Lockwood (24 page)

‘Thank you,’ I said, trying to keep my voice calm. I couldn’t remember when I’d been so angry. ‘I’m quite happy where I am.’

‘Well, think about it,’ Kipps said. ‘The offer’s open.’

‘And I’ll have you know we’re not without influence at your organization already,’ I added, while closing the door. ‘Penelope Fittes has invited us to your Anniversary Party in a couple of days. Perhaps we’ll see you there –
if
you’ve been invited. Good evening.’

I shut the door in his face and stood against it, breathing deeply, trying to calm down. I walked up the hall, boots crunching through salt, to the kitchen. Lockwood and George were surveying the forgotten debris from our supper. It seemed a long while ago.

‘All right, Luce?’ George said.

‘Yeah. I just remembered that Fittes party we were invited to. We still going to that?’

Lockwood nodded. ‘Of course. We’ll have this case done by then, I hope. We’ve been discussing Barnes. He wants this mirror
so
badly. He knows what it does, or something important about it, mark my words.’

‘Well, we know a bit too, now,’ George said. ‘What did Carver say? “You see such things, such terrible things.” He was talking about looking in the mirror. Take it from me.’

Lockwood picked up a dried sandwich, inspected it, and returned it to the plate. ‘If it
is
a mirror,’ he said. ‘Carver called it a “bone glass”. If it’s made from bones Bickerstaff pinched from the graveyards, then it presumably contains a Visitor – that’s what gives it psychic power. Maybe that’s what you see when you look deeply into it? The ghost, somehow.’

‘Or
ghosts
,’ I said. ‘
Seven from it, not one
.’

‘Well, I saw
something
in it,’ George said softly. ‘It was terrible, but I wanted to see more . . .’ He stared towards the window.

‘Whatever it is,’ I said, ‘it’s so bad you die of fright if you see it properly. Like that relic-man Neddles did. I reckon Bickerstaff looked into it too. Maybe what he saw sent him mad and made him shoot himself.’

Lockwood shrugged. ‘Could be.’

‘
No. That wasn’t the way it happened
.’

Lockwood stretched. ‘We should get on and seal the hallway. It’ll be dawn soon.’ He stared at me. I’d jerked suddenly upright. My heart was pounding, my skin felt like ice. I was looking all around. ‘Lucy?’

‘I thought I heard something. A voice . . .’

‘Not Carver, surely. They doused the place well.’

I glanced towards the hallway. ‘Don’t know. It’s possible . . .’

‘So we’ve got a ghost free in our house now?’ George said. ‘Fantastic. What a terrific night.’

‘Well, we’ll fix him.’ Lockwood went to the shelf behind the door; he found a pack of iron filings and tore it open. George did the same. But I stood quite still, frozen in disbelief. A whispering voice had just spoken in my ear.

‘
Bickerstaff? No. That wasn’t the way it happened at all.
’

I ran my tongue over dry lips. ‘How can you possibly know that?’ I said.

Moving like a sleepwalker, I pushed between Lockwood and George, rounded the kitchen table and crossed over to the oven. I put my hand on its door.

Lockwood spoke to me, his voice sharp and questioning. I didn’t answer, just flung the oven door open. A green glow spilled out into the room. The ghost-jar gleamed in the shadows, the face a hazy, malevolent mask deep within the murk. It was motionless, watching me. The eyes were narrow slits.

‘How can you say that?’ I said again. ‘How can you know?’

I heard its spectral laughter bubbling in my mind.

‘
Very simple. I was there
.’

Let’s just freeze-frame that scene a moment: me, standing by the oven, staring at the jar. The ghost grinning back at me. Lockwood staring, George staring. Four sets of goggle-eyes, four mouths hanging open. OK, the face in the jar is still the most disgusting, but for a second it was a close-run thing. It was also precisely what I’d been hoping for all those long, frustrating months: my moment of vindication.

‘It’s talking!’ I gasped. ‘I can hear it! It’s just been talking now!’

‘Right now?’ This was George or Lockwood – one of them, both of them, I couldn’t tell. They clustered at my side.

‘Not just that! It claims it knows about Bickerstaff. It says it was there! That it knows how he died!’

‘It says
what
?’ Lockwood’s face was pale and intense; his eyes glittered. He brushed past me, bent beside the oven. The greenish radiance fell upon him as he stared into the jar. The face glared hideously back. ‘No. That’s impossible . . .’

‘
You’re not the only one to have secrets
,’ the ghost said.

Lockwood looked at me. ‘Did it speak? I couldn’t hear the words, but I felt . . . something. A connection of some kind. My skin just crawled. What did it say to you?’

I cleared my throat. ‘It said . . . it said you’re not the only one to have secrets. Sorry.’

He stared at me; for a moment I thought he was going to get angry. Instead he sprang upright with sudden energy. ‘Let’s get it out onto the table,’ he said. ‘Quick, give me a hand here, George.’

Together they wrestled it free. As George took hold of the jar, the ghost’s face adopted a series of repulsive grimaces, each more menacing than the last.

‘
Torturer . . .
’ it whispered. ‘
I’ll suck the life from your bones.
’

‘Something else?’ Again Lockwood had caught the psychic disturbance, but none of the details.

‘It . . . well, it doesn’t like George, basically.’

‘And who can blame it? Clear a place, Luce – that’s it, shove the plates aside. Right, George, set it down there. That’s fine.’

We stood back, looked at the ghost-jar. The plasm foamed this way and that, a violent green storm contained within the walls of glass. And the face was riding upon it, sliding up and down, rotating, sometimes spinning upside-down, but always fixing us with its horrid gaze. Its eyes were notches in the smoke, its nose a billowing spout. The lips were horizontal twists of rushing substance that split, drew apart, re-joined. They moved continuously. I heard the spectral laughter again, muffled and distorted, as if the sound came from deep underwater and I was helplessly dropping down to join it. My stomach turned.

‘You think we can talk to it?’ Lockwood said. ‘Ask it questions?’

I took a deep breath. ‘I don’t know. It’s never done anything like this before.’

‘We’ve
got
to try.’ George’s body was rigid with excitement; he bent close to the glass, blinking through his spectacles at the face, which in response turned its eyeballs inside out, perhaps as a gesture of disdain. ‘Lucy,’ he said. ‘Do you know how remarkable you are? You’re the first person since Marissa Fittes to categorically discover a Type Three. This is sensational. We
have
to communicate with it. Who knows what we might learn – about the secrets of Death, about the Other Side . . .’

‘And about Bickerstaff too,’ I said. ‘Assuming it’s not lying.’

Lockwood nodded. ‘Which it almost certainly is.’

The face in the jar gaped in mock outrage. In my ear came a sibilant whisper: ‘
Oh, that’s rich, coming from you
.’

‘Lucy?’ Again Lockwood sensed the contact. George hadn’t felt a thing.

‘It said: “That’s rich coming from you.”’ I beckoned to them both. ‘Listen, can I have a word?’

We retreated to the other side of the room, out of earshot of the jar.

‘If we’re going to talk to it we have to be on our guard,’ I breathed. ‘No getting snippy with each other. It’ll try to cause trouble. I know it will. It’ll be rude to you both, like it was before. You’ll hear the words from
my
mouth, but remember I’m not the one insulting you.’

Lockwood nodded. ‘Fine. We’ll be careful.’

‘Like if it calls George “fat” again.’

‘Right.’

‘Or Specky Four-Eyes or something.’

‘OK, OK.’ George scowled. ‘Thank you. We get the point.’

‘Just don’t get mad at me. Are we ready, then? Let’s go.’

The room was dark – the lamps on the worktops turned down low, the blinds closed fast against the coming dawn. The kitchen units rose like columns in the shadows, and through the air came drifting scents of the night’s horror: iron, salt, the taint of blood. Green light spilled across the room. At its centre, on the kitchen table, the ghost-jar sat like a terrible idol on an altar, glowing with spectral force. Swirling ichor pulsed and flowed within it, but the hideous face with its sightless eyes hung motionless beneath the glass.

George had found some salt-and-vinegar crisps and tossed us each a packet. We assembled ourselves in chairs around the table.

Lockwood was calm, impassive, hands quietly folded in his lap. He surveyed the ghost-jar with a cool and sceptical gaze. George carried his notebook; he sat forward, almost doubled over in his eagerness. Me? As usual, I tried to follow Lockwood’s lead, but it was tough. My heart was going too fast.

What had Marissa Fittes recommended in such circumstances? Be polite. Be calm. Be wary. Spirits were deceitful, dangerous and guileful, and they
did not have our interests at heart
. I could vouch for that. I cast a sidelong look at Lockwood. The last time this ghost had spoken, it had succeeded in driving all kinds of silly doubts into my mind. And now we were planning to talk to it together? It suddenly struck me what a perilous thing this was to do.

Marissa Fittes had also warned that prolonged communication with Visitors might drive a person mad.

‘Hello, spirit,’ I said.

The eyes opened. The ghost in the jar gazed out at me.

‘Do you wish to speak to us?’

‘
Aren’t we polite?
’ the voice whispered. ‘
What, not planning to roast me at a hundred degrees today?
’

I repeated this word for word. ‘One hundred and fifty degrees, actually,’ George said cheerfully. He was scribbling the response down.

The ghost’s eyes flicked in his direction; to my ears came a sound like a hungry champing of teeth.

‘On behalf of Lockwood and Company,’ Lockwood said, ‘I humbly apologize for such discourtesy and welcome the opportunity to talk with a Visitor from the Other Side. Say that to it, Luce.’

I knew perfectly well that the ghost could hear Lockwood just as well as me. It was the open valve in the jar’s bung that did it: somehow, sound could pass right through. Still, I was the official intermediary. I opened my mouth to speak – but before I could do so, the ghost gave its response. It was brief, pungent, and to the point.

I passed it on.

Lockwood started. ‘Charming! Hold on – was that from you or the ghost?’

‘The ghost, of course.’

George whistled. ‘I’m not sure I should write
that
down.’

‘There’s no use being polite,’ I said. ‘Trust me. It’s a foul thing and there’s no point pretending otherwise. So you knew Bickerstaff, did you?’ I said to the jar. ‘Why should we believe you?’

‘
Yes
,’ the whisper came. ‘
I knew him
.’

‘He says he knew him. How? You were his friend?’

‘
He was my master
.’

‘He was his master.’

‘
Like Lockwood is yours.
’

‘Like . . .’ I halted. ‘Well, that’s not worth reporting, either.’

‘Come on, Luce,’ Lockwood said. ‘Spit it out.’

George’s pencil was hovering. ‘Yeah, got to record it all.’

‘Like Lockwood is my master. Happy now? I mean, this skull’s an idiot.’ I scowled over at them; Lockwood was scratching his nose as if he hadn’t heard, but George was grinning as he wrote. ‘George,’ I said tartly, ‘just remind me. What were the names of Bickerstaff’s companions? Simon Wilberforce and . . .’

‘Dulac. Mary Dulac.’

‘Spirit! Are you Mary Dulac? Or Simon Wilberforce? What is your name?’

A sudden burst of psychic energy made me jerk back in my chair. The plasm frothed; green light coursed around the room. The mouth contorted.

‘
You think I might be a girl?
’ the voice spat. ‘
What a cheek. No! I’m neither of those fools
.’