The Screaming Staircase

by Jonathan Stroud

  “I don’t want to know about either of your mottos,” Holly said. “You were talking about spirit houses, Lockwood.”

  “Oh, yes….Well, some of these cultures had more relaxed approaches to the dead. When an old person was near death, they were taken to one of these huts. They died there, and their bones were stored inside. In racks. The shaman would go there to talk to their spirits. When he did so, he wore a spirit-cape like this for protection. That’s the story, anyway. Why don’t we take the two capes tomorrow, Lucy? They’re not Sources, exactly, but I bet the Winkmans would buy them as curios.”

  “Seems a shame to sacrifice them,” I said. “They’re so pretty. Why don’t you have another look in the crate?”

  “All right….” Lockwood stuck his hand into the shavings again. “Okay…There’s something here—feels like glass. Might be a…Ah, yes….” He brought it out. His voice faded. “A photograph. Yes, it is.”

  The simple wooden frame was discolored, and the photo stained, either by water or weather. It was a black-and-white picture, probably taken with some heavy, old-fashioned camera on a stand. There was a formality to the shot, despite the mud in the foreground and the jungle trees that formed the backdrop. It showed a group of people standing in a forest clearing. Most were tribesmen and -women, scantily clad, some with astounding birds’ feathers pluming from their hair like so much sculpted smoke. Everyone was grinning. In the center stood a man and a woman in European clothes: he with a crumpled jacket over a white shirt; she with a peasant blouse and long, sensible skirt. Both wore wide-brimmed hats that half hid their faces, but from the man’s long, slim chin and fluted mouth, and the woman’s gleaming smile, I knew full well who they were.

  Lockwood didn’t say anything for a long while. When he did, his voice had a forced jollity. “I think this is New Guinea,” he said. “Soon after they got married. Must be the end of the trip. Look, my mother’s holding the spirit-mask that the old witch doctor’s just given her, the kind he wears when he’s communing with the dead. He’s the guy at the edge of the photo, the one with skin as wrinkled as a rhino’s jockstrap, with my mother’s binoculars hanging around his neck. She’s given them to him in return for the spirit-mask.”

  The woman was holding up the mask and laughing; and you could tell the man beside her was looking at her, and her pleasure was making him smile, too. They were young, full of life and promise.

  “I’ve still got the mask,” Lockwood said. “It’s the one on the shelf downstairs in the hall, next to the broken gourd. When I was very small I climbed up on the shelf and pulled it down and spent an hour looking through it, expecting to see ghosts all around. It didn’t do anything. Just plain cut-out holes in a mask. Not that my mother would have cared. They came back from every expedition with stuff like this: spirit-masks, ghost-catchers, bottles of holy mountain water that, if you drank it, supposedly gave you mystic visions. They were a pair of unworldly academics. Silly fools, really.” He set the photo facedown on the crate. “Luce, we’ll use the capes tomorrow. They’ll do nicely.”

  “And the bit about you both being recognized and horribly killed?” George asked.

  Lockwood flashed a smile, but it was a token one; his mind was far away. “I haven’t forgotten. All we need’s a good disguise.”

  It had to be said that, despite his unshakeable self-confidence, and a large wicker basket under his desk that contained the elements of many costumes, Lockwood’s disguises weren’t always super-successful. He had a weakness for big hats, and a tendency to try curious accents that attracted attention and, occasionally, outright hostility. His famous attempt at a winking East End chimney sweep, used to gain entry to Barleywick Hall in the Case of the Hovering Torso, had so outraged three Cockney footmen it ended with a breakneck chase into the nearest boating lake. As for the blond wig and wimple he’d resorted to while investigating a haunting near the Cobb Street Nunnery bathhouse, the resulting police search had made several papers, and it was probable two sisters and a mother superior would never be quite the same again.

  Generally his disguises worked best when kept to a minimum, and that’s the way our relic-men outfits ended up the next evening, after a long day of experimenting in the office, with a floor mirror propped against my old table, and George and Holly on hand to comment and make the tea. Relic-men being notoriously ill-favored, we’d tried all manner of humps, warts, and missing limbs, and clothes ranging from the holey to the ragged to the frankly indecent. In the end we scaled back to dirty black jeans, atrocious jerseys, and two stained leather jackets that George had scooped up in a charity store, while Holly used her extensive makeup kit to subtly worsen our complexions.

  “I can blacken some of your teeth, Lockwood,” she said. “Otherwise they’re much too shiny. Some darkening around the eyes should make them look puffier, and a smear of pale paste on the cheekbones will give you a good unhealthy sheen. With a bit of work I can make you look sick, needy, and unattractive. Give me half an hour.”

  I was trying on a foul horsehair wig. “How about me?”

  “In your case, I don’t need to do too much. Five minutes should be fine.”

  The wigs capped things off. Mine was a jumble of dirty yellow strands, like a mop soaked in custard, while Lockwood’s was a spiky black abomination.

  He studied himself uncertainly. “I don’t know….It’s like an evil hedgehog is squatting on my head.”

  “Think of Flo Bones,” I said. “She looks like that on a good day. You’ll fit in well.”

  Next we found two old satchels mildewing in the back of the basement storeroom, and George splashed tea over one and mud on the other. When they were dry, we took the spirit-capes that we’d found in Jessica’s room and put them inside. We were almost ready to go.

  “One last thing,” Holly said. “Weapons. I don’t like you going in defenseless.”

  Lockwood shrugged. “Can’t take rapiers, for obvious reasons.”

  “Well, stuff a magnesium flare down your trousers. You’ll need one if things get nasty.”

  “They might search us at the door.”

  “Holly’s right,” George put in. “You need something. All the other relic-men will be armed to the teeth. The water boys will have slime-flanges and cockle-hooks, while the housebreakers and tomb-sharks have their loops and grapplers and all manner of weird stuff.”

  I looked at him. “You seem very well-versed in relic-man business.”

  George did something with his glasses. “Maybe I chat with Flo from time to time. No law against that, is there?”

  “No….No, it’s fine.”

  In the end Lockwood and I both took daggers, wearing them openly at our belts. They weren’t great for combat, but would provide a final option. Plus, they suited the menacing aura we wanted to project as we entered the den of thieves.

  All this took us till nightfall. Shortly after seven, two sinister, swaggering relic-men departed Portland Row and set off for their rendezvous with Flo Bones.

  The district of Vauxhall, just south of the river, where the outflowing Thames curves north toward Westminster and the center of the city, was once the site of lovely pleasure gardens, where gentlemen and ladies used to promenade. Their bewigged ghosts still occasionally showed up incongruously among the automobile factories that now filled the area; the fortunes of these, too, had recently declined, and it was an area of deprivation, mostly abandoned after dark. As we crossed the bridge from Westminster, mists hung about the wharves and mudflats, and the lights of Vauxhall Station gleamed dully on the viaduct above like a row of taunting Wisps.

  Flo was waiting for us in a deserted lock-up beneath one of the viaduct arches. She had her burlap bag wedged between her boots and sat slumped and pensive on a concrete barrier beside a lantern—like a squatting gargoyle, but with a stronger smell. As we entered, her hand darted to her belt; then she relaxed and spat welcomingly into the mud at her side.

  Lockwood gave her a gap-toothed grin. “Aha! These disguises
must be good. We had you fooled for a second there.”

  “The hair got me,” Flo admitted. “But I recognize your walks. Your profile and her hips as well, but your walks mainly.”

  “That’s great. The Winkmans should be fooled, then.”

  “Maybe. ’Specially at a distance. It’s still the daftest thing you’ve ever done, Locky, and that’s saying plenty. I can’t take no responsibility for what happens. Licorice or no licorice, you understand the consequences are not on me.”

  “That’s all right. We’re fine with that, aren’t we, Luce?”

  “Yeah. We’re fine.”

  “Hear the way Luce is talking, Flo? We’ve been practicing on the way down. She’s got an estuary accent now.”

  Flo grunted. “Is that what she’s got? I thought it was phlegm. Okay, so listen. The boys on the door will want to see your artifacts. Don’t give them any trouble. Once you’re inside, it’s a free-for-all, everyone trying to sell their Sources for the best price. If it’s like last time, the Winkmans will be at one end, looking and buying, with their best stuff safely stored and guarded. How you’re going to get away with this precious object you’re after beats me.” She took off her hat and scratched at her matted scalp. “Particularly the place we’re going tonight.”

  “Which is?” This was a detail I was anxious to learn.

  “No great distance. Vauxhall Station.”

  I glanced at the arch above us. “Doesn’t seem very private.”

  “Not Vauxhall Overground, you silly mare. I’m talking about Vauxhall Underground—the station down below.”

  That rang a faintish bell with me, but I couldn’t think why.

  Lockwood knew. “But that’s been shut off for years, hasn’t it?” he said. “Wasn’t there a rail accident there, some terrible disaster? And since then—too many ghosts. I thought DEPRAC gave the whole thing up, just concreted it all in.”

  Something was moving in Flo’s bag. She gave it a nudge with her boot and the furtive motion stopped. “Yeah. There was a gas explosion down there. Forty-five years ago or more. It blew up a train that was just coming in to the station. Killed everyone on board. Wasn’t long before the Visitors started appearing in the tunnels and Vauxhall Underground had to close. They diverted the line; whole area’s bypassed now. And yeah, the entrances were sealed. But we found a way in.”

  “But why would you do that,” I said, “if it’s still so dangerous?” I wasn’t hugely excited to hear that, in addition to relic-men and gangsters, we had ghosts to deal with, too.

  “It’s good to go somewhere that’s forbidden. Gives us a bit of peace and quiet. We keep to the main platform, put up barriers by the tunnels to keep the Specters at bay. I’ve seen them, hanging back, just beyond the light.” Flo stooped, picked up her lantern; her teeth and eyes shone in its gleam. “They say the train’s still down there, lost in the endless dark. And it’s not just the original dead who sit on it now, but newer passengers, too—modern victims of the marauding ghosts.”

  Lockwood frowned. “You don’t believe that.”

  “Not for me to say if it’s true or not.” Flo took up her bag, swung it over her shoulder. “I just make sure I don’t go past the iron lines. Come on, enough chin-rattling. The market’s started, and we need to get to it.”

  With that, she led us out into the night.

  The original entrance to Vauxhall Underground Station was very close, its gates chained and boarded up, its steps choked with litter. On nearby walls, old DEPRAC warning signs were still barely visible beneath years of ghost-cult posters. Flo ignored it all; we walked half a block south down a narrow, unpromising lane between empty office buildings, until we reached a junction, where we stopped.

  “This is where I leave you,” Flo said. “I’m going on ahead. Give me five minutes, then you can follow. You take a left here, walk thirty yards, then left again down the lane. You’ll see the sentries up ahead. Show them the stuff and they should let you in, you’re that ugly. But here’s the deal: once you’re below, I won’t recognize you, I won’t help you. If you get caught and they beat you to death with sticks, I’ll stand by and won’t lift a finger.” She gazed at me with her bright blue eyes. “Just so you know.”

  “Agreed and understood,” Lockwood said. “Hope you get a good price for…what is in your sack, Flo?”

  “That’d be telling. Five minutes. Try not to get yourselves killed.”

  After she’d gone, we took up positions against the wall—something midway between a loiter and a lurk—and waited. Five minutes ticked by; during this another relic-man—tall, ragged, and stooped like a grieving heron—slipped down the side road after Flo. We gave him an extra minute to get clear, then shuffled after him.

  Down to the left. Thirty yards, then left again. It was more of an alley than a lane, dark as a cleft in the earth. Except at the end, where a naked bulb hung from a spindle above a metal door. In its cone of light, two very large gentlemen in long black coats stood like pillars, with a small ragged child between them.

  The men were there to break your bones, but the child was the key—she was the Sensitive who vetted the objects being brought to the meeting. The ragged relic-man was in the process of showing her the contents of his bag. At either side, her henchmen waited for her decision. The bigger of the two held a stout black stick, which he patted occasionally into his cupped palm. He never spoke; he was the threat, the dealer of pain. The other was the talker who did all necessary interrogation. One spoke, one tapped his club. It was a fair bet that neither could manage both at the same time.

  The relic-man passed muster. He closed his bag, pushed open the door, and disappeared inside. The men looked up at us. We approached casually down the alley.

  Lockwood spoke through the side of his mouth. “Be calm. I’ll handle this, Luce.”

  Something in the jaunty way he spoke alarmed me. Again I remembered what George had told me, how Lockwood’s recklessness was escalating all the time. I felt a twinge of guilt. Tonight, for selfish reasons, I was depending on his willingness to take risks. Without me, he wouldn’t have been here. I could feel the thrill of danger radiating from him now—intoxicating, but also scary. And we didn’t have our swords. “Be careful,” I said. “And also polite.”

  “Of course.”

  Lockwood’s tall, but the top of his head didn’t quite reach the shoulders of either sentry. He came to a halt before the child Sensitive, hands ready on his satchel.

  The smaller henchman, the talker, pointed a meaty finger. “Show them.”

  We both opened our bags. The kid looked in. She was no older than eight, a fragile little thing, with blue veins on her forehead under translucent skin.

  I held up my spirit-cape by a corner, so its iridescent beauty was clear.

  Talker’s frown deepened. Stick-Tapper stretched out his club and poked it against the feathers.

  “Where’d you get these?” Talker said.

  Lockwood pushed the club away. “Stole ’em, smelly. What’s it to you?”

  To be fair, Lockwood’s accent did make him sound like an authentic relic-man. Trouble was, he was trying to be authentically insulting, too. At once Stick-Tapper swung the club around. It pressed hard against the underside of Lockwood’s chin.

  “You want Joe to flick that up?” Talker said. “He does, and it takes your head clean off. He does it well, your head lands back on your neck stump upside-down.”

  “Sounds like quite a show,” Lockwood said. “But these here in our bags are foreign marvels. Adelaide Winkman will want to see them.”

  “We kill you, we take them to her ourselves,” Talker said, and I couldn’t help feeling there was a queasy logic to what he said. But the little child had put her hand on Stick-Tapper’s wrist and was shaking her head.

  “No, this is real good,” she said. “She’d want it, like he says. Let them through.”

  Her word was law. At once the stick was withdrawn and the men moved back. With a cocksure flick of the a
rm, Lockwood pushed at the door.

  “Hold it.” Talker gestured at the daggers in our belts. “No weapons.”

  “Call these toothpicks weapons?” Lockwood gave a snort. “You must be joking.”

  Talker chuckled. “I’ll show you whether I’m joking.”

  Thirty seconds later we’d been roughly frisked, relieved of our daggers, and kicked efficiently onward through the door.

  “Do you have to be so rude?” I hissed, when we were alone. “You’re drawing attention to us.”

  “Oh, relic-men are famously obnoxious. It’ll make us fit right in.”

  “Yeah. Our broken corpses will fit in nicely, too.”

  Beyond the door was an empty room with rough, bare concrete walls. At the far end, a circular hole with a metal rim led straight down into the earth. The hole was dark, but the top of a ladder projected from it, and there was a grainy suggestion of a light far below.

  “Old access shaft to the Underground,” Lockwood said. “Guessed it would be something like that. It won’t make getting out too easy, but what can we do? You first, Luce, or me?”

  I went first; I didn’t want him to get into an argument with a sewer rat or anything.

  The ladder descended into the earth for a long distance, so much so that my hands went numb and I lost count of the number of rungs. It was very dark, and another unpleasant aspect of the experience was the sound that came rushing up the shaft: a roaring and a gusting of air, and what I thought were voices screaming. The noise seemed to come from far away, and (I guessed) from long ago; when I dropped down at last into a candlelit tunnel, all trace of it had died away. It was a different hubbub that surrounded me now, here on the forgotten platforms of Vauxhall Underground Station.

  In layout, it was no different from countless other Tube stations still in daily use. Opposite the nook in which the ladder emerged, three rusting escalators rose into the shadows—silent, solid, their steps clogged with black dust. Lines of faded posters flanked them. That was the old way out, to the now sealed up ticket halls.