The Hollow Boy

  “I’m not a trainee,” I said. “On the contrary, I was thinking very clearly.”

  “You thought you were,” George said crisply. “Obviously, you weren’t. There’s a theory that some ghosts feed off psychic atmosphere. They pick up on emotions and play on it. Were you feeling particularly abandoned or needy up there?”

  “No, of course not,” I scowled. “Not at all.” I didn’t look at him.

  “Just that it sounds as if a sense of neediness and abandonment was what drove Robert Cooke mad,” George went on. “I got the full story in the end, in a penny dreadful pamphlet called Mysteries of London. I found it quite quickly in the other Archives building, but I was trapped there when DEPRAC cordoned off the street. That’s why I was so late. There was a riot going on, and then someone saw a Limbless, or said they did, and it was hours before I could leave the building. But the penny dreadful account of the Horror of Hanover Square couldn’t have been clearer. This Cooke—he was sixteen, by the way—had been more or less abandoned by his father, who was always abroad, but had a very close bond with his mother. She spoiled him rotten. Then she died, and he was looked after by an old nurse, who spoiled him even worse. Then she died, too, and was replaced by a manservant—this so-called Little Tom. He was a big man, a bit slow, and apparently more or less mute. The kid resented him, and began to maltreat him—working himself up into fits of rage when Little Tom forgot stuff, or didn’t hop to quickly enough. Anyway, one night the kid goes berserk—the servant had lost his favorite boots or something. He goes down to the kitchen, begins laying into Tom, snatches up a knife, and stabs him. There’s blood everywhere, and Tom’s badly hurt, but he’s strong and he’s angry. He chases Robert Cooke up through the house to the attic landing, where they tussle again. Tom falls over the banister. Cooke’s arrested, sitting there in a lather of gore.” George stretched back in his chair, sniffing discreetly at an armpit as he did so. “That’s how it happened, anyway. Boy, do I need a bath.”

  “That shawl you found,” Holly Munro said. “His mother’s?”

  “I should think so. Something that was precious to him. Who knows what weird mix of neediness and resentment turned him mad?”

  I shrugged. “Clearly one very confused individual.”

  “Yeah,” George said. “There’s a lot of it about.” He looked at me.

  “Well, now,” Holly Munro said heartily, “Lockwood will be getting impatient. I’ll take him his breakfast.”

  “I’ll go if you want,” George said. “You must be tired, Holly.”

  I stood abruptly. “No,” I said. “I’ll do it.” Without waiting, I gathered up the tray.

  Of all the rooms in a house, the bedroom is supposed to give the clearest insight into the personality of whoever inhabits it. That theory probably worked with my room (scattered clothes and sketch pads), and certainly worked with George’s, providing you could wade deep enough in among the library books, manuscripts, crumpled clothes, and weapons to see. Lockwood’s was trickier. There was a row of old Fittes Almanacs set out on a dresser; there was an armoire, with his suits and shirts all neatly put away. On the wall a few paintings of far-off lands—rivers winding through rain forest; volcanoes rising above tree-lined hills—suggested the travels of his parents. I guessed it had once been their room. But there were no photographs of them, or of his sister, Jessica, and the striped wallpaper and gold-green curtains were, in their genteelly blank way, as uninformative about Lockwood as if it had been a whitewashed box. He might have slept there, but I always felt he didn’t really inhabit the room in any tangible sense.

  The curtains were drawn; a bedside light was on. Lockwood lay in bed, resting back against two striped pillows, thin hands folded on the counterpane. A neatly wound white bandage, tilted like a wonky turban, obscured the crown of his head; in one place a dark stain showed where his cut had bled; a spray of dark hair tufted out from under it on the other side. He was pale and thin—nothing new there—and his eyes were bright. He watched me as I set the tray down.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Don’t worry about it. You apologized before.”

  “I wasn’t sure you’d remember.”

  “I don’t remember everything. I remember waking with my head in someone’s lap.” He grinned. “Don’t know if it was yours or Holly’s.”

  “It was George’s, actually.”

  “Oh, was it?” He cleared his throat and shuffled hurriedly up into a sitting position. “Right…Fine.”

  “I’ve been told to tell you to stay in bed. George is most insistent about it.”

  “He’s deputy today, is he? I’m okay. Holly took care of my bump. Look how neatly she did it. She has a certification in first aid, you know.”

  “Of course she has.” I passed him the tray.

  He did stuff with jam and toast. I stared off at the nearest picture. It showed a carved block of masonry, overgrown by jungle, almost lost in the shadow of the trees.

  “A Mayan spirit gate, somewhere in the Yucatán peninsula.” Lockwood said without looking up. “My parents went there, apparently….” He crunched on his toast. “So,” he said, “it’s finally happened. I warned you it would, but you wouldn’t listen. You forgot all your agent training, and you followed your little obsession. And you risked all our lives.”

  I took a deep breath. Now that the moment had come to try to explain, I found I didn’t have the words. “I know it’s bad. But I talked to it, Lockwood. And it talked back.”

  “And promptly tried to kill you. Big deal.”

  “So it was the wrong ghost, but…”

  “Wrong ghost?” He laughed at me then, softly, but without mirth. “Lucy, there will never be a right ghost. Never! And you will not do anything like that ever again. Is that clear?”

  Frustration flexed inside me. “I’m the only one who can do this, Lockwood. Doesn’t that count for anything? I know the way it turned out was stupid, and yes, this is all my fault. But Lockwood, listen: you should’ve felt the connection—”

  “Lucy,” he interrupted, “you’re not listening to me. I’ll ask again: Is that clear?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Ye-es.”

  “I hope so,” Lockwood said, “or next time I’ll leave you behind.”

  “And what? Bring Holly Munro along instead?”

  He went all pale and silent then. “It’s up to me who I take and don’t take,” he said slowly, “but I sure as hell won’t bring anyone who jeopardizes the safety of other agents. If you want to spend the rest of the winter dealing with Cold Maidens and Stone Knockers on your own, just say the word.” He stared down at his plate. “Holly’s efficient, she’s helpful, she keeps this place clean. Oh, and yes, she saved your life. What precisely do you have against her, anyway?”

  I shrugged. “She’s irritating. She just gets in the way.”

  Lockwood nodded. “I see. Yeah, Holly really got in your way with her frantic lifesaving leap last night. I didn’t save you. George would have been too slow. But so what if she grabbed you? She’s irritating.” He threw the sheets aside. “Tell you what, I’ll go down now and tell her to let you drop next time.”

  “Get back in bed!” The cord inside my stomach knotted tighter. My nerves jangled, my heart pounded. “I know full well what I owe her! I know how thoroughly perfect she is!”

  Lockwood slapped his hand on the bedside cabinet. “So what’s the problem?!”

  “Nothing’s the problem!”

  “So…”

  “So why did Rotwell’s let her go?”

  He waved his arms about his head. “What?”

  “Holly! If she’s so great, why did Rotwell’s let her go? You told me, when she first arrived, that she’d been ‘let go’ by Rotwell’s. I’m just interested. I’d like to know why.”

  “It was something to do with internal reorganization,” Lockwood cried. “She suddenly found herself working for someone she didn’t get along with, and she asked to move. They wouldn’t do it, so she resi
gned. Nothing too mysterious, is it?”

  “I guess not!”

  “So that’s fine, then!”

  “Yes!” I said. “It’s fine!”

  “Good!” Lockwood’s pajamaed legs subsided on the bed. He flopped back against the pillow. “Good,” he said, “because my head hurts.”

  “Lockwood, I—”

  “You’d better go and get some rest. You need it. We all do.”

  You know me. I’m obedient. I spent the next few hours up in my bedroom. I dozed a bit, but I was too wound up to rest and too tired to do anything else. I spent a lot of time staring at the ceiling. At one point I heard George whistling in the shower, but otherwise the house was silent. Lockwood and George were in their rooms; Holly, so I supposed, had gone home early.

  I was grateful to her, of course I was. I was grateful to all of them. Oh, how good it felt to be so, so grateful….I let out a long, sad sigh.

  “Penny for your thoughts.”

  I craned my head and squinted at the windowsill. Since coming back from our first trip to the Wintergarden house, I’d not heard a peep from the skull in the jar. It had been sitting on my sill, next to my pile of laundry bags, deodorants, and assorted crumpled clothes. Now a faint mint-green glow hung around the glass, barely perceptible against the drab November sun. The plasm was as translucent as I’d ever seen it, the worn brown skull mostly silhouetted, though the light caught some notches and wiggling sutures on its dome. There was no sign of the horrid face. It was just the horrid voice today.

  “I know what it’s like,” it remarked. “Everyone hates me, too.”

  “I’ve got a question for you,” I said, shuffling up on my elbows. “It’s lunchtime, it’s daylight, and you’re a ghost. Ghosts don’t come out in daylight. And yet still you’re here, annoying me.”

  It gave a throaty chuckle. “Maybe I’m different from the others. Just like you’re so very different from those around you, Lucy.” The voice grew cavern deep; it rang like a corpse-bell. “Different, isolated—and ALO-O-ONE….Ooh, that was spooky,” it added. “Almost frightened myself there.”

  I glared at it. “That’s no answer, is it?”

  “To be honest, I’ve forgotten the question.”

  “You’re able to manifest in daylight. How?”

  “Actually,” the voice said, “the main reason’s probably the properties of my silver-glass prison. Just as it stops me from getting out, so it weakens the power of the light coming in. I’m in a perpetual twilight, in which I can function perfectly well.” The glow dimmed; for a moment I thought it had gone. “So thrill me,” it said. “Why are you so mournful? Maybe I can help.”

  I leaned my head back against the pillow. “It’s nothing.”

  “‘Nothing’ nothing. You’ve been staring at the ceiling for the last hour. That never does anybody any good. Next you’ll be cutting your throat with that pink disposable razor there, or trying to flush your head down the john. I’ve seen girls do that,” it added conversationally. “Don’t tell me. It’s that new assistant.”

  “It’s not. I’m fine with her now. She’s okay.”

  “She’s suddenly okay?”

  “Yes. Yes, she is.”

  “Wrong!” The voice spoke with sudden passion. “She’s a cuckoo in your nest! She’s an interloper in the nice little kingdom you’ve made your own. And she knows it. She loves the effect she’s having on you. That kind always does.”

  “Yeah, well.” I groaned and rolled into a sitting position on the side of the bed. “She saved my life last night.”

  It chuckled again. “Big deal. We’ve all done that. Lockwood. Cubbins. There’s me, of course; I’ve saved you loads of times.”

  “I was talking to a ghost. I got so obsessed with it, I threw away my defenses. Holly saved me. And that means,” I went on doggedly, “that I’m okay with her now. Understand? You don’t need to go on about her. It’s not a problem anymore.”

  “In fact, who hasn’t saved your bacon? I expect even old Arif at the corner shop’s done it once or twice, you’re that hapless.”

  I threw a sock at the jar. “Shut up!”

  “Keep your hair on,” the voice said. “I’m on your side. Not that you appreciate me. A helpful comment here, a shrewd opinion there—that’s what I offer, free of charge. The least I deserve is a quick thanks once in a while.”

  I got up from the bed. My legs felt weak. I hadn’t eaten. I hadn’t slept. I was talking to a skull. Was it any wonder I felt weird? “I’ll thank you,” I said, “when you tell me something useful. About death. About dying. About the Other Side. Think of all the things you could speak about! You’ve never even told me your name.”

  A whispered sigh. “Ah, but it’s not as simple as that. It’s hard to bring life and death together, even in speech. When I’m here, I’m not there—it all becomes misty for me. You should understand what it’s like—you of all people, Lucy—to be in two worlds at once. It’s not easy.”

  I went to the window and looked at the skull, at its battered landscape of nicks and marks, at the sutures winding like zigzag rivers through a wasteland of bone. It was the nearest I’d ever been to it without its repulsive ectoplasmic face popping into view. Two worlds…Yes. The thing is, that was what it seemed like, in those brief moments when I made a psychic connection. On the attic landing, I’d experienced two realities at once, and one undercut the other. Throwing my rapier away had been crazy, suicidal…yet, in the context of communicating with a ghost, it made perfect sense. Perfect sense, providing you found the right ghost. I thought of the bloodstained boy.

  “Why do you think you threw away your sword?” the voice said. “Why do you think you became so confused? None of your friends have a hope of understanding. It’s complex, and confusing, to do what others can’t. Trust me, I know.”

  “Why are you different?” I said. “There are so many Visitors…”

  “Ah.” The voice was a trifle smug. “But I want to come back. That’s the difference.”

  The doorbell rang, far off in the house.

  “I’d better go,” I said, “or Lockwood will try to answer it….” When I got to the door, I looked back at the jar. “Thank you,” I said. I went downstairs.

  George and I converged on the landing just as the bell rang again. Lockwood’s turbaned head was already poking around his door. “Who is it? A client?”

  “Not your concern!” George called. “You’re staying in bed!”

  “It might be an interesting client!”

  “None of your business if it is! I’ll deal with it, understand? I’m your deputy! Do not get out of bed!”

  “All right….”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  Lockwood disappeared. Shaking our heads, George and I went to the door. Standing on the step was Inspector Montagu Barnes, looking more hangdog and weatherworn than ever. In the drab light of afternoon, it was hard to know where the folds of his face ended and his saggy trench coat began. “Cubbins,” he said, “Miss Carlyle. Mind if I come in?”

  If we did mind, we couldn’t have done anything about it. We ushered him into the living room, where Barnes came to a halt, bowler hat in hand.

  “You’ve tidied up a bit,” he said. “Didn’t know you had a carpet.”

  “Just getting on top of things, Inspector.” George pushed his glasses up his nose and spoke authoritatively. “What can we do for you?”

  Barnes looked about as relaxed and at ease as a man wearing fiberglass underpants. He gave a heavy sigh. “I’ve just had Miss Fiona Wintergarden on the phone. A very…influential lady. It’s slightly hard for me to believe, but she’s seemingly delighted with you after a job you did last night, and she’s requested”—he emphasized the word, glaring around as if daring us to contradict—“that I employ your services for the Chelsea outbreak. I’ve come over to officially ask Mr. Lockwood if your company might join the investigation.” The inspector’s mouth snapped shut. With his unpleasant du
ty over, he visibly relaxed. “Where is Lockwood, in fact?”

  “Ah,” I said. “He’s ill.”

  “He was injured at the Wintergarden house,” George said. “Bump on the head.”

  I nodded. “Might be a concussion. Very serious. I’m afraid he’s unavailable.”

  “But it’s all right,” George said. “I’m his deputy. You can talk to me.” He waved the inspector to a seat and lowered himself into Lockwood’s chair.

  “Afternoon, Barnes.” Lockwood strode briskly into the room. He wore his long dressing gown, pajamas, and Persian slippers, and his turban looked bigger, bloodier, and more lopsided than ever. Barnes stared at him as one in a trance. “Something wrong?” Lockwood asked.

  “Not at all…” The inspector collected himself. “I like it. Head wounds clearly suit you.”

  “Thanks. Right. Hop out of that chair, George. So…did I hear right? You’re finally asking for our help?”

  Barnes rolled his eyes, puckered his lips, and made some important adjustment to the brim of his hat. “Yes,” he said, “in a manner of speaking. The outbreak is raging, and we could frankly do with any assistance you might provide. There were riots last night too; and the affected area of London is…Well, you’ll have to come and see.”

  “Bad, is it?”

  Barnes rubbed his eyes with stubby fingers. He had short, ragged nails, bitten to the quick. “Mr. Lockwood,” he said slowly, “it’s like the end of the world.”

  The next evening, we saw it for ourselves.

  DEPRAC had set up temporary headquarters in Sloane Square at the eastern margin of the containment zone. The square had been cordoned off from the public; giant warning posters hung from billboards, and unsmiling officers stood at entry points. Lockwood, George, and I showed our passes and were waved through.

  The surrounding streets had been silent, dark and empty, though we’d seen broken windows, overturned cars, and other scattered evidence of recent protests. The square, however, was bright and filled with feverish activity. Spotlights on trucks had been drawn up in the center, illuminating everything in stark and pitiless detail. The grass was bleached out, the faces of hurrying agents and officers seared white as bone. Black rubber cables coiled across the shining asphalt like monstrous veins, supplying power to temporary ghost-lamps on the roofs and to outdoor heaters near the catering vans.