The Screaming Staircase

by Jonathan Stroud

  Holly, Kipps, and I were transfixed, staring after him—

  Ding-a-ding-a-ding!

  All three of us cried out, all three of us turned. It was the silver bell, swinging wildly on its wires of zinc and spider-silk.

  “Oh, it rings now?” I cried. “That thing is so useless, George!”

  George was lying on his back, head out of sight. “Well, don’t blame me! Blame the Rotwell Institute! They’re selling any old junk!”

  “Just get into that hole!”

  “Got a tap wrench?”

  “No! Why would I? I don’t even know what it is!”

  “It’s this bloody pipe that’s the problem—I can’t pull the thing out.”

  I was staring at the door. Shapes moved beyond it; I heard thuds, slashes, and again and again that keening scream. None of us had gotten into the circle as Lockwood had ordered, and now we saw the chains sliding sideways on the linoleum floor. The chains had been folded over, but not tied. The outer one whipped away; the inner one held firm. A force blasted out across the kitchen, toppling the candles, making us stagger where we stood. For an instant I saw Lockwood’s outline thrust back against the glass, then he was gone. The whole house seemed to shake.

  “We have to go and help him, Kipps,” I said.

  Kipps didn’t seem to have moved since Lockwood had left the room. His face was white. He gathered his wits. “Yes. We must. Come on.”

  “Lucy!” That was George, from below.

  “What?”

  “Got a spanner?”

  “No! I’m not a plumber, George! I’m an agent! Agents don’t carry spanners!” I was halfway to the door.

  “It’s all right! It’s all right! I’ve broken through the floorboard…I’ve almost gotten it out…” Something grated against brick; George’s legs thrashed from side to side. “There!” He sat up, holding a jam jar wreathed in cobwebs. It glinted an unpleasant white. “Get me a Seal!”

  Holly was already standing by; she had a silver net in her hand.

  Beyond the glass, a vast and swollen shape lurched toward the door.

  The handle turned.

  Holly dropped the net, swathing the jar in silver.

  The door swung slowly open—

  —revealing only Lockwood, leaning against the wall. His coat was dusty, his hair plastered over one eye. His right arm was slack, his right hand bleeding; from his left, his rapier hung loosely, trailing along the floor. We stared at him. He stood there, breathing hard and grinning, alone in that empty hall.

  It turned out, once we’d inspected him, that a bruised arm and cut hand were the worst of what Lockwood had suffered, inflicted when he was blown back against the door. Perhaps he was a little quieter than normal; otherwise, physically, he was quite unharmed. While Kipps went to find a phone box to summon a Night Cab, he sat on the porch and let Holly fuss around him; meanwhile, George and I pulled our remaining equipment out onto the lawn.

  When we were packed up, I went to stand beside Lockwood.

  “Didn’t we do brilliantly?” he said. “I think even Kipps is impressed, and that takes some doing. Thank you for agreeing to help us out tonight, Luce.”

  “It’s fine,” I said. “Not a problem.”

  “Did you take a peep at the Source? Did you see what it contained?” The jam jar, securely wrapped in silver and ready for its final journey to the furnaces, sat a little way off, shimmering under the stars.

  “George told me. Lots of human teeth.”

  “A special collection of them. Must have been dear to Guppy’s heart.”

  “How nice. Well, it’s over now. I’m glad we did the job.”

  “It was good to team up with you again.” Lockwood smiled at me, then looked away into the garden. I could sense he was about to speak. “Actually, Lucy…”

  “Yes?”

  “I was wondering something—”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you have any of that chocolate left? I saw you’d started a bar earlier.”

  “Oh. Yeah, of course. Here, take it all.”

  Lockwood wasn’t normally one to overdose on sweet stuff; he left that more to George and me—or used to, when we worked together—but he tore the silver paper away and ate the whole bar, piece by piece, until it was all gone, staring sightlessly into the night. I thought he looked very tired.

  When he’d finished, he gave a sigh of satisfaction. “Thank goodness for you, Lucy. Holly never carries chocolate, and George has always scarfed his before we’re out of Portland Row. But I can always rely on you.”

  I cleared my throat. “I’m glad to be of service. And you’re right,” I went on, in a sudden rush. “It’s great we got a chance to work together again. I’m really glad we could—Oh, and here’s Kipps, back already….He made good time.”

  A Night Cab had pulled up at the end of the drive, its horn blaring. Lockwood was slowly getting to his feet. The time for talking had passed.

  Except for one last thing.

  “Lockwood,” I said, “when you went out into the hallway…”

  The final smile was weary. “Lucy, you really don’t want to know.”

  We ended up needing three taxis. Lockwood, Holly, and Kipps took the first one, carrying the Source off to Clerkenwell, while George and I waited behind with the bulk of the bags. When the other cabs came, I’d head to Tooting, he’d go to Portland Row. It was the parting of the ways. We sat on a garden wall opposite number 7.

  “George,” I said, after a while, “you’ll know this kind of thing. Mummified heads. How common are they?”

  George being George, the question didn’t faze him. “As psychic artifacts? Rare. Has to be the right conditions for mummification: either very dry, or containing certain chemicals, like you get in peat bogs. Can’t have much air, else the microbes get to work. Why?”

  “No reason. Just I heard of two recently, and I was wondering how likely it was, that’s all.”

  He grunted but said nothing. Silence enveloped us.

  “George,” I said again, “what Lockwood did back there—”

  “I know.”

  “It was brilliant, yes, but also—”

  “Crazy?”

  “Yeah.”

  George took off his glasses and rubbed them on his sweater as he always did when considering something disagreeable. It was a different kind of rub than the one he used when he was excited, agitated, or simply being a know-it-all. I’d forgotten how clearly I could read him. If you’d hidden his face and simply showed me his glasses moving on his shirt, I could easily have told you his mood.

  “Yes,” he said, “and the really bad thing is that I wasn’t at all surprised. This is typical behavior for him now. Lockwood’s more reckless than ever. He throws himself into everything like he doesn’t care. Most cases we go on, I don’t have time to even do a quick background check, let alone research the haunting.”

  I stared into the dark. Lockwood’s recklessness was part and parcel of who he was. I guessed he’d been that way since his sister died, when he was very young. It was also linked to the reasons why I’d stepped away from the agency, though it wasn’t the full story by any means. “He’s always been like that,” I said. “That’s just his way.”

  “But it’s worse than before.” George was staring down at his sweater. His eyes, exposed without his glasses, looked smaller, weak, and frail. “You know he was always brave, but not like that.”

  I knew what he meant. We were both thinking of the shape at the door.

  “When did it start?” I said. “When did it get worse?”

  George shrugged. “After you left.”

  “And you think…” I frowned, hesitated. “Why do you think that is?”

  George put his glasses back on; his eyes sprang back into focus, sharp and questing. “Wrong emphasis, Luce. Why do you think that is?”

  “Well, it’s got nothing to do with me.”

  “Of course not. Your leaving the company had no effect on any of us. Why, a day
after you left, we’d forgotten your name.”

  I glared at him. “You needn’t be like that. That’s hurtful.”

  George gave a sudden whoop of rage. “How d’you want me to put it? You waltzed off on a whim and left us to pick up the pieces. Now you suddenly swan back and expect us to carry on where we left off! You can’t have it both ways—either we were affected by your departure or we weren’t. Which do you prefer?”

  “I didn’t ask to come back!” I roared. “Penelope Fittes—”

  “Has got nothing whatsoever to do with it, as you well know. It was Lockwood who came knocking on your door, and that’s why you considered the proposal, and let’s face it, that’s why you said yes.”

  “Well, would you rather I hadn’t?”

  “It’s none of my business what you decide. You cool freelancers walk your own path.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake! Now you’re just being childish.”

  “Am not.”

  “Are too.”

  Neither of us spoke after that. We sat in silence on the wall, waiting for our separate cabs.

  Seven fifteen that same morning, I was awake again in bed.

  At other times, in other years, I would have greeted the day in jaunty spirits. It had been an exhilarating night, and the artificial elation that you always get at the end of a dangerous hunt still coursed through my veins. I’d gotten back early enough to fall into a brief exhausted sleep, but had been woken not long after by trash collectors shouting in the street outside. And now that my eyes had opened, I couldn’t close them again. My body was too tense. My mind was whirling.

  So much of it was good, of course. The Ealing Cannibal had been a notable case, and news of its entrapment and destruction would spread widely; the reputation of all of us present in the house last night would definitely be enhanced. For me, the prospect of Penelope Fittes’s approval was particularly gratifying. With her knowledge of her grandmother’s Talent, she was unlikely to undervalue me, as Rotwell’s and other agencies had done. I could expect a slew of new cases as reward.

  And Lockwood & Co. would do quite nicely, too; Ms. Fittes had made that clear enough. This pleased me. By helping them out, I’d maybe gone some small way toward paying off the debt I owed for having left so suddenly. Now that the case was successfully completed, I could turn my attention to other things.

  Yes, so much of it was good. Yet my room and bed seemed bleaker on that sunny spring morning than on any rain-lashed afternoon during the foul, dark winter. Lockwood had wanted me for one job, and I’d done that job, and now there would be no more, and the pleasure I’d felt while working alongside him—and George and, yes, even Holly—made that prospect bitter. But I could have coped with it, just as I’d coped these last four months, if I’d still felt secure in my original reasons for leaving. It was to protect Lockwood that I’d left the company, and even though it had been painful, I’d known that it was right. He was safer with me gone.

  Or was he? If what George had said to me was true, I might actually have made things worse. He’d become even more reckless without me there. And the varied implications of that kept me lying rigid in that bed, with the sun streaming over my rumpled bedspread.

  Really, I should have tried to get back to sleep, but I was too keyed up—and keyed down; I was both hyped and befuddled at the same time. At last I got out of bed, only to stumble over the ghost-jar in the middle of the floor.

  As I stood there cursing and rubbing my shin, an unsavory face manifested behind the glass. “You look worse than me this morning,” it observed. “Well, when you recover, I await your groveling thanks. You know where I’ll be.”

  I went to put the kettle on. “Groveling thanks for what?”

  “For my help last night in pinpointing the Source. You only found it after my tip. Quite clearly we make an excellent team, and I have an idea. I suggest we go into business together. ‘Carlyle and Skull,’ we’d call it, or possibly ‘Skull and Co.’ Yes, that’s it, with a little picture of me over the door. I can see it now….” Chuckling, it receded into the plasm.

  I didn’t respond. I wasn’t in the mood. I picked up some of my scattered clothes, found my bathrobe, went across the landing to the bathroom. I came back and made coffee. I got out my casebook and tried to make a few notes about the evening, but found I didn’t have the words. The other thing I needed to do was make out my invoice to the Lockwood & Co. agency. But I couldn’t quite bring myself to do that, either. Not right then. So I took a shower, threw on some clothes, grabbed cash from my wallet, and went to get some takeout food. Obviously I should have cooked something, but I didn’t have the energy. It was the same old story.

  Or at least it was until I arrived back on my landing carrying the bag from the Thai place, the Styrofoam box inside already cradling me in lovely fragrant steam, and saw that the door to my room had been kicked in.

  I stood there for five or six heartbeats, looking at the broken lock. The door had been re-closed, or nearly so, and I couldn’t see inside. I glanced back across the landing at my neighbor’s door. That seemed untouched. He would be at work now, as would most of the people on the floor below. It was very quiet in the apartment building, and there was no noise coming from my room.

  I set my bag of food carefully by the wall. Then I moved slowly toward the door, my hand dropping automatically to my side, where my sword normally hung. But I was in sweatpants, and had no weapon now.

  When I reached the door, I waited, straining for any sound that might indicate the intruder was still inside. But beneath the ongoing thrum of traffic from the Tooting High Street hung a profound silence. I took a slow and careful breath, then pushed the door open and stepped in.

  Whoever had been there was gone. The place was a mess—as it always was—and as far as I could see, looked the same as it had when I’d left it a few minutes before. Except for one difference that I spotted right away.

  The ghost-jar was gone.

  I stayed where I was. I didn’t move anything except for my eyes. For a long time I stood scanning the room. I surveyed it from the cluttered sink to the disordered bed, from the top of the open dresser to the stacks of equipment by the door. What else was different? What else had changed?

  I looked at the table, where I’d slung my wallet the night before. The wallet was still there; it even had a couple of bills sticking out of it.

  I looked at my rapier, propped against the back of the chair. A pricey Spanish blade that Lockwood had bought for me the previous summer. Still there.

  I looked at my bags, stuffed with all the expensive paraphernalia of a freelance operative. All those salt-bombs and iron canisters, those cylinders of Greek Fire. You could get good money for those, if you knew the right people. But they remained precisely as I’d left them, completely untouched.

  Nothing else had been taken. Just the skull.

  Someone had come in, knowing the ghost-jar would be there, wanting it and nothing else. They’d taken it, and left. They’d done that during the (I made a rough calculation) ten or fifteen minutes I’d been out. So they’d been watching the building, waiting for me to leave. They’d known or guessed my movements. That bit wasn’t difficult, since I did the same thing almost every morning after a case. The guy in the Thai place pretty much knew me by name. Half the street probably knew I’d potter out to get food at some time in the morning.

  But whoever had been here had known about the ghost-jar, too.

  They knew about the skull, which was something I took pains to keep hidden.

  Who knew about it? Lockwood and George, of course. And Holly, too: I’d told her about it months ago. What about Quill Kipps, last night? No—I’d been very careful. In any case, stealing didn’t seem Kipps’s style. So who else?

  Who else had seen it?

  I stood a long time, thinking.

  Then I went back out into the hall and brought in my breakfast, which was still hot. After all, there’s no use wasting a good Thai.

  Afte
r eating, I dried my hair properly, and changed into my work clothes. My coat smelled a bit of stale sweat and fear from the night before, but who was going to notice?

  I put on my belt and made a cursory check of all its pockets. Not that I was expecting to use it against ghosts right then—I had a different quarry—but I needed it to hold my sword.

  I picked up my rapier and strapped it on. Finally I glanced in the mirror, at my pale face and blazing eyes. Amazing what a theft does to you: all my previous weariness and befuddlement were gone.

  With that, I left the room, pulling the door softly shut behind me.

  A short walk south from the main compound of the Fittes furnaces in Clerkenwell was the paved, triangular space known as Clerkenwell Green, where tall lime trees sheltered a cluster of public benches, and a knot of sandwich bars and pubs serviced the needs of the furnace workers. Close by rose St. James’s Church, with its empty, pretty grass churchyard, which had been depopulated of graves since an outbreak of Phantasms decades before. On pleasant days, as the early shift ended and the Klaxon sounded from the furnace chimneys, a stream of orange-clad men and women emerged from the gates and descended on the green to have their lunch and wash the taste of burning from their tongues. Furnace operators, oilers, stokers, storage clerks, and ash-boys: all of them thronged together to join the human tide.

  As did the attendants working the booths of the vetting room. Or so I was prepared to bet that morning.

  By taking the Tube and walking swiftly, I had arrived on the green just before the lunchtime rush. I selected a bench not far from the lime trees, where I had a good view of the cafés and an ornamental ghost-lamp kept me in shadow.

  Far off, the sirens sounded; I sat and waited, and watched the sidewalks. In dribs and drabs, the flow began. Within a few minutes, the quiet green, like a stream in snow-melt, had become a surging mass of activity. People filled the square; lines wound from the sandwich bars; birds flew in panic from the rooftops; pigeons frenzied over pastry crusts; every inch of every seat was packed. I sat where I was, impervious, unmoving.