Lucy:

A few months after starting at Lockwood and co. George and Lockwood took me sightseeing.

We saw all the great tourist traps; the Fittes Museum, Rotwell's Hall of Science, the House of Hauntings where the Sources of all the most famous and horrifying Visitors were displayed; usually murder weapons. We had free entrance as agents after dark, when the swimming lights of all the ghosts behind the Silver-Glass lit up the halls. One might think that this display of grisly artefacts would have grossed me out, but the thing I hated the most was Madame Tussauds Wax Museum.

We walked through those halls and the empty, lifeless faces in there gave me the creeps in a way that no Visitor had managed yet.

Until now that is.

Because this monstrous being before us combined two of my nightmares and apparently that quadrupled the effect.

The spasmodic movements of the wax figure made me nauseous and the sound it made was not making things better. As it moved, the wax crackled and broke apart. The coffin was full to the brim of ghost fog so we couldn't see what we were up against clearly. Part of me really didn't want to.

For several precious moments we were all frozen in shock. Here we were, five of the best and most experienced agents, making the most basic mistakes at a potentially haunted site.

Never let your guard down.

Never stop using your Talents.

Never turn your back on a coffin.

Never stray away from the chains.

Especially Quill, the former Fittes supervisor should know better and he was the one closest to the coffin.

"Behind the chains!" Lockwood ordered.

We gathered our wits and finally moved out of our stupor but the problem about a surprise like that?

Panic. And panic makes you do stupid things.

Lockwood was already throwing a flare from his belt. Quill had drawn his rapier and put on the Orpheus glasses.

I myself was moving far too slowly. Panic had gotten the best of me and I froze.

Lockwood's flare soared and in spite of the sudden gale of wind, it landed just on the edge of the coffin where it exploded. We were all used to the effects of flares, but maybe the coffin was lined with something or something else went wrong because this time the explosion was far louder and far brighter than it ought to be.

Quill who had been right next to it cried out in pain.

"Quill!" Lockwood called out.

Quill was directly at the foot of the coffin on his hands and knees. The Orpheus glasses were on the floor. He was blinking rapidly and holding his left ear. He was clearly disoriented.

Lockwood came to me with the intention of bringing me to safety behind the chains but in their mad scramble, Holly and George had both stumbled over them, knocking them completely out of place. We had forgotten the padlocks.

"Fix the chains!" I told him and waved him in the direction of where Holly and George were trying to mend our defences.

He looked taken aback that I was suddenly the one giving orders, but I didn't wait to make a discussion out of it.

I forced myself against the storm this ghost had cooked up. The psychic energy it displayed did not bode well for our chances of survival, but we were agents. We fought.

The wind tried to push me back, making each step feel like I was walking through syrup. In spite of that, I slowly made my way to where Quill was trying to get up without luck.

When I reached him, I let myself fall to my knees and quickly picked up the Orpheus glasses that had been sliding away with the wind.

I pushed them into his hand. "Put them on!" I yelled.

He nodded, still slightly dazed. He had small burns on the side of his face and blood was dripping out of his ear.

"We need to go!" I pointed at the others who were still struggling with the chains.

He nodded again and tried to stand on his feet, but he fell once more. I looped my arm around him to support him.

The ghost fog which had thickened into ectoplasm started spilling over the edges of the coffin, sizzling at our boots. I couldn't let Quill fall one more time or he would inevitably touch it with his bare skin.

Behind us in the coffin, blazing white flames still burned from Lockwood's flare. The lining had caught fire and I could hear – and smell the burning wax from the dummy.

Together, Quill and I stumbled across the room to the others, buffeted by winds coming from all directions with ectoplasm curling up against our ankles.

By the time we reached the others the ectoplasm was covering the chains entirely. It was futile to try to put them back together. Attempting to do so would only get us ghost touched.

"Forget the chains!" Lockwood yelled and threw a salt bomb instead. The salt scattered, and for a moment it seemed to make a difference against the plasm. but it didn't last long.

"We need to go!" I pointed out.

Lockwood looked like he was about to argue but he was cut off by an unpleasant cracking sound.

All as one, we turned our heads. Even Quill lifted his head to look at the coffin where the wax-figure with its yellow melting wax and distorted face was sitting up.

"What is that thing?" Quill groaned.

"A Revenant!" Lockwood gasped. "It's got to be."

"But the wax –"

"The bones are cast inside the wax. The ghost animates the bones which are covered in the wax."

Holly and George both threw salt bombs.

Not me though. Now that the first horror had passed and there were no more explosions, my psychic senses picked up on something.

"Marissa Fittes!" A voice called out. "Marissa!"

It was the ghost in front of us who was calling out.

"Fall back to the stairs!" Lockwood ordered.

"Help Quill!" I told George who didn't even complain when I shifted Quill's weight from my own shoulder to his.

I took a step closer to the ghost and really opened up to it.

"Marissa!" The ghost was so full of sorrow, despair, and rage that it made me gasp and stagger.

Lockwood grabbed my arm and pulled me back with the others.

"Throw flares!" he yelled.

Three flares went flying. Two went in the coffin with perfect precision and one ended up in the other end of the room.

"Kipps is throwing off my aim," George excused himself.

The noise of the explosions cancelled out the voice of the ghost and when the noise had died down it seemed to have gone silent for good.

I squinted to look through the sharp silver-white light of the magnesium flames.

"Did we get it?" Holly asked.

"I think we did," George nodded.

"Marissa!"

"No, we didn't. We really, really didn't" I informed them.

The fire burned down to embers and the silhouette of the grotesque figure stood there in the coffin.

Then it started to crawl out.

"What? How does it do that?" Holly complained.

Lockwood's eyes were as large as saucers as he saw the abomination put a hand directly on the silver on the edge of the casket.

"Maybe the wax protects it somehow," he guessed.

"Marissa!"

I gasped when the fury of the ghost washed over me again.

"It's calling out for Marissa!" I told the others.

"Really?" George corrected his glasses. "Do you think maybe she murdered whoever it was and left them down here?"

"I don't know, but whoever it is, they're not happy!"

"I would be grumpy too, if I was murdered, dumped in wax and left to rot," Holly remarked.

"Fascinating. I wonder who it is?" George mused.

Quill lifted his head and squinted at the scene. "Well, as fascinating as the identity of this thing is, I'm more worried about the fact that it's angry, coming towards us and we still have a booby-trapped staircase to climb," he groaned and pressed a hand against his ear.

"Good point, Quill! Up the stairs and look out for traps." Lockwood threw over his shoulder.

Holly hesitated but went up the stairs first. She was smart like that – she could defend the others as Quill was virtually out of commission and George was weighed down by Quill.

Lockwood and I would defend them from the bottom.

"You too Luce," Lockwood told me without looking at me as I hung back. I drew my rapier.

"You're going to do something stupid. I know you; I can tell."

He made a short grin before going into serious focus again.

"That makes two of us then. What's your daft plan?" he asked, brushing hair out of his eyes.

"The usual, you know. Try to reason with it. Calm it down."

He shrugged. "Thought I'd slow it down by cutting off its legs."

"Figures," I chuckled.

"He doesn't know this side of you," he remarked out of the blue.

"What?"

"Quill. He doesn't know the wild side of you,"

I scoffed. "You're one to speak."

He looked at me with a crooked grin. "That's what I mean. You and I are the same."

And then I stood there, at the most inopportune time, holding off a powerful ghost, taking a moment to think that we really weren't.

Okay, maybe we were alike in some ways. We both took risks, but I took them for a reason. I took risks to try and understand the ghosts and try to solve the Problem in a different way. Lockwood often just took risks for the hell of it.

"I'll have to disagree, but maybe this is not the best time for that discussion,"

"All I'm saying is that I know you better than he does," he argued.

"I – now is really not the time, Lockwood!"

"I'd say this is as good a time as any,"

"No!" I insisted. "Because this is going to turn into an argument and the situation is bad enough as it is,"

"If we don't make it out alive, I might return as a Visitor because of this unfinished business," he goaded.

That was blackmail.

"Then that should be great motivation to make it out alive, wouldn't you say?" I ground out. "I'm going to try talking to it."

"Fine," he relented. "I'll give you twenty seconds,"

We backed slowly up to the bottom of the stairs where we stood close together, ready to make a run for it.

The figure was starting to move faster. With each joint freed from the wax, it moved more fluently.

Parts of the wax had broken off. Other parts were melting. Bits and stumps of bone were visible. One of the flares had hit it on the head, distorting the wax and splintering it, revealing a bare scalp and parts of an empty eye-socket. The rest of the wax on the face was charred and melting, making it grotesque-looking in a way the skull in the jar had never achieved.

It was completely out of the coffin now, standing up, but it was stumbling about without proper coordination, probably because the wax was weighing it down unevenly.

I focused on opening up to it.

"Who are you?" I asked it. "What did Marissa do to you?"

It didn't respond or react in any way.

"We can help you. What's your name?" I tried again.

The ghost just kept coming towards us.

"We can help you," I tried one more time. "We can avenge you,"

The wax dripping from the eyes looked like tears.

"Marissa,"

"Last chance Luce," Lockwood mumbled at my side, ready with his rapier. "I think you're being too subtle. It doesn't understand. Move away."

"I've got to try, Lockwood." I argued.

"Lucy," Lockwood said warningly.

The ghost was stretching its arms out, coming towards us.

"We're enemies of Marissa," I tried one last time. "We can help y – Ow!"

Lockwood pushed me hard to the side when the thing made a sudden surge.

Rather than cutting off its legs, his rapier became stuck in the thick wax, covering its torso.

The wax-figure cornered me against the side of the stairs, grappling for my throat.

Lockwood climbed a few steps and kicked the figure away. He thrust his hand down towards me.

"Let's go, Luce!"

He pulled me up on the stairs and we started running upwards. As we did, he turned on his torch so we could see the steps.

"You and your ghost-talking – you almost got yourself killed!" he fumed.

"Well, you were going to cut off its legs! How did that go?" I forced out between breaths.

"I lost my best rapier was how it went. Apart from that it was a wild success," he snarked.

I looked behind us where the thing was coming at us on all fours. Ectoplasm made the visible bones glow blue.

"It's coming up fast," I warned Lockwood.

"It's fine, we're faster, as long as there are no hitches up ahead – Oh hell. Now what?"

The others came stumbling down.

"What are you doing?" I cried. "It's right behind us!"

"There's one up ahead too. George triggered the wire," Holly explained.

"It was my fault," Quill gasped, "I tripped."

At least he was looking a little bit more clear-headed, even if he still blinked hard sometimes and clutched his forehead.

"Where's this new ghost?" Lockwood demanded and pushed past the others.

Up ahead we found the wire where a hollow stone hung open.

The ghost of an old woman was hovering up ahead. She was all grey and smiling maniacally.

Lockwood scoffed. "A little old lady? Are you serious? You have rapiers, why don't you use them?"

George gestured at the dark void on either side of the steps.

"It raises some sort of powerful wind. We tried – it almost blew us over the side."

Lockwood looked at him incredulously, "You've got to be kidding me. What are we, Bunchurch and co? Give me that thing,"

He roughly grabbed the rapier out of Georges hand and leaped across the tripwire.

Instantly the ghost came to life. The demented smile widened impossibly more, and its hair and clothes billowed around it. Cold winds of hurricane strength swept across the stairs, pitching Lockwood sideways. He cried out and only just avoided being pushed off.

"So, how's it going?" An annoyingly casual voice asked in my ear.

"How does it look like it's going?" I bit out, looking on as Lockwood crouched lower on the stairs, trying to creep closer to the ghost.

"Well, it looks a bit like I've only been goon for like, five minutes and in that time you've managed to trigger two ghosts, get sandwiched between them on a narrow staircase at the edge of an abyss. By any standard, I'd probably call that poor. You'll probably be wanting a clever solution to your problem, right?"

I huffed. "Well, do you have any ideas?"

"Of course, I do. But first I want an answer. When are you going to let me out of this jar?"

"Not you too! This is not the time for that sort of discussions!" I whined.

"It's the perfect time for this discussion,"

"We'll talk at home!" I promised.

"Ah, but you never talk to me at home. You ignore me. I get stuffed into a corner with salt an iron and other equipment. Maybe I should ignore you now," It threatened.

"I – tomorrow! I promise you; we'll talk about it tomorrow! Please!" I begged.

The skull made a small huffing sound. "Fine. But I still want to go home with Quill."

"Fine!" I didn't feel like this was the time to tell it that I didn't think Quill should be home alone in his state and that he would most likely come with us to Portland Row. "Now what's the answer?"

"It's quite embarrassing for you really, that you haven't figured it out yet."

"Just get on with it!"

A ghostly sigh. "Fine. But you'll never hear the end of this. A ghost is tied to its Source, yes? Well, the thing coming up from the bottom is bringing its Source with it. But what about the cheerful one?"

My eyes widened. The skull was right. It was embarrassing.

I scrambled upwards to get to the hollow stone. I thrust my arm in there, grappling around to find the Source.

I found it quickly and took it in a hard grip, even though the cold of it burned my fingers.

"Eew. Why is it teeth?"

"Stop whining and get rid of them!"

I looked around. For once, I didn't have any sort of Seal whatsoever so had to improvise.

I hurled it as hard and far as I could and prayed to whatever deity I could think of that it would work.

I looked up at the ghost of the smiling woman and almost laughed when she was comically pulled sideways, following her Source.

The wind died down, following her on her way into the abyss.

Lockwood stood and righted himself. He was about to say something but was cut off by Holly.

"Run!" she screamed.

"Marissa!" The Revenant was almost upon us. It was crawling rapidly on all fours, and still had Lockwood's sword stuck in its chest. The skeleton was almost fully exposed, and you could hear the bone scraping on the stone as well as the sword when it hit the steps.

We ran. Lockwood in the lead, then Holly, then me and George with Quill at the end.

George yelped. Quill had slipped on the stairs and taken George down with him.

They struggled to get back up.

"George!" I heard myself shriek when the Revenant hovered above them. I tried to pull my rapier, but I wasn't fast enough.

Then Holly was there.

Beautiful, gentle, amazing Holly.

With a roar to make the most ferocious Amazon proud, she jumped down three steps and slashed out with her rapier over the heads of Quill and George. She decapitated the Revenant, giving the boys time to get back up.

She didn't waste any time, though, but kept on jumping up the stairs like a deer or an elegant mountain goat.

I recovered from my shock and readied my own rapier. I let Quill and George pass me, so I made up the rear, running almost backwards up the stairs, holding off the ghost.

"Marissa!" it reached out for me.

"Wow, it really wants to get you." The skull commented.

"You think?" I gasped.

"Look at it. The plasm's breaking free. If you're not careful, it'll leave the bones behind entirely. Better speed up!"

"I'm trying!" I groaned.

"What, you want me to cheer you on?"

I right on the heels of the others and the rectangle of light that was coming closer, spurred me on.

Then a sudden jerk stopped my ascent. I cried out. My rucksack had snagged on something and I was starting to move backwards.

Then Holly and George were there, each grabbing one of my arms, pulling so hard it felt they were about to pop out of their sockets.

The rucksack was released, and we wasted no time but surged upwards.

When we finally reached the surface, Lockwood and Quill were already standing with the flagstone, ready to close the grave back up.

There was no time for discretion. As soon as I as the last one was up, they slammed it down with a great big reverberating boom exactly as a skeletal hand was reaching up.

I threw off my rucksack and cursed when I saw the large claw marks on it.

I threw myself on the flagstone, gasping for breath. My throat and lungs were burning with the exertion and I could taste blood.

"We made it!" Holly marvelled and sat down next to me.

"I can't believe we made it," Quill chuckled incredulously and then winced.

"Well, that was fun. Lucky this flagstone is lined with iron eh?"

I frowned. "I – I don't think,"

"Silver then? Too expensive?"

Finally, the penny dropped, and I scrambled off the flagstone.

"Off, off, off!" I pushed Holly.

Tendrils of ice were spreading across the flagstone and slowly the ghost rose through the floor.

It had left its bones behind and appeared now as a person. The head came through first. A lined and creased face. Large eyebrows and long hair. It was the ghost of a man and he was staring straight at me.

The others were scrambling for weapons but all I could think of was backing the hell away. I half ran backwards until my back hit the wall.

Then at the speed of sound it was right upon me. It stretched out a hand as if to cup my face and I shrunk away from it.

I heard shouting in the background, but I couldn't hear what was said. The ghost was emanating so much heartbreak and loneliness that I couldn't help but feel empty myself and I felt a tear running down my cheek, not from fear but from sympathy.

"Lucy! Roll out of the way!" I heard Lockwood yelling. I saw him coming closer out of the corner of my eye, holding a flare.

"No," I held him off with a hand.

"Marissa Fittes. Bring her to me," The ghost ordered.

Then it blinked out of existence.

The air pressure changed. It felt as if a giant had been standing on my chest and just stepped off.

I fell forward on my hands and knees.

"What did it do to you?" Lockwood demanded.

"Nothing, I –" I swallowed. "Have we ever had a ghost client?" I asked almost rhetorically.

Lockwood scoffed. "Of course not."

"I think we've just been given a job."

Lockwood closed his eyes and made a long-suffering sigh. "Of course, we have."

I looked around at the others as I got up "What are we going to do about Quill? I think he has a concussion."

As if to confirm that theory, Quill threw up to the side.

"Eew. Not sure I want to go home with him anymore,"

I wrinkled my nose.

Lockwood gave another sigh and gave Quill an apologetic smile. "Sorry about that."

"You're forgiven if you give me your water bottle."

Lockwood gave it to him immediately and ran a hand through his hair while Quill rinsed his mouth.

"We need to go home, but I wouldn't be surprised if we get one of those 'routine inspections' that DEPRAC started tomorrow morning. If they see you there, we'll have an explanatory problem. You're supposed to be retired –"

Quill chuckled. "Trust me, I'm aware."

"So, how's it going to look, having you there, injured?" Lockwood asked rhetorically.

Quill shrugged. "I'll just go home. It's fine."

Holly shook her head. "You really shouldn't be alone right now."

"Can you go with him, Holly?" Lockwood requested.

Holly winced. "I can, but I need to get home soon too."

Lockwood leaned his head back and scowled at the ceiling as if he were daring God to just smite him and get it over with.

"Lucy then?" he sighed. "Will you go home with Quill and make sure he's alright?"

I shrugged. "Might as well repay the favour."

Thank you for keeping up with the story. It's getting sort of long-ish, isn't it?

Borrowed from Stroud again today.

Please, please, please leave a review to let me know what you thought of the chapter or just the story in general!