The three of us headed out into the muggy evening a quarter-hour before the expected manifestation. We made our rounds, but temperatures hadn't dropped anywhere and Lockwood saw nothing except a tiny death glow at the base of the maple, which he confidently labeled a mouse. Or a sparrow. Or perhaps a slow worm.
I heard nothing, even when I knelt down and trailed my hand along the bricks of the path. I walked down to the garden gate and touched the wall next to it-no use touching the gate, it was made of iron. All quiet.
Leaning against the wall, I could feel the captured heat in the sun-baked bricks through my black cotton tee-shirt. The warmth made me sleepy; although we had a few days without a job, September had been very busy so far-the whole summer had been, really, after Kensal Green.
My mind wandered back over the past few months. I began to nod off. And then the kettle whistled.
"Lockwood, you've left the kettle on!"
"I'm sure I haven't, and I can't hear it. That'll be our Visitor, Lucy," replied Lockwood.
The whistling cut off abruptly, and now there was a voice, calling. It was so faint that I wasn't sure whether I heard it or felt it-Come. Come on. Come here. Faint, but eager and excited.
"She's calling to me, to come to her," I relayed to them. "But it's not threatening."
"Oh yes, George, now take good notes: this must be a Type Four Ghost-the friendly kind. Next she'll lead us by the hand and show us Christmases past," opined Lockwood, his voice rich with sarcasm.
It was a few minutes early-9:07-but suddenly we all saw tendrils of ghost fog materializing around the planting beds.
We formed a circle, back to back, with our rapiers drawn. Our other hands rested on salt tins and iron filings at our waists. A strong, cold breeze rustled through the garden. The temperature dropped, and the Visitor was there.
George and I immediately turned to face the apparition, but the aura was still too faint for me to get a good look. I could hear, though-scrabbling, scratching noises; a jingling sound.
"What do you see, Lockwood?" called George.
"A woman, an older woman, a Shade or a Specter," answered Lockwood. "Cardigan sweater, tartan skirt, sensible shoes. She's holding something..."
The figure flickered and was all at once a few feet further away, but much clearer. I moved cautiously to the left and kept a close watch on the Visitor, in case it disappeared or attacked. If it vanished we'd need to mark the exact spot to locate the source. As to what danger the ghost posed, we still hadn't determined whether the manifestation was a Type One or Type Two, whether she was aware of us or not.
Ghost fog, or some strange trick of other light, had begun to pool at her feet, much brighter than the rest of the apparition's outline. Then she turned toward me, and met my gaze dead on.
"Specter," I called out, "She's a Specter!"
Her arm drew back and then shot forward, reaching for me...no, not reaching, throwing. At that instant her voice became clear: "Go on, go get it. Bring it back to mummy!"
The bright patch at her feet wasn't trailing ghost fog-it was a ghost dog.
I opened my mouth to speak but Lockwood beat me to it.
"Oh I say, it's a Corgi."
And then all three of us just stood there in the moonlit garden and watched an old woman play fetch with her dog. We acted as though we'd never heard of the Fittes Manual, let alone read it. Not one of us so much as reached for a flare or even a salt bomb.
Was it because we had so little resembling a normal family life that Bitsy Brown and her dog were like those documentary films about the Aztecs or the Maasai that we used to be shown in school-a glimpse of an alien world in which even the most mundane things, like clothing or cooking pots, were oddly fascinating in how much they differed from our own experience? Bitsy Brown wouldn't have been any more riveting if she had been wearing a feathered cloak or tribal body paint.
Or perhaps it was just the novelty of an entirely new phenomenon, one that we had never seen or even read about in True Hauntings. The Specter had come back not to avenge a murder or confess a crime or destroy an enemy; she had come back to throw a rubber ball around her garden with her Corgi.
Whatever the reason, or reasons, we didn't attempt to locate or neutralize the source. We didn't move, and we didn't talk much. We just watched them play.
Finally I pulled my thoughts together. "Lockwood, I don't think we have very long-just a few more minutes, at most. They're getting tired."
He didn't ask me how I knew; my Talent sometimes afforded me a glimpse of what Visitors were thinking-or feeling-or whatever it was they did. Often very useful, in that it allowed me to understand, at some level, what they would do next.
In this case, though, it didn't take an extraordinary sensitivity to see that the Corgi was slowing down. Finally the dog returned the ball one last time and sprawled out on his mistress's feet. Even as a ghost, every line of his long stubby body conveyed exhausted happiness.
"Leave them alone. Let them finish. Then we'll find the source. That's all the client asked, actually," said Lockwood quietly. He never took his eyes off the pair in front of us.
At 9:14 the dog and his mistress disappeared into the massed blooms of the overgrown hydrangea.
The three of us crossed the garden yard in a few quick steps. In lieu of our usual argument about whose turn it was to search out the source, I actually volunteered to do the seeking.
Handing my bulky belt to George, I got down on my stomach and crawled forward, parting the lowest branches with one arm while holding my torch in the other. Almost immediately I noticed a flat smooth stone, just a handspan square, embedded near the plant's thick stem.
Although partially obscured by leaves and debris, it was ice-cold to the touch. I cleared it off and read the inscription by the light of my torch:
Rex
Faithful Friend
Forever
