Lockwood & Co: The Screaming Staircase

by Jonathan Stroud

  ‘We’re going to be surrounded,’ I said. ‘How much plasm has it got in there?’

  ‘This is huge,’ George muttered. ‘It’s not an ordinary Type Two. A Poltergeist would have the advanced telekinetic powers – shutting the door, keeping it closed, turning the key – but that doesn’t fit with the manifestation. The blood makes it a Changer, surely. But Changers don’t turn keys . . .’

  ‘I’ve been stupid,’ Lockwood said. ‘Really stupid. I underestimated everything . . . Lucy, we’re going to have to find the secret exit. You’ve got to show us where you felt the difference in the wall.’

  An arm of blood extended swiftly from the central pool upon the floor. Its tip drew close to the iron chains and retreated, fizzing, spitting. The air was thick with the smell of blood; it was difficult to breathe.

  ‘Or we stay here . . .’ I said. ‘At least it can’t get in.’

  George gave a yell; I felt him jump to the side. He stumbled over the duffel bags and nearly fell beyond the iron.

  Lockwood cursed. ‘What the hell are you—?’ He shone the torch. George crouched on the bags, clutching at his jacket. A ribbon of smoke curled from his shoulder.

  ‘Up above,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Quick.’

  The beam snapped upwards. There – the chandelier, choked with dust and webs. A single rivulet of red had trickled from the ceiling, down the central column, and out along a curving crystal arm. At its lowest point a new pendant of blood was slowly building.

  ‘It – it can’t do that,’ I stammered. ‘We’re inside the iron.’

  ‘Move out the way!’ Lockwood pushed me back just as the drop fell, spattering on the floor in the centre of the circle. We were all standing almost atop the iron chains. ‘We’ve made it too big,’ he said. ‘The power of the iron doesn’t extend into the very centre. It’s weak there, and this Visitor’s strong enough to overcome it.’

  ‘Adjust the chains inwards—’ George began.

  ‘If we make the circle smaller,’ Lockwood said, ‘we’ll be squeezed into a tiny space. It’s scarcely midnight; we’ve seven hours till dawn and this thing’s just got started. No, we’ve got to break out – and that means Lucy’s corner. Come on.’

  Keeping our torches trained up above us, we stepped out of the circle on the opposite side to the spreading pools, and began to move round towards the left corner of the end wall. But no sooner did we do so than thick dark trails extended on the ceiling, flowing fast in our direction. The panic in my belly twisted tighter; I fought down the urge to scream.

  ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘It’s sensing where we are. If we all go there, it’ll quickly hem us in.’

  Lockwood nodded. ‘You’re right. Well done. Come on, George. We’ll try to distract it. Lucy: get over there and keep on looking.’

  ‘OK . . .’ I hurried on. ‘But why me?’

  ‘You’re a girl,’ Lockwood called. ‘Aren’t you meant to be more sensitive?’

  ‘To emotions, yes. To nuances of human behaviour. Not necessarily to secret passages in a wall.’

  ‘Oh, it’s much the same thing. Besides, flailing about with rapiers is basically all George and I are good at.’ He danced off across the room, swirling his torch, waving his sword high towards the ceiling. George did likewise, making for another corner.

  Whether the Visitor was suitably distracted, I didn’t have time to see. I put my rapier away, set my torch to its weakest setting, held it tight between my teeth so I could see roughly where I was. To my left was the window recess. Beyond the glass was the fresh cool air of night-time, and a thirty-foot bone-snapping drop down to the gravel driveway. Who knows, perhaps we’d have to jump for it before we were done. Perhaps that would be the better way to die.

  Sweat poured down my face, despite the cold. My hands shook as I set them to the wall. As before, I ran my hands all over the area where I’d got the hollow sound.

  No luck. Nothing but smoothness.

  I reached the corner, felt up and down along the join. On sudden impulse I tried the adjoining wall. Maybe a switch or door was there. I stood on tiptoe, stretched as high as I could. I bent down low. I pressed and pushed. I shoved. I did all this until I reached the window recess. Still I had no joy.

  Looking back, I discovered our tactics had worked up to a point. George and Lockwood were banging about in the far regions of the room, channelling their panic into whoops and whistles, and rude insults shouted at the Visitor. In response the central ceiling pool had thrown out new branches: long angry streams of blood diverged around the chandelier, came lancing out towards them.

  But I hadn’t been forgotten either. To my shock a stream of blood now stretched almost to my feet along the floor. Up above, an arm of the central stain extended perilously close, and from this a dark, thin stream was falling. Black spatters laced the boards beside my boots. One fell against my heel. There was a hiss; a thin white coil of smoke curled upwards as I jumped away, up onto the deep sill below the window.

  This was no good. Now I risked being completely trapped. I turned, crouched, prepared to leap down – and as I did so, my fingers touched the wooden shutter that was folded back against the side of the recess. I looked at it. And in that desperate moment, inspiration came.

  I shone my torch full upon the shutter. It was a single solid panel, as high as the recess and almost as wide. At the back, near the window, great black hinges fused it to the stone. If you pulled it, it would swing out to cover the glass.

  And – possibly – reveal something else.

  I grasped the wood, tried to pull it to me. I wanted to see beneath it – just in case. Somewhere, something gave. I felt the shutter move. I flashed a quick look with my torch – and saw a crack had opened, a gap just wide enough to get my fingers in. Perhaps there was nothing but stone beneath; perhaps it really was a shutter. Or perhaps . . .

  ‘George! Lockwood!’ I shouted out to them over my shoulder, past a column of gushing blood. ‘I may have found it! Quick – I need your help!’

  Without waiting, I pulled at the wood. I heaved, I tugged. It didn’t shift at all.

  Something shoved me to the side. It was Lockwood, throwing himself into the recess. The blood was nearing the edges of the room. He’d had to flatten himself against the wall as he ran towards the ledge. George careered after him, holding his rapier at an angle above his head. Falling blood splashed against the sword-tip, fizzing and sparking as it touched the iron. He jumped up next to us. No one spoke. George handed me the rapier. He and Lockwood grappled the wood, braced themselves, and pulled.

  I turned and held the blade above us all as an ineffective shield.

  The bloodstain on the ceiling had now spread almost wall to wall; in our corner, a single triangle of clean space remained. Elsewhere torrents of blood fell in curtains, roaring, driving, gusting like rain waves in a thunderstorm. The floor was awash. It pooled between the floorboards and lashed up against the skirting. The chandelier dripped with it: the crystals shone red. Now I knew why the chamber was without furniture of any kind, why it had been deserted for so many years. Now I knew why it had the name it did.

  George gasped; Lockwood gave a cry. They fell back, knocked against me, dragging the shutter open. Behind it, matted cords of cobwebs trailed like corpse-hair. My torch showed darkness too – a narrow arch inside the wall.

  Blood spattered on the corner of the shutter and on the tilted blade above my head. I felt it fizz against my gloves and arms.

  ‘In! In!’ I gestured to the others; they tumbled through. I followed, moving backwards, stepping from sill to ancient stone. Blood poured down the inside of the shutter; it ran down the sides of the recess, flooding towards my feet.

  On the inside of the shutter door we saw an ancient rope, fixed there by an iron ring. George and Lockwood seized it, heaved. The door swung slowly inwards. Blood cascaded through the closing crack, splashed thickly on George’s arm. He cursed, fell back; I lost my balance too. Lockwood gave a final tug. The door closed shut
– and we were left in darkness, listening to the crashing and drumming of the blood as the unnamed Thing wrought its fury on the far side of the wall.

  22

  All at once, like a switch had been flicked or a plug pulled, the terrible noise cut out. We were alone.

  The sudden silence made me flinch. I sat against rough stone, head raised, mouth open, panting for breath. My own blood hammered in my ears. My chest rose and fell in jerks; each movement gave me pain. Though it was utterly black, I knew the others were sprawled beside me in the tightness of the passage. Their wheezes mirrored mine.

  We’d collapsed in a single heap, one on top of the other. The air was cold and sour, but at least the overpowering smell of blood had gone.

  ‘George,’ I croaked, ‘are you OK?’

  ‘No. Someone’s buttocks are flattening my foot.’

  I shifted my position irritably. ‘I meant the plasm – where you got hit.’

  ‘Oh. Yes. Thank you. It didn’t touch my hand, though I think this jacket’s ruined.’

  ‘That’s good. It’s an awful jacket. Who’s got a torch? I just dropped mine.’

  ‘Me too,’ Lockwood said.

  ‘Here.’ George clicked his on.

  Torchlight never shows you to your best advantage. In the sudden harshness, George and I crouched close together, eyes bulging, hair matted with sweat and fear. George’s arm was stained a livid white and green where the plasm had struck him. Smoke rose from it, and also from the rapier across my knees. When I looked down, I saw that my boots and leggings were spattered with the substance too.

  Lockwood, miraculously, appeared to have escaped the worst of the assault. His coat was lightly stained, and the tip of his forelock had been burned white by a drop of plasm. But where George’s face shone bright red, his had just gone paler; where George and I gasped and groaned and flopped about, he lay calm and rigid, waiting for his breathing to grow quiet. He had taken off his sunglasses and his dark eyes glittered. His jaw was set. I could see at once that he had drawn his emotions deep inside himself, made them hard and steely. There was something in his face I hadn’t seen before.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘It’s over for the moment.’

  George angled the torch towards the inside of the secret opening. Seconds before, thick fingers of blood had been pouring down it. Now the wood was dry, dusty and unstained. There was no visual sign that anything had happened. If we’d gone back into the empty room, no doubt that would have been dry and clean as well. Not that we were going back there any time soon.

  Lockwood sat up awkwardly, adjusting his bubble-wrapped loops of chain. ‘We’re in good shape,’ he said. ‘We’ve lost the heavy-duty chains and the stuff in the bags, but we’ve got our rapiers, iron and silver seals. And we’ve found what we wanted now.’

  I stared at the clean, calm surface of the door. ‘Why couldn’t it come after us? Ghosts can pass through walls.’

  Lockwood shrugged. ‘In some cases a Visitor is tied so completely to the room where it met its death that it no longer has any conception of there being any adjacent space at all. So . . . when we left its hunting ground, it was as if we ceased to exist, as if we ceased to be . . .’

  I looked at him. ‘You haven’t really got a clue, have you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Here’s a possibility,’ George said. He gestured with the torch. ‘See that ring we pulled to close the door? It’s made of iron. And look, there’s a lattice of iron strips all across the wood. And down the stone here too . . . They look old to me. Someone’s fixed them some time long ago as a way of hemming in that particular Visitor. It keeps the passage safe.’

  He circled the torch around us in an arc, allowing us to consider the space in which we were confined. It was a very narrow corridor, walled and floored with old, thin bricks. It ran a short distance, then hit the corner of the western wall – the one that showed up as suspiciously thick on George’s plans. Here, the bricks were replaced by solid stone and the passage turned to the right. The bend was almost entirely choked with swathes of webbing that hung like fat grey curtains from the roof of the passage to the floor.

  ‘Don’t like all those spiders,’ I said.

  ‘This side-passage is mainly clear of them,’ Lockwood said, ‘because of all the iron. But once we turn the corner, we’re back in the original priory building, and we’ll be getting near the Source. That means more spiders and stronger visitations. From now on we use all available weapons as soon as anything shows up.’

  We struggled to our feet. I gave George back his rapier, and drew my own. I found my torch where I’d dropped it on the bricks, but the bulb had broken. Lockwood’s was gone, and George’s seemed dimmer than before.

  ‘Save it,’ Lockwood said. He brought out candles and distributed them between us; when lit, their flames were mustard-yellow, tall and strong. ‘They’ll be a good indicator of psychic build-up too,’ he added. ‘Keep your eye on them.’

  ‘Shame we can’t use caged cats, like Tom Rotwell did,’ George remarked. ‘They’re the most sensitive indicator of all, apparently – if you can stand the yowling.’

  ‘I can’t believe the Source isn’t in the Red Room,’ I said. ‘That Visitor was so strong.’

  ‘And so weird,’ George added. ‘Mix of Poltergeist and Changer. That’s new.’

  ‘No, it was just a Changer.’ Lockwood held his candle out, surveying the way to the corner. ‘It didn’t have telekinetic properties at all.’

  ‘You forget it closed and locked the door,’ I said.

  ‘Did it?’ Lockwood said. ‘I don’t think so.’

  I frowned at his retreating back; he was already on the move. ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘You think another ghost?’ The answer came to me. ‘You mean someone living did it? Deliberately locked us in? But that means—’

  George gave a long, low whistle. ‘Fairfax or Starkins . . .’

  ‘But they wouldn’t come in here,’ I protested; ‘not after dark.’

  ‘Starkins wouldn’t,’ Lockwood said. ‘Come on, we’ve work to do.’

  But I still stared at him. ‘Fairfax? But why? Lockwood—’

  He held up his hand to hush me; he was at the corner now, ducking low to avoid the hanging webs. When he raised his candle to the webbing, dozens of shiny black bodies scurried to the margins, fleeing the sphere of light. ‘It’s instantly colder here,’ he said, ‘once you step off the bricks. And there’s miasma too, and immediate malaise . . . George, do a temp check there, then cross over to the stones.’

  George pushed past me and began the readings. I followed reluctantly.

  ‘I know you don’t like Fairfax,’ I said, ‘but if you’re saying he’s mad—’

  ‘Oh, he’s certainly not mad,’ Lockwood said. ‘Temp difference, George?’

  ‘Drops from nine to five in the space of a stride.’

  Lockwood nodded. ‘It’s all in the stones. And it’ll only get colder when we go down there.’

  He indicated the arch beside him: black and gaping like an open mouth. Our candlelight didn’t penetrate too far. George briefly switched on his torch to reveal the beginnings of another passage, taller and broader than the one we’d come from. It stretched away inside the wall.

  Lockwood had been right about the temperature drop. For the first time, I really felt the cold. I pulled out my hat, put it on; zipped my coat up tight. The others were doing likewise. I glared at Lockwood as I did so, irritated by his refusal to talk about Fairfax and the Red Room door. Yet again he was keeping quiet, not sharing what he knew. He’d been like this for days, since Fairfax first came calling. Maybe even before that – since the burglary, even since we found the necklace . . .

  I put my hands to my throat, checked the hidden cord around my neck. Beneath my coat the glass case pressed cold and hard against my chest. I wondered if it glowed, whether the ghost was emitting any light. Well, she was secure enough. It wasn’t Annie Ward we had to worry about now.

  Lockwood put on
his gloves; George crammed his head inside his foul green bobble-hat. We started up the passage, Lockwood taking the lead. He held his candle high. Drifts of cobweb danced above its meagre flame.

  A few steps in, George called us to a halt. He pointed to the right-hand wall, at a rough arch of brickwork embedded in the stone. ‘There’s the original way through from the Red Room,’ he said. ‘Blocked up when they rebuilt the house. We’re in one of the priory passageways now.’

  ‘Fine,’ Lockwood said. ‘Let’s look at the map. Then we can see where—’

  His head snapped round. The wick of his candle had quivered; its light shrank dim and pale. All of us had felt the change – the shift that comes when a Visitor walks near.

  We waited, rapiers at the ready, hands hovering at our belts.

  One moment there was nothing, and the next . . . a boy stood ahead of us in the dark. He shone with a frail glow. It wasn’t easy to tell how far away he was, or whether he floated or touched the stones. His other-light lit nothing but himself. When I listened, I thought I heard faint weeping, but the apparition’s face was blank and clear. It looked towards us with that open, empty expression so many of them have.

  ‘Check out the clothes,’ Lockwood whispered.

  The boy had been quite young, probably not as old as me. He was fair-haired and stocky, tending to the stout, with a soft and rounded face. If George had been scrubbed up and forcibly inserted into something smart and ironed, he might almost have been his cousin. He wore dark trousers and a long grey jacket, which seemed slightly too big for him. Something about the cut of the jacket and the trousers (I’m no good with fashion) told me that this was an apparition decades old. But there was no mistaking the essential uniform, or the Italianate hilt of the rapier at his side.

  ‘Oh Lord,’ I said, ‘it’s the Fittes kid. The one who died in here.’

  The weeping sound grew louder. The apparition flickered; it slowly turned away from us and drifted off along the passage.

  All sight and sound winked out. Nothing but darkness, silence, a sweet-sour smell fading in my nose. The candlewicks flared up bright as day. We remembered to breathe again.