The Empty Grave

by Jonathan Stroud

  “Come…” a soft voice said. “Come with me.”

  It was as if she spoke directly to my deepest sorrows, those parts of me I guarded from the world. The pang that I’d experienced when I’d thought about my sisters, the anxiety I’d felt when Lockwood had sat beside the empty grave—she could smooth such doubts away. I had an overwhelming urge to share them, let her listen to my fears. I opened my mind to her willingly. I let her sympathy pour in.

  “Forget these troubles,” the voice said. “Forget them, and come with me.”

  I stood and gazed at the ghost. As if frightened by my scrutiny, it drifted back a little like a startled deer. I felt a plucking in my heart, the need to follow it wherever it might go. I took a stumbling step toward her.

  “Well, she’s a disappointment, no doubt about it.”

  I blinked, looked around. George had come into the exhibition room from the lobby, and was standing there beside me. He had cobwebs in his hair and a salt-bomb in his hand. He was frowning through his glasses, and a little spear of anger went through me to see him like that—so silly and scruffy and making stupid faces at such an important moment. I didn’t want him there. “Meaning what?” I said. My voice sounded odd and thick. “What are you talking about?”

  “After all that buildup,” he said. “I was hoping for the real deal when we met her. Little bit of glitz, bit of high-end razzle…At the very least I was expecting some decent psychic glamour. But not this.”

  I looked back down to the far end of the corridor, where the ghost swayed and waited, sad and slender as a winter willow, her head tilted to one side.

  “She’s not good enough for you?” I said.

  “Not good enough? She’s a sack of pus and bones, Luce. That’s below even my pay grade.”

  The woman was gazing at me, her long dark eyelashes beating in time with the rhythm of my heart. Again I felt the tug of longing, again a jarring anger at the vulgarity of George’s words. I laughed harshly. “What are you talking about, George? Pus?”

  “Well, okay. Technically, it’s clear, translucent ichor, manifested into a semi-solidified corporeal state. But when it’s all melty and icky and dripping off the bones, I think we can go with pus. The effect is much the same.”

  “Shut up, George.”

  “Pus, Luce.”

  I could have punched him. “Just shut up.”

  “No. Look at her, Lucy. Really look at her.”

  And as he said that he stepped forward and clasped my arm, rather harder than I thought necessary. It hurt, in fact, and made me squeak—and with that brief, sharp discomfort, the glamour that had cloaked my brain was momentarily dislodged, like a curtain blown sideways in the wind.

  And behind it—what was the shimmering, shining dress?

  Ectoplasm swirling in a void.

  Those lithe arms? Blackened spikes of bone.

  That rounded hip? Dark flesh, shriveled and pierced with many holes.

  That gentle face? A naked skull.

  I blinked. The curtain blew back into position. The wise, sweet woman stood there, beckoning.

  I stared at her. Outwardly, I stared at her just as before. But this time, I was willing myself to see reality.

  Even so, it was hard. Again the mesmeric swaying of the figure sought to lull my guard; again I felt the pull on my mind and body. But now my focus was on myself, on my own solidity and weight and skepticism, not on the shimmery, undulating thing.

  “Come with me,” the voice said again. “Come up onto the stage….”

  I could only croak it out: “No.”

  It was like snipping a cord with scissors. At once, like a cover falling from a statue, like a cloak being cast aside, the vision fell away, leaving in its place only the grinning, twisted corpse that surged forward. I pulled out my sword and held it before me; the thing at once fell back, mouthing and champing, beckoning me with obscene gestures.

  George was at my shoulder. “Want me to pinch you again?”

  “No.”

  “Can do. Arm, leg, buttock, anywhere you fancy. Just name the spot.”

  “No. It’s okay. It’s okay now. I see it.”

  He nodded. “Then perhaps you won’t mind if I do this?” He tossed the salt-bomb across the room. It burst at the apparition’s feet, showering it with bright green sparks and making it hiss and spit with pain. It drew back, retreating to the shadows of the passage beyond, where it hung for a moment, fizzing, steaming. I could see its pinprick eyes glinting in the dark as it watched me; I felt its malevolence pounding in my head. Then it was gone, and the pull of its glamour with it, leaving me suddenly bereft.

  “Wonder where it’s off to now,” George said. “Why don’t you come back into the lobby with me a moment, Luce? We need to regroup, consider what to do.”

  The lobby was a good place to go. Its chipped gold plasterwork and distinctive popcorn-and-cigarette odor was about as far from spectral enchainment as it was possible to get. George took a chocolate bar from the kiosk and ate it. I leaned back against the ticket counter, water flask in hand, my backpack at my feet. The skull inside was staring at me in mute reproach. I could hardly speak. I was light-headed with self-loathing. Finally: “Thanks, George.”

  “Sure.”

  “Next time I do anything like that, don’t waste time with words. Just hit me.”

  “Okay.”

  “Hit me anywhere. The harder the better.” I kicked my heel against the wall. “God!”

  George shrugged. “Don’t let it get to you. That’s what spectral glamour does. Anyone could have been taken in.”

  “You weren’t.”

  “No. Not this time. Frilly ectoplasm isn’t my thing.” He shrugged. “I hardly think you’d have been fooled for long, Luce. You’d have thrown it off without my help, you know.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But I was feeling…momentarily vulnerable. It was like she sensed it and homed right in.” I took a sip of water. “You’re obviously much more robust than me.”

  “Well,” George said, “I’m fairly chipper today, that’s true. The good news about La Belle Dame is that I don’t think it likes being up-front aggressive. What it wants is a passive victim, someone with a psychic wound. As long as we all stay strong, it’ll keep its distance. What’s not so hot is that it seems to have the run of the place. There’s no telling where it’ll show up now.”

  The full shock of my encounter had dwindled, leaving behind a dull agitation—the kind you get when there’s something on your mind, and you can’t quite think what it is. “Reckon the whole theater is the Source?” I said. “That’s possible, isn’t it?”

  “If so, it’s odd that it’s never shown itself before now. I suppose new ghosts are always popping up….” George took another chocolate bar thoughtfully. “Doesn’t have to be anything suspicious about it.”

  “The skull reckoned there was foul play afoot. But then, it would.”

  “Lockwood does, too,” George said. “Let’s say something has been brought into the theater recently, a Source connected to La Belle Dame’s gory end. It’s been hidden somewhere, and that’s allowing the ghost to wreak havoc every night. Where would it be…?” Chewing swiftly, he came to a decision. “The most likely places are those old storerooms below the stage. I’m going down to have a look. What about you? Want to come with me?”

  I almost said yes. There was something about George that was particularly reassuring that evening. But that agitation I couldn’t put my finger on was forcing its way to the forefront of my mind.

  “Think I’ll check on the others,” I said. “Warn them about what happened to me.”

  “Oh, they’ll be all right.” George set off toward the auditorium. “We’re a resilient bunch. Even Kipps. Though, with those goggles, any ghost would run a mile from him.”

  Almost before he vanished down the passage. I was moving, too. I was heading for the stairs. I shared George’s confidence, of course I did, and yet my heart was pounding hard as I climbed up the
carpeted steps to the lower circle floor.

  Before George had intervened, the ghost and I had shared a psychic connection. In thrall to her glamour, I’d passively opened my mind to her. Which meant she’d read my thoughts. She knew what I cared about.

  She knew who I cared about.

  I remembered my final glimpse of her eyes, the way they’d glittered at me in the dark.

  I realized what she was going to do.

  The lower circle lobby was empty, the electric wall lights burning deep and low.

  Last time I saw Lockwood, he’d said he was going to patrol the upper regions, the balconies and boxes. He’d be somewhere nearby….But there were so many interconnecting levels, so many stairs and passages…I’d start in the upper circle, work my way down.

  What it wants is a victim….Someone with a psychic wound…

  As I reached the next flight of stairs, I saw Holly descending.

  “Where’s Lockwood?” she said.

  I stopped. “What? That’s what I was going to ask you.”

  “Well, did he say where he was going?”

  “When?”

  “When you were with him just now.”

  I stared at her. “I haven’t been with him. I haven’t seen him for ages, Hol.”

  Something in her face slackened and dropped; she looked at me with wide, dark eyes. “But…you were on the lower-circle balcony with him a couple of minutes ago. You were.” Her voice sounded accusatory, but I read the shock in it, and the sudden fear. “I was sure it was you,” she said. “The way you beckoned. He was following you toward the door.”

  “Not me, Holly.”

  We stared at each other. Then I pulled the rapier from my belt. Holly did likewise. We were already running, slamming open the door to the balcony.

  “When was this?” I snapped. “How long ago?”

  “Only a minute or two…I was up in the highest boxes. I saw you both below….”

  “Yeah, only it wasn’t me, was it? Why did you think it was, for heaven’s sake? Did it look like me? Face? Clothes?”

  “I—I didn’t see your face. Its face. Or clothes. It was dark-haired, I think….Or maybe that was just the shadow.”

  I gave a curse. “Geez, Holly.”

  “There was just something about it. The way it stood or gestured. It was so like you.”

  Well, the thing had been an actress, of a sort. We were out on the steep steps of the lower balcony now, and the great soft silence of the auditorium closed around us again. Lights glimmered on the balcony railings below, with the trapeze ropes hanging in the shadows and the dim white stage gleaming across the gulf beyond. We spun around, scanning the sloped seats, looking for Lockwood’s reassuring shape. But there was nothing.

  “He could have taken one of the other exits,” Holly said, pointing. “Gone down different stairs. This place is such a maze.”

  I didn’t answer. Black fear rose up in me, like oil welling from the ground.

  He will go into the dark….

  I clamped my teeth together, forced the panic down. Holly was right. The theater was a maze. There was no use just running around hoping to get lucky. Lockwood could be anywhere. It could be anywhere.

  Or could it? Though the thing had manifested in many random locations around the building, there was a pattern when it came to its attempts at psychic enchainment. It had been leading me toward the stage. Charley Budd had been rescued walking toward the stage door, too….

  And Sid Morrison, the only one who had actually been on the stage?

  Much good it had done him. He’d died there.

  That was where she wanted us. Why not? It was where she’d died, too.

  I ran down to the railings, looked down from on high.

  At first I saw no one, and when you considered how many of us there were wandering around the theater that night, it made you realize how successful La Belle Dame’s diversionary tactics had been. She’d waited patiently until we were all away from the place where the action was. We were scattered, helpless. Holly and me up high; George in the basement; Kipps, heaven knew where. And Lockwood—

  There he was now, walking slowly down the aisle. His movements were smooth enough, but there was something placid about them, too unhurried. I thought I saw a wisp of shadow just ahead, moving at the same pace, leading him on.

  I called his name. I screamed it. Holly, crashing down beside me, did too. But whereas the acoustics from the stage were so good, here the space just swallowed up the sound. Lockwood didn’t turn his head. Perhaps the shadow heard; it seemed to dance more avidly as it led him toward the steps.

  “Quick, Luce!” Holly was dragging at my sleeve. She’d made the same deductions I had. “We’ve got to get down there!”

  “Yes—” But even as I said it, I knew we had no time. Too many stairs, too many doors and passages to be negotiated. We had no time. “No, you go,” I said. “Run as hard as you can.”

  “But what are you—”

  “Run, Holly!”

  She was gone, leaving only a waft of perfume in her wake. She was too good an agent to argue, though she must have been desperate to interrogate me, find out my plan.

  I hardly knew what it was myself.

  Or rather, my conscious brain didn’t. If it had, I’d have been crawling, cowering under the nearest seat. But the unconscious bit, that was way ahead. It had made the calculations. With Holly sent packing, I turned my attention to the railings on the balcony.

  Far below, step by step, Lockwood was climbing onto the stage. His sword was at his belt, his hands hung limp beside his coat. If he was fighting the compulsion, there was no sign of it. How slim he was, how frail he looked from here. Under the lights, the haze of shadow that I knew was still ahead of him was harder than ever to see, but I wasn’t bothering about it now. I was clambering onto the rail, beside where the trapeze ropes hung. There were several of them, ends tied to a jutting metal frame. Each rope looped out and downward across the awful space, before extending up toward the distant ceiling.

  I seized the frame, steadying myself, refusing to look down at the stalls far below. The nearest rope looked the likeliest; its outward curve was very large. Tufnell had mentioned the way the trapeze artists started the show, so I knew the leap was possible.

  That didn’t mean it particularly bore thinking about.

  Far away, on the hard white stage, Lockwood had reached the center. Something shimmered into existence a short way ahead of him: something in a long white dress with flowing hair. It was radiant and lovely; it cocked its head at him. A slim arm beckoned. I heard a husky voice, whispered on the air.

  “Come to me.”

  And Lockwood moved forward.

  Know what? That made me mad. How dare he go with her? I picked up the rope with my left hand, pulling it toward me. It was heavy, rough, and fibrous. I gripped it, winding it tight around my wrist and arm. Then, with my free hand I slashed at the knot below; the rapier point cut it as easily as a flower stalk, and I had the rope’s weight pulling on my arm.

  I leaned back, and gave a little jump. Gravity did the rest.

  Don’t make me tell you what it was like, looping down through the air. Down being the key word for that horrific descent. I was basically falling, leaving my stomach somewhere in the region of the balcony, and with the stalls leaping up to receive me. Then I was passing over them at ferocious speed, so close I might have kicked the hats off people sitting there; rushing with my arm nearly pulled out of its socket and my fingers burning on the rope, and my outstretched sword flashing under the lights. And now flying up again, with the stage opening in front of me, and the ghost woman standing, swathed in other-light, and Lockwood walking toward her open arms.

  “Come….”

  You know me. I love to obey an order. I swung over the stage, passing directly in between them, flashing through a zone of ice-cold air that burned my skin. And the tip of my rapier flashed through something too: namely the neck of that whispering, simperi
ng woman, slicing through it neatly, from side to side. Then I was up and beyond her, flying over the top of the crash pads, which was roughly the point where I thought it advisable to let go.

  The next bit, landing painfully on my bottom and doing a superfast reverse somersault with my ankles around my ears, I’m not going to dwell on. It wasn’t gainly and it wasn’t soft, but I broke nothing, and it didn’t last long. Almost before I’d landed, I was savagely tearing myself upright and leaping back down to the front of the stage, teeth clenched, breathing like a bull.

  There was Lockwood, standing where I’d seen him. Arms at his side, relaxed and passive. If he’d noticed me swinging past his nose, it hadn’t affected him much, but he was no longer walking toward the shape. My discarded rope was just flashing back the way it had come, and it almost bowled him over. He paid it no heed.

  And there, nearby, the headless woman. Or not exactly headless—the head was still frowning at me from midair. It was almost in its correct position, but clearly detached from the torso. Its long fair strands of hair coiled around it, slapping against the lacy dress, seeking to bind it back to the stump of the neck.

  Even now, she wasn’t finished. The lips twisted in a parody of a smile.

  “Come….”

  “You know,” I said, “a lot of trouble would be avoided if people like you just lay down and accepted they were dead.”

  I threw a canister of iron, which shattered against the boards; countless filings went racing beneath the ghost’s feet. The nearest particles ignited, surrounding La Belle Dame with a circle of green flames. The figure leaped and jumped in agitation, knocking the head aside. Coils of hair grappled urgently at the bare white shoulders, and with spidery movements resumed hoisting the head toward the body.