The Empty Grave

by Jonathan Stroud

  Our beams speared inward to meet at the central point. This was a raised rectangular plinth of smooth gray stone, a few feet high, with bunches of dried lavender propped against it. It had the word FITTES inscribed along the side.

  On top of the plinth, glinting coldly in our flashlight beams, was a silver coffin.

  The coffin had been covered with a magnificent silver drape, emblazoned with the famous Fittes symbol: a rampant unicorn.

  “Don’t want to rush to any conclusions,” Lockwood murmured, “but I think we might be there.”

  George too spoke in a whisper; it was not a place for noise. “That’s the special coffin in which she supposedly lay in state. Three days in Westminster Abbey, with mourners filing by. Then they brought her here.”

  “If she is here,” I said. I was Listening again. No, it was okay. Everything was still.

  “That’s what we’ve come to find out.” Lockwood walked purposefully across the vault. In the briskness of his movements, he was allaying our unspoken fears. “Won’t take five minutes, then we’re gone. Do it like we practiced. Chains at the ready.”

  Time and again, in the peace and comfort of 35 Portland Row, we’d gone through this part of the operation. We’d known it was the crunch point, when fear might make us forget essential things. So we’d rehearsed on a sofa in our living room, circling it with iron chains, looping their ends carefully, sowing salt and iron filings on the floor, setting up lavender candles at regular distances all the way around. Good protective measures, carried out swiftly and well. In moments we had the plinth surrounded in this manner, sealing in the coffin—and whatever it contained.

  We stood ready, just outside the chains.

  “All right,” Lockwood said. “Now for the coffin. George?”

  “As predicted, it’s an Edgar and Soames special edition, lead-lined, silver casing, double clasps. Should have a counterweighted hinge, so it opens to the touch.” George spoke calmly, but there was sweat running down the side of his face. This was not a normal tomb, and all of us were clammy with nerves. Holly’s face had blanched; Kipps looked as if he were trying to chew off his own bottom lip. Even the skull at my shoulder had gone quiet, the green glow dulled almost to nothing.

  Lockwood took a deep breath. “Okay, so this is my job.” He looked around at us. “Old Marissa started everything—the agencies, the fight against the Problem. That’s her legacy, which everyone takes for granted. But we know something else is going on. And part of the answer lies inside.”

  “Move fast,” I told him.

  He smiled at me. “Always.”

  George and Kipps held their candles ready. Holly and I unclipped magnesium flares.

  Lockwood stepped over the iron chains and approached the plinth.

  The coffin was at waist height. With a delicate touch, as if pulling a blanket off a sleeping child, Lockwood took the unicorn drape and drew it to the foot of the coffin, where he let it fall to the floor. The lid was pristine, shimmering with reflected candlelight. It had two double clasps. Lockwood flicked them open—one, two—each falling against the coffin side with a clink that set my heart juddering.

  This was the moment. If the skull’s story was true, the coffin would be empty.

  Lockwood took hold of the lid and pushed it upward. In the same motion, he jumped back beyond the iron chains.

  George was right: the lid must have had some kind of concealed counterweight, because it continued to open, smoothly and soundlessly, of its own accord. It tipped up and up and over—and came to a gentle halt, hanging back at an angle.

  The interior of the coffin was a slot of thick darkness, black to the brim.

  Kipps and George lifted their arms. Light from their candles scooped out the slot. Now we could see that the interior was upholstered in red silk—

  And filled with something. Something long, thin, and covered in white linen.

  For a few seconds, no one spoke. Holly and I had our arms raised, flares cupped in our hands. The others were likewise frozen, rigid, breath rasping between bared teeth. We stared at the shrouded shape. It had an awful kind of gravity that held us all transfixed.

  “Well, somebody’s at home,” Holly said in a small voice.

  Kipps swore under his breath. “So much for that skull’s promises.”

  This was a fair point. I came to life, rapped on the ghost-jar. “Skull!”

  “What?” Faint green light flared sullenly within the glass. “This had better be good. I can’t hang around. There’s too much silver here for me.”

  “Never mind that! Look in the coffin.”

  A pause followed. “Oh, well. Could be any old corpse in there. Might be a pile of half-bricks wrapped in sacking. I can tell you one thing: it’s not Marissa. Uncover the face and see.”

  The light faded. I told the others what the skull had said. None of us much enjoyed hearing it.

  “Suppose we had better take a look,” I said.

  Lockwood nodded slowly. “Right…Well, it’s easy enough.”

  The body of that quiet someone in the coffin was not wrapped tightly, but instead concealed by a loose cloth. Whoever pulled it back would have to step inside the chains, reach in close to the shrouded thing.

  “Easy enough…” Lockwood said again. “It’s just a dead body, like any other, and we’ve all seen plenty of those.”

  He looked at us.

  “Oh, very well,” he sighed. “I’ll do it. Stand ready.”

  Without hesitation he stepped over the iron chains, reached into the coffin, took hold of a corner of the cloth, and, with a fastidious movement, flicked it away. Then he jumped back. We all flinched with him. As Lockwood said, we’d seen enough decomposed bodies to want to be as far away as possible when the dreadful sight was revealed.

  And it was dreadful. Only not in the way we expected.

  It wasn’t decomposed at all.

  Long gray hair lay thick and lush across an ivory pillow. It cradled a gaunt white face, the skin flowing like wax beneath our candlelight. It was the face of a woman; an aged, wrinkled woman—bony, with a nose curved thin and sharp like the beak of some bird of prey. The lips were closed tight; the eyes, too. It was recognizably the same face as on the iron bust upstairs, only older and frailer. What was awful about it was that it didn’t appear to be long dead, but only sleeping. It had been miraculously preserved.

  No one spoke. No one moved. At last a blob of hot wax from his candle dripped onto Kipps’s hand. His yelp broke the spell.

  “Marissa Fittes…” George breathed. “It is her.”

  “Close the lid!” Holly cried. “Close it quick, before—!”

  She didn’t finish the sentence, but we knew what she meant. Before Marissa Fittes’s spirit stirred. I’d had the same thought. But I also felt a rush of anger that we’d risked so much for nothing. “That wretched skull!” I said.

  Quill Kipps cursed. “What fools we are! We’ve risked everything for this!” He gestured wildly around the tiny vault. “We’ve got to get out quick. She won’t be happy we’ve desecrated her resting place. Come on, Lockwood! We’ve got to get out.”

  “Yes, yes….” Of all of us, Lockwood had been the least affected by the dead woman in the coffin. He bent forward over the chains, gazing at the pallid face. “She seems relaxed enough so far,” he added. “In fact, she’s positively chilled. How did they keep her like this, I wonder?”

  “Mummified,” George said.

  “Like the Egyptians? Reckon people still do that?”

  “Oh, sure. You just need the right herbs and oils and natron, which is a kind of salt. Dunk her in that, it dries her out, though you mustn’t forget to remove the intestines, and pull the brains out through the nose. It’s a messy business. Imagine one of Luce’s worst head colds—that’s the amount of gunk you’re dealing with. After that, you’d stuff her various cavities with—”

  “Right, so mummification is possible,” Kipps interrupted. “We get the idea.”

  Geo
rge adjusted his spectacles. “A few details never hurt anyone.”

  “All the same,” Lockwood said, “I’ve never heard of a mummy looking quite like this….” As he spoke, he stepped across the iron chains again.

  “Lockwood,” I said, “what are you doing?”

  “It’s like she died yesterday.” He reached in, put his fingers to the side of the face.

  “Well, don’t touch her!”

  “Ack! Lockwood!”

  “Ah, yes….” There was a softly noxious peeling sound, as of skin coming away.

  Holly put her hand over her mouth; George made a noise like a throttled cat. Kipps clutched my arm.

  Lockwood stood back. He had the old woman’s face dangling between his fingers.

  “Look,” he said. “It’s just a mask.” He smiled at us. “A plastic mask…And check this out….” His other hand came up. The gray-white wig hung heavy in his hand, matted and shapeless like something that had been teased out of a bathtub drain. “A mask and wig,” he said, laughing. “It’s fake. Everything’s just fake….Everyone okay?”

  To be honest, that might have been stretching it. For a moment, none of us moved. Then our shock and relief spilled over. Kipps began laughing. Holly just stood there, shaking her head, hand still on her mouth. I realized I’d been holding my flare ready all this time. My fingers hurt. I put it back in my belt.

  “Lockwood,” I said, “that is so icky. That is the ickiest thing I’ve ever seen you do. Which is saying something.”

  “It’s not really icky.” Lockwood considered the thing lying in the coffin. “It’s just a dummy. Come and see.”

  We all stepped over to the coffin. Sure enough, shorn of its coverings, the head resting on the red silk pillow wasn’t human at all. It was made of wax. It had the correct dimensions, with a rough nose shape and shallow indents where the eyes would be, but there were no real features, just the bubbles and pits of yellowish wax, smooth in places, rough in others.

  “What a con!” George bent over the coffin, holding his spectacles as he stared quizzically at the dummy. He pulled the shroud farther away, uncovering a wax torso, and rough, spindly wax arms crossed over the breast. “Life-sized, and probably the correct weight, so no one guessed when they were carrying it. The mask was there just in case anyone looked in….”

  “She’s not there,” Lockwood said. “This whole mausoleum is built on a lie.”

  “Unbelievable.” Kipps was still laughing softly to himself. He reached into the coffin and struck the waxen chest with his knuckles, making a hollow tapping sound. “A dummy! And we were all so frightened….”

  I wanted to laugh, too. It was the sheer release of the tension that had been building up all night. Everyone felt it. Holly got out some chocolate, began offering it around. Thermos flasks of coffee were located. We leaned back against the coffin.

  “We’ve got to go public with this,” George said.

  Lockwood frowned. “Maybe. It’s only half the story, don’t forget. Marissa’s not here. So where is she?”

  “The skull’s been telling us where,” I said.

  Tap, tap…Behind us, Kipps rapped out a jaunty little rhythm on the wax. “A dummy!” he said. “We can’t keep this quiet. We show the mask, tell DEPRAC, get the press down here.” He reached out for the chocolate. “Thanks, Holly. Don’t mind if I do.”

  Holly handed out the last piece. “The difficult thing is knowing who to trust,” she said. “Half of DEPRAC’s in Penelope’s pockets.”

  “Barnes is okay.”

  “Yeah. He is. But how much influence does Barnes have now?”

  Tap, tap…

  “Decisions for tomorrow,” Lockwood said. “Thing to do now is get back topside, before the guards change again.”

  Tap, tap, tappety-tap…

  “Okay, Quill,” I said. “Maybe you can stop that now. It’s getting a little irritating.”

  “I have stopped,” Kipps said. “I’m eating my chocolate, same as you.”

  Everyone looked at Kipps, leaning against the plinth beside us. He held up both his hands in confirmation. The tapping noise continued. We stared at one other. We swallowed our chocolate in unison. Then we looked behind.

  Something protruding from under the rumpled shroud was striking the side of the coffin, making the tapping sound. It was a cupped wax hand, twitching and jerking in spasms. As we watched, the trembling extended up the arm, and all at once the whole wax dummy was shaking, as if in protest at the coils of ghost-fog now rising from the grave.

  Ten minutes earlier, it would all have been fine. Even five minutes earlier would have been okay. We were so keyed up when we came into the vault, the first apparition to show its face would have been impaled by five rapiers simultaneously. As for the coffin, anything jumping out when we opened the lid would have been diced and dismembered before it knew what was happening. But the extreme shock—and subsequent anticlimax—of finding the wax mannequin had fatally distracted us. We had allowed ourselves to switch off. This in turn had lured us into committing the three cardinal sins of psychic investigation: we’d stopped using our Talents, we’d stepped beyond the chains, and we’d turned our backs on an open coffin. Even the rawest seven-year-old trainee knows to avoid those mistakes. Rookie errors, every one.

  So it was that when we saw the mannequin moving and the coils of ghost-fog looping toward us, we were—for a crucial moment—stunned and frozen. It took our brains a split second longer than normal to react.

  This delay was enough. We lost control.

  So thick was the mist, it was as if the coffin were filling up with white liquid. It pooled around the edge of the body in the shroud, lapping at its contours, swirling and spiraling as if being stirred by unseen hands. And the stiff yellow figure was infected by the movement. It juddered into life. Fingers hooked over the lip of the coffin. There was a cracking sound as the wax broke. The mannequin thrust itself upward into a sitting position.

  “Back! Back!”

  It was Lockwood’s cry. As one, we threw ourselves away from the plinth, away from the coffin. But panic breeds panic; mistakes escalate. Lockwood was fine—he was already twisting as he jumped, whipping a flare from his belt. He landed lightly, the other side of our iron chains, his right arm pulled back and ready to throw. The rest of us? We didn’t possess such finesse. We were just tumbling every which way, crashing down on hands and knees. Kipps knocked over a candle. I arched like a cat to avoid the ring of chains, then rolled unglamorously through a mess of salt and iron. Holly and George fared even worse. Both careered straight into the circle, twisting the links violently out of position.

  Looped ends came away from each other; the circle was broken.

  A cold wind blew outward through the gaps and across the vault.

  I finished my roll in a crouch, and spun on my heels, grappling for a flare. As I did so, Lockwood’s canister flashed over me. It arced down toward the coffin, where a thin and faceless figure now sat, wrapped in grave-clothes, its smooth, misshapen head slowly turning in our direction.

  The flare struck the edge of the coffin lid, just behind the figure.

  Everything on the plinth disappeared in a bursting orchid of bright white fire.

  I don’t know whether or not it was the acoustics of the vault we were in, but the explosion was more than usually loud. Brighter, too. I looked aside. Kipps cried out—he’d been closest to the burst. My ears rang; a ring of heat buffeted me for a second, then expanded past me and away. It was cold again.

  I opened my eyes. White-hot iron was fountaining down like a rain of needles, fizzing and bouncing on the flagstones. The coffin interior was a coronet of fire. Fragments of its red silk lining waved and stirred like seaweed, dancing in the center of each flame.

  A dark shape stood above the blaze, stiff, bent-backed, enveloped in a burning shroud.

  “The chains!” I was scooping for the loose ends, trying to push them together. The others did the same. But the cold draft that blew f
rom the coffin caught the iron links, sent them skittering apart. And the mist was already spilling over the edges of the coffin, pouring silently down in thick white ropes that uncoiled toward us on the floor. It pushed us back as we fumbled for the chains. We couldn’t repair the circle without the mist brushing against our skin. It wasn’t your usual ghost-fog, which is harmless. This was thicker and too viscous; you couldn’t risk it touching you.

  “Forget the iron,” Lockwood shouted. “Move back! Hit it with your flares!”

  The shape in the coffin moved abruptly, awkwardly, as if it didn’t know how to use its limbs. It gave a lurch, toppled forward out of the coffin, and landed headfirst on the floor of the vault in a spreading plume of ghost-fog. A moment later it vanished in a double explosion of magnesium fire. Two flares had struck it. A third (I guessed George’s) had missed completely, exploding against the far wall of the room. The noise buffeted us; we were scoured by a sunburst of violent silver light.

  “What was that thing?” Kipps stumbled around to join us, one ear bleeding, his jersey a ragged colander of magnesium burns.

  “A Revenant,” Lockwood gasped. “Got to be.”

  “But the wax—”

  “Its bones are hidden in the wax shell. The ghost is able to make the bones move, and that animates the wax.” He took a canister from his belt. “Quick! Help me salt the floor.”

  Nothing moved in the silver flames, but Lockwood and the others threw salt-bombs onto the ground, lacing the stones in front. I didn’t help them. I stood motionless, my flare still unused in my hand. Up until this point my psychic senses had been numbed with shock. Now, as the echo of the explosions died away, they’d suddenly kicked in. And I could hear a voice, harsh and hollow as a crow’s caw. It was calling out a name.

  “Marissa Fittes…” it said. “Marissa…”

  “Fall back to the stairs,” Lockwood said.

  We retreated toward the arch, watching the flames. They were dropping swiftly, revealing a prone and broken figure on the floor.

  “Maybe we got it,” Holly breathed.