CHAPTER THREE

This was the first case for which Lucy was alone with Lockwood since they'd begun their little charade two weeks ago. Lucy hoped this was the first step to bringing things back to normal.

The client had been one of the first to come to them after the incident, but he didn't seem to be aware of the company's newfound reputation. He was old and balding, and decidedly not the kind of person to follow gossip magazines. Shorter than Lucy with a stocky, flabby frame. He wore navy trousers that day with a brown jacket and a grey shirt that may have once been white. Unfortunately things were already beginning to pile up, and the man was running a business by himself. Finding a day that would fit their mutual schedules was tricky enough, but George had specially requested extra time to research this one. After hearing his story, they were anxious to investigate but decided to let George have a go.

"My wife," the middle aged widower explained, "passed away about two years ago. She was a seamstress, had a little shop in the village and everything, but she had bit of a studio on the third floor of the house. I haven't been up there since she died, at least, not until a few days ago. My son asked if he could borrow my sport jacket for a wedding - he's all grown now, you see - and I told him to go up to the third floor to find it. Well, he comes back downstairs empty handed and asks, 'dad, when was the last time you went up there?' and I told him and he said, 'the entire hallway is covered in cobwebs.' Well, I went to see for myself, and he was right. You can't even see the door at the end of the hall, they're so thick. It was cold up there too. Those are signs of Visitors, aren't they?" He slurped from his teacup.

"You are absolutely correct, Mr. Graham. You were quite right to contact us," Lockwood said with a pleasant smile. "Did you notice anything else? Had your children been aware of a manifestation when they were younger, perhaps?"

"No, that's why this seems so strange. I suppose it's possible Alice kept the cobwebs at bay while she was alive - she always did like a clean house…"

"We are very sorry for your loss, Mr. Graham," Holly added.

"Thank you."

"If I may," George interjected. "I'd be interested to observe the spiders for a few days, if it's all the same to you. It's not often we get a chance to study them while a manifestation is occurring. Besides, with all the calls coming in, we're not likely to get to your house for a few nights at the very least." Classic George, ever prioritizing research.

"I- I suppose that would be acceptable."

"Do you have any idea what may have caused this? Are you aware of any events throughout the house's history?" Lucy asked.

"Well…" His voice was quiet, and as he spoke it lost volume. It was as if he hoped whispering the details of the house would protect him, like hoping a bedsheet could ward off the boogy man. "My wife died in the hospital, if that's what you're asking. But I do believe the previous owners lost a child. The flu virus that year was fairly lethal to infants, if I remember correctly." They had all leaned forward unconsciously, straining to catch his last few words. "The parents divorced each other six months later. The wife… committed suicide. I'm not sure where. And my family bought the house."

Reassuming control of the conversation, Lockwood spoke up. The callous volume of his words gave everyone whiplash. "Thank you very much for bringing this to our attention. We can see that there is some tragedy in the house. We'll have to tread carefully with this one. In the meantime, for your safety, we recommend placing iron strips at the edge of the manifestation. Fresh lavender, silver, or salt are other options, but you really can't go wrong with iron. I'm sure I don't have to tell you to leave the area alone after dark."

"No, of course not. And I have already taken some precautions. We'd laced the house when we bought it, especially after hearing it's history, but we were poor then and a haunted house was all we could afford."

"Excellent. Can you think of any other sensations surrounding the site? No? Alright then. Holly, why don't you and Mr. Graham find the soonest possible opening. This sounds promising. Can I offer you another biscuit?"

"Oh, yes, that would be welcome."

"I'll just refill the plate," Lucy said, getting up and whisking away the tray of crumbs. Hearing about the death of a child always gave her a grey, muted feeling. Not to mention all the stress from the newspapers that was beginning to boil up. She needed to leave the room.

"Thanks, Luce!" George hollered behind her.

By the time she returned, Holly and Lockwood had said their goodbyes and left. George, pen and paper in hand, remained with Mr. Graham, pestering him with more details about the spider infested hallway. Lucy set the plate down between them and left them to it. She almost felt sorry for Mr. Graham - George could go on for hours. It was probably why her coworkers had left so abruptly.

Still, his research had been helpful. Observation of the spiders in addition to a few hours spent in the library meant that Lucy and Lockwood were armed with the knowledge they needed to tackle the house. Apparently, the residence had been built by the previous owners on a plot of land in the process of being cultivated by enterprising business men. The entire street, in fact, was a product of their development. Three lost lives were connected to that house. The death of Charlie Notion was reported in the local paper, and the subsequent divorce of Mr. and Mrs. Notion had been loud and messy. Police reports detailed answering to multiple disturbances, called in by annoyed neighbors. All of this took place about 20 years ago, so it was easy enough to find information on it in the new archive system. George was rather pleased with everything but Mrs. Notion's death, which was underreported compared to everything else. Alice Graham's death was found in a matter of seconds.

The house was placed in the middle of the street, surrounded by its brothers and sisters. Most of the buildings looked as though they had just been popped right out of their mold, as if the developers had twisted an icecube tray. The rest of the houses had been personalized with splashes of paint or scruffs and scrapes over the past 25 years. Trees lined the street, old enough now to form a kind of tunnel. Their branches stretched across the road, leaves brushing up against each other like the hands of lovers who'd gotten on the wrong side of fate. So close, and yet...

Forcing down a feeling of foreboding, Lucy crossed the threshold and ducked into the house.

Lucy and Lockwood made quick work of setting up camp on the first floor. The interior of the residence was sparse and dusty. There was plenty of room for an iron circle, but even the barest of movements sent clouds sweeping up from the floor. Lockwood's flashy coat, gallantly flapping behind him as ever, caused the majority of this.

"Put some feathers on the edge of that coat and he'd make a better housekeeper than Holly." The Skull, who had not been happy at being left out of Lucy's little vacation, was as acidic as ever. Holly had put it into her rucksack for her - her sense of Touch was becoming stronger with each passing day.

Much like Mr. Graham's shirt, there may have been color and vibrance to the house in its earlier years, but all of that had been muted by months of melancholy. It was clear the man missed his wife. Lucy could feel his loneliness seeping throughout the house as she took readings on the first floor. There were other emotions, stewing beneath the surface as the sun went down. They crouched there on the edges of her mind, just waiting for the chance to spring the trap. She did her best not to Touch anything just yet, but remained mentally open to the other psychic phenomena.

"Luce?" Lockwood called from upstairs. "Ready to take a look at this hallway?"

"Be right up!" Lucy stashed the thermometer into her pocket, and headed to the stairs. Naturally, her thick agency boots caught on an uneven step. She actually fell up the steps, but she managed to catch herself on the railing.

"Clumsy, clumsy. It's a wonder you get any work done."

It was then that the true emotions of the house made themselves known. Fury raged at her down the staircase. She heard shouting, writhing and vicious tones echoing from the past. Accusations and protestations. It was a veritable ocean of anger, beating its waves against the shore, pounding, pounding, pounding away, grinding her brain into sand.

And then a riptide of guilt threatened to sweep her off her feet.

Instinctively, she pushed off of the railing, but she hadn't properly regained her balance from the trip up the stairs. Her body paused for a moment, suspended in the air, giving potential energy a moment to collect itself. Still reeling emotionally, her hands blindly rotated in the nothingness, feebly searching for balance or purchase. She tilted her head back to shout for help, but this shifted her gravity in the worst possible way. Backward, toward the foot of the stairs she fell.

Suddenly, miraculously, Lockwood was there. She should have known: he was always there for her. His hand clasped her forearm and wrenched her forward. He sat on the step above her in order to keep their collective weight under control. She toppled onto him, feet sweeping out from under her. He held her. Still practicing then.

"Luce? You alright there? What happened?"

"Touched the railing… felt the- the anger... from the divorce... And the guilt. So much guilt. Had to get away…" She was taking ugly, deep breaths between phrases.

"Did you hear me calling for you? I must've said your name a dozen times…"

"What? No… I only heard it once. When you said to come upstairs."

"Well, you were clutching that railing for a solid five minutes. I came to check on you, and there you were with your eyes all glazed over and your mouth barely open… It looked like you weren't breathing. I even waved my hand in front of your face. I've seen you Sense objects before Luce, but this was just… eerie."

"I'm… sorry?"

"There's no need to apologize." He helped her stand, taking care not the let her bare hands touch the walls. "Let's just focus on staying safe from here on in."

"Yeah. Of course."

"Well, look at you! Managing a little flirtation, I see… Nicely done, playing damsel in distress. I actually thought you wouldn't make for a moment it there."

"Sorry to disappoint, Skull," Lucy muttered.

"Finally talking to me, are you?"

"Only if you help. Do you sense anything?"

"Aside from your beating heart?"

"Not helping."

"Lots of emotional trauma. Nothing distinct yet."

"Still not helping."

"Perhaps, if you let me out…"

"Still not happening."

They'd come to the third floor landing. The stairs hugged the right wall of the house's interior from the first to the second floor (where Lucy had fallen), and the left wall from the second to the third. Stupid place felt like a maze. They'd had to walk the long hallway on the second floor in order to reach the next level. The landing was only one square meter, with a door directly across from the stairs and the hallway to their right.

Mr. Graham and George hadn't been exaggerating. There was literally a solid wall of cobwebs within three feet of the landing. The pair stood, gaping, as tiny dots with eight legs scuttled in every direction. The house below may have been grey with dust, but this hallway was silvery white and black. They could see where George attempted to scrape away at the corners and in the center, trying to gage how quickly the spiders would reassert themselves.

Fury and guilt began to trickle back into Lucy's awareness. Lockwood offered her some gum to combat the stench of sickness and decay wafting from the hall. Her sense of foreboding returned. Something terrible happened here, and she felt responsible for it.

These sensations, she knew, were the secondary effects of a haunting: miasma, malaise and creeping fear. Still, knowing what it was did not necessarily make her feel any better.

"It's a strong one," She commented. "I feel like it's all my fault…"

"Same. My eyes are watering, the smell is so potent. We'll have to be extra careful with this one. It's too bad we couldn't have the whole team for this."

"Nothing we can do about that now, though. I'll get the chains out."

"Right." He'd come to a decision, she could tell, but wasn't sure what he'd been deciding between until he said, "Observation only tonight, I think. No good taking chances. This is obviously an intense manifestation and I won't be risking our lives more than we have to."

"Got it."

"Has the Skull given you any insight?"

"Nope, just the usual garbage. It's probably scared, or going soft."

"That won't work on me, Lucy. I know you too well."

"Well, once we get the iron set up we can start making our way down the hall. I wonder if it's concentrated here, or if it's in one of the bedrooms…"

"Only one way to find out," she said, taking out a crowbar. George had suggested wrapping the webs about a stick like candy floss. Lucy hadn't felt the need to bring extra gear, so they'd decided on using the crowbars. Lockwood brought his out, and they got to work.

It was slow, and tedious. They had to be careful since they had no knowledge of when or where the ghost would manifest, but it was unlikely they'd be able to see much through strands. Despite her best efforts, she simply could not stop the cobwebs from building up on her clothes and in her hair. It stuck to everything. Lockwood seemed to fair a little better, but not by much. The webs gathered on him like tinsel, draping his jacket in moonlight. In contrast, she look like she'd crawled out of a zombie cave.

"Mr. Graham seems to have become a recluse," she mentioned, breaking the silence. It was so good to be working at his side, even if the task was grueling. "Only seems to go into the kitchen and out the door. He's left a pretty clear path in the dust. And you could tell which room was his on the second floor there."

"Yeah, it was the only knob that turned. The rest of them were stuck - I was only able to open a few of them, but the rooms that were available all had cobwebs on the ceiling."

"Did you happen to seen any Death Glows?"

"None. Hear anything?"

"Aside from the shouting on the stairs back there… no. But that feeling of guilt is almost overwhelming."

"It's a good thing you're so strong," he grinned at her, and winked. More practice. Lockwood never did anything halfway. She just looked away and concentrated on swirling the webbing around her crowbar. There was now a huge glob at the end, and they'd only gotten a few feet in. "Did you think to put the kettle on? It's so cold…"

"I was about to when you called me upstairs."

Even though she was sweating with the effort of waving that metal crowbar around, she could feel the temperature dropping. Fog began to billow around their feet. A cup of tea sounded wonderful right about then.

"Something's starting," Lockwood said, pausing to better concentrate on the phenomena.

"I know," she agreed.

"Luce...I want to tell you something."

Trust Lockwood to wait until they were in mortal peril to finally open up. "Yeah?"

"You're right."

"I'm right about a lot of things. What is it this time?"

"About pretending. I don't want my first kiss to be pretend, and I don't want to pretend with you anymore."

"Me neither. This whole thing has been -"

The conversation could have gone anywhere at that point, but it didn't get the chance. A door to their right slashed open violently, slicing through the cobwebs and catching Lucy's shoulder.

"Look out for that specter there!" the Skull lazily warned.

"A little more of a heads up next time!" She shouted at it.

"You were busy! I didn't want to… interrupt. Oh, and by the way- it's after you in particular."

"What? Why?!"

"I've told you this before, Lucy. You're practically a neon lighthouse. It's hardly even noticed your boyfriend over there."

She and Lockwood looked into the room. The gust that had opened the door had also busted through the webbing that was in front of it, so the view was strangely clear. It too had been covered by cobwebs, but since the space was bigger it must've been more difficult for the spiders to connect to the center. That didn't stop them from trying. The corners of the room had vanished, leaving a rounded semblance of a wall. Amorphous shapes gathered at the edges, but the objects they once were - perhaps sewing machines? - had been completely obscured. Lucy felt like she was looking into an egg sac. Now did not seem like a good time to remember how some spiders eat their young.

Frost and fog roiled across the floor, white and grey as snow drifts. Floating in the midst of it all was a Visitor. Spectral light wafted off of her, a mournful glow casting shadows on the surface of the webbing. Her face was a smooth, blank oval on the tip of her neck - mouth, nose, and ears gone. Only the whites of her eyes remained. Skeletal fingers raked at the tufts of hair protruding from her scalp. Her head strained against her own grip: while the knees buckled and the back arched, the chin was pointed upward.

It's all my fault… the hoarse voice tickled within Lucy's brain. It was an itch she could not reach, but maybe there was another way to scratch at it.

"C'mon" she said to Lockwood, "the Source is probably in here somewhere." She crossed the threshold of the room.

"Observation only tonight, remember? We need to get back to the iron circle, see what it does." He'd begun to reach for her, to pull her back to safety.

The door slammed shut in between them.

...

A/N: originally, this was going to be the last chapter... but then it got really long. I'll update again soon, no worries.