Lockwood & Co.: The Creeping Shadow Read Free Page A

licking from my sleeve. “No, Dave. No, you didn’t. But it was a very good try. And you don’t need to chuck another one. She’s gone into the secret room.” I coughed out a glob of ash. “We have to follow her and finish this. We—Yes, Ted?” From his corner, Ted had raised a hand.
    “You’ve got a trickle of blood coming from your nose.”
    “I know.” I dabbed at it with a sleeve. “But thanks for pointing it out. Right, we need to go in. Who’s coming with me?”
    The three of them might have been carved from stone. Their fear was so solid it was like a fifth person in the room. They stared at the opening in the wall. I waited while wreaths of smoke spread and mingled, filling the office, blocking them from my sight.
    “Mr. Farnaby says—” Ted’s voice began.
    “Like I
care
what Farnaby says!” I cried. “He’s not in here! He’s not risking his life with us! Think for yourselves for once!”
    I waited. No answer came. Rage and impatience filled me. I turned alone to the secret door.
    I could still feel the wave of cold following the ghost like a bridal train, running away into the dark. The side of the bureau shone with nets of ice crystals, as delicate as lacework. The paneling was frosted over, too. I flicked on my flashlight.
    It was a narrow passage, wooled with cobwebs, bending almost immediately to the left and out of sight. Darkness hung there, and also a faint tart tang, the smell of dust and death.
    Somewhere inside was the Source of the haunting, the place or object to which the ghost was tied. Suppress that by covering it with silver or iron and you trapped the Visitor, too. Simple. I took my mirror in one hand, my flashlight and rapier in the other, and squeezed into the hole.
    It wasn’t something I
wanted
to do, exactly. I could have waited for the others; I could have spent ten minutes cajoling them to follow me. But then
I
might have lost my nerve as well. Once in a while you have to be a little reckless; that’s a skill I learned somewhere.
    The passage was so narrow I brushed against brick on either side, the cobwebs tearing off as I passed through. I went slowly, steeling myself for an ambush.
    “Do you see her?” I whispered.
    “No. She’s tricky; flicks in and out of this world. Makes her hard to pin down.”
    “I wonder what the Source is, what she’s guarding.”
    “Some bit of her, more than likely. Maybe the husband got overenthusiastic, hacked her into pieces. A toe rolled off, say, went under a chair, and got lost. Easily done.”
    “Why do I ever listen to you? That’s so disgusting.”
    “Hey, there’s nothing disgusting about random body parts,”
the skull said.
“I’m one myself. It’s an honest profession. Steady here—blind turn.”
    Darkness bled around the corner. I took a salt-bomb from my belt and chucked it ahead of me, out of sight. I heard it burst, but there was no psychic impact—I hadn’t hit anything.
    I raised my flashlight and peered around. “Maybe she
wants
us to find it,” I muttered. “That’s a possibility, isn’t it? It’s almost like she’s showing us where to look.”
    “Maybe. Or luring you to a miserable death. I reckon that’s an option, too.”
    Either way, we didn’t have far to go. The concentration of spiders—always a sign of Visitors—told me that. Ahead was a little room, choked with a thousand cobwebs; they were strung from wall to wall, fireplace to ceiling. Over and through each other they passed, forming a maze of soft gray hammocks and lumpy, dust-encrusted intersections. My flashlight beam was fractured, split, and inexplicably absorbed. I was inside a bird’s nest of maddening distortions. Tiny black-bellied bodies moved on the fringes, scuttling to find shelter from the light.
    I hesitated, letting my eyes make sense of the confusion. The place was a former dressing room, I guessed, sealed behind the fake panel; remnants of tattered wallpaper backed this up. One wall had rows of empty shelves,