Lockwood & Co.: The Screaming Staircase

the side. He stumbled over the duffel bags and nearly fell beyond the iron.
    Lockwood cursed. ‘What the hell are you—?’ He shone the torch. George crouched on the bags, clutching at his jacket. A ribbon of smoke curled from his shoulder.
    ‘Up above,’ he said hoarsely. ‘ Quick .’
    The beam snapped upwards. There – the chandelier, choked with dust and webs. A single rivulet of red had trickled from the ceiling, down the central column, and out along a curving crystal arm. At its lowest point a new pendant of blood was slowly building.
    ‘It – it can’t do that,’ I stammered. ‘We’re inside the iron.’
    ‘Move out the way!’ Lockwood pushed me back just as the drop fell, spattering on the floor in the centre of thecircle. We were all standing almost atop the iron chains. ‘We’ve made it too big,’ he said. ‘The power of the iron doesn’t extend into the very centre. It’s weak there, and this Visitor’s strong enough to overcome it.’
    ‘Adjust the chains inwards—’ George began.
    ‘If we make the circle smaller,’ Lockwood said, ‘we’ll be squeezed into a tiny space. It’s scarcely midnight; we’ve seven hours till dawn and this thing’s just got started. No, we’ve got to break out – and that means Lucy’s corner. Come on.’
    Keeping our torches trained up above us, we stepped out of the circle on the opposite side to the spreading pools, and began to move round towards the left corner of the end wall. But no sooner did we do so than thick dark trails extended on the ceiling, flowing fast in our direction. The panic in my belly twisted tighter; I fought down the urge to scream.
    ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘It’s sensing where we are. If we all go there, it’ll quickly hem us in.’
    Lockwood nodded. ‘You’re right. Well done. Come on, George. We’ll try to distract it. Lucy: get over there and keep on looking.’
    ‘OK . . .’ I hurried on. ‘But why me?’
    ‘You’re a girl,’ Lockwood called. ‘Aren’t you meant to be more sensitive?’
    ‘To emotions, yes. To nuances of human behaviour. Not necessarily to secret passages in a wall.’
    ‘Oh, it’s much the same thing. Besides, flailing about withrapiers is basically all George and I are good at.’ He danced off across the room, swirling his torch, waving his sword high towards the ceiling. George did likewise, making for another corner.
    Whether the Visitor was suitably distracted, I didn’t have time to see. I put my rapier away, set my torch to its weakest setting, held it tight between my teeth so I could see roughly where I was. To my left was the window recess. Beyond the glass was the fresh cool air of night-time, and a thirty-foot bone-snapping drop down to the gravel driveway. Who knows, perhaps we’d have to jump for it before we were done. Perhaps that would be the better way to die.
    Sweat poured down my face, despite the cold. My hands shook as I set them to the wall. As before, I ran my hands all over the area where I’d got the hollow sound.
    No luck. Nothing but smoothness.
    I reached the corner, felt up and down along the join. On sudden impulse I tried the adjoining wall. Maybe a switch or door was there. I stood on tiptoe, stretched as high as I could. I bent down low. I pressed and pushed. I shoved. I did all this until I reached the window recess. Still I had no joy.
    Looking back, I discovered our tactics had worked up to a point. George and Lockwood were banging about in the far regions of the room, channelling their panic into whoops and whistles, and rude insults shouted at the Visitor. In response the central ceiling pool had thrown out new branches: longangry streams of blood diverged around the chandelier, came lancing out towards them.
    But I hadn’t been forgotten either. To my shock a stream of blood now stretched almost to my feet along the floor. Up above, an arm of the central stain extended perilously close, and from this a dark, thin stream was falling. Black spatters laced the boards beside my boots. One fell against my heel. There was a hiss; a thin white coil of smoke curled upwards as I jumped away, up onto the deep sill below the window.
    This was no good. Now I risked being completely trapped. I turned, crouched, prepared to leap down – and as I did so, my fingers touched the wooden shutter that was folded back against the side of the recess. I looked at it. And in that desperate moment, inspiration came.
    I shone my torch full upon the shutter. It was