Lockwood & Co. Book Three: The Hollow Boy (10 page)

Fatigue was an issue, too. George was ambushed by a Lurker he hadn’t spotted near Whitechapel Lock, and he only escaped by jumping headfirst into the canal. I fell asleep during a stakeout
in a bakery and totally missed a charred ghost emerging from the oven. The sudden smell of roasted meat woke me just as it was reaching for my face with blackened fingers, much to the amusement of
the whispering skull—which had been watching from its jar but hadn’t said anything.

Our narrow escapes bothered Lockwood, who saw it as yet further proof that we were undermanned and overworked. No doubt he was right, but I was more interested in the freedom that my solitary
expeditions gave me. I was waiting to make a proper psychic connection with a ghost—and it wasn’t long before I got precisely that opportunity.

My appointment was with a family in apartment number 21 (South Block), Bermuda Court, Whitechapel. It was the housing project case, the one I’d been stuck with because of the dibs rule. It
had been postponed twice due to client illness, and I nearly couldn’t take it on the third time, either, because I’d already booked train tickets to go back home to see my family. I
hadn’t set eyes on my mother or sisters since coming to London eighteen months before. Though I viewed the trip with mixed feelings, Lockwood had given me a week off, and I wasn’t going
to rearrange
that
for a job that involved climbing lots of stairs.

I agreed to pop in the night before I left. Lockwood and George were busy with other cases, so I took the skull along. It provided company, of a disagreeable, unsavory sort. If nothing else, its
jabbering helped keep the silences at bay.

Bermuda Court proved to be one of those big concrete housing projects they’d built after World War II. It had four blocks of apartments arranged around a grassy yard,
each with external stairs and walkways running around the sides. The walkways acted as protection against the weather but also cast the doors and windows of the flats into perpetual shadow. The
surface of the concrete was rough and ugly, dark with rain.

As I’d predicted, the elevators were out. Apartment 21 was only on the fifth floor, but I was out of breath when I arrived. My backpack, weighed down by a certain jar, was killing me.

The light was almost gone. I took a rasping breath and rang the bell.

“Man, you’re unfit,”
the skull said in my ear.

“Shut up. I’m in good shape.”

“You’re wheezing like an asthmatic sloth. It would help to lose a little weight. Like that bit on your hips Lockwood’s always going on about.”

“What? He doesn’t—”

But at that moment the clients answered the door.

There was a mother, gaunt and graying; a large, silent, slope-shouldered father; and three small kids, all under six, living together in a unit with five rooms and a narrow hall. Until recently
there’d been a sixth person, too: the kids’ grandfather. But he’d died.

Slightly to my surprise, the family didn’t usher me into the living room, which is where such awkward conversations usually take place. Instead, they led me into a tiny kitchen at the end
of the hall. Everyone crowded in; I was pushed so tight against the stove, I twice turned a dial with my bottom while I heard their story.

The mother apologized for the uncomfortable surroundings. They
did
have a living room, she said, but no one went in it after dark. Why? Because the grandfather’s ghost was there.
The children had seen him, every night since he’d died, still sitting in his favorite chair. What did he do? Nothing, just sat there. And beforehand, when he was alive? Mostly sat in that
same chair, while he wasted away from the sickness he’d refused to get treated. He’d been skin and bones at the end. So light and papery, you’d think a draft would have carried
him away.

Did they know why he’d returned? No. Could they guess what he wanted? No. And what had he been like, when alive? At
that
there was a lot of shuffling of feet. The uncomfortable
silence told me much. He was a difficult man, the father said, not generous with his money. He was tight and grasping, the mother added. Would have sold us to the devil, if the devil offered cash.
Sad to say, but it was true: they were glad he was gone.

But he
wasn’t
gone, of course. Or, if he had left, he’d now come back.

They made me tea, and I drank it standing under the single bright light of the kitchen, with the children’s eyes, as wide and green as those of cats, staring up at me. At last I set the
cup down in the sink, and there was a sort of collective sighing that the moment had now come. With that they showed me to the living room. I stepped through onto the worn carpet and closed the
door behind me.

It was a rectangular room, not large, centered on an electric fireplace. A metal guard ran around the hearth to keep the kids away. I did not switch on the light. A wide window looked out over
the grassy wasteland behind the estate. There were lights on in the other units, and an old neon streetlight—left over from the times when ordinary people went out at night—on the path
below. Its glow gave shape to my surroundings.

The furniture was of the kind that had been fashionable a couple of decades back. Hard, high-backed chairs with jutting armrests and spindly wooden legs; a low, stiff-sided sofa; side tables; a
plain glass cabinet set in a corner. A deep-pile rug had been arranged before the fire. Nothing quite matched. I saw kids’ games stacked in another corner and sensed they’d tried to
tidy up for me.

It was chilly in the room—but not
ghost
-chilly. Not yet. I checked the thermometer on my belt. Fifty-three degrees. I listened but caught only a noise like distant static. I
carried my bag over to the sofa below the window and set it quietly on the floor.

The jar, when I pulled it out, was glowing its palest green. The face rotated slowly, eyes glinting in the plasm.

“Cramped little hovel,”
the voice whispered.
“Won’t fit many ghosts in here.”

My fingers floated over the lever in the jar’s lid that would cut off communication. “If you’ve nothing useful to say…”

“Oh, I’m not knocking it. Hell of a lot tidier than
your
place, that’s for sure.”

“They say this is where it happens.”

“And they’re right. Someone died in here. The air’s stained with it.”

“You sense anything else, you let me know.” I set the jar down on a side table.

Then I turned to face the high-backed chair opposite.

I already knew it was the one. You could guess from its domineering position, the way it sat closest to the TV in the corner, closest to the fireplace; all the other seats were less conveniently
situated. Then there was the walking stick propped against the wall in the shadows beyond; the little side table marked with mug rings. The chair itself was decorated with some god-awful flowery
pattern. The fabric had been worn white on the armrests, and repaired with leather patches near the ends. There was a dirty bald mark halfway up the back, too. The sponge of the seat cushion had
been compressed thin with long usage; it was almost as if someone sat there still.

I knew what I
should
do. Agency practice was clear. I should get out the chains, or, failing that, a sensible amount of filings, and carefully encircle the chair. I should set up
lavender crosses as a secondary barrier, and place myself at a safe distance from the likely manifesting point. George would certainly have done all that. Even Lockwood, always more cavalier, would
have whipped up a chain circle in double-quick time.

I did none of those things. I went as far as loosening the strap of my rapier and opening my bag, so that my tools were near at hand. Then I sat back on the sofa in the orange-pink darkness,
crossed my ankles, and waited.

I wanted to test my Talent.

“Naughty,”
the skull said in my mind.
“Does Lockwood know you’re doing this?”

I didn’t reply; after a few more gibes, the ghost fell silent. Beyond the door came muffled noises—kids being told to shush, clinks of crockery; sounds of an evening meal being made.
A smell of toast permeated the air. The family was
so
close by. In theory I was endangering them by not putting out defenses. The
Fittes Manual
was very clear on this. DEPRAC
rules expressly forbade contact without adequate protection. In their eyes, I was committing a crime.

Outside the window the night grew black. The clients ate their meal; the children were ushered into one of the bedrooms. Toilets flushed. At the sink, someone was doing the washing up. I sat
quietly in the dark, waiting for the show.

And it began.

Slowly, insensibly, a malign atmosphere began to invade the room. I heard the change in the quality of my breathing; I was taking quicker, shorter gulps of air. The hairs on my arms prickled
with disquiet. Doubt rose in me; also anxiety and a strong feeling of self-loathing. I took some gum, chewed steadily, made the usual adjustments to counteract the malaise and creeping fear. The
temperature dropped; the reading on my belt thermometer showed fifty degrees, then forty-eight. The quality of the light altered; the neon glow became fuzzier, as if struggling through
molasses.

“Something’s coming,”
the skull said.

I chewed and waited. I watched the empty armchair.

At nine forty-six precisely (I checked my watch), it was empty no longer. A faint outline became visible in the center of the chair. It was very weak, and scuffed and smudged in the middle, like
a pencil drawing poorly erased. You could see what it was, though: the shrunken figure of an old man, sitting there. He exactly fitted the contours of the worn sponge seat; the outline of the head
rested precisely over the grubby bald spot on the back. The apparition remained transparent, and I could still see every detail of the appalling flowery pattern of the cushions behind, but steadily
its features grew more certain. It was a very small, shriveled man, bald except for a few long white hairs straggling behind his ears. I guessed he had once been fat, round-faced even; now the
flesh on his cheeks had fallen in, leaving the skin hanging empty. His limbs, too, had wasted away; the fabric of his sleeves and trousers hung horribly flat. One bony hand lay cupped amid the
folds and looseness of his old man’s lap. The other curled at the end of the armrest like a spider.

He’d been a wicked thing, that was for sure. Everything about him projected a discomforting malice. The eyes glittered like black marbles; they were staring fixedly at me, and there was
the faintest of smiles on the thin lips. My every instinct told me to defend myself: bring out the rapier, lob a salt-bomb or a canister of iron—do
something
to get the presence away
from me. But it didn’t move, and neither did I. We sat in our seats and stared at each other across the thick fur rug and the gulf that separates the living from the dead.

I had my hands folded in my lap. I cleared my throat. “Well,” I said finally, “what is it that you want?”

No sound, no reply. The shape sat there, eyes shining in the dark.

Over on the side table, the skull in the jar remained silent and shrouded too; only the faintest green haze behind the glass showed that it was present, watching.

Without the protection of iron chains, the full chill of the apparition tore into me. The temperature at my belt was down to forty-four degrees; it would be colder still near the chair. But the
degree
of cold isn’t really the point; it’s where it comes from. Ghost chill is a fierce, dry cold; you can feel it sucking the life and energy from your bones. I bore it. I
didn’t move at all, but just stared at the old man.

“If you have a purpose,” I said, “you might as well tell it to me.”

Just the silence and the glittering of the eyes, like starlight in the dark.

No real surprise. It wasn’t a Type Three, scarcely even a Type Two; it couldn’t speak, couldn’t communicate in any obvious way.

Even so…

“No one else is going to listen,” I said. “Better take this chance while you can.”

I opened my mind, tried to empty it of sensation, see if I detected anything new. Even an echoing mess of emotion, like I’d gotten from the Changer at Lavender Lodge, might be enough to
set me on the right track….

From the chair came a scratchy rustling of fabric, a
pick-pick-pick
ing sound, like cloth being teased and pulled by the tip of someone’s nail. I heard shallow breathing, a person
muttering under their breath. My skin crawled. I couldn’t take my eyes off the smiling apparition in the chair. The sounds came again—muffled, but very close.

“Is that it?” I asked. “Is that what you’re telling me?”

A crash in the corner—I sprang up in fright, scrabbling for my rapier. The ghost was gone. The chair was empty; the squashed seat, the worn patch, everything exactly as before. Except for
the walking stick, which had toppled over, cracking against the fireplace.

I checked the time—then rechecked it with something like alarm.
Ten twenty?
That was weird: according to the watch, the apparition had been present for more than half an hour, yet
it had felt like scarcely a minute to me….

“Did you get it?”
The skull’s voice jerked me back into action. The face in the jar had re-emerged, nostrils flaring smugly.
“Bet you didn’t. I did. I
know, and I’m not telling.”

“What is it with you?” I said. “You’re like a toddler. Yes, of course I got it.”

I rose, crossed to the door, and switched on the light, ignoring shrill protests from the jar. The evil atmosphere had vanished from the room. Under the ceiling light, the outdated shabbiness of
the furniture was revealed in all its muted oranges and browns. I looked at the stack of kids’ games: Scrabble, Monopoly, and the Rotwell Agency’s Ghost Hunter—that one where you
have to remove the plastic bones and bits of ectoplasm without setting off the buzzer. Battered boxes, secondhand games. The house of an ordinary family without much cash.