Lockwood (29 page)

Like lots of little rushing things with scaly tails and scaly claws, hurrying through the house towards us. Brushing against walls, squeezing under doors, pattering through pipes and under floorboards, converging ever closer on that hateful airless room. That, to be frank, is what it sounded like. Kat Godwin didn’t say this, and she didn’t say the fateful word. She didn’t need to. Everybody guessed.

‘Chains out,’ Lockwood said. ‘Let’s all think happy thoughts.’

‘Do it,’ Kipps said.

They may have had the social graces of hungry jackals, but give them their due: Fittes agents are well trained. They had their kitbags opened faster than us, and a decent double circle of chains laid out in twenty seconds flat. Ned Shaw was still scowling at us, but the others were calm and matter-of-fact now. The priority was survival. We all squeezed in.

‘This is cosy,’ George said. ‘Nice cologne, Kipps. I’m being genuine there.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Shut up now,’ I said. ‘We need to listen.’

So we stood there silently, seven agents squashed inside the circle. The lantern-light continued to flicker wildly. I could see nothing, but the rustling, scraping, scampering sound grew nearer, nearer . . . Now it was all around us, as if a terrible, pell-mell chase was going on, just out of eyeshot in the dark. From Kat Godwin’s constricted breathing I knew she heard it; whether the others did, I couldn’t tell. The tumult rose around me. It was as if the frantic chase continued up the walls. It kept on rising till it reached the ceiling. Claws skittered and slid on plaster just above our heads. Still it rose. The sound merged into the ceiling; the terrible rustling vanished away into the fabric of the house.

‘It’s gone,’ Kat Godwin said. ‘It’s backed off. You think so too, Lucy?’

‘Yeah, the air’s clearing . . . Wait, so you know my name as well.’

‘Temperature’s back up to twelve,’ George said.

A general lessening of tension followed. Everyone suddenly realized how close we were all pressing. We scattered from the circle; the chains were put away.

The two groups stood looking at each other once again.

‘Look, Quill,’ Lockwood said. ‘I’ve got a suggestion. This clearly isn’t a place for an argument. Let’s continue it later, somewhere else. Also, since none of us can stand the sight of each other, why don’t we go our separate ways around the house? We’ll all search where we like, and won’t disturb the others. Sound fair enough?’

Kipps was pulling at his cuffs and brushing at his jacket, as if our recent forced proximity had made him worried about fleas. ‘Agreed, but don’t make any sudden reappearances. I might take your head off next time.’

Without further words, we steered past them and back down the passage. Once through the outer door, we retraced our steps to the main hall. Here Lockwood paused.

‘Kipps showing up complicates things,’ he whispered. ‘They might spend a while in the workroom, taking readings, but they’ll be creeping after us again very soon. And if those papers are here, I want to find them without any interference. Lucy, I know you don’t want to use it, but this might be a good time to consult our friend, the skull.’

I regarded George’s bulging rucksack without pleasure. ‘This still feels like a bad idea to me,’ I said. ‘But since we’re running out of time . . .’ I opened the pack, reached in and turned the lever on the stopper. ‘Spirit,’ I said, bending near, ‘do you recognize this place? Where was your master’s study? Can you tell us?’

The glass stayed cold and dark.

‘Maybe you need to go in close,’ Lockwood suggested.

‘Any closer than this and I’ll be tickling George’s neck. Spirit, do you hear me? Do you hear me? Oh, I feel such an
idiot
doing this. It’s an utter waste of—’

‘
Upstairs
 . . .’

I jerked back; there’d been the briefest flash of green from the heart of the jar. Now it, and the breathless voice, were gone.

‘It said upstairs,’ I said slowly. ‘It definitely said upstairs. But do we really—’

Lockwood was already halfway across the hall. ‘Then what are we waiting for? Quick! We haven’t got much time!’

Negotiating those stairs, however, wasn’t something we could do
too
quickly. Many of the treads were rotten, and wouldn’t support our weight. We had to step over slicks of tiles and splinters of fallen wood. High above, ragged patches of stars shone where the roof had been. Also we had to keep taking precautionary readings (much hastier than usual; we kept expecting our rivals to reappear below), which held us up still more. We picked up a slight decrease in temperature, and low-level noises (a faint crackling and whistling). Lockwood also saw some plasmic traces flitting through the dark. Then there was one final thing as we got to the top of the stairs.

‘Look at the skirting,’ I said. ‘What are these dark stains running along it?’

George bent close and fixed them with his pen-torch. ‘Smudges and smears of grease,’ he said, ‘made by thousands of bristle marks. It’s just the kind of stain that . . .’ He hesitated.

‘That
rats
make.’ Lockwood brushed past us impatiently, took the last couple of steps in a single vigorous stride. ‘Forget it. Come on.’

It was a big square landing, ruined and half open to the sky. Brown leaves and little twigs lay among the dirt and debris on the wooden floorboards, and the moonlight shone with cold assertion through gaping rents in the roof above. Behind us, a passage ran away deeper into the house, but this was half blocked by fallen rubble. The stairs had curved round on themselves during the ascent, so we were facing back towards the front of the house. Ahead of us were the open doorways to three rooms.

‘
Yes . . .
’ the ghost’s voice whispered in my ear. ‘
There . . .
’

‘We’re close,’ I said. ‘Bickerstaff’s study is one of those rooms.’

The moment I said the name, there was a spike in the psychic sounds I heard; the distant crackling flared loud enough to make me flinch. A slight breeze blew through the empty house, moving leaves and curls of paper across the floor. A few fragments fell between the banisters and drifted away into the darkness of the void below.

‘Might be worth going easy on that name up here,’ Lockwood said. ‘Temperature, George?’

‘Eight degrees. Holding constant.’

‘Stay there and watch the stairs for Kipps. Lucy, come with me.’

Soundlessly, we crossed the landing. I looked back at George, who had taken up position by the banister, where he had a good view down over the curve of the staircase to a portion of the hall below. His mood seemed steady, his body-language seemed OK. As far as I could tell, the malaise wasn’t getting any worse.

His rucksack hung open. I could see the top of the ghost-jar, faintly glowing green.

‘
Yessss . . .
’ the voice said. ‘
Good girl . . . You’re getting closer . . .
’

How eager the whisper sounded now.

‘
The middle room . . . Under the floor . . .
’

‘The middle one. It says that’s it.’

Lockwood approached the central doorway, started to pass through, and at once jumped back.

‘Cold spot,’ he said. ‘Cuts straight through you.’

I unclipped my thermometer and held it out beyond the door. At once I could feel the air’s bitterness on my hand. ‘Five degrees in, eight degrees out,’ I said. ‘That’s serious chill.’

‘And not only that.’ Lockwood had taken his sunglasses from his coat and was hastily putting them on. ‘We’ve got spiders. And a death-glow – a real whopper. Over there, beneath the window.’

I couldn’t see it, but I wouldn’t have expected to. To my eyes it was a fair-sized, squarish chamber, dominated by a large and empty window-space. As with the rest of the ruined house, it was barren of furniture or decoration. I tried to imagine how it had looked in Bickerstaff’s day: the study desk and chair, the portraits on the wall, maybe a bookcase or two, a carriage clock upon the mantelpiece . . . No. I couldn’t manage it. Too much time had passed, and the sense of menacing emptiness was just too strong.

A flood of moonlight shone through it, making everything glow a sleepy, hazy silver. The noise of static in my head buzzed loudly once or twice, then faded sharply, as if being squeezed out by the heavy silence emanating from that room.

Thick dusty layers of cobwebs hung in the corners of the ceiling.

This was it, the centre of the haunting in that house. My heart beat painfully against my chest, and I could feel my teeth chattering. I forced the panic down. What had Joplin told us? The men had stood outside and seen movement in the window. ‘Lockwood,’ I whispered. ‘It’s the room of the rats. It’s where Bickerstaff died. We mustn’t go in there.’

‘
Oh, don’t be scared
,’ the whispering voice said in my mind. ‘
You want the papers? Under a board in the middle of the floor. Just walk right in
.’

‘A quick look only,’ Lockwood said, ‘and then we’ll go.’ I couldn’t see his eyes behind the glasses, but I could feel his wariness; he stood at the door and didn’t step inside.

‘That’s what the skull
wants
us to do,’ I pleaded. ‘But we can’t trust it; you
know
we can’t. Let’s just leave it, Lockwood. Let’s get out of here.’

‘After all this? Not likely. Besides, Kipps will be up here in a minute.’ He pulled his gloves higher on his wrists, and stepped through the door. Gritting my teeth, I followed.

The drop in temperature was brutal; even in my coat it made me shudder. There was an immediate hike in the static too, as if someone had turned a dial the moment I went inside. The air was heavy with a peculiar sweet smell, not unlike the climbing shrub outside the window. It was thick, cloying, and somehow rotten. It had no obvious source.

It was not a room to remain in very long.

We walked slowly through drifting spears of moonlight, hands at our belts, surveying the floor. Most of the boards seemed held fast, stone-stiff and strong.

‘It’s in the middle somewhere,’ I said. ‘According to the skull.’

‘What a
very
helpful skull he is . . . Ah, this one gave a little. Keep watch, Lucy.’

In a moment he was on his knees, squatting by the floorboard, exploring its edges with his long fingers. I took my rapier from my belt and paced slowly around the room. I did not want to remain still there; somehow I needed to move.

I passed the door; across the landing, George was looking at me from his position by the banisters. He waved. The back of his rucksack glowed a faintish green. I passed the window; from it I could see the slates of the entrance porch, the path leading down the hill, the tops of ragged trees. I passed an empty fireplace; on impulse I let my fingers touch the blackened tiles—

Sound looped out of the past; the room was warm, fire crackled in the grate.

‘Here, my dear fellow. The boy’s set it all up for you. We’ve chosen you for this great purpose. You are to be the pioneer!’

Another voice: ‘Just stand before it and take the cloth away. Tell us what you see.’

‘Have
you
not looked yet, Bickerstaff?’ The speaker was querulous, prickly with fear. ‘Surely it should fall to you . . .’

‘It is to be
your
honour, my good Wilberforce. This is your heart’s desire, is it not? Come, man! Take a drop of wine for courage . . . That’s it! I stand ready to record your words. Now, there . . . We remove the veil . . . So, look into it, Wilberforce! Look, and tell us—’

Appalling cold, a cry of terror – and with it, the buzzing of the flies. ‘No! I cannot!’

‘I swear you shall! Hold him fast! Get him by the arms! Look, curse you –
look
! And talk to us! Tell us the marvels that you see!’

But the only answer was a scream – loud, loud, louder; and suddenly cut off—

My hand fell away from the wall. I stood rigid, eyes staring, frozen in shock at what I’d heard. The room was very still, as if the whole building held its breath. I could not move. I was engulfed by the echo of a dead man’s fear. The terror subsided; blinking, gasping, I remembered where I was. In the centre of the room, Lockwood crouched beside an uprooted floorboard. He was grinning at me broadly. He had several yellowed, crumpled papers in his hand.

‘How’s that, then?’ He smiled. ‘The skull spoke truth!’

‘No—’ I lurched towards him, caught his arm. ‘Not about everything. Listen to me!
It wasn’t Bickerstaff who died here
. It was Wilberforce. Bickerstaff forced him to look in the bone glass, right here in this room! The bone glass killed him, Lockwood – it was
Wilberforce
who died in this house, and I think his spirit’s still here now. We need to get out. Don’t talk, just leave.’

Lockwood’s face was pale. He rose; and at that moment George appeared beside us. His eyes shone. ‘Have you found them? You got the papers? What do they say?’

‘Later,’ Lockwood said. ‘I thought I told you to watch the stairs.’

‘Oh, it’ll be all right. It’s quiet down there. Ooh, it’s handwritten, and there are little pictures too. This is fascinating—’

‘Get out!’ I cried. A growing pressure beat against my ear. It seemed to me that the moonlight in the window was a little thicker than before.

‘Yes,’ Lockwood said. ‘Let’s go.’ We turned – and saw the hulking form of Ned Shaw standing in the doorway. He blocked the space. If you’d put a hinge on his backside and another on his elbow, he’d have made an ugly but effective swing-door.

‘George,’ I said. ‘How long has it been since you actually watched the stairs?’

‘Well, I might have nipped over a moment or two ago to see what you were doing.’

Shaw’s little eyes gleamed with triumph and suspicion. ‘What have you got there, Lockwood?’ he said. ‘What’s that you’re holding?’

‘I don’t yet know,’ Lockwood said truthfully. He bent, put the papers in his bag.

‘Give them here,’ Shaw said.

‘No. Let us pass, please.’

Ned Shaw gave a chuckle; he leaned casually against the door-jamb. ‘Not until I see what you’ve got.’

‘This really isn’t a place for an argument,’ I said. The temperature was dropping; the moonlight swirled and shifted in the room, as if slowly being stirred into life.