The Empty Grave (Lockwood & Co. #5)(27)

‘Ah!’ Frustration bubbled up within me. I banged the mug down on the table, sloshing brown splashes onto the thinking cloth. ‘That’s the whole point! You never tell me anything! Not really. About Marissa, about you and who you really are, about the nature of the Other Side … It’s all insults and no facts – that’s the way it is with you!’

‘When you’re a ghost,’ the skull said blandly, ‘you find that facts are overrated. You sort of leave them behind with your mortal body. It’s nothing but emotions and desires with us spirits, as I’m sure you’ve seen. “I’ve lost my gold!” “I want revenge!” “Bring me Marissa Fittes!” All that old hokum. Know what my desire is?’ It flashed a sudden grin at me.

‘Something foul, no doubt.’

‘To live, Lucy. To live. That’s why I talk to you. That’s why I’ve turned my back on what waits for us on the Other Side.’

‘So what does wait for us there?’ I spoke lightly, but my hand gripped my mug a little harder. This was more like it; this was the kind of detail I was after.

As ever, I was disappointed. ‘How should I know?’

‘Well, you’re dead. I should think that helps.’

‘Ooh, we are snarky today. You’ve been to the Other Side too. What did you see?’

I’d seen an awful lot of darkness, and an awful lot of cold. A place that was a terrible and freezing echo of the living world. I’d thought about it often, lying in bed, dreaming the dreams that made me cry out and then lie awake till dawn.

‘Hear any celestial trumpets, did you, while you were there?’ the skull prompted.

I’d heard nothing. It had been a ferociously silent place.

‘I was too busy trying to survive to take a proper survey,’ I said primly.

‘Yeah, well, me too,’ the ghost said. ‘That’s my story for the last hundred and ten years. And if it wasn’t for my cuddly Source here’ – with this it sort of surged back lovingly around the brown skull at the centre of the jar, so that for a moment you could glimpse the face as if would have been in life; less rubbery, wrapped neatly around the bones – ‘I’d have been a wanderer in the dark world like all those other dumb idiots. Agh! No thanks! That’s not for me. I keep myself turned towards the light, and it isn’t easy, I can tell you, particularly when the living insist on asking stupid questions.’

‘When you were at Fittes House long ago, what questions did Marissa ask you?’ I said. My hopes weren’t high, but it seemed a decent moment to move in.

Dim lights flared in the ghost’s eyes. ‘It was so many years back … Similar ones to you, I think. About the Other Side; about the nature of spirits – what we do and why … Also she was very interested in ectoplasm.’

‘Ectoplasm? Why?’

‘It’s fascinating stuff.’ The face distorted, reversing into itself so that the nose and brow ridges were pointing backwards into the jar. ‘It listens, it communicates, you can mould it into funny and obscene shapes. How d’you think I spent the last fifty years? Want me to show you some of my favourites? I call this one the Happy Farmhand.’

‘No, thank you. And I certainly don’t see why Marissa would be interested in that.’

‘She wasn’t, to be fair. Cheeky origami wasn’t her thing. But you have to understand: plasm represents the part of you that survives – that passes from one side to the other. You can call it your essence, your life force, whatever you want. It doesn’t decay. It doesn’t die. It doesn’t really change. That’s how I know Penelope Fittes is actually Marissa.’ The face pressed close to the glass. ‘Because their essence is exactly the same.’

‘Even though they look so different?’ It was one of the things that had puzzled us about the skull’s claims. Penelope Fittes was glossy and glamorous, a raven-haired woman in her thirties; Marissa, in later years at least, had been a gaunt and shrivelled creature, prey to the frailties of age.

‘Looks?’ the skull said. ‘Who cares about that? It’s superficial. Outward appearance doesn’t interest me at all. Why do you think I hang around with you?’ It chuckled. ‘Insults aside, that’s just one way in which I’m superior to every one of you, except for Cubbins.’

I blinked. ‘What? Why? What’s George got to do with anything?’

‘What a person looks like doesn’t bother him much, or hadn’t you noticed?’

There was a scrabbling at the door. I turned in my chair – to find George himself tottering into the kitchen in the first throes of wakefulness. He switched on the light, scratching industriously at a crevice in his pyjamas. ‘What’s that skull saying? Something about me?’

‘Never mind. It’s not important.’ I turned the lever on the jar. ‘You want tea? How did you get on yesterday?’

‘At the Archives? Oh, I found plenty. I’ll tell you more presently. Can’t think straight before I’ve had my breakfast.’

‘Nor me.’ Especially not today. My head was spinning from the ghost’s conversation, and it wasn’t yet seven in the morning.

Lockwood was down later than usual, long after Holly had arrived and the day’s work had begun. He seemed in good spirits; we smiled at each other, but didn’t refer to our expedition to the cemetery. We turned our attention to the business of the day.