Lockwood by Jonathan Stroud Page B

Temperature’s still holding firm and the miasma isn’t any worse. Whatever’s in there is keeping surprisingly quiet. Well, there’s no time like the present. Lucy – let’s take our positions.’
    He and I went to opposite ends of the coffin. I held our largest, strongest silver chain-net, four feet in diameter. I unfolded it, and let it hang ready in my hands. Lockwood unclasped his rapier and held it with an angled Western grip, ready for a quick attack.
    ‘George,’ he said, ‘it’s over to you.’
    George nodded. He closed his eyes and composed himself. Then took up the crowbar. He flexed his fingers, rolled his shoulders and did something with his neck that made it click. He approached the coffin, bent close, set the end of the crowbar into the crack between the broken clamps. He widened his stance and waggled his bottom like a golfer about to take a swing. He took a deep breath – and pressed down on the bar. Nothing happened. He pressed again. No, the lid was twisted; perhaps its contortions had jammed it shut. George pressed down again.
    With a clang, the lid shot up; George’s end of the bar shot down. George jerked backwards, lost his balance and landed heavily on his backside in the mud, with his glasses slightly askew. He sat himself up, stared stupidly down into the coffin.
    And screamed.
    ‘
Torch
, Lucy!’ Lockwood had dived forward, shielding George with the blade of his rapier. But nothing had come out. No Visitor, no apparition. The gleam of the lanterns shone on the inside of the lid, and also on something in the coffin – something reflecting a darkly glittering light.
    The torch was in my hand. I shone it full into the interior, on what was lying there.
    If you’re easily icked-out, you might want to skip the next two paragraphs, because the body staring back at me wasn’t just bones, but a great deal more. That was the first surprise: there was much that hadn’t decayed away. Ever left a banana under a sofa and forgotten about it? Then you’ll know that it soon goes black, then black and gooey, then black and shrunk right down. This guy, entombed in iron, was like a banana midway between the second stage and the third. Torchlight glimmered on the dried and blackened skin, stretched tight above the cheekbones. In places it had cracked. There was a neat hole in the centre of his forehead, around which the skin had entirely peeled away.
    Long hanks of white hair, colourless as glass, hung beside the head. The eye sockets were empty. Dried lips had shrunk back, revealing gums and teeth.
    He wore the remnants of a purple cloak or cape, and beneath it an old-style black suit, stiff high collar, black Victorian cravat. His hands (bony, these) cradled something shrouded in tattered white cloth. Whether because of the angle of the burial, or because of the movement of the earth in the long years since, the object had slid from beneath the cloth, and was peeping out between the skeletal fingers. It was a piece of glass, perhaps the width of a human head, with an irregularly shaped rim. It was quite black with dirt and mould, and yet the glass still glinted – and the glinting caught my eye.
    Look! Look . . .
    What was that voice?
    ‘Lucy! Seal it up!’
    Of course. It was Lockwood shouting.
    With that I cast the silver chain-net, and the contents of the coffin were blotted out.
    ‘So what did you
see
, George?’ Lockwood asked.
    We were standing on the path now, drinking tea and eating sandwiches, which some of Saunders’s team had brought. A decent crowd had gathered – Saunders, Joplin, several workmen and the night-watch kids – some because the fun was over, others possibly in delayed response to George’s scream. They all hung about the gravestones, staring at the pit, a safe distance from the chains. We’d shut the coffin lid; just a corner of the chain-net could be seen.
    ‘I mean, I know Bickerstaff looked bad,’ Lockwood went on, ‘but, let’s face it, we’ve seen