Lockwood (2 page)

‘My research, and your Talent,’ George said shortly. ‘
I
didn’t hear the voice. Now why don’t you put a cork in it, and let’s decide what we need to do.’

OK, maybe I’d been a little ratty, but there’s something about rotting corpses leaping at my face that gets me a bit on edge. And I was right, by the way: George
had
promised us a body here. He’d found a record of a murderer and sheep-stealer, one John Mallory, hanged at Wimbledon Goose Fair in 1744. Mallory’s execution had been celebrated in a popular chapbook of the time. He had been taken on a tumbrel to a place near Earlsfield crossroads, and strung up on a gibbet, thirty feet high. Afterwards he’d been left ‘to the attention of the crowes and carrion-birds’, before his tattered remains were buried near the spot. This all tied in nicely with the current haunting, in which the sudden appearance of a Wraith on the Common had slightly tarnished the popularity of the local toddler playground. The ghost had been seen close to a patch of scrubby trees; when we discovered that this wood had once been known as ‘Mallory’s End’, we felt we were on the right track. All we had to do now was pinpoint the exact location of the grave.

There had been an oddly unpleasant atmosphere in the wood that night. Its trees, mainly oaks and birches, were crabbed and twisted, their trunks suffocated by skins of grey-green moss. Not one of them seemed quite a normal shape. We’d each used our particular Talents – the psychic senses that are specially tuned to ghostly things. I’d heard strange whisperings, and creaks of timber close enough to make me jump, but neither Lockwood nor George heard anything at all. Lockwood, who has the best Sight, said he glimpsed the silhouette of someone standing far off among the trees. Whenever he turned to look directly, however, the shape had gone.

In the middle of the wood we found a little open space where no trees grew, and here the whispering sound was loud. I traced it carefully back and forth through the long wet grass, until I discovered a mossy stone half buried at the centre of the glade. A cold spot hung above the stone, and spiders’ webs were strung across it. A clammy sensation of unnatural dread affected all three of us; once or twice I heard a disembodied voice muttering close by.

Everything fitted. We guessed the stone marked Mallory’s burial spot. So we laid out our iron chains and set to work, fully expecting to complete the case in half an hour.

Two hours later, this was the score:
two
ghosts, no bones. Things hadn’t quite gone according to plan.

‘We all need to simmer down,’ Lockwood said, interrupting a short pause in which George and I had been glaring at each other. ‘We’re on the wrong track somehow, and there’s no point carrying on. We’ll pack up and come back another time. The only thing to do now is deal with these Wraiths. What do you think would do it? Flares?’

He moved round to join us, keeping a watchful eye on the second of the two ghosts, which had also drifted near the circle. Like mine, it wore the guise of a decaying corpse, this time sporting a long frock coat and rather jaunty scarlet breeches. Part of its skull appeared to have fallen away, and naked arm-bones protruded from the frilly sleeves. As Lockwood had said, it had no hands.

‘Flares are best,’ I said. ‘Salt bombs won’t do it for Type Twos.’

‘Seems a shame to use up two good magnesium flares when we haven’t even found the Source,’ George said. ‘You know how pricey they are.’

‘We could fend them off with our rapiers,’ Lockwood said.

‘That’s chancy with two Wraiths.’

‘We could chuck some iron filings at them.’

‘I still say it has to be flares.’

All this while the handless ghost had been inching nearer and nearer to the iron chains, half-head tilted querulously, as if listening to our conversation. Now it pressed gently up against the barrier. A fountain of other-light burst skywards; particles of plasm hissed and spat into the soil. We all took a half-step further away.

Not far off, my ghost was also drawing close again. That’s the thing about Wraiths: they’re hungry, they’re malevolent, and they simply don’t give up.

‘Go on, then, Luce,’ Lockwood sighed. ‘Flares it is. You do yours, I’ll do mine, and we’ll call it a night.’

I nodded grimly. ‘Now you’re talking.’ There’s always something satisfying about using Greek Fire outdoors. You can blow things up without fear of repercussion. And since Wraiths are such a repulsive type of Visitor (though Raw-bones and the Limbless push them close), it’s an extra pleasure to deal with them this way. I pulled a metal canister from my belt, and threw it hard on the ground beneath my ghost. The glass seal broke; the blast of iron, salt and magnesium lit the surface of the trees around us for a single white-hot instant – then the night went black again. The Wraith was gone, replaced by clouds of brightly slumping smoke, strange flowers dying in the darkness of the glade. Small magnesium fires dwindled here and there across the grass.

‘Nice,’ Lockwood said. He took his flare from his belt. ‘So that’s one down and one to— What is it, George?’

It was only then that I noticed George’s mouth hanging open in a grotesque and vacuous manner. That in itself isn’t unusual, and wouldn’t normally bother me. Also his eyes were goggling against his spectacles, as if someone were squeezing them from inside; but this too is not unknown. What
was
concerning was the way his hand was raised, his podgy finger pointing so unsteadily at the woods.

Lockwood and I followed the direction of the finger – and saw.

Away in the darkness, among the twisting trunks and branches, a spectral light was drifting. At its centre hung a rigid, man-shaped form. Its neck was broken; its head lolled sideways. It moved steadily towards us through the trees.

‘Impossible,’ I said. ‘I just blew it up. It can’t have re-formed already.’

‘Must have,’ Lockwood said. ‘I mean, how many gallows Wraiths can there be?’

George made an incoherent noise. His finger rotated; it pointed at another section of the wood. My heart gave a jolt, my stomach turned.
Another
faint and greenish glow was moving there. And beyond it, almost out of eyeshot, another. And further off . . .

‘Five of them,’ Lockwood said. ‘Five more Wraiths.’

‘Six,’ George said. ‘There’s a little one over there.’

I swallowed. ‘Where can they be coming from?’

Lockwood’s voice remained calm. ‘We’re cut off. What about behind us?’

George’s mound of earth was just beside me. I scrambled to the top and spun three hundred and sixty nervous degrees.

From where I stood I could see the little pool of lantern-light, bounded by the faithful iron chain. Beyond its silvery links, the remaining ghost still bunted at the barrier like a cat outside an aviary. And all around, the night stretched smooth and black and infinite beneath the stars, and through the softness of the midnight wood a host of silent shapes was moving. Six, nine, a dozen, even more . . . each one a thing of rags and bones and glowing other-light, heading in our direction.

‘On every side,’ I said. ‘They’re coming for us on every side . . .’

There was a short silence.

‘Anyone got tea left in their thermos?’ George asked. ‘My mouth’s a little dry.’

Now, we don’t panic in tight situations. That’s part of our training. We’re psychical investigation agents, and I can tell you it takes more than fifteen Visitors suddenly showing up to make us snap.

Doesn’t mean we don’t get tetchy, though.

‘
One man
, George!’ I said, sliding down the mound of earth and jumping over the mossy stone. ‘You said
one man
was buried here! A bloke called Mallory. Care to point him out? Or do you find it hard to spot him in all this crowd?’

George scowled up from where he was checking his belt-clips, adjusting the straps around each canister and flare. ‘I went by the historical account! You can’t blame me.’

‘I could give it a good go.’

‘No one,’ Lockwood said, ‘blames anyone.’ He had been standing very still, narrowed eyes flicking around the glade. Making his decision, he swung into action. ‘Plan F,’ he said. ‘We follow Plan F, right now.’

I looked at him. ‘Is that the one where we run away?’

‘Not at all. It’s the one where we beat a dignified emergency retreat.’

‘You’re thinking of Plan G, Luce,’ George grunted. ‘They’re similar.’

‘Listen to me,’ Lockwood said. ‘We can’t stay in the circle all night – besides, it may not hold. There are fewest Visitors to the east: I can only see two there. So that’s the way we head. We sprint to that tall elm, then break through the woods and out across the Common. If we go fast, they’ll have trouble catching us. George and I still have our flares; if they get close, we use them. Sound good?’

It didn’t sound exactly
great
, but it was sure better than any alternative I could see. I unclipped a salt bomb from my belt. George readied his flare. We waited for the word.

The handless ghost had wandered to the eastern side of the circle. It had lost a lot of ectoplasm in its attempts to get past the iron, and was even more sorry-looking and pathetic than before. What
is
it with Wraiths, and their hideous appearance? Why don’t they manifest as the men or women they once were? There are plenty of theories, but as with so much about the ghostly epidemic that besets us, no one knows the answer. That’s why it’s called ‘the Problem’.

‘OK,’ Lockwood said. He stepped out of the circle.

I threw the salt bomb at the ghost.

It burst; salt erupted, blazing emerald as it connected with the plasm. The Wraith fractured like a reflection in stirred water. Streams of pale light arched back, away from the salt, away from the circle, pooling at a distance to become a tattered form again.

We didn’t hang about to watch. We were already off and running across the black, uneven ground.

Wet grass slapped against my legs; my rapier jolted in my hand. Pale forms moved among the trees, changing direction to pursue us. The nearest two drifted into the open, snapped necks jerking, heads lolling up towards the stars.

They were fast, but we were faster. We were almost across the glade. The elm tree was straight ahead. Lockwood, having the longest legs, was some distance out in front. I was next, George on my heels. Another few seconds and we’d be into the dark part of the wood, where no ghosts moved.

It was going to be all right.

I tripped. My foot caught, I went down hard. Grass crushed cold against my face, dew splashed against my skin. Something struck my leg, and then George was sprawling over me, landing with a curse and rolling clear.

I looked up: Lockwood, already at the tree, was turning. Only now did he realize we weren’t with him. He gave a cry of warning, began to run towards us.

Cold air moved against me. I glanced to the side: a Wraith stood there.

Give it credit for originality: no skull or hollow sockets here, no stubs of bone. This one wore the shape of the corpse
before
it rotted. The face was whole; the glazed eyes wide and gleaming. The skin had a dull white lustre, like those fish you see piled in the Covent Garden market stalls. The clarity was startling. I could see every last fibre in the rope around the neck, the glints of moisture on the bright, white teeth . . .

And I was still on my front; I couldn’t raise my sword, or reach my belt.

The Visitor bent towards me, reaching out its faint white hand . . .

Then it was gone. Searing brightness jetted out above me. A rain of salt and ash and burning iron pattered on my clothes and stung my face.

The surge of the flare died back. I began to rise. ‘Thanks, George,’ I said.

‘Wasn’t me.’ He pulled me up. ‘Look.’

The wood and the glade were filled with moving lights, the narrow beams of white magnesium torches, designed to cut through spectral flesh. Bustling forms charged through undergrowth, solid, dark and noisy. Boots crunched on twigs and leaves, branches snapped as they were shoved aside. Muttered commands were given; sharp replies sounded, alert and keen and watchful. The Wraiths’ advance was broken. As if bewildered, they flitted purposelessly in all directions. Salt flared, explosions of Greek Fire burst among the trees. Nets of silhouetted branches blazed briefly, burned bright against my retinas. One after the other, the Wraiths were speedily cut down.