The Empty Grave (Lockwood & Co. #5)(89)
We knew it was the place. The frost on the steps had been worn away by the passage of many feet, and a silver net hung suspended in the open doorway to keep the wandering dead at bay. It hung there like a portcullis, like a row of jagged teeth. We watched from the shadows of the building opposite. There was no sign of any silver-clad workers. Everything was still.
‘Got to risk it,’ Lockwood croaked. ‘We can’t wait any longer.’
‘I think my cloak is giving out,’ George said. ‘Let’s just— Wait, what’s that?’
A golden light was advancing far off along the centre of the Strand, shining on the mists, illuminating the buildings as it came. It swelled and grew. At its heart were two figures, approaching side by side. We pressed back against the wall and watched. The first was a woman, tall and beautiful. She wore a silver cloak that reached down to her feet; it swished and swirled about her and turned the mist to golden froth. Her long hair was pulled back almost out of sight beneath her hood, but the graceful lines of the face were clear enough. It was the woman known in our London as Penelope Fittes – but we knew her real name.
Beside her was something that wasn’t human at all. It had the vague shape of a man, tall and slim, and glowing with a blazing light. It did not walk, but drifted forwards in mid-air. You could see two golden eyes, and above its head was a coronet of pure white fire. Other than that it was too radiant to look upon. It was the source of the beautiful glow that spun about the woman and lit up the street. We watched them ascend the steps and pass through into Fittes House. The nimbus of light flared around the door and was swallowed by it. Darkness fell again.
For a long while none of us moved. Then we looked at one another.
‘Marissa …’ Holly said. ‘And with her …’
Lockwood nodded. ‘I think we just saw Ezekiel.’
It was a strange thing, entering that other version of Fittes House. What a contrast it was to the one we knew. In our world, the entrance foyer was abuzz with business at all hours, ranks of cool receptionists attending to queues of prospective clients; visitors reading magazines on comfy sofas; a small statue of Marissa Fittes blandly watching over all. Here, the foyer was a black and empty room, like a cavern in a coal mine, with a low-slung roof and wet ice on the floor. A few cracked cylinders and plastic oil jugs lay abandoned in the shadows.
A row of glimmering oil lanterns led us deep into the building, marking a safe route through. It was a necessary measure: in certain places the floor had fallen away completely, or the ceiling had collapsed under the weight of ice. The walls bowed inward; floors slanted. I began to experience the same claustrophobia I’d felt at 35 Portland Row.
Moving slowly, rapiers out in case of danger, we followed the lights, and soon came to the Hall of Pillars – or its dark and dismal counterpart. Here, disconcertingly, the nine trapped spirits stood, faint and flickering, just as the skull had done in Portland Row. They watched us avidly as we passed, rotating to keep up with us. Pinpricks of light burned in their hollow eyes. Long Hugh Hennratty, the highwayman whose ghost had been one of the first captured by Marissa and Tom Rotwell, grinned lopsidedly above his broken neck. The Clapham Butcher Boy made urgent motions to us with his spectral knife. Fortunately the silver-glass pillars in the living world held firm.
The spirits could not speak, but that didn’t stop them calling out to us, hooting and crying like owls. As a Listener, I’m used to such stuff, though it was strange to hear it in the silence of the Other Side. It disturbed the others more than me. To their surprise, they found they could hear it too.
We left the room in haste, and so came to the Hall of Fallen Heroes, where lift shafts accessed other floors. In our world, lavender fires burned perpetually here beside the shrine to fallen agents. This room was a black void; the six shafts nothing but gaping holes, plugged with mist. The lanterns led us past them, and presently we came to a staircase going down.
‘The gate must be in the basement,’ Lockwood said. He mustered a frozen smile. ‘This is the last push, everyone. Stay strong. We’re almost there.’
Down we went, flight after flight; and the stairs led us steeply into the earth. We went very slowly now, past openings to unknown levels, and still we saw nothing. Twice, George nearly fell; his legs were giving out, and Kipps and Lockwood had to grapple him under the arms and pull him onwards. Holly and I supported each other too. In this manner, fumbling, dishevelled and almost dead, we came at last to the deepest basement beneath Fittes House. It was all we could do to go on now, for our stamina was at an end.
The lanterns led through a dark and empty chamber towards an arch, and here I finally heard what I’d been straining for all this time: the psychic thrum and tumult of a nearby gate.
Lockwood sensed it as well. He made a noise that in better times might have been a cry of triumph. We roused ourselves and hobbled forward.
‘And what time do you call this?’ said a voice.
We stopped in our tracks. As one, we raised our hoods a little and stiffly looked around.
‘If I’d known you’d be this long, I’d have put my curlers in,’ the thin youth said. He was standing on the far side of the dark and icy room. His spiky hair gleamed with other-light; otherwise he was as faint and flickering and supercilious as ever.
‘Skull!’ A wave of something washed through me. Relief? Pleasure at seeing something familiar in this dreadful place? Whatever it was, it made me warm. ‘I’m so happy to see you,’ I said, hobbling towards him. ‘How did you get here?’