The Empty Grave (Lockwood & Co. #5)(92)

‘Oh, God,’ I said.

‘It’s OK. Take my hand, Lucy, and let’s go.’

He was correct, of course. Whatever happened, it had to be done right. There was nothing else to say. Slowly I took his hand. We walked together across the iron bridge. The ghosts did their usual. We ignored them. We passed through the psychic vortex, the breach between worlds. Bright neon light shone ahead of us, and I could feel life pouring back into my body. I think Quill felt it too; his grip tightened on mine, flared suddenly warm and strong. It didn’t last. We crossed the iron wall and left the gate, back into our world. We were in the proper place. Before we had left the walkway, Kipps was already falling.





23




Don’t ask me for a careful, reasoned account of what happened after that. I can’t give you one. My excuse is that when you step back out through a gate (and I’ve done this since, and know it to be so), you’re always sick, confused and ill. You don’t see straight; every sense is shrieking with the sudden onslaught of light and sound, with the feel of warm air on your skin and in your lungs; your body goes into a kind of temporary shutdown and muscular collapse. This is particularly marked when you’ve been on the Other Side for a long time, as we had, and it’s not a condition that makes it easy to follow what’s going on.

Panic’s similar. Sudden, unexpected panic all the more so. So it’s hard to piece together the fragments I’ve retained: Lockwood dragging Kipps and me clear of the circle; blood on the floor; Lockwood bent over Kipps; George holding his hand; everyone bent over him, with his cloak of feathers being stripped away; more blood – there was such a lot of it; white cloths being brought from somewhere; Holly holding them to his side in an effort to staunch the wound. All this while Lockwood kept talking to Kipps, joking, smiling, pouring out encouraging words. Kipps lay very still. He was white-faced; his hair shone with melting ice. There were faint rings around his eyes where the goggles had been.

‘Lucy, George,’ Holly said, ‘I want fresh towels and bandages. There must be some in here.’

I stood, shakily, and surveyed the room in which we found ourselves. It was a clean and orderly place. OK, sure, it had a massive ghostly maelstrom at its heart, but all that whirring chaos was nicely contained within the iron circle. Once across the bridge, as we were now, you found a brightly lit and whitewashed room with all the sterile neatness of an operating theatre. Racks of goggles and silver suits hung along the walls, each one named and numbered; there were trolleys and wheeled plastic bins with a few discarded suits; a pair of stilts, propped in a corner like the legs of an idling drunkard; even a few safety notices by the doors.

It wasn’t so neat and tidy when George and I had finished with it. We stumbled around, wrenching open cupboards, pulling out drawers. George found a cabinet of medical supplies; he dragged it across the room. I went through an arch into a tiled washroom, where ranks of shower cubicles showed where the workers scrubbed up after a hard shift beyond the gate. There were plenty of towels here; I brought a load back and placed some under Kipps’s head, while Holly did the best she could with bandages and wadding. She was still wearing her cape of animal fur. The ice had melted; it looked forlorn and matted. A puddle of brownish water lay around her. I took towels and did my best to wipe it up.

At last Holly’s frantic efforts slowed and stopped. She knelt back, bloodied hands flopping in her lap. Kipps’s eyes were closed. He didn’t move.

Lockwood had stopped speaking to him. His head dropped; he sat back in exhausted silence. George and I slumped to the floor. We stared at each other across the body, four pathetic visitations of feathers and fur and snot and melted ice. Our eyes were puffy and red, our faces purple where the circulation was returning beneath the frozen skin. The grip of the Other Side was lessening with every second, but an icy numbness clung to my heart. I looked at Kipps lying there.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said at last. ‘I … I saw him get hurt. I should have known it was bad. But … but with so much going on … I never thought to look.’

No one said anything.

‘He was so brave over there. He was so strong, so full of life …’ I sniffed loudly. ‘Too strong. It was only at the very end that I realized he was dying.’

Kipps opened an eye. ‘What do you mean, dying? I bloody well hope not.’

‘Quill!’ I jerked back in shock. Lockwood and the others sat up, open-mouthed.

‘Who says I’m dying? Did you see the amount of sheer ruddy effort it took me to escape the land of the dead? I’m not going back in now!’

‘Quill!’ In my surprise and joy I leaned down and gave him an awkward hug.

‘Ow!’ he cried. ‘Careful! I’ve got a hole right through me. And watch with those feathers. I’m sure I’m allergic to them.’ We were all around him now, talking at once, our misery falling away like ice chunks off our thawing capes. ‘If Cubbins kisses me,’ Kipps said, ‘I swear I will pass back over to the Other Side … What I really need right now is a drink of water.’

That was quickly given him. Kipps tried to sit up, but the pain was too bad. A reddish stain was showing through the thick layers of bandage and dressing that Holly had applied.

She shook her head. ‘We’ve got to get you to a hospital, Quill,’ she said. ‘Being on the Other Side somehow stopped the blood loss, but now that we’re back out here it’s started flowing freely again. It’s like you were just stabbed five minutes ago. There’s no time to lose.’ She got up, cast her furry cloak aside and stood there, arms folded. ‘Lockwood, what’s the plan?’