The Empty Grave

by Jonathan Stroud

  From all these inhabitants of the dark city we turned away and fled, and were soon worn out from all our twists and turns and switches of direction. Even in our cloaks, the remorseless cold and tension ate away at our energies. Lockwood himself grew slower. George, already weak before stepping through the spirit gate, was suffering. I took his arm, helped him along the road.

  “I don’t like the trail we’re leaving, Luce,” he whispered after a time.

  “You mean our footprints?” In places the ground was laced with the faint imprints of naked feet, crossing to and fro. Our heavy boot-marks stood out amongst them, trodden deep into the frost.

  “Yeah, them—and the vapor trail,” George said. And it was true. Our icy cloaks were flickering with silent silver flames as the unnatural cold attacked their surface; from this, a thin gray smoke was rising, floating behind us as we walked. “Think they could sense that—smell it, maybe?”

  I nodded. “I think so.”

  “Well, we’ve got our weapons,” Kipps said. Of all of us, he seemed to be holding up the best. At each crossroad he was at the vanguard, going ahead, scouting the way. “I’ve still got a flare. And with these rapiers…”

  I shook my head. My limbs were heavy, my breath rasped at the back of my throat. “I don’t know, Quill. The rules are different now. When Lockwood and I were here before, we tried a flare—it didn’t work. I don’t know that even a sword would hold them off for long. Take it from me, if they notice us, all we can do is run.”

  We had progressed by now into an area that in our London was near to the great thoroughfare of Oxford Street. The buildings were larger; mist hung low between them like the waters of a white lagoon. Giant cracks ran across the fabric of the storefronts and hotels; some fissures extended into the streets, causing slabs of frozen asphalt to sheer up like shark fins through the mist. Here there was more activity among the dead: they seemed to move faster, with greater purpose or agitation. Several times we had to duck into an abandoned doorway as gray figures drifted past. But if they noticed our footprints or our trailing smoke, they showed no sign; something else had a stronger pull.

  What this was, we discovered farther on. We came to an open square, a place where black and leafless trees stood on a patch of frosted ground, fringed by tall office buildings. Here in the distance, a large number of the dead had congregated. They had their backs to us, and the mist was thick around them, but we could see men and women and children, dressed in a variety of styles. They weren’t still, but shuffling and moving around with every appearance of disquiet, and the focus of their attention was something that hung in front of them, dark but also shimmering.

  Desperate as we were to keep moving—we were barely halfway to Fittes House, and our strength was already failing—we could not help but stop and stare at what we saw.

  If you asked me afterward, I would have said it was a door, though it was unlike any door that I had ever seen. It hung in midair, floating a short way above the ground, right in the center of that little square. It was a slab of blackness, without definite shape. Seen from one angle, it was almost oval; from another, as thin as paper. Either way, the edges sort of blurred and faded, as if they were spun out of the air. You could see nothing in the middle of the door but a kind of glimmering, like stars. Fearful as we were, we were transfixed by it. We stayed there, loitering at the edge of the square, entranced by the strangeness of the scene.

  “Is it a Source?” Kipps whispered. “A way back to our world?” He ran a tongue over frozen lips. “I feel it calling to me….”

  “It’s not a Source,” Holly said. “It’s something else.”

  Lockwood gave a sigh that was almost one of longing. “I think it’s a way of moving onward. Look—they want to. But they can’t.”

  Indeed, it was clear that the dead were making a great effort to get closer to the doorway in the air, but were kept at bay by something that had been erected all around it. This was an ugly-looking fence, silver and shiny and obviously man-made. It looked a bit like one of the silver nets we kept in our belts, only it was much bigger, and supported by poles. The net seemed largely formed of little barbs, on which white flecks hung, twitching and fluttering. As we watched, one of the dead men in the square, impelled by an irresistible compulsion, broke free of the crowd and threw himself against the fence. There was a soft sound, a flash of light; the figure fell back, writhing. New white fronds hung twitching from the net and the crowd stirred in agitation.

  “Marissa’s work,” George croaked. “We wondered how she got her plasm. Now we know.”

  “They’re trapped here,” I said. “Poor things. They’re blocked and can’t get out….”

  I felt a swelling of pity for the hapless figures, and with this came a sudden urge to get closer to the glimmering doorway. I knew it would have been fatal to do so—in moments I would have been surrounded by the dead—but I found myself stepping slowly forward. Quill and Holly did the same.

  “Wait!” With a great effort of will, Lockwood had turned his head aside. He gave a croak of dismay. “Look behind us,” he cried.

  The urgency in his voice broke the spell. We turned. Some way off down the street we’d come from, a figure in a broad-brimmed hat was limping slowly through the mists. He was close enough for us to see his white face, the long white fingers poking out beneath his sleeves.

  “That can’t be the same bloke we saw before,” Kipps said. “That was ages ago. He can’t be following us.”

  “I’m not going to hang around and ask him,” Lockwood gasped. “Come on!”

  Forcing ourselves into action, we hurried off again, and soon the square, its contents, and the limping figure were left behind. Onward we went, as fast as we could; onward through the city of the dead, the smoke from our capes curling persistently behind us. Now we entered the neighborhood of Soho, where the roads were narrower and the buildings pressed close on either side. Once, far off, we saw another doorway in the air; it too had a silver fence and a company of dead around it. I was glad that our route lay in a different direction. I didn’t want to repeat the tug I’d felt when I looked into the strange glimmering void. It was the tug you get on a crumbling cliff edge, when you’re tempted to step close, lean over, and look down.

  Kipps took the lead again, bustling ahead, his boots sending up tiny clouds of frost. His energy remained high, but the rest of us were flagging.

  “You’re in good shape, Quill,” I whispered, when we caught up with him.

  Kipps nodded. “I feel okay. Must be the effect of this coat or something.”

  “How’s the side? Not giving you any trouble?”

  He gave a shrug; he was staring up the next street, eyes bright, eager to be gone. “It did hurt a bit at first, but it’s calmed down now. Don’t notice it at all.”

  At that moment, George stumbled and almost fell. He was the weakest of us, but I too could feel my strength seeping out of me under that black sky. There was no prospect of struggling on. Lockwood gave the order for a short rest.

  We took shelter inside the shell of some kind of shop, where the empty front window gave us a good view up and down the road. Everyone slumped to the floor, gasping, wheezing. Our heads were lowered, our legs drawn up beneath our smoking cloaks.

  Lockwood came to sit beside me. “You all right, Lucy?”

  We stared at each other from under our ice-bound hoods.

  “I’m feeling it now,” I said. “It’s getting hard.”

  His lips had a dusting of frost; his voice was halting. “We’re doing very well. We’re almost at Trafalgar Square. The Strand’s just beyond.”

  “I don’t know that we’re going to make it, Lockwood.”

  “We’ll make it.”

  I wanted to believe him. But the cold and the weariness were taking their toll. A great weight lay on my heart. I just shook my head. “I don’t know….”

  “Lucy,” Lockwood said. “Look at me.”

  I did so. His eyes were as warm and dar
k as ever. He said, “I’ll tell you something to cheer you up. I’ll tell you a story. You remember I told you once how Kipps and I first fell foul of one another? At the DEPRAC fencing competition when I was young? I beat Kipps and went on to the final, where I lost to someone with a far better grasp of swordplay than me.” He looked at me. “Remember I told you that?”

  “Yeah, I remember,” I said dully. “Though you never told me who it was who beat you.”

  “I’ll tell you now: Flo.”

  “What?” The sheer surprise cut through the numbness in my brain. When I jerked my head up, bits of ice fell off my hood. “What? You’re kidding.”

  “Flo,” Lockwood said again. “She was very good.”

  “Wait,” I said. “We’re talking the same Flo Bones here? Wellington boots, puffer coat, parts of whose anatomy on which the sun has never shone? That Flo Bones? No! Don’t you dare raise that frozen eyebrow at me!”

  “Well, you just seem to know more about her than I do, that’s all,” Lockwood said, smiling gently. “Anyway, none of that was the case back then. Not a welly to be seen. I think I could have beaten a girl in wellies, Luce. Come on.”

  “Forget the wellies! I want an explanation. I’ve known Flo for years, and you’ve never told me about this!”

  “Well, she was a different person then. She wasn’t really Flo Bones, that’s the point. She was Florence Bonnard of the Sinclair and Soanes Agency. A young agent, very promising indeed.” He shook his head at the memory. “She could swing a mean rapier, that’s for sure. She gave me a good thrashing.”

  I tried to reconcile the two images in my head—the Flo I knew, who squatted under storm drains, poking the mud with sticks—and this other one. No good. The difference was too great. “I’ve never even heard of Sinclair and Soanes,” I said.

  “That’s because it doesn’t exist now. It was a tiny agency. A two-person band, really, run by Susan Sinclair and Harry Soanes. Flo Bonnard was their apprentice. One night, the three of them got surprised by two Limbless in a chapel on Dulwich Heath. Both Sinclair and Soanes were killed instantly and very horribly. Flo grabbed an iron cross off the altar and wedged herself behind it in a corner of the room. She spent the night there, beside the bodies of her companions, fending off repeated attacks by the Visitors. You know what Limbless are like. A quick glance at them gives anyone the creeps. A whole night of it, alone…Well,” Lockwood said, “Flo survived. But it changed her.”

  “For sure it did,” I said. “It made her cracked in the head.”

  “That’s not true, and you know it.” Lockwood levered himself up with difficulty and looked out into the mists. “Anyway, I helped her out, in the early months. I tried getting her another job, but it was clear she’d been broken by the ordeal; she wasn’t going to be an agent again. After a while, she drifted into relic-collecting. Sad, in a way, but also not sad, Lucy. She’s a survivor. She’s our friend. That’s Flo’s story….”

  I didn’t speak for a moment. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “To cheer you up, as I said. And to remind you: we’re survivors, too. George, Quill, Holly—we’ve got to go. Just a few minutes’ walk now. This is the final push.”

  We came out of the empty shop into the street; and as we did so, saw a limping person in a broad-brimmed hat come out of a side road and turn toward us.

  Holly’s voice was hoarse and high. “What do we do?”

  “Just keep walking,” Lockwood said. “Take the next turn.”

  The mists in front of us swirled and parted. At the intersection up ahead, a small group of the dead were standing. There were men there, women, children. They blocked the road.

  Lockwood cursed. “Quick! In here.” He darted toward the wall on our left, where there was an alley, a slot between buildings. We followed him in, plowed down it. Bricks brushed against my cape on either side. I was afraid it would be ripped, as my first spirit-cape had once been; I drew my shoulders in. The alley became narrower, until I felt as if I would be pressed to nothing. All at once it turned sharply to the right and opened into a tiny yard.

  High brick walls towered over us on three sides. In one of them, at head height, was a rectangular opening—a door that in our world was perhaps reached by iron stairs. There were no other doors, and no routes through.

  “Drat,” Lockwood panted. “Dead end.”

  “What do we do?” Kipps wasn’t breathing hard. “There’s a door up there. We might find a way through that building.”

  “I’d rather not. Who knows what’s in there? Maybe that guy didn’t spot us. When he’s gone, we can take another way.”

  There was a silence. “Hands up who thinks he didn’t see us,” Kipps said.

  No one raised their hands. We stood in the yard, with black brick walls around us. By and by we heard faint sounds coming from the gap, as of limping feet scuffing along hard ground.

  “Door,” Kipps said. “It’s our only chance. I’ll give you a leg up.”

  “Yes—” Lockwood was already beside him at the wall, clasping his hands ready. “Quick, Hol. You too, Luce.”

  Neither Holly nor I had to be told twice. I took a little run-up—or as close to a run as I could manage with my deadened limbs—stepped onto Kipps’s hands, and was propelled upward onto the ledge. Lockwood launched Holly up beside me. We slipped and struggled, and got in each other’s way, but in moments stood in the open doorway. George, heavier and stiffer, was harder work; Kipps and Lockwood had to combine forces to hoist him up to the ledge, where Holly and I bundled him through the door. Lockwood moved back a few paces and vaulted up using Kipps’s hands. Then Lockwood, Holly, and I reached out, grabbed Kipps, and dragged him up the wall.

  We were just pulling him alongside us when the dead man with the broad-brimmed hat shuffled into the yard.

  “Can he get up here?” I said.

  We stood in the doorway looking down at the man. He stood looking up at us with dark, unblinking eyes.

  He started to walk toward our wall.

  “Tell you what,” Kipps said. “Let’s assume he can. Come on—these old Soho tenements are a maze. They all interconnect with each other. We can cut through here and out into another street quick as anything. Follow me.”

  He drew his sword, briefly surveyed the passage ahead of us, then plunged along it, deep into the building. We hesitated. If the dark hall back at 35 Portland Row had been unpleasant to walk down, this was even worse. The proportions of the corridor felt wrong, and ice glistened in fissures by the ceiling. There was a sour taint on the air.

  Fingertips scrabbled at the wall behind us.

  You know, that passage looked just fine. We stumbled after Kipps as fast as we could go.

  My memory of what followed is jumbled and fragmentary. We went down corridors, up staircases, into rooms that led nowhere, doubling back the way we’d come, always expecting to meet up with what pursued us. We went through endless doors, some ordinary, others thick with ice and twisted into odd dimensions. All were open—no doors were locked in this dark, cold world. You could go anywhere, but no place was better than another, and we could not find a way out of the building. Sometimes we passed windows, but either they were too high, or too narrow, or so caked with frost that we couldn’t see out of them to know if it was safe to jump. There was nothing but the scrape of our boots on the wooden floors, and our breaths like broken pistons, and the flap and flutter of Kipps’s feathers just ahead. And somewhere behind, the slow feet following.

  Kipps was right: those old houses were a maze. We passed through attics, where faint outlines of dollhouses and rocking horses merged with spreading shadows; through rooms where beds seemed half sunken into the tilted floors; through kitchens, where dark objects hung dead and heavy from ceiling hooks; up rattling staircases that grew wide then thin with every twist or turn; and once, out onto a high parapet that ran between buildings, with the white street far below and ice shards tumbling soundlessly beneath our skidding boots. That street unnerved
us, and not because of the drop; a host of gray figures stood in it, looking up as we ran like rats into the house beyond.

  And now there began to be noises from neighboring rooms, as if other things were keeping pace with us beyond the walls. Kipps was cursing now, moving ever faster, shying away from open corridors, squeezing through cracks, dropping through chutes of ice and rubble; Holly and I came after, ushering the stumbling George, and all the while Lockwood brought up the rear, rapier out, steadily retreating, staring back the way we had come.

  And then we arrived at a flight of steps with a long corridor below, and saw at the end of that corridor an arch that gave us a glimpse of open air.

  Down the steps, clattering, wheezing, particles of ice falling from our capes.

  Kipps halted. “Wait! There’s movement out there!”

  “Don’t stop!” That was Lockwood at the back. “We’ve got at least four of them close behind!”

  There was nothing else we could do, and all our strength was gone. We stumbled along the passage, hearing bare feet slapping on the stairs. Holly and I were pulling George bodily after us; Kipps was cursing. We fell out through the archway into the half-light—and came to a shuddering stop.

  The way was blocked. The chase was over.

  We were in a street on the edge of Trafalgar Square, and it was thronged with London’s dead.

  It was me who saved us. I was the quickest this time. On either side of the doorway were spreading piles of ice and stones that had fallen from the wall above. Grabbing Kipps’s and George’s arms, I pulled them with me, over and down behind the nearest pile of rubble. A moment later, Holly and Lockwood were doing the same on the opposite side. We ducked our heads low.

  “Don’t say anything,” Kipps hissed. “Don’t move.”

  As all-time unnecessary suggestions went, it was way up there. Breathing wasn’t high on our agenda, let alone movement. My heartbeat was a bass drum in my ears. I was pressing so hard against the stones I thought I’d probably push right through.