Lockwood & Co: The Screaming Staircase

by Jonathan Stroud

  We sat looking at the plan in our little pool of lantern-light, the sea of ghost-fog lapping at its fringes. Lockwood had his head bowed, hands pressed tight together. He was deep in thought.

  ‘OK,’ he said at last, ‘I’ve something important to say.’

  ‘It’s not about Fairfax’s scrapbooks again, is it?’ I said.

  ‘No. Listen. George, as usual, has got it right. The Combe Carey Source is probably hidden in that wall. To find it we’d have to find the entrance, and that’s almost certainly in the Red Room. Now, some of the stories about the Hall might be bunkum – I don’t think there’s anything in that Screaming Staircase yarn, for instance – but the Red Room is clearly different. We all felt the atmosphere outside that door. It would be no small thing to go inside.’ He looked up, surveyed us each in turn. ‘But we don’t have to. Fairfax said so himself. We don’t have to go into that room. Just by turning up here this evening, we’ve earned the money to pay off the damages caused by the Sheen Road fire. Fairfax has already paid – I checked with the bank when we arrived. Sure, we can get more if we track down the Source, but that’s not essential. The company will survive without it.’

  ‘Will it, though?’ George said. ‘Exactly how many more cases are you expecting to get, Lockwood? Apart from Fairfax’s surprise offer, our reputation’s up in flames.’

  Lockwood didn’t try to deny it. ‘Like I keep saying,’ he said quietly, ‘we need a big success to turn it all around. Solving the Annie Ward murder would do it, of course, and we’re close there, thanks to Lucy. But . . . it’s not guaranteed.’ He sighed. ‘I can’t quite make the final jump. As for finding the Source here – well, that’s certainly another option. But it’s a risky one. Whatever’s hidden in this place is frighteningly strong.’ He sat back and smiled – and this time it wasn’t the full megawatt version, the one you obeyed despite yourself; just a warm, companionable grin. ‘You know me,’ he said. ‘I think we’d be a match for it. But I’m not going to impose that belief on you. If you want to steer clear, that’s fine. I leave it up to you.’

  George and I looked at each other. I waited for him to speak; he waited for me. And in my head the crackling ghostly static died away, as if the thing that controlled the house awaited my decision too.

  Before that evening? I might have held back. I’d chosen wrongly too many times in crisis situations to fully trust my instincts now. But since stepping through the door, and particularly since we’d begun our explorations, my confidence had slowly risen. We’d worked well together; better than ever before. We’d been careful, rigorous, even competent . . . It showed me what Lockwood & Co. might one day become. This wasn’t something I wanted to give up lightly. I took a deep breath.

  ‘I vote we take a quick look,’ I said, ‘providing we keep an avenue of retreat open behind us. If things go bad, we leave and get out of the building as quickly as possible.’

  Lockwood nodded. ‘Fair enough. And George?’

  George puffed out his ample cheeks. ‘Amazingly, Lucy’s talked some sense for once. I feel exactly the same way. Provided’ – he patted the cylinders at his belt – ‘we’re allowed to use all our weapons if we have to.’

  ‘That’s settled, then,’ Lockwood said quietly. ‘Gather up the bags, and let’s go.’

  Now we’d made the decision, we didn’t hang around – but we weren’t reckless, either. We made cautious progress up the stairs, always watching and listening a few steps ahead. As before, the phantoms kept their distance, but the ghost-fog billowed around our knees. Lockwood saw death-glows on the landing and beyond the bedroom doors. For my part the towering silence was back: it pressed tightly against my temples. The air felt thick and syrupy. The cloying sickly-sweet smell followed us from the landing.

  Outside the defaced door the whispering had died away. When I looked back along the passage, I could sense the apparitions clustering beyond the fringes of the torchlight.

  ‘It’s like they’re waiting,’ I muttered. ‘It’s like they’re waiting for us to go in.’

  ‘Who’s got the mints?’ George said. ‘I just know we’re going to need the mints in there.’

  Lockwood took the key from his pocket and put it in the lock. ‘Turns easily,’ he said. There was a single solid click. ‘OK, that’s done. Here we go. Like Lucy said, we take a quick look, and that’s all.’

  George nodded. I did my best to smile.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Lockwood said. ‘It’ll be fine.’

  Then he took hold of the handle and pushed, and the horror of the night began.

  21

  The hinges didn’t squeak eerily or anything. To be honest, they didn’t need to.

  As the door swung open, there was a sigh of dry, cool air, a smell of dust and absence. It was the same sensation you get in any disused room. Lockwood shone his torch into the darkness; its soft round glow picked out bare floorboards, running across the room. They were grey and dark and stained. In places ragged strips of some old rug were visible, fused to the boards by centuries of grime.

  He moved the beam upwards until it hit the opposite wall. A glimpse of high white skirting, then dark-green wallpaper, almost black with dirt and age. In places it had been ripped away, revealing the bricks beneath. Still the beam rose: we saw a strip of heavy coving, then a ceiling of ornate plasterwork, covered with swirls and spirals. The light reached a single chandelier hanging from the centre of the ceiling. Fronds of soft grey webbing dangled from its scrolls and chains, swaying in currents stirred by the opening of the door.

  Spiders . . . A sure sign.

  Lockwood dropped the torch low. Down at our feet, the corridor carpet ended precisely at the line of the door. A thick strip of iron had been embedded here. Beyond were dust and floorboards and the utter desolation of the Red Room.

  ‘Anyone sense anything?’ Lockwood said. His voice sounded strange and hollow.

  Neither of us did. Lockwood stepped over the iron band, and George and I followed him, bringing the heavy duffel bags. Cool air swirled around us. Our boots tapped softly on the boards.

  I’d expected to be hit by strong phenomena right off, the moment we went in. But all was very quiet, though the pressure in my skull was worse than ever. The ghost-fog had not manifested in the room and I couldn’t hear the static or the whispering right now. We put down our bags, and with our torches surveyed our surroundings.

  It was a large rectangular space, taking up the full depth of the wing. The wall opposite marked the end of the house, and corresponded to the tapestried wall in the Long Gallery directly below. This wall had no doors or windows, but in places the paper had been stripped away to reveal bricks or stones beneath.

  The wall on the right had no windows; that on the left had originally had three, but two had been bricked up. The last one had a shutter, folded back against the sides of its recess.

  Other than the chandelier there was no furniture at all.

  ‘Not very “red”, is it?’ George said. That had been my thought too.

  ‘First things first,’ Lockwood said briskly. ‘Lucy, help me make a circle. George, secure our retreat, please.’

  Holding our torches in our teeth, Lockwood and I opened the duffel bags and pulled out the heavy-duty two-inch chains. We laid them on the floor and began to shape them into the necessary circle – our defence against whatever waited in the room.

  George meanwhile bent to his rucksack. He unzipped a side-pocket and felt within. ‘I’ve a Visitor-proof DFD somewhere in here,’ he said. ‘Hold on a tick . . .’

  ‘DFD?’ I said.

  ‘Door-Fixing Device. Just a bit of the latest tech. Got it from Satchell’s. Pricey, yes, but worth it. Ah, here we go.’ He produced a rough-hewn triangle of wood.

  I stared at it. ‘Isn’t that just a wedge?’

  ‘No. A DFD, my friend. A DFD. It’s got an iron core.’

  ‘It looks like you found it in a skip. How much did you pay for it?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’
George kicked it firmly into position, so that the door was held ajar. ‘Call it what you like. It’ll stop the door from closing, and that might keep us alive.’

  He was right to that extent. In the case of the Shadwell Poltergeist the year before, two Grimble agents had been separated from their colleagues when the bathroom door blew shut on them. The door had then stuck fast; no one could get through, and the two agents had been battered to death by whirling ceramics. When the visitation ended, the door had opened freely.

  ‘Scatter salt across the doorway too,’ Lockwood said. ‘Just to be sure.’ We’d finished the chain circle now and were hauling the bags inside. ‘Right, we retreat in here if anyone gives the word. Temperature?’

  ‘Six degrees,’ George said.

  ‘So far, so good. At the moment this seems the quietest place in the house. Let’s make the most of it. We’ll hunt for hidden doors. It’s the end wall, isn’t it, George?’

  ‘Yes. We’re looking for any signs of a concealed entrance. Buttons, levers, that sort of thing. Try knocking for hollow areas too.’

  ‘OK. Lucy and I will do the first search. George, stay here and watch our backs.’

  Lockwood and I went to opposite ends of the wall, our boots echoing in emptiness, torch-beams focused small to minimize the disruption to our inner senses. I chose the left-hand corner, not far from the single unblocked window. Through the dirty glass I could just make out lights from a distant village, and a couple of winter stars.

  I turned off the torch and ran my hands along the wall. It seemed smooth enough, the paper level and unbroken. I shuffled sideways, feeling high and low. Every now and then I stopped and listened, but all remained still.

  ‘Anyone smell that?’ Lockwood said suddenly. His profile hung at the edge of his patch of torchlight. He was frowning, wrinkling his nose.

  ‘Smell what?’

  ‘Something sweet but sour . . . I can’t think what it is. It’s familiar, but strange.’

  ‘Sounds a lot like Lucy,’ George remarked. He was behind us, in the centre of the room.

  The minutes passed. Lockwood’s hand met mine in the darkness; we’d reached the middle of the wall. After a moment we each started going back the way we’d come, this time rapping the surface with our knuckles.

  ‘A few wisps of plasm building,’ George called.

  ‘You want us to stop?’

  ‘Keep going for now.’

  At last, near the end of the wall, at the corner by the window, I detected a slight variation in the quality of sound. The ring of my knock seemed higher and more resonant, as if echoing from a space within.

  ‘I may have something here,’ I said. ‘There’s a place that sounds hollow. If you—’

  ‘What was that?’ George said. We’d all heard it: somewhere in the dark, a soft, decisive tap. Lockwood and I turned round.

  ‘Come back to the circle,’ George said. ‘And keep your torches off. We’ll use mine.’

  His beam cut slowly, carefully past us as we hurried back to join him, strafing the ceiling, walls and floor. All seemed exactly as before.

  Or did it? Discreetly, insidiously, something in the atmosphere had changed.

  We stood back to back in the centre of the circle, shoulders pressing tight together.

  ‘I’m going to turn off the torch,’ George said.

  He did so. We gazed out into the blackness of the empty room.

  ‘Lucy,’ Lockwood’s voice said, ‘what do you hear?’

  ‘The whispering’s kicked off,’ I said. All at once it was very loud. ‘It’s like before. A host of wicked voices.’

  ‘Can you tell where?’

  ‘Not yet. Seems all around.’

  ‘OK. George: what do you see?’

  ‘Wisps and whorls of light. Bright, but brief. No one location.’

  There was a pause. ‘And you, Lockwood?’ I said.

  He spoke heavily. ‘I can see the death-glows now.’

  ‘More than one?’

  ‘Lucy, there are dozens. I don’t know how I didn’t see them before. The whole room’s a death chamber . . .’ He took a breath. ‘Everyone draw your rapiers now.’

  Three sets of shoulders bumped and shifted. There was the collective rasp of iron.

  ‘It sensed that,’ George said. ‘The wisps went into a frenzy. They’ve calmed again.’

  ‘Lucy?’

  ‘The whispering got louder, angrier, then it died back. What do we do?’

  ‘That smell!’ Lockwood said. ‘It’s there again. So strong! Surely you can—’ He gave a little cry of frustration. ‘Don’t either of you smell it?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Lockwood – concentrate. What do we do? Do we leave?’

  ‘I think we’ve got to. Something big’s coming. Ahh . . . these glows are bright!’ I could hear him fumbling with his sunglasses, hurrying to put them on.

  ‘But didn’t Lucy say she’d found a door?’ George said. ‘Shouldn’t we—’

  ‘Not a door,’ I said. ‘I got a hollow thump, like the wall was thin, somehow.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter either way,’ Lockwood said. ‘We’re leaving the room now.’

  A tap sounded in the darkness, soft but heavy, the same as the first. Another followed. And then another.

  ‘That’s between us and the door,’ George said.

  ‘No it isn’t.’

  ‘Quiet,’ Lockwood said. ‘Just listen.’

  Tap, tap, tap . . . Slow and regular: I timed five fast heartbeats between each sound. It wasn’t easy to tell where the noise was coming from, or what it might be, but it seemed familiar. I’d heard the like before. For some reason the bathroom back in Portland Row came to mind – the lower one, where I sometimes took a shower, and where George’s discarded underclothes lay in wait for unwary feet. At first I thought it might be the shared sense of danger and foreboding that made me make the connection; then I realized it was something else. The showerhead in that bathroom was faulty. It dripped.

  Tap, tap, tap . . .

  ‘Switch on your torch, Lockwood,’ I whispered. ‘Direct it in front of you.’

  He obeyed without question. Perhaps he’d realized too.

  The beam fell on the floorboards like a delicate ring of gold. Something black and irregular lay in its centre. It looked rather like a large misshapen spider with innumerable legs. Tap. A new leg grew, splayed out to the side. Tap. Another leg: longer, thinner, stretched far across the wood . . . With each tap there came a flash of movement in the middle of the shape. The black thing glistened. There was a hint of red.

  Lockwood raised the torchlight slowly, in time to catch the next drip as it fell, mid-air. He lifted the torch to the plaster ceiling, where a wider, darker stain was spreading along the spiral moulding. At its centre, stuff as thick and dark as treacle sagged, grew heavy, broke loose in drops – to splash down upon the floor below.

  ‘Now I know what the smell was,’ Lockwood muttered.

  ‘Blood . . .’ I said.

  ‘Well, technically, of course, it’s plasm,’ George said. ‘The Visitor’s just chosen a highly unusual, non-anatomical guise, which—’

  ‘I don’t care about technically, George!’ I cried. ‘It looks like blood, it smells like it. It’ll do as blood for me.’

  Even as we watched, the weight of substance pooling in the ceiling became too great to be released by a single steady outflow. Drips broke loose in a second place, slightly closer to us, and the rate of fall was faster. I flicked on my torch too, saw the floor stain spattering out. Broken fingers of blood reached in the direction of our chains.

  ‘Don’t let it near you,’ George said. ‘It’ll ghost-touch same as any other kind of plasm.’

  ‘We’re going,’ Lockwood said crisply. ‘Gather the bags. No, forget the chains; we’re carrying spares. Ready? Quick, then. Follow me.’

  We stepped over the barrier of iron and looped out across the room, keeping well clear of the spreading mass. Malevolence radiated off it in w
aves. The room was icy cold.

  ‘Goodbye and good riddance to you,’ George said, as we approached the door.

  But when we got there it was closed.

  For a moment none of us moved. I felt a coil of panic slide slick and tight around my belly. Lockwood stepped forward. He covered the ground in three quick strides, and tried the handle. He rattled at it urgently. ‘Shut,’ he said. ‘I can’t open it.’

  ‘What the hell happened to the wedge?’ I said.

  George’s voice was faint. ‘The DFD.’

  I gave a wild curse. ‘I don’t care what it was called, George! It didn’t work! You didn’t secure it properly.’

  ‘I secured it fine.’

  ‘No, you just nudged it in with your BFF! That’s Big Fat Foot, by the way.’

  ‘Shut up, Lucy!’

  ‘Will you both shut up,’ Lockwood snarled, ‘and help me with this door?’

  We grasped the handle together and tugged as hard as we could. The door didn’t budge.

  ‘Where’s the key?’ I said. ‘Lockwood – the key. What did you do with it?’

  He hesitated. ‘I left it in the door.’

  ‘Oh, that’s great,’ I said. ‘Between you and George we might as well have put up a sign for the Visitor saying Be Our Guest.’

  ‘I tell you, I secured it fine,’ George shouted. ‘And I put the salt down too.’ He kicked out viciously at the grains beneath our boots. ‘See? It shouldn’t have been able to go near the door.’

  ‘Calm down,’ Lockwood said. He had shone the torch back to the ceiling, where a new spur of blood had begun to well downwards ominously close to where we stood. ‘It’s responding to our panic. Let’s get back to the circle.’

  We managed this OK, though we had to loop noticeably further out across the room than before. Several of the drips had now intensified into unbroken streams, like taps left gently running. The noise they made was no longer a series of sharp clicks, but a continual liquid thrum. There was a considerable puddle of blood spreading on the floor.