The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Author: Jonathan Stroud
- Language: English
- Genre: Children’s Scary Stories
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 6 MB
- Price: Free
The Ghost
Of the first few hauntings I investigated with Lockwood & Co. I intend to say
little, in part to protect the identity of the victims, in part because of the
gruesome nature of the incidents, but mainly because, in a variety of
ingenious ways, we succeeded in cocking them all up. There, I’ve admitted
it! Not a single one of those early cases ended as neatly as we’d have wished.
Yes, the Mortlake Horror was driven out, but only as far as Richmond Park,
where even now it stalks by night amongst the silent trees.
Yes, both the Grey
Spectre of Aldgate and the entity known as the Clattering Bones were
destroyed, but not before several further (and, I now think, unnecessary)
deaths. And as for the creeping shadow that haunted young Mrs Andrews, to
the imperilment of her sanity and her hemline, wherever she may continue to
wander in this world, poor thing, there it follows too. So it was not exactly an
unblemished record that we took with us, Lockwood and I, when we walked
up the path to 62 Sheen Road on that misty autumn afternoon and briskly
rang the bell.
We stood on the doorstep with our backs to the muffled traffic, and
Lockwood’s gloved right hand clasped upon the bell-pull. Deep in the house,
the echoes faded. I gazed at the door: at the small sun-blisters on the varnish
and the scuffs on the letterbox; at the four diamond panes of frosted glass that
showed nothing beyond except for darkness. The porch had a forlorn and
unused air, its corners choked with the same sodden beech leaves that littered
the path and lawn.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Remember our new rules. Don’t just blab out anything you
see. Don’t speculate openly about who killed who, how, or when. And above
all don’t impersonate the client. Please. It never goes down well.’
‘That’s an awful lot of don’ts, Lucy,’ Lockwood said.
‘Too right it is.’
‘You know I’ve got an excellent ear for accents. I copy people without
thinking.’
‘Fine, copy them quietly after the event. Not loudly, not in front of them,
and particularly not when they’re a six-foot-six Irish dockworker with a
speech impediment, and we’re a good half-mile from the public road.’
‘Yes, he was really quite nimble for his size,’ Lockwood said. ‘Still, the
chase will have kept us fit. Sense anything?’
‘Not yet. But I’m hardly likely to, out here. You?’
He let go of the bell-pull and made some minor adjustment to the collar of
his coat. ‘Oddly enough, I have. There was a death in the garden sometime in
the last few hours. Under that laurel halfway up the path.’
‘I assume you’re going to tell me it’s only a smallish glow.’ My head was
tilted on one side, my eyes half closed; I was listening to the silence of the
house.
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