The Empty Grave (Lockwood & Co. #5)(101)

‘Of course there was,’ I said. ‘The catch being that what you were doing was both wrong and mad. What is this Ezekiel, anyway? What sort of ghost is it? Where did you pick it up?’

The woman raised her arm, tapped the jade bracelet on her wrist. ‘I found him buried in the earth near an ancient grave. He is old, Lucy, and wiser than you’ll ever know. He has seen kingdoms rise and fall. He has turned away from death. He rejects it. I reject it too.’

The golden shape drifted nearer to me. Its seeping cold blazed on my skin. ‘Enough talk,’ its deep voice said. ‘This girl is not like us. She denies the mysteries. She wants death. She has said as much. We must give it to her.’

‘No,’ the woman said. ‘First I want her to understand. You see, Lucy, though my spirit grew stronger, my body was weakened by my visits to the Other Side, becoming prematurely aged. I began to need the help of others to venture across instead of me. My friends at the Orpheus Society were the first, and they have proved most reliable over many years. They are inspired by the same dreams as me, and carry out many of the experiments downstairs.’ Her smile thinned. ‘It is right that they do so. After all, the Problem funds their businesses and keeps them rich. But they are old and growing desperate. They seek immortality as I once did, trying to keep their bodies young. They do not understand that this is not the answer.’

‘So what is?’ I said. The radiant spirit was so close now; I could feel its power thrumming against me, fixing me where I stood. Yet while the woman spoke, I kept my mind free of ghost-lock. My brain was racing, assessing my position, my options for attack and escape. ‘What is the answer?’

‘It’s going to be nasty,’ the skull said. ‘Take it from me.’

Marissa leaned towards me. ‘Here’s what I learned,’ she said. ‘A mortal body always fails you. A mortal body always lets you down. But if your spirit is sufficiently strong …’ She touched my face with her ice-cold hand and stepped away. ‘There are other options.’

And now a strange thing happened to her; it was like watching the face of a clay doll being stretched to the side by the motion of a giant thumb. Her nose, mouth, eyes and cheekbones – all her features – were, for a second, smudged and distorted as something started pulling clear of them. Then they snapped back into position and a second face began to break free alongside the first. She had two faces – one solid, the other faint and see-through! At first they were almost entirely superimposed upon each other, then simply overlapping; finally the translucent, ghostly head emerged like a midnight insect from a chrysalis and hung independently beside the other. It was hard to say which was the more terrible: the malevolent glimmer of intelligence in the eyes of the spirit or the sudden deadness in the eyes of the living.

The face of the woman known as Penelope Fittes hung slack and stupid, her breathing newly loud and ragged. And the face alongside? There were family resemblances, that much was true. The shape of the jaw and chin, the hairline on the forehead … Otherwise the spirit of Marissa Fittes had precisely the hook-like nose, the ravaged lines and haughtily imperious expression of the bust in the mausoleum or the engraving at the front of our Fittes Manual. It was the same face as the one that was kept, decayed and ravaged, in the cabinet behind me.

‘Stone me,’ the skull said from the jar on the floor. ‘I didn’t expect that.’

I swore under my breath. Instinctively, as one does when faced by something repulsive and unnatural, I moved back a pace.

‘I always knew she was Marissa,’ the skull went on. ‘But I just go by what’s on the inside. I told you that, right? I call it as I see it. If I see Marissa’s spirit, I assume the body’s hers as well! I didn’t realize she was squatting in someone else.’

A faint blur beneath the spirit-head showed where its neck and shoulders disappeared inside Penelope Fittes’ motionless body. Marissa’s mouth moved; a voice came, faint and crackling, like something heard down a bad phone line. ‘Squatting?’ it said. ‘It’s a much closer, more perfect bond than that! See? I want to raise my hand’ – Penelope’s left arm rose, and gave us a cheery wave – ‘I do so. I want to move my feet’ – the long legs made adjustments; the hand smoothed down the skirt – ‘I can. I inhabit dear Penelope just as snugly as one could wish. We are the same.’ The ghost-head grinned at us. Alongside it, the solid head lolled sideways like an unloved doll’s.

‘So … so Penelope was a real person?’ I said.

‘Penelope was my grand-daughter, yes.’

‘We thought you’d faked her life.’

‘Not at all.’

I spoke harshly. ‘She was living, and you killed her.’

The spirit-head clicked its tongue. ‘Tsk, tsk. I killed the spirit by driving it out. The body is alive and flourishing, as you can very well see. It’s been an extremely practical solution to my problem and should last me a good many more years. Now, excuse me a moment. I should put this back on.’

With a horrid nuzzling the spirit-head bunted up against the side of the living one and burrowed its way within. In an instant it had disappeared. Penelope’s head jerked and drooled. Intelligence snapped back into the eyes. The woman raised her hand and wiped her mouth.

‘This is an atrocious thing,’ I said. ‘A wicked crime.’