The Hollow Boy

by Jonathan Stroud

  Vernon had edged slightly away. “Er…What is your bag for?”

  “That,” Flo said, “is my relic-bag. To put things in.” She leaned close to Bobby. “Things I find in the soft, moist darkness of the river mud….Want to look inside? I could pop you right in, you’re that small.”

  Vernon gave a squeak and vanished behind Kate Godwin; now Flo turned to Holly Munro. I must admit I was looking forward to this bit, but our assistant preempted Flo’s advances. She strode forward, hand outstretched. “Holly Munro, Anthony Lockwood’s new assistant. Very pleased to meet you.”

  I waited for the verbal assault; or, better yet, a quick over-the-head toss into the lavender cushions. But Flo seemed taken aback. Her eyelashes fluttered; beneath her grime, I swear she flushed. “Charmed, I’m sure.”

  They just shook hands. Somehow, this annoyed me too.

  “Right,” Lockwood said. “Good. Everyone knows each other. So let’s get started. The manager’s waiting.”

  “I’m not sure we should bother….” Kate Godwin was still eyeing Flo. “Surely it’s a safe bet all the ghosts will have scarpered now.”

  The current chairman of Aickmere Brothers, Samuel Aickmere, represented the fourth generation of the family to run the store. He was a fussy, nondescript man (middle-aged, bland-featured, with hair that had started, rather timorously, to recede) who had tried to make himself less so by way of his clothes. He wore a dark wide-shouldered suit with a strong purple pinstripe. A purple handkerchief, crisply folded, jutted like a potted plant from his breast pocket. The cuffs of his shirtsleeves seemed slightly longer than necessary; you could scarcely see his fingers. His tie was shockingly pink; I sensed Lockwood flinching as he shook his hand.

  Mr. Aickmere cast his eyes over our rapiers and workbags without pleasure. As we explained our purpose, his lips pressed tightly together.

  “Quite impossible, I’m afraid,” he said, once Lockwood finished. “This is a reputable commercial establishment. Can’t have your sort in here.”

  We looked at him. Aickmere’s office wasn’t particularly large. Sure, it had room for a marble-topped desk, chair, garbage can, filing cabinet, and dark green yucca plant. One or two submissive employees standing in front of the desk, caps in hand, might just have squeezed in too. But eight hard-bitten agents, bristling with rapiers, flares, and grim-faced purpose? We must have been quite an unnerving sight, standing there—and that was before you assessed us individually. George was just finishing a tuna sandwich, holding his hand underneath to catch the falling flakes. Bobby Vernon sported his enormous salt-gun. Kipps was Kipps. Flo was Flo. I kind of understood the guy’s point.

  “Mr. Aickmere,” Lockwood said, “there is a major spectral incident going on all around you, a stone’s throw from your door. You understand that we are empowered to investigate its cause, wherever that might be?”

  “It is ridiculous to look here! We have no dangerous Visitors in Aickmere’s!”

  “In Chelsea? Really? That’s a remarkable claim.”

  “There was some little trouble, a dozen or so years ago. It was swiftly dealt with.”

  “That would have been the air-raid wardens?” George said.

  “I don’t remember the details.” The man waved one sleeve at us airily. “But after the event, the building was reconstructed with supernatural safety in mind. We have iron laced into the foundations and into many walls. Our staff wear silver brooches and are trained in all necessary Visitor defenses. There are lavender sticks and Rotwell salt-sprays in every room. Why? Because our customers expect and demand a safe shopping experience. And they get it—of course they do. We have a whole silversmithing department, for heaven’s sake! No, there is no need for you to linger here.”

  “We’ll be very discreet,” Lockwood said.

  The manager smiled at us; the smile was a tight, hard thing, a line of defense scratched across rock. “I know what DEPRAC’s like. Closing honest shops down. Bolder’s in Putney. Farnsworth’s in Croydon. That won’t happen here.”

  “No one’s trying to get you closed down,” Lockwood said. “And if there is anything to be found, it’s in your interests to have it cleared.”

  “Agents leave devastation in their wake! They disrupt smooth service and endanger innocent lives!”

  “George, how many of our clients have we managed to kill now?”

  “Hardly any. A very small percentage.”

  “There. I hope that reassures you, Mr. Aickmere. We will conduct quiet investigations and be on our way.”

  “No. It’s my final word.”

  Lockwood sighed; he rummaged in his pocket. “Very well, I have here a DEPRAC warrant card, signed by Inspector Montagu Barnes, which—”

  “Allow me.” Kipps stepped forward. “Mr. Aickmere, my name is Kipps. I’m a team leader for the Fittes Agency, and one of my areas is Public Safety Noncompliance. We take refusal to adhere to operative statutes very seriously and have the power to authorize a detainment team to exercise immediate penal restraint in such circumstances.” He put his thin, pale hands together and cracked his knuckles like a rifle volley. “I do hope that this won’t be necessary in your case?”

  Aickmere blinked at him. “I can’t say. I haven’t a clue what any of that means.”

  “It means,” Kipps said, “let us do our job, or we’ll lock you up. That’s basically the size of it.”

  The manager sat back in his chair. He removed the purple handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at his forehead. “Ghosts after dark, children running amok…What an age we live in! Very well, do what you must. You won’t find anything.”

  Lockwood had been staring at Kipps. “Thank you, sir. We appreciate it.”

  “It’s a bit late for courtesy now….Well, I have one stipulation! I insist you don’t disturb any of our displays, particularly our Seasonal Creations.”

  “Seasonal Creations? Oh, you mean like the tree thing in the foyer?”

  “That ‘tree thing’ is ‘Autumn Ramble,’ hand-created by noted installation artist Gustav Kramp. Did you know that every piece of dry driftwood and tissue leaf has been personally glued by hand? It took an age to piece together, and it’s very, very expensive. I simply won’t have you ruining it.”

  “We’ll certainly try to be careful,” Lockwood said, after a short pause.

  “We run a tight ship here at Aickmere Brothers,” Mr. Aickmere said. “Everything in its proper place.” As if to prove it, he adjusted two pens beside the blotter in the center of his desk. “And my staff cannot be distracted from their duties.”

  “Certainly not. We’ll be sure to treat everything in your store with appropriate respect—right, everyone?”

  We nodded. George leaned in close to me. “Remind me to blow my nose on ‘Autumn Ramble’ when we get downstairs.”

  “One thing,” Lockwood said, as we were filing out. “You say you have no dangerous Visitors here, yet you give your people silver brooches. Does that mean—?”

  “Oh yes, the place is haunted. ’Course it is. Where isn’t, these days?” The folded handkerchief at Mr. Aickmere’s breast lolled forward as if waving us toward the door. “But my staff are quite safe. If you wear your silver, keep your eyes open, and lock up during daylight, there’s nothing to trouble you here.”

  But the chairman’s view was not entirely backed up elsewhere in the building.

  “Mornings are all right,” the attendant in Men’s Wear said. “And late afternoons, funnily enough, when you get the sunlight streaming through the windows. It’s noon I don’t like, when the streets outside are bright, and in here it’s full of shadow. The air goes thick. Not hot, exactly. Just stuffy. You smell all the cardboard and plastic wraps piled in the basement, the ones we’ve taken off the new clothes.”

  “Is it a bad smell?” Lockwood asked.

  “No…Gets a bit much, that’s all.”

  “I don’t mind it when it’s busy,” the young woman in Cosmetics said. “When there’s people coming through the
doors. Quiet times, I have to pop out. Talk to the doorman, get a breath of air.”

  “Why?” I asked her. “What makes you go outside?”

  “The air’s so still. Oppressive. I think the air conditioning units aren’t up to snuff.”

  Four other staff members, working on separate floors, also had comments to make about the general atmosphere and the apparent deficiencies of the air conditioning. But in Handbags, Belts, and Leather Goods, Miss Deidre Perkins, 55, a tall, thin-lipped person dressed in somber black, was more concerned with something else.

  “If there is a Visitor,” she said at once, “you’ll find it on the third floor.”

  I looked up from my notebook. Holly Munro, interviewing staff nearby, also drew near. “Really? Why?”

  “Karen Dobson saw it there. She came down from Lingerie with a face like all horrors. Just before closing one afternoon in September, it was. Said she saw it at the far end of the passage.” Miss Perkins sniffed disapprovingly. “She may have been lying. Karen did have a tendency to exaggerate. I never saw anything.”

  “I see. So this was an actual apparition? And before dark?”

  “It was a Visitor, yes.” Miss Perkins was one of those people who avoided using ghostly terminology if at all possible. “Night hadn’t fallen, but it was a stormy day. Already very dark outside. We had the lamps on.”

  “Perhaps I could speak to Karen. Which department does she work in?”

  “She doesn’t, anymore. She died.”

  “Died?”

  “Sudden-like, at home.” Miss Perkins spoke with gloomy satisfaction. “She smoked. Expect it was her heart.” She adjusted a rack of hanging belts, smoothing them between her hands. “I suppose she’ll be a Visitor now, and all.”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” I said.

  “How do you know?” Miss Perkins’s facade cracked; all at once there was anger in her voice. “How do any of you know how or why our friends or family choose to come back? Do you ask the Returned their motivation?”

  “No, ma’am, we don’t,” Holly Munro said. “It’s not considered wise.”

  Holly glanced at me, then, as I knew she would. In the Wintergarden house, I’d done precisely that. And much good it had done me. I pressed my lips together.

  “And this figure that Karen Dobson saw?” I prompted. “Did she describe it?”

  Miss Perkins had moved on to a tray of purses and wallets. “Thin thing on all fours. Crawling down the corridor toward her.”

  “Nothing more about its appearance?”

  Her bony fingers moved across the tray, adjusting, adjusting, adjusting. “Little girl, I don’t think she hung around long enough to find out.”

  A couple of hours we took, wandering around that store. I spent a good deal of it on my own. I interviewed the staff, but I also took stock of the building itself, tried to make a connection, suss out its personality. I found it surprisingly hard to do.

  The layout was clear enough. It was a typical old-style department store, with each floor divided into formal sections. We had Bargains in the Basement; and Cosmetics and Visitor Defenses on the Ground floor. Visitor Defenses—consisting of more cut-price iron than you could shake a nightstick at—occupied, rather forlornly, the old Arabian Hall, looking almost comically insignificant beneath the golden pillars and winged griffins. Ladies’ Fashions, Kitchenware, and Children’s were on One; Men’s Wear was on Two, together with Habadashery and Home Furnishings. Three was mostly taken up with Furniture, while Four was Office Supplies and a few meeting rooms. To my eyes, the quality of goods seemed a little tired, though Holly Munro claimed that some of the ladies’ fashions were okay. There were four elevators—two centrally placed ones for customers (on the Ground floor, these were accessed behind the escalators) and two for staff at the north and south ends of the building—and also four staircases. Most people used the central staircase, which was next to the escalators and was impressively fashioned from coffee-colored marble, but there were narrow flights of stairs at the north and south ends too, extending the height of the building.

  At the back of Aickmere’s, each floor had a long, echoing storeroom, accessible only by staff, where goods were piled in rows of cardboard boxes before being made ready for display. George spent his time prowling around these rooms, particularly the one at basement level, but I couldn’t feel any particular psychic difference in them. In fact, the sensations I got from the whole place were fairly muted—perhaps odd, given our theory that it was the focus for the whole Chelsea thing.

  That’s not to say there was nothing. Underlying it all, fading in and out as you passed Visitor Defenses or the wall racks of lavender beside each interconnecting door, was a faint yet palpable unease. It was like a tingle on the skin, a prickling in the stomach; familiar to me, but not the usual malaise, chill, or creeping fear. As the afternoon drew on and the flow of customers ebbed away, the sensation grew stronger. Around me, silent staff members, pale and preoccupied, locked up registers, and tidied up displays. I went to a quiet corner, opened my backpack, and twisted the tap at the top of the ghost-jar.

  “Ah,” it said at once, “stand aside! Let me use my enormous talent to solve your difficulties! Ooh, yes…I feel that disturbance too. Yes, that’s very odd. That’s interesting….”

  “What do you reckon it is?”

  “How do I know? What am I, a miracle worker? Give me a chance here. I need to think.”

  Outside the windows, the sky was almost black. A buzzer sounded; down in the foyer, the staff gathered, muffled in their coats, eager to be gone. They filed out silently through the revolving doors. We watched from the fringes of the foyer: Lockwood and George beneath the artificial tree; Holly and Flo at the entrance to Cosmetics; Kipps and his crew up on the first-floor balcony, just across from me.

  Mr. Aickmere was the last to leave. He spoke a few terse words to Lockwood, pressed buttons on the wall. The escalators stopped dead; the speakers gave a sudden crackle, a final, dying whine. Silence. Now the lights across the departments were one after the other shut off, leaving only a dim yellow nightlight humming in the foyer. Aickmere drew back, retreated through the door. We heard the key turn in the lock, his footsteps hurrying off along the King’s Road.

  “And now we’re alone,” Lockwood said. “Good! The investigation can properly begin!”

  None of us took issue with him as we gathered silently beneath the tree. It would have been easy enough to do so, but there wasn’t any point. We all knew the score.

  Yes, all the living inhabitants of the store had left. But that didn’t mean we were alone.

  Of course not. After dark, we never are.

  There’s nothing like the onset of night to bring out the best in an agent, and for some of us the darker it is, the better. I’m talking visually here. Suddenly every embarrassing pimple is cloaked in shadow; jaws become firmer, waistlines sleeker. Unwashed faces become pale and interesting; the lankest hair acquires a glamorous sheen. The rougher points of personalities recede too; thoughts turn to survival and to the job at hand. So it was with the ragtag band that Lockwood had assembled that evening. For once, as we stood beneath Aickmere’s tissue tree, our similarities outweighed our differences. Kipps and Lockwood, Kate Godwin and I—we were all made of the same stuff. We had our rapiers and other weapons; we shared a cool seriousness of purpose. Even Flo looked businesslike, her straw hat casting a ring of shadow across her face, her coat pulled back to reveal her great curved gutting knife and the sinister array of implements she normally used to winkle objects from the river mire.

  George handed around some chocolate; we compared notes on what we’d learned.

  “Mostly just seems to be worries about the air quality,” Lockwood said. “Something unpleasant but hard to fathom.” He leaned casually against a counter, face lit by a flickering gas lantern. “Then there’s that story of the girl who saw a crawling figure. That stands out a mile, because it’s so definite and strange.”

  “What
kind of ghost might it be?” Holly Munro asked.

  No one knew.

  “A couple of people say they heard a voice calling out their name,” Bobby Vernon said. “It was always at dusk; always when they were leaving. It sounded like someone they knew was far off in the building, calling them back inside.”

  “Did they ever follow the sound?” I asked.

  “Er, no, Carlyle, they didn’t,” Kate Godwin said. “Because they weren’t completely stupid. Who would ever obey a disembodied voice?”

  “Oh, you never know. Some people might be tempted.” Holly Munro used her sweetest, most eyelash-batting tones—as she always did when she was referring to me.

  Flo Bones shuffled her feet impatiently. “I don’t know about all this, Locky….There’s not much to go on here. Are you sure this place is the focus?”

  “It’s pretty thin pickings so far,” Lockwood admitted. “Aickmere could tell as much from my manner when I spoke to him just now. Exactly what he expected, he said. We’re going to have a very dull evening. He still maintains there’s nothing here.”

  “No, he’s wrong,” I said slowly. “There is something. I can sense it.”

  I still detected that oddly prickling feeling, so familiar, yet so hard to read. The skull appeared to be having similar problems analyzing it; it hadn’t yet reported in.

  “I don’t hear anything,” Kate Godwin said. She was a Listener too, and that made her suspicious of my insights. “What do you think it is?”

  “I don’t really know,” I said. “It’s like background buzz, a kind of radiation. It’s strong, but also muffled—like it’s mostly blocked but managing to seep in anyway.”

  “You need to get your ears syringed,” Godwin said.

  Lockwood shook his head. “If Lucy says there’s something, we need to take notice. Where’s it strongest, Luce? The basement?”