The Empty Grave

by Jonathan Stroud

  Or perhaps not everyone.

  Of all of us, he confided most in me. We’d always been close, but since my return to the company five months earlier, we’d become closer still. We spent more time with each other than ever before. We worked together, we laughed a lot. I felt comfortable in his presence, and he in mine; it was clear to both of us, I think, that we found greater peace and pleasure in each other than in anyone else. That was the good news.

  The bad news? I wasn’t quite sure why.

  Our journey through the frozen land of the dead, shielded by a single spirit-cape, had marked us both forever and separated us from our friends. No one else could properly imagine what we’d seen. Memories of it still disturbed our nightly dreams. It had taken weeks for our physical energies to return. My hair was flecked with white; there were gray twists in Lockwood’s bangs. In fact, so overwhelming had this journey been that it cast a shadow over everything that came afterward. And it was sometimes hard to know, while standing in that shadow, whether the changes between us had been caused by this, or perhaps by other things.

  So, the way Lockwood gazed at me, the flashes of vulnerability in his eyes, the looks we shared, quietly, when the others’ backs were turned—on what, exactly, was that intimacy based? On us, pure and simple? On who we truly were? Or on the aftershocks of one overwhelming event, on the experience we’d shared?

  It made a difference.

  Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad we had it. I just would have liked a bit of clarity, that’s all.

  It didn’t help that, being Lockwood, he never talked about these emotions much. It didn’t help that, being me, I never saw an easy way to broach the subject, either. And it certainly didn’t help that we were always so busy, dealing with ghosts, with DEPRAC, with the ongoing mystery of the Problem.

  And also with clients who came knocking on our doors half an hour before their scheduled appointments, bringing fresh terror into our lives.

  We’d only just finished eating our doughnuts when the bell rang on the path outside. The echoes died away.

  Lockwood frowned. “They’re hellishly early. Are we ready for them?”

  “Cake’s on the coffee table,” Holly said. “But the living room is a mess, as usual.” She got up, made for the door. “George, put the kettle on again, please. Lockwood, Lucy—you’ve got thirty seconds to make everything presentable.”

  We were well practiced at this; twenty-eight seconds later, cushions had been plumped, salt-bombs put in cupboards, and the living room window opened to admit the sunny air of early autumn. In the kitchen, George was making appropriate sounds with crockery. Lockwood and I stood waiting by the coffee table as our visitors came in.

  They certainly made an immediate impression. The elder of the two was a short, stout person in a startling yellow-checked jacket, not overly new, with leather patches on the elbows. He wore a gray vest, pushed out to bursting by his protuberant belly, and a shiny white shirt, behind the open V of which gray-white chest hairs played and spilled like summer brambles. His cords were a vigorous deep red. His face was also red; it suggested too close an acquaintance with the wine bottle. He had an impressive crop of very curly gray hair, wedged beneath a worn green felt hat; a snub nose; a wide, elastic mouth; and a pair of small, bright eyes that seldom stopped moving and never properly met your gaze.

  Beside him was a thin youth of scrawny, malnourished appearance. He wore old jeans and a baggy jersey that emphasized rather than concealed his lack of width. His nose was large and hooked, and beneath a shock of unruly black hair, his skin had an alarming bone-white pallor. His face was utterly expressionless. In contrast to his companion, he stared out straight ahead. He didn’t seem to focus on the room at all.

  “This is Mr. Lewis Tufnell,” Holly said. “Mr. Tufnell and…” She looked at the boy.

  “And Charley Budd,” Mr. Tufnell said. “Come along, Charley.”

  Mr. Lewis Tufnell loped forward to meet us, with much nodding and winking and touching of his hat; as one in a trance, the boy shuffled at his side. They were an odd-looking pair, but it was only when they were halfway across the room that I noticed what was amiss.

  The man was holding the lad on a chain.

  As chains went, it was discreet and clean, with lots of neat, bright links, but that wasn’t the issue. It was a chain. It ended in a loop of rope tied fast around the boy’s wrists.

  I glanced at Lockwood to see if he had noticed, too. One look told me he had. He wasn’t alone. George, coming in with the tea things, had halted, openmouthed. Holly, following the visitors, was gesticulating furiously at us behind their backs.

  Our clients reached the coffee table. Without waiting for an invitation, Mr. Tufnell settled himself into the sofa. At first the lad remained standing; by placing a hairy hand on his shoulder and applying pressure, his companion encouraged him to sit. There was a gentle clinking of chains, then silence.

  One after the other, we sat, too.

  Lockwood cleared his throat; he was still rather taken aback. “Er, good morning,” he began. “I’m Anthony Lockwood. Now, Mr. Tufnell—”

  “Call me Lew!” the gentleman interrupted, with a flourish of his worn green hat. “Plain Lew Tufnell! That’s how I like it. No airs and graces about me, I hope. Proprietor of Tufnell’s Theater, not to mention Tufnell’s Marvels and Tufnell’s Traveling Fairground of Astonishment and Delight. More to the point, I’m also a man at his wits’ end, for my establishment is cursed by an evil spirit that threatens me with ruin.” He gave an extravagant sigh, then noticed Holly’s seedcake on the table. “Ooh. Is that little morsel for me? Smashing!”

  “Well, we were kind of hoping to share it between us,” George said.

  Lockwood raised his hand. “Before we deal with cake or curse,” he said, “there’s one thing we need to discuss….” He paused significantly, hoping the visitor would get the hint. “Well,” he said finally, “we can’t help noticing the chain….”

  Mr. Tufnell gave a little start as of mild surprise; a weak and liquid smile sloshed across his face. “What, this chain here? This chain? Oh, that’s just for Charley Budd’s own safety. Don’t go worrying on your own account.”

  Lockwood frowned. “I’m not. But—”

  “He won’t hurt you, not poor Charley.” With his free hand, Mr. Tufnell ruffled the lad’s hair. “Only, he isn’t so particular about himself, if you take my meaning. See that cake knife there? If I weren’t vigilant, he’d be on it in a trice. Bury it in his own heart, he would, and spoil your lovely carpet.”

  We looked at the carpet, and then at the cake knife, and then at the boy, who sat quietly in a world of his own.

  “He’d stab himself?” I said.

  “Assuredly.”

  Holly had perched herself on the arm of George’s chair. She said, “Surely, Mr. Tufnell, if he’s…if he’s ill, he should be in the hospital. He needs doctors who—”

  “Doctors can’t help him, miss.” Lew Tufnell shook his gray head sadly. “Doctors? Medics? Pah! I’d like to see them try. They’d drug him and truss him up and what have you, and all the while his life would drain away regardless, till in a day or two he was just another corpse what’s spirit’s gone a-roving. Waste of time, doctors. No, Miss. We need you. That’s why we’re here.”

  There was a silence. In the kitchen we could hear the kettle boiling. “I’m sorry,” Lockwood began. “I don’t understand, and I’m not sure what we can do to help this boy. Now, if you say there’s an evil spirit in your establishment—”

  “It was the ghost what done this to Charley,” Mr. Tufnell said.

  We gazed at the lad again; at his stillness, his passivity, his unseeing eyes.

  “Ghost-touched, you mean?” George asked.

  “Not touched physically,” Mr. Tufnell said, “though it was a close one. But his heart’s snared. She’s pulling his spirit out of him, making him weaker. I give him another night, maybe two, then he’ll cross over after her.” Just for a moment the
man’s eyes stopped their furtive wandering; he gazed directly at Lockwood. “If you can destroy her, maybe it’ll break the link. Maybe he’ll come back. I dunno.”

  Lockwood crossed his long legs in a resigned, businesslike way. He still wasn’t happy about the chain, but he’d come to a decision. “You’d better tell us about it,” he said.

  I got to my feet. “I think first we should all have some tea.”

  “And I think,” George said, springing to my side, “I should bury this cake knife where it belongs.”

  “That’ll be splendid,” Mr. Tufnell said. “I love cake. Nothing for Charley Budd, though. He don’t eat no more.”

  I went to the kitchen, did the honors with kettle and teapot. George took care of the seedcake, casting concerned looks at our visitor’s healthy midriff as he did so. While he waited, Mr. Tufnell’s gaze flitted ceaselessly among us all. I noticed it lingered longest on me and Holly.

  “Well,” he remarked, as I handed him his cup, “you’re a bright little shower, and no mistake. Scrubbed and shiny and pleasing to the eye. I could find jobs for one or two of you in my shows, if this agency gig doesn’t work out.” He smiled his washy, ingratiating smile, displaying an array of teeth like broken biscuits. “Couple of little dresses, a few sequins, twinkly tassels in appropriate places…You’d fit right in.”

  “That’s nice to know,” Lockwood said. “George will bear it in mind. Now, how can we help you in our present capacity as professional psychic investigation agents?”

  “Tell us about this evil spirit.” Holly spoke crisply; she turned a page of her notepad and held her pen ready. “What it is, how it appears—and how it’s affected this poor boy.”

  Mr. Tufnell balanced his plate of seedcake on one worn knee. “It’s not just Charley who’s been affected. There’s been a death, too. The theater and fairground ain’t a safe place for young lads no more, thanks to her.” He took an enormous mouthful and chewed mournfully. “I’ll be brief. I’m a busy man; I can’t sit around all day munching cake, even if you can. Well, the background’s quickly told. You’ll have heard of Tufnell’s Traveling Fairground, no doubt. Been in the family a hundred years. My old dad now, Frank Tufnell, he used to take it up and down the country, but what with the Problem, travel’s not so easy now. So, the last twenty years, we’ve taken root in Stratford, East London. There’s an old theater on the site—the Palace Theater, it’s called; been there a couple of hundred years itself, they say—and we use it for magic shows and circus entertainments, as well as housing Tufnell’s Marvels. The fair’s set up permanently around it. A ten gets you entry for the whole shebang, and for that, my friends, you have a feast of wonderment that never ceases or runs dry. Plus a free hot dog for kids on Sundays. Now that’s what I call value.”

  Lockwood had been gazing out the window. “Indeed. You mentioned something about a ghost.”

  “I did. It walks the theater corridors by night in the guise of a cloaked woman, fair of shape and radiant, yet with an evil heart.” Mr. Tufnell heaved a great shuddering sigh. “One of my lads she’s done away with,” he said, “and Charley Budd won’t linger long. Whatever young man she meets never lives to speak of it. They call her…” He leaned forward suddenly, his voice descending to unguessed-at depths. “They call her…La Belle Dame Sans Merci.”

  The echoes of his whisper died away, and all at once the chained boy at his side, little white-faced Charley Budd, who had hitherto been as one carved from stone, uttered a long, low moan. There was something so quavering and frightful about the sound that I felt the hairs rise on my arms.

  Mr. Tufnell tightened his grip on the chain, but the boy did not stir again.

  We sat for a moment in silence.

  “La Belle Dame Sans Merci…” Holly breathed. “The Beautiful Lady Without Mercy…They call the ghost that?”

  “They do.”

  “On account of its deadly feminine allure?”

  “No. Because it’s her name. We know who the apparition is, see? Didn’t I mention it? La Belle Dame Sans Merci. She was an actress, of a kind, at the turn of the last century. Great star in her day, and a wicked and beautiful woman she was. Now it seems she’s left the grave and is walking again. Here, take a gander.” From an inner pocket of his jacket he drew, much creased and greasy-looking, a large, yellowed, folded piece of paper. He passed it across the table in a covert motion. “For Gawd’s sake, don’t let Charley Budd see that,” he said.

  Lockwood took the piece of paper and opened it. I leaned in close. George and Holly left their seats and came around the coffee table to look over our shoulders.

  It was a theatrical flyer, printed in black and gold. It showed an illustration of a blond woman posing languorously among rolling clouds of golden smoke. She wore a glamorous outfit that was hard to describe, partly because there was so little of it. It had a faintly Eastern feel. It was all plunging necklines, cunningly positioned slashes, and tightly fitting curves. It looked both impractical and chilly. The woman’s long slim arms were festooned with bracelets; she had a tiara on her head and her fair hair billowed behind her, merging into the smoke. Her eyes were half-closed and entirely hidden behind enormous black lashes. She had her head thrown back, and her lips parted in a way that was either enticing or half-witted, or both. Beside her, written in eerie letters in the smoke, were the following words:

  La Belle Dame Sans Merci

  Mistress of Illusion

  in

  The Sultan’s Revenge

  At the bottom of the flyer, the name and address of the Palace Theater were given, along with a date of more than ninety years previously.

  Mr. Tufnell had taken the opportunity to help himself to another slice of cake. “La Belle Dame. Legendary beauty, as you can see.”

  “Yup,” said George.

  “Looks a bit overripe to me,” Holly said. “Don’t you think, Lucy?”

  “Definitely.”

  The impresario grunted. “She was a cruel woman in life, they say. Her looks gave her power over all who saw her, and that’s the power her ghost has, too.”

  Lockwood was frowning at the handbill. “And she’s the one haunting you….How can you be sure, Mr. Tufnell? How do you know it’s her?”

  “Because La Belle Dame met her gruesome end onstage in that very theater. She was an escapologist, see? People came from all over London to see her perform marvelous illusions in which she narrowly avoided death. Her most famous stunt was that very one you see there: The Sultan’s Revenge. She was shut in an upright casket like a coffin, which was hung about with chains. Men then impaled it with swords, with her screaming from inside. Of course, it was all fake. Really, she’d dropped through a trapdoor in the base of the box and escaped under the stage. She was ready to pop back up when the swords were withdrawn. Easy. Until the night it all went horribly wrong…”

  Mr. Tufnell paused and swallowed. He had spoken with passion and dramatic eloquence; also with his mouth full. The gentle rain of cake crumbs that had accompanied his account now stopped pattering on the coffee table. “Some say it was sabotage,” he whispered, “the vengeful act of one of her scorned admirers. Others claim the lad in charge of flipping the lever had downed a drink and simply forgotten his cue. Either way, La Belle Dame did not drop through the floor. She was still in the box when the swords were driven in. The shrieks onstage that night were real.”

  “A nasty way to go,” I said. “Nasty for the audience, too.”

  “To begin with,” Mr. Tufnell said, “no one in the theater understood what had happened—they thought the torrent of blood was part of the act. But it just went on and on….” He took a sip of tea. “I hope I’m not distressing you.”

  Lockwood was eyeing the damp crumbs on the table. “Only a little. Right, fine. That’s the story of how she died. Tell us about the ghost.”

  Our client nodded. “We do an afternoon performance in the theater. No evening event, naturally—everyone’s out before the sun goes down. It’s an old-sc
hool circus variety show: trapeze artists, jugglers, clowns, and acrobats on the stage. Most are adults, but I’ve got kids who clean up after the show. A couple of them came to me reporting that they’d seen a woman walking in the back of the theater while they were sweeping the stage. Late afternoon, it was. They’d thought she was a customer who’d strayed in somehow, but when they went to find her, she was gone. Few days later, another kid was passing the main dressing room, just before locking up. Out of the corner of her eye she saw someone in a black dress standing there. When she stepped back, the room was empty.”

  “All a bit ominous,” Lockwood said. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing. We weren’t in the building after dark, were we? This was in daylight. I thought we’d be safe enough…until what happened to Charley and poor Sid Morrison.” Mr. Tufnell sighed with feeling; he took off his hat and ran his hand through his nest of curls.

  “What happened to Charley, Mr. Tufnell?”

  “It was late afternoon, three days ago,” our client said. “The ghost-lamps were just coming on outside. Sarah Parkins, our stage manager, had forgotten her coat; she went back in to get it, and spotted Charley Budd walking down a corridor, all smiling and blank-eyed, like he was in a trance. She saw something with a woman’s shape beckoning to him from the end of the passage. Says it was all dark around the shape, though the lights were on everywhere else. He was going straight toward it.” Mr. Tufnell looked at us. “Well, Sarah didn’t waste any time. She just upped and tackled Charley, brought him crashing to the floor. As she did so, she says, the darkness at the end of the passage kind of flared, then went out, and all the lamps came on again. And Charley was still alive—but in the condition you see here.”

  “The stage manager was very brave,” I said.

  “Yes.” Mr. Tufnell nodded. “Sarah’s a strapping lass like you. Not willowy and pliant like this young lady here.” He flashed his broken teeth at Holly.