The Empty Grave

by Jonathan Stroud

  “I gave you the relevant details,” Tufnell said. He was looking at his watch.

  “Tracey?” Lockwood went on. “You saw it most clearly, I believe. On the stage—and in the wings. You saw it with poor Sid Morrison.”

  The girl’s face was gray and haggard. “Yes.”

  “The Specter was beautiful, I understand?”

  “Not to me.” She looked away. “But I think Sid found her so. She was up on the stage there, wrapped in a golden light.”

  “Perhaps the stage is the Source,” Holly said. “That’s where the woman died.”

  Sarah Parkins, the stage manager, shook her head. “I don’t think it can be. It’s not the original stage. The bloodstained boards were ripped out and burned, right after La Belle Dame’s death. Same with the actual sultan’s casket. You can read all about it in books on theater history.”

  “Ah, she’s a clever girl, our Sarah is,” Mr. Tufnell said. “And committed to Tufnell’s, despite our troubles. Though I maybe shouldn’t mention it, she was fond of poor Sid in particular. I’m much obliged to her for carrying on in such tragic circumstances. Ain’t I, Sarah? But now we really should go.”

  “All right,” Lockwood said. “If there’s nothing more—”

  “It’s not the stage you should be looking at,” Sarah Parkins said, as they turned to leave. “I saw the ghost in the dressing room corridor. Girls saw it on the balcony, and down in the basement….” She waved her arm up toward the dim, silent reaches of the auditorium. “Be careful. You never know where it might show up next.”

  No sooner were we alone than we set off on a careful inspection of the haunted building. We immediately discovered that the Palace Theater was a complex and sprawling structure. It had three distinct areas, connected by a variety of stairs and passages; and each gave us some cause for psychic concern.

  At the heart of the theater was the auditorium itself, with no fewer than three levels of seating—the stalls on the ground floor; the first-floor balcony, or lower circle; and the steeply inclined upper circle near the roof. We took a number of psychic readings on every floor, and detected traces of supernatural activity: fleeting chills, subtle miasmas, a pervading sense of unease that came and went almost at random.

  The second area was the “front of house.” This included the lobby on the ground floor, and two other public spaces directly above, from which the circle seats were reached. There were two staircases, each lined with faded plush carpets, muffling all sounds. One of these seemed colder than the other, for no discernible reason. Next to the lobby on the ground floor was a dark, narrow exhibition space containing Tufnell’s Marvels, which turned out to be a collection of amusement machines that animated if money was fed into them. We treated this area with extreme caution, as we’d encountered haunted automata before, but despite the presence of several mechanical clowns, which so often cause trouble, the room seemed psychically quiet.

  The final area comprised the stage, and the backstage region beyond. There was a cold spot on the stage itself, close to where I’d heard the sound of the audience from long ago. This was eight degrees cooler than the rest of the auditorium. Lockwood ordered an iron circle to be set up near it, and we equipped it with flares and salt-bombs. We also scrutinized the dressing room corridor, and the musty basement beneath the stage, which was filled with racks of costumes and broken scenery. No further cold spots were discovered, but we fixed up circles in both of these locations, too.

  After that, it was time for the hunt to begin.

  You might think that with a prowling Specter somewhere at hand, Lockwood & Co. would stick together at all costs. Instead, we spread out slowly across the auditorium, keeping each other in sight, but letting our individual Talents take us where they would. It was risky, yes, but splitting up like this was a standard tactic; the kind of thing done when a haunting covered a wide space, and the ghost’s ultimate vanishing point wasn’t yet known. We were in pursuit of the spirit, but we were also acting as bait. The plan was to lure it out by being just a little bit vulnerable. In the long run this was better than sitting twitchily in one random place for hours, hoping the Visitor would simply drop by.

  I stayed at ground level, drifting along the central aisle toward the place where I’d seen the bloody casket. Holly was on the stage, Kipps somewhere in the wings. George and Lockwood were on the far side of the stalls. Everyone was near enough, but I felt the need for extra company, no matter how annoying it might be. I opened my backpack, turned the lever at the top of the skull’s jar to allow it to communicate, and was instantly engulfed by a tide of resentful psychic chatter that had been bottled up since breakfast.

  “What kind of bosom friendship is this,” the skull cried, “where you go merrily shutting me up for hours on end? You never plug Lockwood’s mouth with a giant cork, or stick a gym shoe in Holly’s gob to keep her quiet. Which is a crying shame, because I’d pay good money to see both those things.”

  “They don’t keep distracting me with nonsense,” I growled. “And you need some peaceful thinking time. Have you figured out the mystery of Marissa yet, while you were in there?”

  “No! With all this silver-glass, it’s all I can do to eavesdrop on your private conversations right outside my jar.” The skull’s light flared indignantly. “Hey-ho. Still, I manage. From what I’ve overheard, I take it we’re mid-case?”

  I gave a brief account of events, while checking for psychic traces. It was very quiet; the temperature was a bit low beneath the balcony, but that was probably a draft from the exit door.

  The skull listened with close attention. “So this ghost shows up full strength out of nowhere after almost a century,” it mused. “Interesting. Anybody around here with a grudge?”

  “Lots of spirits suddenly become active for no reason,” I said.

  “True, true. This Tufnell…popular chap, I suppose.”

  I couldn’t imagine anyone liking Tufnell much. “He wasn’t very kind to Tracey.”

  The face in the jar looked thoughtful. “Maybe she’s out for revenge after years of cruel treatment. She’s found the Source somewhere, and is hoping the ghost will catch her boss and squeeze him till his eyes pop out….No? You don’t seem convinced.”

  “Funnily enough,” I said, “not everyone is as horribly vindictive as you. Now make yourself useful for once. La Belle Dame’s out there. Can you sense her?”

  The skull stayed more or less silent, but I could feel its surveillance alongside mine.

  “It’s a fierce one,” it said at last. “I can feel it out there, flitting in the dark. Fierce, but not strong…Its weakness angers it. It envies the living their vitality.”

  “If it catches someone, it sucks the life force out them,” I said.

  “Makes sense. It’s trying to restore itself, fill itself back up. Only it can’t, because it’s dead and gone and full of holes.” The skull chuckled unpleasantly. “I could tell it not to bother. You suck the living dry, and the goodness just flows right through you and out the other side. ’Course, you get a kind of buzz, I won’t say you don’t, but it’s empty calories. Ultimately a waste of time.”

  “You are so disgusting. You killed people that way?”

  “Only one or two. Ooh—did you feel that?”

  “No. What?”

  “She’s made her move.”

  My heart double-thumped against my chest. The glee in the ghost’s voice was palpable. “I don’t—”

  “Patience. Patience…Wait for it….Ah, yes, there you go.”

  A scream cut through the silence of the auditorium. It came from somewhere behind the stage. I began to run toward it. Who was it? Holly? Kipps? Neither was in sight. Far off on the other side of the stalls, Lockwood was running too, long coat flapping, mirroring my speed. We launched ourselves up onto the stage almost as one, plunged behind the thick red curtains into the wings. It was very dark there, the walls black-painted, stage sets propped in corners. Above us, ropes hung like weary snakes from met
al gantries. Holly was staring up into the shadows, sword in hand. When she turned to look at us, her face was very pale.

  “It’s all right,” she said, as we halted on either side. “It’s gone.”

  “What was it?” I shone my torch up at the ceiling. Nothing but ropes, cobwebs, floating dust.

  Holly bit her lip. “I heard a horrid little laugh above me. When I looked up…I thought it was one of the weights they put on the ends of ropes to help pull up the scenery. But it was too long, and thin, and white for that. I aimed my flashlight up and…and it was a woman hanging there. Hanging by the neck, and spinning slowly around, her dress all lank and still, her legs as thin and white as candles….I’m afraid I dropped my flashlight. When I looked again, the thing was gone.”

  “Sounds dreadful,” Lockwood said. “It was La Belle Dame, of course. Did you see her face?”

  “Do you know what?” Holly said. “I’m so glad I didn’t. There was too much hair.”

  George had been slower to arrive than Lockwood and me. His glasses flashed as he looked around. “Seems she’s testing our resolve,” he said. “What with the bloody casket Lucy saw—”

  He never finished. Another scream made us all jump. It was higher and shriller than Holly’s, so we knew that it was Kipps. We were still reacting when he burst in through a door at the back of the wings. He skidded to a halt, ripped off his goggles, and pointed back the way he’d come. “There! There!” he cried. “In the tank! Do you see her? The poor drowned girl!”

  We all hurried to the door. “There’s no tank there, Quill,” Lockwood said. “It’s just an empty corridor.”

  Kipps took a deep breath. “I know that. Of course I know that. I heard Holly, and I was running here, when I turned the corner and saw it. A great long tank, with a body in it! Her head was underwater, her arms all limp and dangly, her long hair stretching out like river weeds…”

  Lockwood nodded impatiently. “There’s no need to get poetic. Did she leap out and attack you?”

  “No, she didn’t, as it happens. But she was very white and pasty, and also very dead. Believe me, that was bad enough.”

  “Looks as if you got The Captive Mermaid,” George said, as we walked back out onstage. Our psychic senses were quiet now. For the present, the ghost was gone. “Holly had The Hangman’s Daughter, and we know Lucy got The Sultan’s Revenge. La Belle Dame’s going through her full repertoire.”

  “She’s giving us her greatest hits,” Lockwood said. “But gruesome as these images are, they’re all just an act—or not even that: they’re the echo of an act. The ghost’s messing with our minds. Question is: What’s next?”

  I glanced out at the dark expanse of seats, then back at Lockwood. “Have you or George seen anything?”

  “No.”

  “You’re the only ones who haven’t.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe we’re just resistant to these things.”

  “Well,” George said, “none of this has changed the state of play. We still have to locate the Source, find out how the thing’s managed to come back.”

  “It’s not just a question of how.” Lockwood’s eyes narrowed as he stared out over the auditorium. “It’s a question of why….What’s the motivation?”

  “La Belle Dame’s a malevolent spirit,” I said. “That’ll do for now, surely.”

  “Yes, only I’m not necessarily thinking about the ghost….” Whatever train of thought Lockwood was following looped him back into the present. “Right, we’ll continue making sweeps of the theater. Her Visitations so far have been fleeting. Sooner or later, she’ll hang around long enough for us to react. Then we’ll deal with her. Any questions?”

  No one had any. Chocolate was shared, and drinks taken. We began our rounds again.

  Hours passed and bled together. Outside was darkness; inside, the theater’s soft gold glow. The ghost appeared to have exhausted its resources with its three separate Visitations. I left the auditorium, and walked the passages and soft, carpeted landings of the Palace Theater. Sometimes, when climbing the long, curved stairs, I had the sensation that I was being followed, but whenever I looked back, I saw nothing but the electric candles flickering in their sconces and the frozen, laughing faces on old posters on the walls.

  Periodically I glimpsed some of the others from afar: Lockwood striding purposefully across the stage, Holly taking readings high in the upper circle. At first we stayed near each other, but as the night grew older and nothing happened, we drifted farther apart. I began to relax a little. Even the sporadic phenomena of the early evening had petered out to nothing.

  At an unknown point the skull and I found ourselves (for the second or third time) in the room of amusement machines known as Tufnell’s Marvels. It was a dark, winding corridor, with brightly colored mechanical toys arrayed in glass cases on either side. Some were simple figures—hinged bears and clowns and grotesque policemen that could move or dance; others were complex little scenes showing real-life tragedies, such as the Great Fire of London, that would come to brief, cog-driven life if you put your money in.

  First thing I did, as always, was check the temperature and use my senses. As before, I got nothing. I peered at the exhibits, and as I did so, a memory rose unbidden in my mind. “I used to see these things at the country fairs,” I said, “when I was a little kid. My sister Mary gave me the money to make one go once….”

  “Didn’t know you had a sister,” the skull said.

  “I’ve got six.” I didn’t mention that I hadn’t seen any of them for years; that only Mary still wrote to me from the North of England. I tried to ignore the dull pang that accompanied the thought. It made me seek distraction. “Ooh, look at this,” I said.

  At the far end of the room, near the exhibition exit, was a square glass box. In it was the most intricate toy of all. It took the form of a traditional traveler’s caravan, with a bow roof, large wooden wheels, and sides gaily painted in red and gold. The model stood on a field of fake grass with dark trees and a full moon behind. There was a window along one side, with net curtains drawn across it. I could just make out the shape of someone hidden inside. Above the caravan was a sign: ONE POUND. YOUR FORTUNE TOLD. There was a slot below, and a silver hatch beside it.

  I looked at it. I had a pound.

  “Go on,” the skull said. “You know you want to. What harm can it possibly do?”

  “It’s just a silly machine.”

  But I was bored and lonely, and wanted something to happen. I took off the backpack and set it on the floor, with the skull’s jar peeping out. Then I took the pound out of my pocket and sent it clinking into the slot.

  At once, a light came on inside the caravan, illuminating a hideous witchlike silhouette, all pointy nose and chin. There was a deranged cackling. With rhythmic jerks, the side of the caravan swung open. Lights disguised as candles hung from the ceiling; these sprang into flickering life, revealing a badly painted crone hunched over a table, a crystal ball clutched between her gnarled hands. As I watched, a milky brightness flared in the ball. The cackling came again. The hands moved across the surface of the crystal. A mechanical cat chased a mechanical mouse around the back of the fortune-teller, and a mechanical crow on her windowsill cawed loudly. The candles flickered; cupboard doors opened and closed, revealing concealed skulls and demons. The light in the ball flared and went out. A tinny bell rang somewhere, and something rattled into the hatch at the front of the cabinet. Cogs whirred and spun. The caravan began to close.

  I put my fingers into the hatch. Whether it was a glitch or not, two pieces of paper had emerged instead of one. I took them out and read them in the light coming from the fortune-teller’s window.

  The first read:

  He will go into the dark.

  The second:

  He will sacrifice his life for you.

  I stared at the slips of paper for a moment, then crumpled them abruptly in my hand. What kind of fortune was that? That wasn’t a fortune. It was stupid. It was
a stupid machine.

  “What did it say?” the skull asked. “Bet it was something terrible.”

  “Oh, shut up. Why don’t you ever shut up? You’re always going on at me.”

  The skull said nothing. I waited for the inevitable retort. Nothing. Even in my anger and disquiet, this struck me as slightly odd. When I glanced down at the jar, I saw that the ghost’s face was indeed animated, the bug-eyes rolling, the mouth moving urgently. Yet I heard nothing. That’s when I noticed that the lever at the top of the jar had swung closed, blocking the psychic contact.

  I hadn’t turned the lever.

  A breeze ruffled my skirt against my legs; chill air parted my hair and brushed around the contours of my neck. A soft white glow extended out across the floor, sparkling on the glass of the cabinets like the light of a cold new dawn. It was a gentle light, and the face of the smiling woman standing close behind me was gentle, too. As I turned, I’d been scrabbling for my sword, but one look at that radiant lady was enough to make me recognize how silly and inappropriate such an action was. I let my fingers hesitate on the hilt; hesitate, then fall away.

  The woman was all fair and shimmery, with a pearlescent wasp-waisted dress that flowed down tight against her legs before spilling out like plunging foam. Her shoulders were bare, her long slim arms as white and sweet as sugar. She did not stand still, but swayed gently from side to side—her arms and body stirring separately, like reed fronds in an underwater current. Her pale hair fell in waves around her neck, cascading over her shoulders, moving, always moving, as if to secret music. And how enticing the face was! I wasn’t especially sickly, or a lovelorn boy, so I frankly wasn’t La Belle Dame’s target audience, but even so I felt the tug of longing as I looked into those fathomless dark eyes.

  What was it that made me yearn to walk across? What was it that made me want to give myself to her? It wasn’t just that she was exquisite. Sure, you had the gently smiling mouth, the soft full lips, the set-square straightness of that lovely nose. I could take or leave all that. You could see similar blandly beautiful young people in any fashion magazine. But she was flawed, too. That was the brilliance of it. There was a homeliness to her, something ordinary in the lines of the face that made her seem accessible. It was the flash of Doris Blower behind Marianne de Sèvres. You sensed that deep down she understood what it was to feel imperfect and unspectacular. She understood your need for love.