Lockwood & Co. Book Three: The Hollow Boy Read Online Free PDF Page A

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. We moved like climbers laboring at altitude: it was slow, painful, painstaking. All around us 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 places, the floor had been roughly
boarded, and Lockwood pointed out the thick layers of dust lying over everything. We 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.
    I stood in the middle, listening.
    Beyond the freezing rafters, beyond the cobwebs, the wind howled around the roof. Rain lashed against tiles; I could hear it running down the pitch and drumming onto the window. The fabric of
the building trembled.
    Inside
, however, it was quiet. I could no longer hear the whispering of the ghosts in the rooms below.
    No sounds, no apparitions, not even any ghost-fog.
    Just vicious cold.
    We gathered at last in the center of the attic. I was grimy, tense, and shivering; Lockwood, pale and irritable. George was trying to get a mass of sticky cobwebs off his rapier, rubbing the
blade against the edge of his boot.
    “What do you think?” Lockwood said. “I’ve no idea where it can be. Any thoughts?”
    George raised a hand. “Yes. I’m hungry. We should eat.”
    I blinked at him. “How can you possibly think about eating now?”
    “Very easily. Mortal fear gives me an appetite.”
    Lockwood grinned. “Then it’s a pity you haven’t any sandwiches. You left them in your bag, back down with the ghosts.”
    “I know. I was thinking of sharing Lucy’s.”
    This made me roll my eyes. Mid-roll, my eyes stopped dead.
    “Lucy?” Lockwood was always first to notice when anything was wrong.
    I took a moment before replying. “Is it me,” I said slowly, “or is there something lying on that beam?”
    It was the crossbeam almost directly overhead. Cobwebs hung down from it, merging with the shadows of the eaves. Above was a funny patch of darkness that might have been part of the beam, or
part of an object resting directly on it. You couldn’t really see it from below, except for something poking out on one side that might have been hair.
    We regarded it in silence.
    “Ladder, George,” Lockwood said.
    George went to get the ladder, pulling it upward through the hatch. “Those guys are still down there,” he reported. “Just standing around the chains. Looks like they’re
waiting for something.”
    We set the ladder against the beam.
    “You want my advice?”
In its jar, the ghost had stirred.
“The worst thing you can do is go up and look. Just chuck a magnesium flare and run away.”
    I reported this to Lockwood. He shook his head. “If it’s the Source,” he said, “we
have
to seal it. One of us has to climb up. How about you, George? Seeing as
how you went for the broom closet just now.”
    George’s face generally expresses as much emotion as a bowl of custard. It didn’t display overwhelming delight now.
    “Unless you want me to?” Lockwood said.
    “No, no…that’s fine. Hand me a net, then.”
    At the heart of every haunting is a Source—an object or place to which that particular ghostly phenomenon is tethered. If you snuff this out—for instance, by covering it with a Seal,
such as a silver chain net—you seal up the supernatural power. So George took his net, ready-folded in its plastic case,