Lockwood & Co. Book Three: The Hollow Boy (38 page)

I slapped my hands against my face. I kept them there, blocking out the sight.

“It is not your fault,”
the voice said.

But it was. I knew it was. I curled my fingers, raking the nails into my skin. I heard a strange and awful cry, like some desperate, wounded animal, and realized it was me.

Coherent thoughts did not come. Images only. I remembered him throwing the chain net across the attic between the grasping ectoplasmic coils; leaping between me and the black-dressed woman at
the window. I remembered him running along the tops of the carnival floats, dodging the bullets of the enemy; and at the Wintergarden house, launching himself across the stairwell to strike the
murderous ghost and save my life.

Save my life
again
….

I also remembered the photograph from his sister’s room—that impatient, blurry child.

I rocked back and forth, tears pooling against my palms. I was a huddling, crumpled thing. This wasn’t right. It
couldn’t
be right. None of this was happening.

“Lucy.”
I lowered my hands. I could not see the shape; my eyes were awash. But I could hear, and he was speaking, clear and calmly, that way he always had.
“I did
not come to give you pain. I came to say good-bye.”

I shook my head, my face wet. “No! Tell me what happened.”

“I fell. I died. Is that not enough?”

“Oh, God….Trying to save me….”

“It was always going to be this way,”
the shape said.
“You knew it in your heart. My luck couldn’t go on forever. But I’m glad I did it, Lucy.
You’ve nothing to be guilty about, and I’m glad you’re safe. Safe….”
the voice added drily,
“with barely a scratch on you.”

I gave a wail at that. “Please—I’d have done anything for it to be the other way—”

“I know you would,”
Again I could tell that somewhere in the dark he was smiling a sad, sad smile.
“I know. Now…”
The form seemed to shrink back.
“I have been here too long.”

“No! I need to see you….” I said. “Please. Not in the dark. Not like this.”

“I cannot. It would distress you.”

“Please—show me.”

“Very well.”
Bright blue fire erupted around the shape; flames as delicate as liquid glass pooled up against the ceiling. And I saw him.

I saw a great and bloody wound, open in the center of his chest. His shirt had been ripped open by the force of whatever had driven through it. Tattered remnants of his coat hung on either side,
fading, at its base, with the rest of the apparition.

I saw his thin, pale face, twisted and terrible, his eyes dull and despairing. Yet, even so, he smiled at me, and the tenderness and grief contained within that smile made the image horrible
beyond imagining.

Blackness flared at the edge of my vision; I felt as if I would pass out. Instead I lurched to my feet and staggered toward him, hands outstretched. And as I did so the bloodied head turned
suddenly to look back along the passage, and I saw that it was not a solid head at all but an empty mask, and that its hollow contours were filled with wisps of shadow.

The face turned back to me.
“Lucy—I must go now. Remember me.”

From the front, it was perfect: I could see the pores in the skin, that little mole I always noticed on the side of his neck. The hair, the jaw, the crumpled details of the shirt and
coat—everything was right. But from the side and back…it seemed to me that not just the head but the body itself had been utterly scooped out, hollow as a fibrous papier-mÂché
shell.

“Wait, Lockwood…I don’t understand. Your head…”

“I must go.”
Once more, the figure looked behind it, as if something had disturbed its concentration. And I wasn’t wrong. It was an empty thing. Thick black fibers
dangled at the margins, like the edges of an unfinished rug. Beyond was a net of grainy wisps, intricate yet chaotically woven, like a great gray spiderweb that had been molded into a contoured
membrane. I saw the inverse of Lockwood’s face, the curve of the cheekbones, the indentation of the nose.

There were blank holes where the mouth and eyes should be.

Now it faced me once more. The mouth smiled sadly; the eyes shone with wisdom and remote knowledge.
“Lucy…”

Those fibers…I thought of the jerking, crawling thing.

My head cleared. I staggered back, filled with revulsion and relief.

“I know what you are!” I cried. “You’re not him!”

“I am what is to come.”

“You’re a Fetch! An imposter! Feeding on my thoughts!” The flare! Where was it? I couldn’t see it in the dark.

“I show you the future. This is your doing.”

“No! No, I don’t believe you.”

“Not everything you see is what has passed. Sometimes it is what is yet to be.”

A pale smile shone in the pale, pale face. It looked at me with kindness and with love.

Then a sword point cut straight through it.

Down from the scalp, through the hair, right through the center of the nose and across the mouth and chin; down into the substance of the chest. It all happened in an instant; the body showed no
more resistance to the blade than a bag of air.

Lockwood’s head and body peeled away on either side, split in two by the shimmering silver point. The black wisps from the voids behind the contours of the hollow face drifted free, like
twists of black juice tumbling in water. The body fell away, dissolved to threads of plasm that coiled themselves to vapor and then to nothing.

Behind it, in the exact same spot, hair tousled, face bloodied, coat torn, one hand held outstretched behind him to counteract the driven blow, was Lockwood.

He had no gaping wound in his chest. His shirt, white, but a little grubby with dust and mud, was still done up neatly to the second button. He grinned at me. “Hey, Lucy.”

I didn’t answer. I was too busy screaming.

A little later on we were sitting together on a block of stone at one corner of the chamber. Lockwood had kicked a few skulls away to make a clear space near us. He’d
scattered a bit of iron and salt over the piles of bones to discourage further nuisance, and two candles from his belt pouch were burning brightly in the middle of the floor. Somehow he’d
even found some chewing gum. It was all quite cozy, really.

“So, you’re all right?” he said for the tenth time.

“I think so. I don’t know.” I stared at my knees. Lockwood gave my arm a friendly squeeze. He had a scrape down the side of his face, and a corner of his lip was puffy. Still,
he looked an awful lot better than the white-skinned thing that had stood and talked to me before. “You know,” he said, “we need to find a way to get back up top; George will be
having kittens up there.”

“George! Is he okay? The others…”

“Fine. George is fine.”

“And…and Holly?”

“Good. Good….A little bashed up. We all are. They all went to find medics for Bobby Vernon. Kipps was going to try to contact Barnes. I left George in charge of it all when I climbed
down the hole after you.”

“You shouldn’t have done it,” I said. “You shouldn’t have risked yourself.”

“Come off it,” Lockwood said. “You know I’d die for you.” He chuckled. “Heaven knows, I’ve come near it often enough. Scrambling down a crack in the
ground is nothing….Hey, look at you now, you’re shaking. Put my coat on. Come on, I insist.”

I didn’t argue. I’d had enough of that. And the coat
was
warm. “I don’t remember any of it,” I said dully. “You know, how I got down here. I know I
must’ve banged my head when I fell—I haven’t been thinking quite straight since.” I thought of the skeletons, and our one-way conversations. Then I thought of the hollow
boy.

Lockwood nodded. “I’m not surprised. It was all a little hectic. Well, after you were sucked down the hole, the Poltergeist blew itself out. It was like you were the focus of it,
Luce. All that raging air just stopped, like it was frozen in time. You could hear things thumping to the floor all around the building. I was quite lucky—I was in midair, quite high up when
it happened, but I was over the escalators, so I didn’t fall too far. I landed on that central part, and just slid gently down. I lay there, upside down, watching all those tissue leaves
wafting slowly down across the foyer. It was like falling snow. Apart from their being red, of course. It was quite pretty. I wish Mr. Aickmere had been there to see it. Got to admit the place
doesn’t look quite so attractive now.”

I rubbed my eyes. “That poor department store…”

“Oh, think of all that free publicity we’re going to give it,” Lockwood said. “It’ll do really well.” He scratched the bridge of his nose. “Either that
or go out of business. Anyway, who cares? One thing’s for sure, they’ll have to do something about the hole in the floor. It goes pretty deep, and the earth is very unstable. I had
quite a job getting down in one piece. When I got to the bottom, I hacked through this layer of broken stone and dropped down into the old prison chamber. I found one of your candles on the floor
and knew you were alive. I set off up the passages, but got lost—at least, I ended up in one that was half-filled with water. I don’t think you went
that
way.”

“No.”

“But in the end it paid off for me because, before I found you, I came across the entrance to a long straight tunnel, part waterlogged and stinking of the river. I swear I could hear the
lap of the Thames at the far end—it wouldn’t surprise me if that was another way out. We could try it, maybe—save us trying to climb back up the hole.”

I looked at the floor, so carefully swept clean. “I think it
will
be a way out,” I said softly. “Lockwood, the ghost you saw with me—”

“Yes, what
was
that thing? I heard you talking to it, but to me it seemed just a horrible tangle of black wisps. I could hardly make out a shape at all, even when I crept close
with my rapier.”

“So you didn’t see its face?”

“Should I have?”

“Oh, no—it doesn’t matter.”

There was a silence, then. In truth, I found I couldn’t easily speak of the Fetch to him. To forestall immediate questions, I pointed out the signs of previous activity in the room: the
swept floor, the cigarette end, the burn mark in the center, and wax stains here and there. Lockwood was at once alert; he paced the chamber, studying it with a frown.

“You’re quite right,” he said. “This is a mystery. Someone has been here, and very recently. Look at the marks here: it’s Chinese wax they’ve been
using”—he scraped it with his finger and held it to his nose—“scented with jojoba oil. You get that at Mullet’s. Top quality stuff. And as for that cigarette…Its
brand might tell us something….” He picked it up and scrutinized it, rolling it between his fingers, scanning it against the candle light, narrow-eyed. “Hmm…aha. Yes….”

“So what brand
is
it?”

“Haven’t a clue. It just looks white and tobacco-y to me. But I bet we could find someone to tell us more.” He gazed around at the skeletons. “So what on earth were they
doing? You know, Luce, George
said
that something funny might be going on to stir so many ghosts up so quickly these last few weeks. And he was right. I want him to see this. He’s
got just the right kind of slightly fussy, obsessive mind that might notice something. We need to do it fast, too, before Barnes shows up. As soon as he does, you can bet DEPRAC will boot us out
and take over.”

I nodded. That
was
usually how it went. “The Chelsea outbreak…do you think we’ve stopped it?”

Lockwood was all energy again; he held out his hand to pull me up. “We’ll find out soon enough.” He looked over at the skeletons, peppered with salt and iron. “But if
this room
doesn’t
turn out to be the Source, with all this lot,
and
with an unknown someone doing something weird, I’m a Bunchurch agent. Look at the bones! If these
guys were all entombed alive here, that’s enough psychic charge to light up a city district.” He patted my arm. “And
you
found it, Luce. You did so well.”

That wasn’t how I was feeling. “Lockwood,” I said slowly, “about the Poltergeist…you were right, earlier. I
was
the focus. When we were upstairs, I…I argued
with Holly. I picked a fight with her. We stirred the Poltergeist up. I’m really sorry, Lockwood. It’s all my fault. I couldn’t control myself. I’m a liability. I could have
killed us all.”

“You and Holly saved Bobby Vernon, don’t forget,” Lockwood said, but he didn’t actually contradict what I’d said.

“She probably told you, did she?” I said. “Maybe she didn’t have time.”

“No, she didn’t say anything. She seemed worried about you, Lucy. We all were.”

He produced a penlight and led me out of the room of bones, down a narrow passage. We went in silence for a while.

“Lockwood,” I said, “I need to apologize. About recently. I’ve not been myself.”

It was a tight corridor; we walked almost side by side, following the beam of light. His voice was calm and quiet in the dark. “Well, neither have I,” he said. “After what
happened at the Wintergarden house, I’m afraid I haven’t treated you very well. I know I might have seemed standoffish. It’s just”—he took a deep breath—“I
didn’t trust myself to be with you. I was too anxious about what might happen.”

I stepped carefully over a fallen stone. Water was pooling around our feet. “Um, what might happen in exactly what sense?”

“In an operative situation, when our lives were again in danger. Your Talent is just so extraordinary, Luce—yes, we go left here; I know it
looks
like sewage, but it’s
algae, mostly—I mean, I heard you talking to that thing just now. It’s getting easier for you, isn’t it? It’s not just the skull anymore. It’s unique, your Talent, but
it makes you so vulnerable. And I have to look after you.”

Something knotted tightly in my chest. In the dark of my mind I saw again the palely smiling face. “No, Lockwood, you really don’t. You mustn’t. It’s not your
responsibility to—”