
spirit with a succession of electric shocks.” He shook his head. “I could tell them that technique doesn’t work. Tried that on our skull a year or more back. Didn’t alter its plasm at all. Just made it grumpy.”

I’d been listening out for the skull when I entered the room, but without success. Now I was staring at a rushing centrifuge, which whirled its imprisoned ghost on an endless loop. “It’s not right,” I said. “It’s not…healthy.”

George looked at me. “I’ve been doing this sort of stuff for years.”

“I rest my case.”

“It’s all part of trying to understand the Problem, Luce,” Lockwood said. “Finding out what makes ghosts tick. It’s a bit extreme, but there’s nothing exactly
wrong
here.”

I didn’t answer. Lockwood had no love for ghosts; neither he nor George ever spared much sympathy for them. Me? It wasn’t quite that simple. I gazed at the busy work tables, with their pads and pens, their thermometers and stacked tubes. For some odd reason I remembered the vision I’d had of Emma Marchment’s seventeenth-century workroom, filled with the pots and potions she’d used to help her in her witchcraft. This was more high-tech, but otherwise it didn’t seem all that different.

“They’re certainly hard at work in here,” Lockwood said. “Everything mid-experiment. Which raises the question: Where are they?”

Kipps grunted. “Must be something better going on next door.”

This was obviously true, and the laboratory, with all its cruel marvels, did not detain us long. We moved toward the partition at the far side of the shed. As we did so, George gave a cry. He swooped to the nearest table. “Yes! Yes!
That’s
what I wanted to find!”

Holly stared at the container beside him. “A moldy pelvis?”

“No, you twit—these cigarette butts!” He picked up a jar that someone had been using as an ashtray, and gave it a quick sniff. “Yes, unmistakable—burned toast, a caramel tang! These are Persian Lights! The cigs we found at Aickmere’s. No doubt now. We’re dealing with our friends from Chelsea, for sure.”

“You think
that’s
good,” Kipps said in a low voice, “you might want to take a look in here.”

I could now see that the partition wall split the building neatly down the middle; the open arch led into a chamber that was almost the mirror image of the first, except with a tubelike passageway leading to another part of the complex.

The room had three long tables in its center. These, in contrast to the madly swirling glows of the tortured ghosts behind us, gleamed dully with more consistent light. They were stacked with boxes and neat piles of objects, laid out in ordered rows. There were canisters and cylinders and firearms. And other things, stranger still.

“Weapons room,” Lockwood breathed. “Check out these flares! Ever seen any that big, Kipps?”

Kipps had pushed up his goggles and was gazing around the room in awe. “We used some pretty hefty ones in the East End once. These are bigger, though.”

George whistled. “I’ll say. They’d do some damage if you chucked them. They’re as big as coconuts! Take the roof off a place, they would.”

We walked along the aisles, opening boxes, peering into sacks. Professional fascination had overtaken us. This was ghost-hunting equipment designed for agents, but equipment we had never seen.

“Got guns here that fire capsules of iron and salt,” Lockwood said. “They would have come in handy in Ealing….But what’s this?”

He stood before a metal rack, on which was sat a large weapon. It had a black stock, a long barrel, and, just in front of the trigger, a silver-glass orb strapped to the magazine with iron bands. You could see tiny bones lying in the orb. It glowed faintly.

“It’s basically a traditional shotgun,” Lockwood said, “but it’s been adapted. I may be wrong, but I think that if you fire it, a ghost flies out….” He shook his head. “It’s weird. I’m not sure DEPRAC would approve of it.”

“They wouldn’t,” I said in a small voice. I was staring at a tray of neat little wooden cylinders—batons, really—each with a glass bulb on the end. “They wouldn’t approve of
any
of this.” I picked up one of the batons and held it up to them. Supernatural light swirled in the bulb at the end. “Recognize these, anybody?”

No one spoke. They stared at the baton, openmouthed.

I took that as a yes.

The previous autumn, at a carnival in central London, two armed men had attacked a float on which Penelope Fittes and Steve Rotwell were riding. Guns had been used in an attempt on Ms. Fittes’s life, but the attack had begun with a bombardment by ghost-bombs just like these. When broken, Specters had emerged from them, threatening many lives. Where the ghost-bombs had come from was unknown.

Until now.

“Well…
that’s
interesting,” Lockwood said.

“But—but surely,” Holly said, “Mr. Rotwell can’t be responsible. The assassins tried to kill him, too….”

“
Did
they?” I said. “I don’t remember them turning their guns on him. It was Penelope Fittes they actually shot at—”

“No! What are you saying? He fought against them! He killed one of the attackers!”

“Yes, that was good of him,” Lockwood said quietly. “He came out of it quite the hero, didn’t he? Even though
we
saved Ms. Fittes’s life, and his primary purpose failed. It was always going to be a win-win for him.”

“I knew the Rotwell organization hated Fittes,” Kipps said, “but I never thought they’d go
that
far.”

“I can’t believe it,” Holly said. She had tears in her eyes. “No, I can’t. I
worked
for him.”

Kipps frowned. “We’ve seen enough. We ought to get out of here. Go and find a phone, call DEPRAC, get Barnes over now.”

“Not yet,” Lockwood said.

“Are you insane? This is critical evidence, Lockwood.”

“What would DEPRAC do? They wouldn’t just barge into a Rotwell site, would they? Even if they believed us, which is a stretch, they’d delay things by getting search warrants, talking with lawyers—by the time anyone actually set foot in here, all this would be gone.”