Lockwood & Co.: The Screaming Staircase

them distinctly, their shapes gently overlapping. They probably floated in some kind of cloud.
    I didn’t buy any of it; besides, I had a pounding headache too. So I stared at them grimly until they broke apart and faded, and I was left in a different, darker place.
    Dark, but not pitch-black. It shone with a silver glow.
    Quiet, but not entirely silent. I heard a ringing in my ears.
    It was a high-pitched, tinny sort of ring, like a mosquito’s whining buzz, and when I heard it I instantly felt a kind ofjoy. Because it meant my ears were sore, and that in turn meant I wasn’t dead. I wasn’t in that silent place at the bottom of the well.
    Additionally there was a strong smell of smoke and gunpowder, and a chemical taste on my tongue. The side of my face was pressed against hard stone.
    When I moved, I hurt. It was like the fall from Mr Hope’s study window all over again; every muscle ached. I could feel a light coating of something dusty falling off my hair and skin as I rolled over and levered myself upright.
    I was sitting in a far corner of that terrible underground chamber, where the force of the blast had blown me. My forehead was sticky with blood. I was covered – like everything else in the room – with a whitish layer of the ash and iron fragments that were still settling from the air. I coughed, spat the stuff out of my mouth. The cough made my head hurt even more.
    A column of pale white smoke rose slowly from the well shaft in the centre of the room. It was lit by an angry silver radiance from the depths beneath, an eerie glow that pulsed and flared. The whole room shone with magnesium light. Somewhere, faint reverberations still sounded; I could feel the impacts in the stone.
    At the well rim, several bricks had disappeared, and a curling crack now ran outwards from the edge across the floor. A portion of the floor had tilted upward. Wherethe crack met the wall, many stones had been dislodged; one or two had fallen, and others protruded at queasy angles. Smaller fragments of rock littered the chamber. Some rested on the bodies lying there.
    Three bodies, covered with white dust. Three bodies, scattered by the explosion from the well. None of them was moving.
    Which was reasonable enough in the case of the poor Fittes boy. He’d had a lot of practice at that.
    But Lockwood and George . . .
    I got to my feet slowly, carefully, supporting myself against the wall. Dizzy as I felt, it was a whole lot better than when the screaming had filled my head. There was a kind of hole in my mind from the psychic attack; I felt scoured out and hollow, as if I were a convalescent, newly risen from my bed.
    George was nearest. He lay on his back with his arms and legs spread wide. He looked like a kid caught making an angel in the snow, except his glasses had been blown off and one of his hands was bleeding. He breathed heavily; his belly rose and fell.
    I knelt close. ‘George?’
    A groan, a cough. ‘It’s too late. Leave me . . . Let me sleep . . .’
    I shook him firmly, slapped the side of his face. ‘George, you’ve got to wake up! George, please . Are you OK?’
    An eye opened. ‘Ow. That cheek was the one bit of me that wasn’t sore.’
    ‘Here, look – your glasses.’ I scooped them out of the ash, put them on his chest. One of the lenses had cracked. ‘Get up now.’
    ‘Lockwood?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    I found him on the opposite side of the room, lying on his side with his coat blown outwards like a single broken wing. He was very still. With its coating of ash, his face looked like that of an alabaster statue, smooth and white and cold. A piece of masonry had struck him and there was blood in his hair. I knelt by him, brushed the ash from his forehead.
    His eyes opened. He looked at me with a clear, unclouded gaze.
    I cleared my throat. ‘Hi, Lockwood . . .’
    Awareness returned. I saw bafflement first, then gradual recognition.
    ‘Oh . . . Lucy.’ He blinked, coughed, tried to sit up. ‘Lucy. For a moment I thought you were . . . It doesn’t matter. How are you, Lucy? You’re OK?’
    I stood abruptly. ‘Yes, I’m fine.’
    George was watching me through cracked spectacles. ‘I saw that.’
    ‘What?’ I said. ‘Saw what? Nothing happened.’
    ‘Precisely. Where was his slap round the chops? Wherewas his firm shaking? There’re double standards at work here.’
    ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I’ll be sure to slap him next time.’
    George grunted. ‘Great . . .