Lockwood & Co.: The Screaming Staircase

I awoke, some time in the middle of the night, with the room in darkness and all my body aching. I lay on my back – the least uncomfortable position – turned slightly towards the window. One arm was bent and resting on my pillow, the other stretched out on the duvet. My eyes were open, my mind alert. It almost seemed as if I hadn’t been asleep at all, but I must have been, for all around me was the heavy, velvet silence of the dead hours.

My cuts felt raw, my bruises tender; a whole day after the fall, my muscles were in the process of stiffening nicely. I knew I should probably get up and take some aspirin, but the packet was in the kitchen far below. It was too much effort to go and fetch it. I didn’t want to move. I was stiff, the bed was warm, and the air was much too cold.

I lay quiet, staring at the sloping attic ceiling. After a short time, a pale white glow showed beyond the window, dim at first, then flaring. That was from the ghost-lamp, regular as a lighthouse beam, shining way off on the corner of the street. Every three and a half minutes it pierced the night with its harsh white radiance for exactly thirty seconds, before switching off again. Officially this was designed to keep the roads safe, discourage Visitors from lingering. In reality – since few ghosts wandered the open roads – it was about reassurance, to make people think the authorities were doing something.

It worked in its way, I guess. It gave a little comfort. But when it shut off, it made the night seem blacker still.

While the light was on, I could see the details of my little room: the ceiling beams, the dark strips of the iron ghost-bars around the window; the flimsy wardrobe that was so shallow all my hangers had to go in at an angle. There was scarcely any room in it – I usually ended up chucking my clothes in a heap on the chair beside the door. I could see that heap out of the corner of my eye. It had risen mighty high. I’d have to sort it out tomorrow.

Tomorrow . . . Lockwood’s brave face notwithstanding, it didn’t look as if there were many tomorrows left to us. Four weeks . . . Four weeks to find an impossible amount of money. And it had been my insistence that had kept us in the house after the ghost-girl’s first attack. It had been me who drove us on to face her again, when it would have been so easy just to pack our things and leave.

My fault. I’d made the wrong decision, like at the Wythburn Mill. That time I’d not obeyed my instincts. This time I’d followed my instincts, and they’d been wrong. One way or another, when it came to a crisis, the end result was the same. I messed up, and disaster followed.

Out in the street, the ghost-lamp switched off; the room was dark again. Still I hadn’t moved. I was hoping I could con my mind into going back to sleep. But who was I kidding? I was too sore, too awake, too guilty – and also much too cold. I really needed another duvet from the airing cupboard in the bathroom below.

Too cold . . .

My heart gave a little tremor as I lay there in my bed.

It really was too cold.

And not the ordinary dank middle-of-November kind, either. It was the sort of cold that causes your breath to plume above you as you sleep. It was the sort that causes little crystal webs of ice to grow on the inside of your window-panes. It was a spreading, numbing, lung-scouring chill, and it was very well known to me.

I opened my eyes wide.

Darkness. I saw the faintest outline of the gable window and, through it, the orange-tinted London night. I listened – heard only the blood pounding in my ears. My heart beat against my chest so hard I guessed the quilt above was jumping in response. All my muscles tensed; I’d become super-aware, feeling every inch of contact on my skin – the brush of my cotton nightie, the warm, smooth pliancy of the sheet, the press of the plasters on my wounds. The hand that lay on the pillow twitched involuntarily; sweat broke out on my palm.

I’d seen nothing, heard nothing, but I knew.

I was not alone in the room.

A small part of my mind screamed at me to move. Throw off the heavy duvet, get to my feet. What I’d do then I didn’t know – but anything was better than just lying there, helpless, clenching my panic tight between my teeth.

Just get up. Throw open the door. Run downstairs . . . Do something!

I lay quite still.

A trickle of cold memory told me that making for the door might not be wise. Because I’d seen . . . What had I seen?

I waited. Waited for the light.

Sometimes three minutes takes a long, long time.

Down by the corner store, in the ghost-lamp’s hidden circuitry, the electronic switch clicked on. Behind the great round lenses, magnesium bulbs ignited, bathing the street in cool white light. High up at my attic window, the glow returned.

My eyes flicked in the direction of the door.

Yes. There. The chair and heap of clothes. They formed a black and shapeless blot – but it was higher than usual, far higher than it should have been. If I’d taken all the clothes I owned in the world and piled them there with my skirts and jumpers at the bottom and my socks teetering at the top, they wouldn’t have been anything like as tall, or thin, as the shape that stood just visible in the dark place by the door.

It didn’t move. It didn’t have to. I stared at it for thirty seconds, lying frozen in the bed. And I did feel frozen too. The ghost-lock had stolen up on me so subtly, so stealthily, that I’d been entirely unaware of it till now.

The light from the street went out.

I bit my lip, ignited my concentration, drove the feeling of helplessness from my mind. I wrenched my muscles into action, threw my bedclothes off me. I hurled myself sideways, rolled off, landed on the floor.

I lay quite still.

All my muscles throbbed with pain; the violent action hadn’t done my stitches any good. But I’d put the bed between me and the door, and the thing that stood beside it, which was good. It was all that counted now.

I was pressed low against the carpet, head resting on my hands. Ice-cold air bit the exposed skin of my feet and legs. The carpet was covered with a faint luminosity, a thin, white, swirling haze: ghost-fog, an occasional side-product of a manifestation.

I closed my eyes, tried to calm down, open my ears and listen.

But what’s easy when you’re fully clothed and kitted out, and have a gleaming rapier at your side, isn’t so simple when you’re in your pink-and-yellow nightie, sprawling on the floor. What’s fine when entering a haunted house on agency business doesn’t work so well when you’re in your very own bedroom, and have just seen something dead standing a metre or two away. So I picked up no supernatural sound at all. What I got were life’s essentials – my beating heart, the pumping of my lungs.

How the hell did it get in? There was iron on the window. How could it get so high?

Calm down! Think. Did I have any weapons in my room – anything I could use?

No. My work-belt was on the kitchen table, two full floors below. Two floors! It might as well have been in China. As might my rapier, lost back at Sheen Road, burned and melted in the fire. All our spares were in the basement, and that was three floors down! I was completely defenceless. There was probably plenty of kit scattered nearer in the house, but that was useless too, because the thing was hovering by the door.

Or was it? Air shifted. My skin crawled.

Lying on my stomach as I was, I couldn’t raise my head too far, not without supporting myself on my hands. All I could see was the nearest bed-leg, grey and granular, strands of white-green ghost-fog, and the wall. My back was to the open room. Something could be drifting up behind me that very moment, and I wouldn’t know anything about it.

Dark or not, I had to look right now. I steeled myself, prepared to rise.

The light in the street came on again. I straightened my arms, craned my head up, peeped back over the edge of the mattress . . .

And felt my heart nearly stop in fear. The shape was no longer by the door. No. It had moved up, slowly, silently, and was now hovering above the bed. It hung there in a stooped, investigative posture, plasm trailing on the mattress, its long dark fingers blindly probing the warm patch on the sheet where I’d just been lying.

If it had stretched those fingers to the side, it would have touched me.

I ducked back down.

In many ways the spare bed that I slept in was a manky affair. It was probably the very one Lockwood had snoozed in all those years ago as a little kid. Its joints were rickety, its mattress a wilderness of humps and springs. But one good thing about it: it lacked those built-in drawers you get with modern beds. So there was plenty of room beneath for crumpled hankies, books and dust; even for my little box of stuff from home.

And plenty of room, right then, for a swiftly moving girl.

I don’t know whether I crawled or rolled; I don’t know what I crushed or broke. I think I hit my head, and I must’ve torn the plasters off my forearms, because I later found them all bloodied on the carpet. One second, maybe two: that was all it took for me to shoot beneath the bed and out the other side.

As I emerged I was engulfed by something cold.

It was big and soft, and flopped on me from above. For a split second I thrashed about in utter terror – then realized it was just my duvet, slumping off the bed. I hurled it away, struggled to my feet. Behind, on the bed, came a flare of angry other-light. The patch of darkness sprang into focus: a pale, thin shape drifted after me with outstretched arms.

I leaped to the door, tore it open with a crash, and launched myself desperately down the stairs.

Onto the first-floor landing, colliding with the banisters, threads of cold air clutching at my neck. ‘Lockwood!’ I shouted. ‘George!’

Lockwood’s door was on the left. A little crack of light appeared beneath it. I scrabbled at the handle, staring over my shoulder at the pale glow extending swiftly down the stairs. The handle moved uselessly up and down; the door was locked, it wouldn’t open. I raised a desperate fist to hammer on the wood. Round the angle of the stairs came fingers, a shining, outstretched hand . . .

The door swung open; soft yellow lamplight almost blinded me.

Lockwood stood there, dressed in striped pyjamas and his long dark dressing gown.

‘Lucy?’

I pitched past him into the room. ‘A ghost! My room! It’s coming!’

His hair was a little rumpled, his bruised face tired and drawn, but otherwise he was as self-possessed as ever. He didn’t ask questions, but stepped backwards, keeping his face towards the black opening of the door. There was a chest of drawers beside him. Without looking, he opened the uppermost drawer with his good hand, reached purposefully inside. I felt a warm surge of relief. Thank goodness! It would be a salt bomb or a canister of iron filings maybe. Who cared? Anything would do.

He brought out a crumpled mess of wood and string and bits of metal. The metal pieces were shaped like animals and birds. Lockwood took hold of a wooden pole and began untangling the strings.

I stared at it. ‘That’s all you’ve got?’

‘My rapier’s downstairs.’

‘What the hell is it?’

‘Toy mobile. Had it when I was a kid. You hold it here, and the animals hang from this rotating wheel. Make a jolly sound. My favourite was the smiley giraffe.’

I looked towards the open door. ‘Well, that’s very nice, but—’

‘They’re made of iron, Lucy. So what happened? Your knees are bleeding.’

‘An apparition. Dark aura at first, but other-light’s kicking in now. Secondary effects of ghost-lock, fog and chill. It just followed me down the stairs.’

Lockwood seemed satisfied with the mobile. When he held it up and flexed his wrist, the little circle of dangling animals turned freely. ‘Turn off the bedside lamp, will you?’

I did so. We were plunged into darkness. No spectral glow showed on the landing.

‘Take it from me, it’s out there,’ I said.

‘OK. We’re making for the door. As you pass my bed, pick up a boot.’

We stole towards the door, with the mobile held in front of us, and peered cautiously out. There was no sign of the apparition on the landing or the stairs.

‘Got the boot?’

‘Yes.’

‘Chuck it at George’s door.’

With as much strength as I could muster I hurled it across the landing. It struck the door opposite with a dramatic thump. We waited, watching darkness.

‘It followed me down the stairs,’ I said.

‘I know. You said. Hurry it up, George . . .’

‘You’d have thought he’d be awake already, the noise I made.’

‘Well, he’s a heavy sleeper. In more ways than one. Ah, here he is.’

At last George had stumbled from his room, blinking and peering like a myopic vole. He wore an enormous pair of saggy blue pyjamas that were at least three sizes too big for him, and decorated with garish and ill-conceived spaceships and planes.

‘George,’ Lockwood called, ‘Lucy says she’s seen a Visitor, here in the house.’

‘I have seen it,’ I said tersely.

‘Got any iron to hand?’ Lockwood said. ‘We need to check this out.’

George rubbed his eyes; he fumbled at his belt-cord in a vain effort to keep his trousers from sagging dangerously low. ‘Not sure. Maybe. Hold on.’

He turned and trudged inside. There was a pause, followed by various rummaging sounds. A few moments later George returned, wearing a gaucho-style shoulder-belt bristling with magnesium flares, salt bombs and canisters of iron. An empty silver-glass box hung beneath it on a string. He carried a coil of chain, a long, ornate-handled rapier, and had a torch poking nonchalantly from the waist-band of his pyjamas. His feet were encased in enormous boots. Lockwood and I gazed at him.

‘What?’ George said. ‘Few little bits and pieces I keep by my bedside. Always good to be prepared. You can borrow a salt bomb if you want to, Lockwood.’

Lockwood hefted his tinkling mobile resignedly. ‘No, no, I’ll be all right with this.’

‘If you’re sure. So where’s this apparition, then?’

With a few terse words I filled them in. Lockwood gave the order. We began to climb the stairs.

To my surprise, the way was clear. Every few steps we stopped to look and listen, but with no result. The sense of fearsome cold had gone; the ghost-fog too had faded, and I heard nothing with my inner ear. Lockwood and George drew a blank as well. The only obvious peril was provided by George’s pyjama bottoms, which with the weight of his equipment were in perpetual danger of falling down.

We rounded the corner at last. George plucked the torch from his pyjamas and flashed it around my room. Everything was dark and quiet. My rumpled duvet lay where I’d cast it, beside my disarranged bed. The clothes from my chair, which I must have knocked over in my flight, lay scattered on the floor.

‘Nothing here,’ George said. ‘Are you sure about this, Lucy?’

‘Of course I am,’ I snapped. I crossed swiftly to the window, looked down onto the distant street. ‘Though I admit I can’t feel it now.’

Lockwood was kneeling, squinting under the bed. ‘From what you say, it must’ve been a weak one – slow-moving, only faintly aware of its surroundings, otherwise it would have caught you, surely. Maybe it’s used up its energy, gone back into its Source.’

‘Which would be what, precisely?’ George said. ‘Where’s this new Source that’s just mysteriously sprung from nowhere in Lucy’s room? The house is well-defended. Nothing can get in.’ He peered into my wardrobe, rapier at the ready. ‘Well, there’s nothing in here but some charming tops and skirts and . . . Ooh, Lucy – I’ve never seen you wearing that.’

I slammed the door closed, narrowly missing his podgy hand. ‘I tell you, I saw a ghost, George. You think I’m going blind?’

‘No, I just think you’re deluded.’

‘Now look—’

‘This makes no sense at all,’ Lockwood interrupted, ‘unless Lucy’s brought one of our psychic artefacts up here. You haven’t, have you, Luce? You haven’t brought that pirate’s hand up for a closer inspection, for instance, and forgotten to put it back in its case?’

I gave a little cry of anger. ‘Don’t be stupid. Of course I haven’t. I wouldn’t dream of taking anything that wasn’t properly . . . that wasn’t properly secured . . . Oh.’

‘Well, George is always moving that jar of his about . . .’ Lockwood noticed my expression. ‘Lucy?’

‘Oh. Oh no.’

‘What is it? Have you taken something?’

I gazed at him. ‘Yes,’ I said in a very small voice. ‘Yes, I think I have.’

George and Lockwood both turned towards me, their backs to the wardrobe and the mess of scattered clothes. As they began to speak, pale radiance flared across the wall. A figure rose from the floor behind them. I saw thin, thin arms and legs, a dress with orange sunflowers, long blonde tresses dissolving into whirling snakes of mist, a contorted face of cold, hard rage . . . I gave a cry. Both boys wheeled round, just as sharp-nailed fingers reached out for their necks. George swung his sword, embedded it in the corner of my wardrobe. Lockwood thrust frantically with the mobile. There was an impact pulse as the iron struck; the ghost-girl vanished. A wave of cold air blasted across the room, pressing my nightie tight against my legs.

The attic room was dark once more.

Somebody coughed. George tugged at the rapier hilt, trying to get it free.

‘Lucy . . .’ Lockwood’s voice was dangerously quiet. ‘Didn’t that look like—’

‘Yes. It was. I’m so, so sorry.’

George gave a heave; the blade came free. He stepped awkwardly to the side and, as he did so, there was a sharp crack beneath his boot. He frowned, bent down, picked up something from amongst the scattered clothes beside the chair. ‘Ow!’ he said. ‘It’s freezing!’

Lockwood took the torch and trained the light upon the object dangling from George’s fingers. A pendant, slightly squashed, glinting as it spun on a delicate golden chain.

Lockwood and George stared at it. They stared at me. George unhooked the silver-glass box from his belt and stowed the necklace inside. He shut it with a crisp and final click.

Slowly Lockwood raised the torch until I was transfixed by a silent, accusatory beam of light.

‘Er, yes,’ I said. ‘The girl’s necklace . . . Um, you know, I was going to mention that to you.’ Standing there in my rumpled nightie, in my bandaged, dishevelled state, I did my best to smile at them as prettily as I could.