Lockwood by Jonathan Stroud

out a gasp of shock. And that wasn’t the worst of it – as the cold hit me, my inner ears kicked into life. That vibration I’d sensed before? It was suddenly
loud
. Behind the hum of George’s voice and Joplin’s chatter, it had become a muffled buzzing, like an approaching cloud of flies.
    ‘Lockwood . . .’ I began.
    Then it was done. My head cleared. The cold vanished. My skin felt red and raw. The noise shrank into the background once again.
    ‘. . . really quite extraordinary church, Mr Cubbins,’ Joplin was saying. ‘The best brass-rubbings in London. I must show you some time.’
    ‘Hey!’ This was Lockwood, standing in the centre of the pit. ‘Hey!’ he called. ‘Look what I’ve found! No, not you, please, Mr Joplin – you’d better stay beyond the iron.’
    He had his torch trained on the mud beside his feet. Moving slowly, my head still ringing, I crossed the chains with George and went down into the hole. Our boots trod soft, dark mud.
    ‘Here,’ Lockwood said. ‘What do you make of this?’
    At first I made out nothing in the brightness of the beam. Then, as he moved his torch, I saw it: the long hard reddish edge of something, poking out of the mud.
    ‘Oh,’ George said. ‘That’s weird.’
    ‘Is it the coffin?’ Little Mr Joplin was hovering beyond the chains, craning his thin neck eagerly. ‘The coffin, Mr Lockwood?’
    ‘I don’t know . . .’
    ‘Most coffins I’ve seen are made of wood,’ George murmured. ‘Most Victorian coffins would have long since rotted in the ground. Most are buried at a respectable six feet, with all the proper rites and regulations . . .’
    There was a silence. ‘And this?’ Joplin said.
    ‘Is only four feet down, and has been tipped in at an angle, like they wanted to get shot of it as fast as possible. And it hasn’t rotted because it isn’t made of wood at all. This box is made of iron.’
    ‘Iron . . .’ Lockwood said. ‘An iron coffin—’
    ‘Can you hear it?’ I said suddenly. ‘The buzzing of the flies?’
    ‘But they didn’t have the Problem then,’ George said. ‘What did they need to trap in there?’

7

    It took us till midnight to dig the thing out. One of us stood guard, taking readings, while the others laboured with the tools. Every ten minutes we swapped round. We used the spades and picks that had been discarded on the path to cut away the mud from metal, deepen the pit at its centre, and slowly expose the object’s lid and sides.
    We rarely spoke. Silence enfolded us like a shroud; we heard nothing but the
skrrt, skrrt, skrrt
of the tools in the earth. All was still. Occasionally we scattered salt and iron up and down the centre of the pit to keep supernatural forces at bay. It seemed to work. It was two degrees colder in the pit than on the path beyond, but the temperature remained steady. The buzzing noise I’d heard had gone.
    Albert Joplin, for whom the mysterious burial exerted a powerful fascination, remained with us for a while, flitting back and forth among the gravestones in a state of high excitement. Finally, as the night darkened and the coffin rose clear of the earth, even he grew cautious; he remembered something important he had to do back at the chapel, and departed. We were alone.
    Skrrt, skrrt, skrrt.
    At last we finished. The object stood exposed. Lockwood lit another storm lantern and placed it in the mud near the centre of the pit. We stood a short way off, gazing at what we’d found.
    An iron box about six feet in length, two feet wide and just over a foot deep.
    Not any old box, in other words. As Lockwood had said – an iron coffin.
    The sides were still partially caked with soil, grey and sticky-looking. Where the gunge had come away, the surface of the box showed through. Rust bloomed on it like flowers of coral, the colour of dried blood.
    Once, presumably, its sides had been clean and straight, but the pressing earth and weight of years had contorted the box so that its