𝐇𝐨𝐦𝐞┃ Anthony Lockwood┃2┃

Chapter Forty Six - Ghost Train

Whatever the skull's complaints, Nola didn't think the chamber had ever been a ladies' toilet. It was far too spacious. It was a simple tiled recess, once probably used for railway supplies and then a storeroom of a different kind. In its centre, a long trestle table had been erected. On that table, and in neat piles on the floor to either side, sat silver-glass boxes and jars of varying size, and each one of those containers was full. Nola glimpsed bones, lumps of ragged cloth, pieces of jewellery, the usual bric-a-brac that made up supernatural Sources. But, there were powerful ones amongst them. Nola could feel the psychic buzzing even through the glass.

Very powerful, some of them. In a silver-glass box halfway up one pile, Nola spied the Ealing Cannibal's tooth collection.

Propped precariously at the end of the table, a certain familiar ghost jar.

The slime that surrounded the skull was thick and syrupy, but tiny pulses of green throbbed in its heart and the ghost's voice echoed in the girl's mind.       

"At last! Am I glad to see you! Right, stab this guy quickly, and let's be going."

Nola didn't answer. She needed to concentrate. She was not the only person in the room.

Behind the table, sitting on a plastic folding chair, was a man. A small man in a black suit with a dull blue tie. Those aspects Nola could instantly attest to. The rest was curiously vague. Even as she looked at him, the details were slipping from Nola's mind. He had nondescript brown hair, slicked back away from a bland, slightly shapeless face. He also had an expression of mild concentration: the tip of his tongue protruded from the side of his mouth. He had a cigarette in one hand, and with the other was making notes on a piece of paper. But distinguishing features that would pick him out in a crowd? None.

Something about that overt and almost aggressive ordinariness made Nola assume that he was not the person she was looking for. He was a bookkeeper, an underling – certainly not the mysterious collector for whom the Winkmans toiled. But, another part of her mind was jolted to sudden alertness. She felt as though she had seen him before.

Even as Nola made the connection, the skull's voice came again. "Beware this man." It said. "He doesn't look much, but he's dangerous. Oh, great – and I see you forgot your sword."

The little man looked up and saw the girl standing in the doorway. "Who are you, please? You are not welcome here."

It was a precise, finicky, almost waspish sort of voice, and suddenly Nola knew she was right. It was familiar to her. A voice that dealt in figures and paperwork and bureaucratic details, as well as the qualities of the strange, unpleasant psychic relics on the table top before him. A voice that kept tabs on things, that reported on them to others...

"Who are you?" The man asked again.

Nola had met him. Not so long ago.

"Woodhead, sir." Nola said, giving a small salute. "Jane Woodhead. Mrs Winkman sent me. There's been a mistake with one of the items. That manky skull in the jar. We should have brought you a different skull, sir. This one's a dud."

"Dud?" The little man frowned over at the jar, then down at his jottings. "It's in an official containment vessel. Old too. It's the style of jar used by the Fittes Agency years ago. They didn't often make mistakes."

"Did with this one, sir. The thing's got almost no psychic force. An old bit of tat that needs burning, Mrs Winkman says. She's sent for the good skull now. It'll be along in a minute. I'm to take the useless one away. She sends her apologies." Nola made a sort of tentative saunter towards the skull.