doesn’t do that, it should still give me a clearer sense of where the ghost is hanging out—what part of this building is its anchor, or its home.”
I cleared a space on the layout table. This involved shoving aside some of Jon Tiler’s pencils and worksheets, which he snatched out of my hands indignantly.
“Has she got to have an anchor?” Alice asked, stubbornly insisting on the personal pronoun.
“No,” I admitted. “But most of them do. We’re playing the odds.”
I turned to Rich.
“Rich,” I said, “how would you feel about being wounded again? Just very slightly this time, and in the name of science?”
He hesitated again, searching my face for a clue to what I meant. When I took out the diabetes blood-testing kit from my pocket, he looked even more doubtful—but Tiler looked downright sick.
“It’s okay,” I reassured him. “It’s not surgery, it’s just—sympathetic magic. The ghost spilled Rich’s blood. That’s unusual in itself. Most ghosts, even the ones in the angry brigade, they’re happy just to chuck stuff around. Smash a window or two, maybe, leave scratch marks on the furniture—that sort of number. Actual violence, though, that’s rare. Wounding you is probably the most intense experience this spirit has had since it crossed over.”
I had their full attention now. Opening up the test kit, I took out the disinfectant and unscrewed the lid. Then I picked up a bubble pack and tore it open. It contained a sharp—a thin strip of stainless steel with a short but keen point at one end. I anointed this end with the antiseptic.
“Nobody knows,” I said, “whether ghosts are made out of emotions or just drawn to them. Either way, it’s pretty much an accepted fact that they’ll usually choose to hang around in places where they experienced strong emotions in life. Fear. Love. Pain. Whatever. But there’s another side to the equation. If they become involved in strong emotions
Alice put on a sour, disapproving face at the sexual metaphor, but I think they all got it.
“So we can use that now,” I concluded, simply. “If Rich reenacts the wound, the ghost may respond. It ought to feel the ripples from the original event stirred up again by the replay. If we’re lucky, it won’t be able to help itself. It might be drawn right here, in which case I’ll probably be able to finish the job tonight. But whether it comes or not, it should look in this direction; it should be pulled toward us. And I’ll sense it. I’ll be able to triangulate on where it is.”
All eyes turned to Rich, who shrugged as nonchalantly as he could.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m not scared of a little prick with a needle.”
In the tense, expectant atmosphere, nobody touched the straight line. Rich held out his hand, and without preamble, I jabbed him once with the sharp, on the ball of his forefinger. He had enough self-control not to wince.
“Squeeze out a drop of blood,” I said. “On the desk, preferably.”
“I can’t authorize the cleaners to wipe up blood,” Alice objected, but Rich was already doing it. Clenching his right forefinger in his left hand, he tightened his grip, and a pearl of blood welled up from the tiny wound. It reached critical mass and fell onto the desk with a slight but audible splat.
I handed Rich a swab of cotton wool from the kit, and he reached out his good hand to take it. But before he could, both the cotton wool and the sharp were swatted from my fingers by an invisible force. Rich gave a yelp of shock as his hand was flicked away, too. All the heads present, including mine, snapped around—to stare at empty air.
Then the entire room went crazy.
It was as though there was a wind—a whirlwind—that we couldn’t feel: a whirlwind that flesh was immune to, but that swept all other substances before it with implacable fury. Both doors to the room slammed deafeningly shut; books and files leaned over, tumbled, and fell to the floor; and papers flew from every desk and shelf to envelop us in an instant A4 blizzard. At the same time, the floor shuddered to a series of pounding thuds, the vibrations so powerful that my jaws clacked shut on the tip of my tongue. Cheryl swore, and Alice screamed. Rich gave a choking cry, backing away from the swirl of papers and striking ineffectually at the air. Jon Tiler and the other guy whose name I’d already forgotten both hit the floor in best
As for me, I just stood and watched as maps and posters and fire-drill charts hauled themselves off the walls and added themselves to the general melee. It was instinctive: not arrogant, or defiant, or particularly brave. It was just that this was information, and I wanted to make sure that I didn’t miss anything that might turn out to be important.
So when one small piece of paper or card came fluttering toward me, sailing against the storm, I noticed it at once. Unlike most of the diabolically animated paperwork, it was a lot smaller than A4. More to the point, it was dancing to the beat of a different drum, almost hovering, its short feints to left and right keeping it more or less directly in front of my face. I reached up and grabbed it out of the air. I couldn’t look at it because file folders and envelopes and catalogs and worksheets were beating against me and wrapping around me. I closed my hand on it instead, used the other hand to shield my face until, only a few seconds later, the tempest stopped. It didn’t slacken or falter, it just died, and everything that had been snatched up into the air fell simultaneously to the ground. Except for the scrap of card that I was holding—that went into my trouser pocket.
The archive staff blinked and looked around them, shell-shocked and disbelieving. Only Alice and Rich were still on their feet; Cheryl had ducked under her desk to join Jon Tiler and the other guy on the floor. Nobody said a word as they all got up again and stared around at the debris.
“Well, that was what we call a positive result,” I said into the silence.
“The—the damage!” Tiler stuttered. “Look at this! What have you done, Castor? What the fuck have you done?” Alice was just staring at me, and I saw that her hands were trembling.
“I don’t think anything much is broken, Jon,” Cheryl offered. “It’s a terrible mess, but look—most of it’s just paper.”
“Just paper? It’s my worksheets,” Tiler howled. “I’ll never get them sorted out again.”
“Looking on the bright side,” I said, “it worked. I got a really strong line on the ghost. I can pinpoint more or less exactly where it came from.”
They all looked at me expectantly.
“The first floor,” I admitted. “Just as we thought.”
Eight
I BEAT THE KIND OF RETREAT THAT COULD BE CALLED either hasty or strategic, depending on which side of the line you were watching it from. I was helped by the fact that Alice seemed unable even to frame, let alone speak, the many harsh words that she wanted to say to me. I assured her that I’d taken more from that brief encounter than just a confirmation of what we already knew, and I promised her definite progress tomorrow. Then I was out of there.
The lights in the corridor had already been turned off, but there was a strip light on in the stairwell. By its subliminally flickering glare, I reached into my pocket, took out the offering that the ghost had thrown at me, and examined it. It was card, not paper: a white rectangle about five inches by three, printed with pale blue lines and perforated close to one of the long edges by a single circular hole. This hole had once been about half an inch away from the edge, but was now joined to it by a ragged tear.
It was a card ripped out of a Rolodex or file-card index. On it there were four letters and seven numbers.
ICOE 7405 818.
ICOE? Was that a name? An acronym of some kind? The Institute of . . . Christ knew what. The rest of it looked to be a central London phone number, though—logical enough if this was from someone’s desk directory.
