Haunted: A Lockwood & Co Story

Chapter Three: The Attic

It was cold - that was the first thing.
It was also pitch-black. A hazy column of other light drifted up through the loft hatch from the ghosts below, and lit their three pale faces; otherwise, they could see nothing.
And there was something with them, close and all around. Charlotte could feel the pressure of its presence, hovering over them in the dark. The force of it made it hard to breathe, hard to move; it was like they were suddenly crouching in deep water, with the awful weight of it crushing down...

Lockwood was the first to fight back. Charlotte heard a rustling as he reached into his bag and drew out his lantern. He flicked the switch and turned the dial; a soft warm radiance swelled from it, and showed them where they were.

An attic: a cavernous space, broad at its base and rising into the darkness beneath the eaves of a steeply pitched roof. There were old brick gables at either end, one with chimney stacks built in, and one pierced by a single tall, but narrow, window. Great crossbeams spanned the shadows high above them, supporting the weight of the roof.

A few broken tea chests lay in one corner. Otherwise the room was empty. There was nothing there.

Or almost nothing. Cobwebs hung like hammocks between the rafters, thick and grey and heavy, like ceiling drapes in an Arabian bazaar. Where the roof lines hit the floor, they were piled in drifts, plugging the corners, softening the edges of the abandoned room. Threads of webbing dangled from the crossbeams, twitching in the little air-currents our activities had stirred.

Some of the webs glittered with frost. Their breath made bitter clouds.

The three got stiffly to their feet. There's a well-known fact about spiders, a curious thing. They're attracted to places of psychic disturbance; to longstanding Sources where invisible, unknowable powers have loitered and grown strong. An unnatural congregation of spiders is a sure sign of potent and ancient haunting, and their cobwebs are a dead giveaway. To be fair, Charlotte hadn't seen any in the guest rooms of Lavender Lodge, but then Mrs Evans was probably pretty handy with her duster.

It was a different matter in the attic, though.

They gathered what remained of their equipment. In their haste to climb the ladder, George had left his bags below, and between the three , they'd used up their chains and most of the salt and iron. Luckily Lockwood still had his bag containing their vital silver Seals, and they each had their magnesium flares tucked safely into their work-belts. And Charlotte still had the ghost-jar too, for what it was worth. Charlotte dumped it beside the open hatch. The face had grown faint, the plasm dark and cold.

"You oughtn't to be up here..." it whispered. "Even I'm nervous, and I'm already dead."

Charlotte used her rapier to cut away a few dangling cobwebs near her face. "Like we've got a choice. You see anything, let me know."

Lockwood went over to the window, which was almost as tall as he was. He rubbed a circle in the filthy glass, brushing off a thin crusting of ice. "We're overlooking the street." He said. "I can see ghost-lamps far below. Okay. The Source must be here somewhere. We can all feel it. Go cautiously, and let's get this done."

The search began. The three moved like climbers labouring at altitude; it was slow, painful, painstaking. All around Charlotte, the dreadful psychic weight bore down.

There were recent handprints by the hatch, perhaps where the police had made their cursory inspection. Otherwise no one had been in the attic for years. In paces, the floor had been roughly boarded, and Lockwood pointed out the thick layers of dust lying over everything. Charlotte noticed certain swirls and curling patterns traced faintly into that dust, as if it had been stirred by curious motions of the air, but no footprints at all.
George poked in the corners with his rapier, winding cobwebs around his blade.
Charlotte stood in the middle, listening.