The Empty Grave (Lockwood & Co. #5)(87)

‘For sure it did,’ I said. ‘It made her cracked in the head.’

‘That’s not true and you know it.’ Lockwood levered himself up with difficulty and looked out into the mists. ‘Anyway, I helped her out in the early months. I tried getting her another job, but it was clear that she’d been broken by the ordeal; she wasn’t going to be an agent again. After a while she drifted into relic-collecting. Sad, in a way, but also not sad, Lucy. She’s a survivor. She’s our friend. That’s Flo’s story …’

I didn’t speak for a moment. ‘Why are you telling me this?’

‘To cheer you up, as I said. And to remind you: we’re survivors too. George, Quill, Holly – we’ve got to go. Just a few minutes’ walk now. This is the final push.’

We came out of the empty shop into the street; and, as we did so, saw a limping person in a broad-brimmed hat come out of a side road and turn towards us.

Holly’s voice was hoarse and high. ‘What do we do?’

‘Just keep walking,’ Lockwood said. ‘Take the next turn.’

The mists in front of us swirled and parted. At the intersection up ahead, a small group of the dead were standing. There were men there, women, children. They blocked the road.

Lockwood cursed. ‘Quick! In here.’ He darted towards the wall on our left, where there was an alley, a slot between buildings. We followed him in, ploughed down it. Bricks brushed against my cape on either side. I was afraid it would be ripped, as my first spirit-cape had once been; I drew my shoulders in. The alley became narrower, until I felt as if I would be pressed to nothing. All at once it turned sharply to the right and opened into a tiny yard.

High brick walls towered over us on three sides. In one of them, at head height, was a rectangular opening – a door that in our world was perhaps reached by iron stairs. There were no other doors, and no routes through.

‘Drat,’ Lockwood panted. ‘Dead end.’

‘What do we do?’ Kipps wasn’t breathing hard. ‘There’s a door up there. We might find a way through that building.’

‘I’d rather not. Who knows what’s in there? Maybe that guy didn’t spot us. When he’s gone, we can take another way.’

There was a silence.

‘Hands up who thinks he didn’t see us,’ Kipps said.

No one raised their hand. We stood in the yard, with black brick walls around us. By and by we heard faint sounds coming from the gap, as of limping feet scuffing along hard ground.

‘Door,’ Kipps said. ‘It’s our only chance. I’ll give you a shin up.’

‘Yes—’ Lockwood was already beside him at the wall, clasping his hands ready. ‘Quick, Hol. You too, Luce.’

Neither Holly nor I had to be told twice. I took a little run-up – or as close to a run as I could manage with my deadened limbs – stepped onto Kipps’s hands, and was propelled upwards onto the ledge. Lockwood launched Holly up beside me. We slipped and struggled and got in each other’s way, but in moments stood in the open doorway. George, heavier and stiffer, was harder work; Kipps and Lockwood had to combine forces to hoist him onto the ledge, where Holly and I bundled him through the door. Lockwood moved back a few paces and vaulted up using Kipps’s hands. Then Lockwood, Holly and I reached out, grabbed Kipps and dragged him up the wall.

We were just pulling him alongside us when the dead man with the broad-brimmed hat shuffled into the yard.

‘Can he get up here?’ I said.

We stood in the doorway looking down at the man. He stood looking up at us with dark unblinking eyes.

He started to walk towards our wall.

‘Tell you what,’ Kipps said. ‘Let’s assume he can. Come on – these old Soho tenements are a maze. They all interconnect with each other. We can cut through here and out into another street quick as anything. Follow me.’

He drew his sword, briefly surveyed the passage ahead of us, then plunged along it, deep into the building. We hesitated. If the dark hall back at 35 Portland Row had been unpleasant to walk down, this was even worse. The proportions of the corridor felt wrong, and ice glistened in fissures by the ceiling. There was a sour taint on the air.

Fingertips scrabbled at the wall behind us …

You know, that passage looked just fine. We stumbled after Kipps as fast as we could go.

My memory of what followed is jumbled and fragmentary. We went down corridors, up staircases, into rooms that led nowhere, doubling back the way we’d come, always expecting to meet up with what pursued us. We went through endless doors, some ordinary, others thick with ice and twisted into odd dimensions. All were open – no doors were locked in this dark, cold world. You could go anywhere, but no place was better than another, and we could not find the way out of the building. Sometimes we passed windows, but either they were too high, or too narrow, or so caked with frost that we couldn’t see out of them to know if it was safe to jump. There was nothing but the scrape of our boots on the wooden floors, and our breaths like broken pistons, and the flap and flutter of Kipps’s feathers just ahead. And somewhere behind, the slow feet following.

Kipps was right: those old houses were a maze. We passed through attics where faint outlines of doll’s houses and rocking horses merged with spreading shadows; through rooms where beds seemed half sunken into the tilted floors; through kitchens where dark objects hung dead and heavy from ceiling hooks; up rattling staircases that grew wide then thin with every twist or turn; and once, out onto a high parapet that ran between buildings, with the white street far below and ice shards tumbling soundlessly beneath our skidding boots. That street unnerved us, and not because of the drop; a host of grey figures stood in it, looking up as we ran like rats into the house beyond.