The Screaming Staircase

by Jonathan Stroud

  I lifted the ghost-jar. It flared with sudden green other-light—casting a vile radiance on the men ahead of me. The youth with the knife stared deep into the glass—and gave an unholy scream. He staggered back, knocking into the men behind him, sending them all careering against the wall.

  The skull chuckled. “How was that? Gave him my best face there.”

  “Not bad.” I made like an eel, twisting between the sprawling bodies, hurling myself through the arch and out onto the platform, where a full-scale brawl was under way. At its heart was a slim young relic-man with hair like an evil hedgehog; he stood near the Winkmans’ table, swinging a long, black candlestick around his head and keeping the crowd at bay. Nearby, Adelaide Winkman was shouting orders and completely failing to bring the situation under control.

  “This is your plan?” the skull said. “Interestingly fluid. What happens now?”

  “I haven’t a clue.”

  But Lockwood had been watching out for me. He danced forward, grasped the Winkmans’ table, and overturned it, sending a sparkling waterfall of coins crashing to the floor. In the same movement he leaped over it and came racing toward me. Behind him, Adelaide and her helpers were engulfed as a frantic tide of relic-men made efforts to reach the coins.

  “The arch beyond you, Luce!” Lockwood cried. “Cross to the other platform!”

  I turned—but at that moment Leopold Winkman burst out of the side room. He ducked under Lockwood’s viciously swinging candlestick, threw himself at me, and snatched at the ghost-jar under my arm. The impact knocked me over; Leopold and I tussled on the floor, kicking and punching. My wig fell off. I was conscious of Lockwood calling, of other people drawing near. All at once Leopold struck the side of my head. Lights burst in my eyes. My arm went loose; the ghost-jar was torn away.

  “Lucy! Save me—”

  “Skull!” My head rang with the blow. I raised it, blinking. Leopold and the jar were gone. I was lying on my back. Above me was a confusing blur of fighting forms—Lockwood, the Winkman flunkies, several relic-men. One man saw me move; he lifted a heavy stick to strike at me. Someone stuck out a dirty Wellington boot and tripped him. I glimpsed Flo’s tatted straw hat as he fell away. Then Lockwood was wrenching me to my feet, hauling me onward up the platform.

  “Lucy…!” A faint, despairing cry behind me in the crowd.

  “The skull! Lockwood, I lost it—”

  “I’m sorry. So sorry. But we really need to go.”

  Lockwood’s face was bruised, his wig askew. His candlestick was gone. Together we ran toward the far end of the hall. The tunnel mouth was boarded up over here, but a connecting passage led to the southbound platform. We fled down it, pursued by a tide of noise.

  “The ladder’s a no-go now,” Lockwood gasped. “It’ll have to be a tunnel.”

  Fewer candles burned along the second platform, and there was no one on it. A few yards from us was the tunnel mouth, filled by another great pile of sandbags, salt, and iron. Lockwood and I jumped down onto the track, scrambled up to the top of the slope, and stared down into the blackness of the tunnel.

  “It’s unblocked,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “It’ll lead us out of here.”

  “I’m sure it would.”

  “So come on, let’s go.”

  “No.” He clasped my arm. “Ghost.”

  How had I not seen it? A gray form was standing in the tunnel, not so very far off. It was man-shaped, but two-dimensional and contorted, as if it had been cut from paper, then twisted. Its head was cocked toward us, as if drawn by our sound, our smell, our body heat—by whatever it was of life that the pale, thin shape had lost and still desired. As I stared at it, my foot slipped on a pebble; I jerked forward down the slope, just a little way; a few chunks of rock and sand fell onto the line. At once the ghost darted out of the tunnel, only to draw back when it got near the iron.

  I wished quite a lot of things right at that moment.

  I wished I hadn’t followed the skull’s voice.

  I wished I hadn’t encouraged Lockwood to bring me here.

  Most of all, I really wished we had our rapiers.

  The shape drifted nearer. Lockwood motioned with his head, and we stepped carefully back across the mess of iron and salt and rubble, down toward the old platform.

  Where Adelaide Winkman was waiting for us in the light of the flickering lantern. She held a long, narrow-bladed knife in her right hand.

  It wasn’t just her, by the way. She was backed up by a host of relic-men, who in their ragged, shambling hideousness looked like a crowd of the agitated dead, plus the implacable flunkies with their knives.

  But it was Adelaide your eyes were drawn to. It was that weird double adjustment that your brain had to make. First you saw what looked like a large blond housewife, pink of face and plucked of eyebrow, her motherly curves squeezed into a voluminous and flowery dress, yet standing among a crowd of criminals. Then, just when you were getting used to the strangeness of that, you realized she was the scariest of the lot. It was the blue-gray eyes, mostly; the pencil-thin slash of the lips, partly; plus bonus points for the swell of her forearms and her evident physical strength. She’d long sworn vengeance on us for having put her husband away. Perhaps this was why she was smiling.

  “Mr. Lockwood,” she said. “And Miss Carlyle. How surprising to see you at this market.”

  “Yes…I’m a great believer in late-night shopping,” Lockwood said. He scratched at his lopsided wig and eyed the knife. “I see that you aren’t.”

  “I’m a believer in giving intruders what they deserve,” Adelaide Winkman said. “What did you want here?”

  “We’ve been waiting to offer you some choice articles,” Lockwood indicated his satchel. “I must admit, I’m not wildly impressed by your service. I’ve a good mind to complain.”

  The woman’s eyes flickered toward the rubble, and the iron line. Down in the dark behind us, the shape moved. “Isn’t there someone in the tunnel to take care of you?”

  “Well, yes. Bit uncommunicative, I found. Doesn’t say much.”

  “No, but very attentive, from what I understand.” Adelaide Winkman gestured with the knife, and once again I found myself wishing ardently that we hadn’t left our rapiers behind. “Why not run away into the tunnel? He’ll see to you very quickly, I’m sure.”

  Lockwood nodded. “Or, possibly, we could stay here, talking with you.”

  Mrs. Winkman held up the knife and tilted it, so that its fine edges caught the light. “I wasn’t always in the antiques business, you know.”

  “Weren’t you?”

  “No. I used to be a butcher. This is a slaughterman’s filleting knife. I became quite proficient with it, a long time ago. Used it on all kinds of livestock—and other things.”

  “Fascinating.” Lockwood took off his wig and ruffled his hair distractedly. “I had some other jobs, too, when I was younger. Delivered papers, washed cars…Sometimes I used to kick big women in the backside. That wasn’t paid work; I did it just for laughs. I bet I haven’t lost that knack, either. We could talk about this all night.”

  She moved closer. “It’s the tunnel or the knife. I’ve a short fuse when it comes to snoops and interferers, as you’ll soon find.”

  Lockwood smiled. “Snoop? Interferer? I protest at that description.”

  “You think it inaccurate?”

  “Oh no; I’m both of those. But I’m an agent, most of all.”

  The woman shook her head. “An agent has his rapier. Tonight, you have nothing.” She signaled to the men beside her. “Climb up and seize them.”

  “Agents have other weapons, too,” Lockwood said. “Such as these.” He rummaged around inside his wig and brought out two magnesium flares; they’d been concealed there ever since he’d left Portland Row. He threw the first one at Adelaide Winkman’s feet. Even as it dropped, he was spinning, hurling the second into the tunnel, in the direction of the ghost. Then he pulled me to him. />
  For an instant we stood at the top of the mound, clutching at each other while the world exploded around us. Twin eruptions of fire on either side. Hot iron spattered against our clothes; we were buffeted first one way, then the other. Plumes of silver smoke billowed up at us, broke against our bodies, merged, and darkened into gray.

  It all took three or four seconds, tops. Then we pulled apart, turned, and skidded down the mound into the tunnel. Screams sounded from the platform, but the silence up ahead was absolute.

  The flare had done its work; the hovering shape was gone. Our boots rattled on dry gravel. The tunnel curled away. I scrabbled in my bag for a little flashlight. Every now and then I switched it on, watching the curve of the tracks, so we didn’t run into the walls. Almost at once I noticed how cold it had become since crossing the iron line. The tracks were sparkling with ice now; the black gravel glittered with it. Our breath was frost. The sound of our panting echoed off the walls.

  “Lockwood,” I said, “the chill.”

  “I feel it, but we’ve got to keep moving.”

  Behind us, around the bend in the tunnel, we could hear the sounds of reluctant pursuit—heavy boots stumbling over rubble, Adelaide Winkman’s voice urging them on.

  “They’ll have defenses against the ghosts,” I gasped. “They’ll drive us straight into—”

  I didn’t need to say it. We were getting close to the site of the train accident. You could feel the psychic pressure mounting, and sense presences very near.

  “Maybe there’ll be a side tunnel,” Lockwood muttered. “They had them sometimes. If we could branch off, get away from this…” He gave a cry. “Switch that flashlight off!”

  My light had picked out a cavity in the right-hand wall, a blank, flat recess where workers could shelter from the passing trains. But there was the suggestion too of white things jumbled among the dust and rubble. I switched off the flashlight. We kept on walking.

  “Were those bones?” I whispered.

  The answer hung in the dark ahead of us: a thin gray shape, a smear of shadow. Another Shade.

  “It looks inert,” I said. “Maybe it doesn’t see us. Hold on, no—it’s moving.”

  Lockwood cursed. “This isn’t good. If only we had something we could use”—he clicked his fingers—“for protection….Of course! Maybe we do.” He stopped dead.

  “What are you doing?” I hissed. “We need to move.” I could hear boots some way behind us, slipping on gravel.

  “Here. Stand close. Shine the flashlight on the ground.” He had torn his bag open, pulled out his spirit-cape. With a shake of the hand, he let it unfold. Purple-blue feathers shimmered on their silver network. Like a conjurer completing a trick, he whirled it up and around so that it fell over me, soft and downy. Then he raised its hood to cover my head.

  “When the medicine men went into the spirit houses to talk to their ancestors, they wrapped themselves in these,” he said. He was looking in my bag now, getting out the second cape, wrapping it around himself. “We should do the same.”

  “But we’re not going to talk to our ancestors!”

  “We don’t know what we’re going to do, Luce. But it certainly won’t do any harm. In fact—am I imagining it, or has the cold lessened already?”

  “I suppose it has, a bit. What’s the Shade doing?”

  “Nothing now. It’s just standing there. Don’t know if it’s the capes or not. But it’s not attacking, which is good. Come on, we’ve got to run. They’re coming.”

  Keeping our capes pulled tightly over us, we jogged down the tunnel, even as Winkman’s party came into view. There were shouts of excitement as they saw us, then a shrill cry of alarm—someone had noticed the ghost. The clatter of boots abruptly stopped; their whispered discussions resounded behind us as we hastened on.

  “Won’t delay them long,” Lockwood said. “But I can’t believe those adults are going to want to go much farther. Oh…Oh no.”

  All at once we had emerged into a higher, wider space.

  In some ways it resembled the areas of Vauxhall Station we had left behind. The rails curved around ahead of us beside the beginning of an open platform; steps led up to it from the trackside. Not far along, however, the platform was choked with dusty gray chunks of rubble, rising right up to the broken ceiling. There were no arches or doorways in the walls. The way was clearly blocked.

  And the track was blocked, too. By a train.

  Even in my flashlight beam, it was black. Whether it had been the gas explosion itself, or the fire that ran through the cars afterward, or even the corrosion from long years being buried underground, the surface of the metal was dark and pitted. From the angle where we stood, we could see the back of the first car, the door hanging open, the charred stubs of the first few seats.

  “It’s the one,” Lockwood breathed. “The train from the disaster.”

  With the capes still draped over us, we edged out of the tunnel to the platform steps. From here the damage wrought on the train was even more evident. Halfway along, where it was embedded in the rubble, the entire central section of the train’s roof had been crushed as if slammed by a giant fist. One wall had burst outward. Portions of metal curled up from the rubble on the platform like the ribs of some prehistoric beast. The train was silent, empty, its windows twisted in agonized contortions.

  I saw nothing, but the roar of flames echoed in my ears. When I stuck my hand out from under the spirit-cape, I gasped at the sudden supernatural cold.

  “Flashlight off, Luce,” Lockwood said.

  The recommendation when switching off a flashlight is always to keep your eyes closed for five full seconds—to give them a chance to get used to the dark. Just before I opened them, I heard Lockwood give a startled exclamation, and knew he was ahead of me. So I looked, too. There was a faint luminosity in the broken windows, and by this other-light it was possible to see that the seats of the ruined car were occupied after all.

  Silhouetted heads showed in the darkness, bowed and still; long hair hung lankly above ragged collars and thin, thin necks. Skin as white as cave fish gleamed, and rows of coal-black eyes. Though their physical bodies had been removed long ago, the passengers of the train remained inside.

  We stood there. Behind came sound of renewed pursuit, with Adelaide Winkman hallooing at the back.

  “No choice, Luce,” Lockwood said. “We’ll have to go through.”

  “Through the train? But Lockwood—”

  “It’s either that or Winkman. We’ve got to trust in the capes.”

  “But there are so many of them….”

  “We’ve got to trust the capes.”

  And do so right away, because now a flashlight beam speared us each in turn, and then another, and the tunnel mouth became a brutal blaze of merging lights and running forms.

  A shot rang out; a small hole appeared in the metalwork at the end of the car.

  I don’t remember how we climbed onto the train, who went first, or how we kept the capes around us as we scaled the rungs and squeezed through the narrow opening into the car. Fear blurred the experience—fear of what was behind and, mostly, fear of what sat in the seats around us now.

  Fire had passed through the train, at considerable heat. The interior was stripped to its metal skeleton; the chair upholstery was gone, and some of the thinner metal struts were warped. Everything was black, the surfaces burned and thick with charcoal dust. Nevertheless, those sitting in the haze of other-light retained vestiges of old-style clothing, traces of suits, hats, and fancy dresses that weren’t entirely scorched. They sat bolt upright on facing seats, on either side of the narrow central aisle. Close-up, you could see that their skin, like their clothes, persisted only in papery flakes and sections. How dry and dusty they were—except for their eyes. Those were as big and bright and moist as the eyes of toads, and all were fixed directly on us.

  Another bullet whined overhead and struck something deep inside the train. I was grateful for it. Without the
prompting, I believe we’d never have taken another step. Now we gathered the capes around us and started to shuffle forward—first me, Lockwood behind—past the glowing forms of men and women in their metal tomb, the rows of resentful dead.

  An old woman, bones beneath her shawl. A man with a bowler hat blending with his face. Two young men, heads propped against each other, merged and fused. I shut my ears to the eager whispering that rose around us.

  The floor was crispy where some synthetic layer had become a kind of toast. It felt crunchy underfoot. We moved very slowly, inching down the aisle. Eyes watched us. The occupants of the car didn’t move.

  As we progressed, we saw that not all the forms were burned and old. One or two had brighter auras and—I felt—jarringly modern clothes. A youth with an orange puffer jacket and dark blue jeans; a thin girl in a hoodie. They sat among the older ghosts like gold teeth in a rotting mouth. Newer passengers, too, Flo had said. She’d been right. It was not clear how they’d died.

  We came to the center of the train, where the side had been blown away and the roof crushed low. We had to bend almost in half in order to progress, and there were ghosts here, too, squashed into appalling forms. I did my utmost not to take in the details. We passed into the second half of the train.

  “Keep looking straight ahead,” Lockwood whispered. “Don’t meet their gaze.”

  I nodded. “They want us with them.”

  “And they’d have us, too, if it weren’t for the cloaks.”

  As if in proof, an old man sitting by the aisle raised a withered hand as I passed by. His curled finger reached to touch me—but jerked away as the cape drew near.

  At the far end of the train, there were fewer ghosts. We hastened on, made it to where the door hung open and the tunnel track stretched away. Legs watery with relief, we dropped through, stumbling on a few yards until we finally sank to our knees on the sharp gravel. Behind us was only silence.

  “Hope the Winkmans try to come after us,” Lockwood said, once we could speak. “If they do, I reckon tomorrow night there might be a couple more passengers sitting in that train.”