Lockwood & Co. Book Three: The Hollow Boy (35 page)

“Say,”
a voice said in my ear,
“this is exciting. I almost think you might make it.”

The skull! I rolled my eyes in dismay, biting the corner of my lip. Would his presence disturb the Poltergeist? I looked over at the desk, at the gently ruffling papers.

“Unless Holly trips and drops little Bobby and his head knocks on the floor with a whopping great thud,”
the ghost continued amiably,
“like a tufty coconut
cracking on a rock. I honestly think this might happen. Look at the way her little hands are slipping….”

It was true. Holly had stopped, and altered her grip under Vernon’s armpits. Her face was as pale as I’d ever seen it. But we weren’t far from the doors.

“I call this a nice refreshing change,”
the skull said.
“You can’t talk back! Or reach around to turn my tap off. Means I can tell you what I think of you,
without you giving me any lip.”

We shuffled on. I squinted frantically across the room.

It was okay. On the desk, nothing had changed.

“Don’t worry,”
the skull said.
“It’s not interested in me. We entities, by and large, keep ourselves to ourselves. It won’t pay any attention to
what I do.”

I breathed out with relief. And just then Holly nudged a coat with her elbow, making its hanger scrape gently on the rail.

“
That
, on the other hand…”

My eyes flipped around; I looked at the pile of papers.

They were suddenly very still.

Holly and I exchanged glances. We waited. I counted to thirty in my head, forcing my breathing to remain calm. The room was dark and silent. Nothing happened. The papers didn’t move.

I expelled air very, very slowly. We tiptoed on.

“Hey, maybe you’re okay now!”
the skull said.
“Maybe it’s gone.”

An empty coat hanger on a rack on the other side of the room spun up and over in a whizzing 360-degree turn, then rocked back and forth with ever smaller movements until it was once again quite
still.

“It hasn’t, you know. I was just kidding.”

We froze, watched the space. Again everything was still. I nodded to Holly. Grimly, grappling Vernon tighter, moving slightly faster, we inched along the aisle.

Away across the room, a
ting
of metal. One of the lights in the ceiling swung softly in the darkness. Holly started to slow, but I shook my head and we redoubled our pace toward the
stairs.

We needed to hurry now. We needed to get out.

“Don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s over there,”
the skull said in my ear.
“Or by the coats…”

I gritted my teeth. I knew what it was going to say.

“Truth is, it’s everywhere. It’s right on top of us. It coils around us like a snake. We’re all inside it. It has already swallowed us whole.”

All at once a squealing screech of feedback came from the speakers in the ceiling, followed by a low-level, crackling hum. Holly and I both jumped. Behind Holly’s head a pair of blue
pajamas on a rail jerked too, as if someone was in them, legs bending, arms jabbing outward in a brief, appalling spasm.

Almost as fast as it had started, the energy went out of it. The pajamas hung limp, without animation.

A moment later we slammed through the swinging doors into the pitch darkness of the back stairs.

I dropped Vernon’s leg, flipped a penlight from my belt, and shoved it between my teeth. The light showed Holly, sagging against the wall, easing Vernon to the ground.

“Oh, God…” she said. “Oh, God…”

“We can’t stop here, Hol,” I hissed. “We’ve got to move. Pick him up! Come on!”

“But, Lucy—”

“Just do it!”

Onward, stumbling, down the stairs, contained within our bobbing sphere of light. We weren’t trying for quiet anymore, and we weren’t attempting to suppress the fear that, choking,
rose within us. Holly was sobbing as she went; Bobby Vernon’s head bounced side to side as we careered against the walls.

We reached the turn. Behind us, the doors at the top burst open, smashing back against the wall. Their panels of glass shattered; fragments cascaded down the steps, rained past us into the dark.
A squall of air buffeted against us as we collapsed onto the landing below.

“In there!” I’d been planning to keep going down, all the way to the ground floor, but I didn’t want to be stuck in the stairwell now. I nodded toward the door leading
back into the store. Holly shouldered her way through—we entered the silence and darkness of Kitchenware at the far end of the first floor.

“Holly,” I whispered, “you’re tired. Swap with me. Let me go in front now.”

“I’ll be all right.”

“Side by side, then.” The aisle was wide enough for us to go abreast. It wasn’t too far. Through Kitchenware, then Ladies’ Fashions, then down the main stairs to the
ground floor—that’s all we had to do.

Far off I heard voices calling us. Living voices—Lockwood, George…

“Don’t answer them,” I said. “Keep silent.”

We went as fast as we could. I kept expecting the door behind us to crash open, as if the ghost were chasing us. But Poltergeists don’t work that way.

When we were beside a stack of colanders, something slapped me in the face.

I cried out, dropping my flashlight, letting go of Vernon’s legs. He moaned, thrashed in Holly’s grip.

Another slap, stinging across my cheek. Cursing, I drew my sword, swung it around me in a wild sweep. Nothing.

In the next aisle, something smashed against saucepans.

Holly gave a yelp; a red mark bloomed like a flower on her cheekbone.

There’s only one good thing about Poltergeists: no ectoplasm, so you can’t get ghost-touch, even when you’re slapped around by them. It almost makes up for the higher than
average chance of being brained by a sofa or skewered by a banister rail. We snatched Vernon up, staggered on.

Somewhere behind, a clattering; dozens of utensils cascading to the floor. And now came a horrendous din, a tumbling of tortured metal, peppered with grunts and snarls, as if a great beast was
thrashing and writhing in their midst.

But the beast was ahead of us too. Farther along our aisle: a rack of knives of every size and shape. They quivered and trembled on their hooks.

Uh-oh.

I pulled us out of the aisle and down along a parallel one, just as the weapons burst free. Down behind a rack of chinaware we fell, rolling over in a heap as dozens of carving knives screamed
through the air, embedding themselves in the floor around us, splintering plates, bouncing off copper pots.

Bobby Vernon opened an eye. “Ow! Careful. I’m in pain here, you realize.”

“You’ll be a darn sight worse off shortly,” I snarled, “if you don’t shut up. Come on, Holly! Get up! We’re doing so well.”

“What would doing badly look like?”

Feedback welled up through the sound system, vibrating jaggedly through the nerves of our teeth. We heard bangs and screams from elsewhere in the building. Somewhere ahead, at the entrance to
Ladies’ Fashions, came an almighty tearing, a wrenching sound that told of something heavy and substantial being uprooted from the floor.

For a moment I hung back, unsure whether to go on.

“Skull,” I said. “I don’t know…”

“You have to, else you’ll die.”

“All right.” Practically using Vernon as a rope to pull Holly upright, I got us going again. We stumbled forward. In the next aisle, two display cases swung sideways and slammed into
another.

“Mr. Aickmere’s going to be pleased,”
the skull said.

“Yeah. He’ll be delighted.”

Holly was staring at me. “Who were you talking to just then?”

“No one! You!”

“I don’t believe you.”

Five Pyrex bowls flashed past my head and shattered against the wall. The wind whipped at my boots, threatening to snatch my legs out from under me. “Look, does it really matter right
now?”

“If we’re going to be working together, Lucy….”

“Oh, hell! All right! I’ll tell you! It’s an evil haunted skull that lives in my backpack! Happy, now?”

“Well, yes. It explains a lot.” Several aprons, flapping like bats through the air, thrashed at Holly’s face. She batted them away. “See, that wasn’t so bad, was
it? You only had to say it.”

We ducked through the archway into Ladies’ Fashions, just before an entire solid display case, whistling behind us, cracked against the arch and lodged there.

“What’s going on?”
the skull growled. “
You’re telling everyone about us now? I thought we had something special going.
”

“We do! Shut up! We’ll discuss this later.”

“You know, Lucy”—Holly Munro gasped—“I used to think you were just plain weird. Now I see how thoroughly wrong I was.”

Ladies’ Fashions was quiet, at least compared to Kitchenware. Cold air cut against our ankles, keeping pace with us. At the far end I could see the elevator lobbies and the marble that
enclosed the grand stairs and escalators down to the ground floor.

“Nothing sharp in here,” I said. “That’s one blessing.”

To the left of us—I could see it, but Holly, with her back to it, could not—the head of a mannequin turned slowly around, fixing us with its blind, bland smile.

And now the room erupted. An entire clothes rack reared up, slowly at first; then, with a kick like a bucking horse, it flung itself in a somersault through the air. Holly screamed; we launched
ourselves back as it smashed into the pillar opposite and toppled down to block the aisle like a fallen tree.

Other racks were caught up, tossed high, sent smashing through windows and crumpling against walls. All around us coats were torn free of their pegs. They swirled up above us, hoods empty,
sleeves billowing as if filled with invisible limbs. They hung in the air like witches on their sticks; the howling wind blew them around and around. Down they came now, thumping against our heads,
whipping us with their trailing belts, slashing our skin with their zippers and buttons.

Bending low, pulling Bobby Vernon between us, we raced toward the escalators, dodging falling debris, dancing aside as floor tiles popped loose between our feet and went spinning off to crack in
shards against pillars and walls. Clothing battered against us; a pair of pastel nylon trousers wrapped itself around my face, pressing close, clinging so tight, I felt my breath being stifled. I
tore it away, looked over my shoulder at the whirling chaos at our back.

Far off, beyond the racing clothes and tumbling furniture, in a dark, still space, I saw a shadow crawling after me on hands and knees. It raised a stick-thin arm.

“Lucy…”

Then Holly and I had vaulted the marble wall and jumped down onto the smooth metal strip that sloped between the escalators. Vernon landed awkwardly; he shouted out in pain. Holly slipped,
skidded on her backside down the slope. Vernon tumbled after her. I kept my footing, slid after them; and so, because I remained upright, saw what was happening in the grand foyer of
Aickmere’s department store.

Light greeted us from below: oddly swirling light. It came from four agency lanterns, spinning in midair.

It had occurred to me more than once to wonder where the others were. Where, in particular, Lockwood and George might be. I’d heard their voices far away, but they hadn’t come for
us—and I couldn’t fathom why.

Now I understood.

The Poltergeist, and its energies, had not been confined to the halls through which Holly and I had been running. Far from it. It had been active in the foyer, too. Display cases lay scattered,
racks embedded in the plaster pillars of the room. The murals on the walls were ruined, embedded with shards of glass torn from the entrance doors. The great artificial tree, Autumn Ramble, of
which Mr. Aickmere was so proud, was at that moment spinning upward from its mount at the bottom of the escalators, its thousand lovingly handcrafted tissue leaves being torn off by whirling
centrifugal force. And in the center of the room, the very floorboards were being ripped asunder too, wrenched up and outward, nails snapping, before being whipped out to break against the ruined
walls. Loose earth from below floated upward into space and joined the lanterns spiraling around and around.

In all that room a single area remained untouched—a roughly semicircular space just in front of the revolving doors. It was surrounded by a set of iron chains, of triple thickness, wound
around each other for extra security. Within this boundary, the floor was thick with strewn defenses—salt and iron filings, lavender sprigs, other pieces of random chain, tossed down for
desperate protection. The spectral hurricane that blew around us beat against the edges of this sanctuary, making the border quiver; inside, however, everything was still.

And here stood my companions, swords out, shouting, beckoning to us.

There at the back, jamming the revolving door open with a plank of wood: Kate Godwin and Flo Bones. In the center of the space, Quill Kipps, slicing through lavender cushions with his rapier so
that the stuffing spilled out onto the floor. And at the front, right on the lip of the chains, gesticulating, calling, urging us on: Lockwood and George.

My heart swelled to see them. I skidded down the bottom of the slope, jumped over Holly and Bobby Vernon, who were sprawled on the ground, and helped them to their feet. It was all I could do to
stand upright, the wind blew so hard. A bent clothes rack, twisted as easily as a paper clip, crashed onto the escalators from above, twitched once, then lay there like a dead thing.

“Lucy!” That was George. “Please, come on! The place is tearing itself apart!”

George always was a master at telling you things you already knew. We started forward. Vernon looked green; Holly’s face was bloodied, either from her fall or from the buffeting we’d
had upstairs.

In front of us the hole in the floor was widening. The floor burst open. Earth spat against our faces; a piece of wood struck my arm.

Lockwood threw his rapier away; he stepped out of the circle. I saw him stagger as the wind caught him; his coat billowed up and outward. With an effort he kept his feet, leaped across the edge
of the hole. Then he was beside us, grinning that old grin.