“Thanks, Lockwood,” George said, after a pause. “That makes me feel so much better.”

“But what do they get out of it?” I asked. “Mr. and Mrs. Evans, I mean?”

“I suppose they help themselves to the victims’ money and belongings. Who knows? They’re obviously quite mad….”

Lockwood raised his arm; we halted on the topmost steps. The landing was similar to the one below. It had three doors, all of which were closed. The temperature had dropped again. Ghost-fog flowed across the carpet like boiling milk. The whispering of dead men rattled in my ears. We were close to the heart of the haunting.

All of us moved slowly, as if great weights bore down on us. We looked carefully, but saw no apparitions.

“Skull,” I said, “what do you see?”

A bored voice came from my backpack. “I see great peril,” it intoned. “Great peril very near. You mean to say you can’t? Honestly, you’re rubbish. You wouldn’t notice a Wraith if it strolled up and dropped its pelvis in your lap.”

I shook the backpack. “You dirty old pile of bones! Where is this peril?”

“Not a clue. Far too much psychic interference. Sorry.”

I reported this. Lockwood sighed. “All we can do is pick a door,” he said. “Well, I guess there’s one for each of us.”

“I’ll go for this one.” George advanced confidently to the door on the left. He flung it open with a dramatic flourish. “What a pity,” he said. “Nothing.”

“That was so obviously a broom closet,” I said. “Look, the door’s a different shape and hasn’t got a number or anything. Really, you should choose again.”

George shook his head. “Not a chance. Your go.”

I chose the door on the right. It had a sticker with the number 1 on it. Holding my rapier in front of me, I pushed it open. It was a small bedroom with a sink and mirror. Standing in front of these, faintly luminous, was a skinny, bare-chested man. His chin was white with shaving foam; he held a cutthroat razor in his hand. As the door opened, he turned and looked at me with sightless eyes. Sudden fear poured through me. Fumbling at my belt, I located my supplies of salt and iron filings and emptied them out across the floor. They created a barrier the spirit could not cross. It hung back, circling from side to side like a caged beast, staring at me the while.

I wiped my ice-cold brow. “Well,” I said, “mine’s done.”

Lockwood made a slight adjustment to his collar. He regarded the final door. “So…my turn, is it, now?”

“Yep,” I said. “That’s Room Two, by the way, the one Evans mentioned.”

“Right….So there’ll probably be a ghost or two inside….” Lockwood didn’t look the happiest I’d ever seen him. He hefted his rapier in his hand, rolled his shoulders, and took a deep breath. Then he gave us his sudden radiant grin, the one that made everything seem okay. “Well,” he said, “after all, how dreadful can it actually be?”

He pushed open the door.

The good news was there weren’t a couple of ghosts inside. No. The bad news was we couldn’t count how many. It was packed with them: they filled the room, that host of pajamaed gentlemen. Some were bright, others much fainter. They were gaunt, unshaven, hollow-cheeked, and empty-eyed. Some looked as if they’d just been awakened from deep sleep. Others had died in the act of dressing. They overlapped each other in that mean and dowdy space, crammed between the dresser and towel rack, between bed and washbasin. Some looked at the ceiling; others drifted haltingly, staring toward the open door.

They were all victims—but that didn’t make them safe. I could taste their resentment at their fate, the force of their blank hostility. Cold air lapped at us: the edges of Lockwood’s coat fluttered; my hair brushed against my face.

“Careful!” George cried. “They’re aware of us! Get a barrier down before—”

Before they moved, George was going to say. But it was too late.

Some ghosts are drawn to living things—perhaps they sense our warmth and want it for themselves. These men had died lonely deaths—the urge for warmth was strong in them. Like a tide, the host of luminous figures surged forward: in an instant they were through the door and out onto the landing. Lockwood dropped the canister of iron that he was about to pour, and swung up his rapier. My sword was out too: we wove them in complex patterns, trying to create a solid defensive wall. Some spirits fell back; others moved deftly left and right, out of rapier range.

I grabbed at Lockwood’s arm. “They’ll surround us! Downstairs! Quick!”

He shook his head. “No, there’s nothing down there! And if they follow us, we’re trapped. We’ve got to find the cause of all this. We’ve got to keep going up.”

“But we’re at the top of the house!”

“Are we? What about that?”

He pointed. I looked, saw a narrow wooden attic hatch, high up in the ceiling.

“George,” Lockwood said calmly. “Pass me the ladder, please.”

“What ladder?” George was busy throwing a salt-bomb; it ricocheted off the wall, peppering the Shades with particles of bright-green fire.

“Pass me the ladder, George.”

George waved his hands above his head in panic. “Where from? Down my trousers?”

“There’s one in that closet you opened, you twit! Quick!”

“Oh, yes. I remember.” George leaped for the little door.

Ghosts pressed in on us. Their whispering had become a roaring. At my side I saw the outline of a man in a vest and jogging pants. He shimmered toward me; I slashed the rapier diagonally, slicing him in two. The two halves tumbled, flowed together, re-formed. Beyond, Lockwood had brought lengths of chain from his bag; he was dragging them into a rough circle in the middle of the landing.

In a moment, George was back; he had the ladder, the kind that expanded on telescopic legs. He jumped into the center of the circle, next to Lockwood and me. Without words, he extended the ladder up toward the ceiling, balancing its end against the rim of the attic opening, just below the hatch.

All around us, the landing had filled with eerie light. Figures flowed toward us, white arms reaching. Ectoplasm fizzed against the barrier of chains.

Up the ladder we went, first Lockwood, then George, then me. Lockwood reached the hatch. He shoved it hard. A band of blackness opened, expanding slowly like the edges of a paper fan. A smattering of dust fell down.

Was it me, or had the assembled ghosts below us suddenly grown quiet? Their whispering stilled. They watched us with blank eyes.

Lockwood pushed again. With a single crash, the hatch fell back on its hinge. Now there was a hole, a black slot gaping like a mouth. Chill air poured down from it.

This was where it stemmed from, the horror of the house. This was where we’d find the cause. We didn’t hesitate. We scrambled up and, one after the other, were swallowed by the dark.

It was cold, that was the first thing.

It was also pitch-black. A hazy column of other-light drifted up through the attic hatch from the ghosts below and lit our three pale faces; otherwise we could see nothing.

And there was something with us, close and all around. We felt the pressure of its presence, hovering over us in the dark. The force of it made it hard to breathe, hard to move; it was like we were suddenly crouching in deep water, with the awful weight of it crushing down….

Lockwood was the first to fight back. I heard rustling as he reached into his bag and drew out his lantern. He flicked the switch and turned the dial; a soft warm radiance swelled from it and showed us where we were.

An attic: a cavernous space, broad at its base, and rising into darkness beneath the eaves of a steeply pitched roof. There were old brick gables at either end, one with chimneys built in, and one pierced by a single tall but narrow window. Great crossbeams spanned the shadows high above us, supporting the weight of the roof.

A few broken tea chests lay in one corner. Otherwise the room was empty. There was nothing there.

Or almost nothing. Cobwebs hung like hammocks between the rafters, thick and gray and heavy, like ceiling drapes in an Arabian bazaar. Where the rooflines hit the floor, they were piled in drifts, plugging the corners, softening the edges of the abandoned room. Threads of webbing dangled from the crossbeams, twitching in the little air currents our activities had stirred.

Some of the webs glittered with frost. Our breath made bitter clouds.

We got stiffly to our feet. There’s a well-known fact about spiders, a curious thing. They’re attracted to places of psychic disturbance; to longstanding Sources, where invisible, unknowable powers have loitered and grown strong. An unnatural congregation of spiders is a sure sign of a potent and ancient haunting, and their cobwebs are a dead giveaway. To be fair, I hadn’t seen any in the guest rooms of Lavender Lodge, but then, Mrs. Evans was probably pretty handy with her duster.

It was a different matter in the attic, though.

We gathered what remained of our equipment. In our haste to climb the ladder George had left his bags below, and between us we’d used up our chains and most of the salt and iron. Luckily, Lockwood still had his bag containing our vital silver Seals, and we each had our magnesium flares tucked safely in our belts. Oh, and we still had the ghost-jar too, for what it was worth. I dumped it beside the open attic hatch. The face had grown faint, the plasm dark and cold.

“You oughtn’t to be up here….” it whispered. “Even I’m nervous, and I’m already dead.”

I used my rapier to cut away a few dangling cobwebs near my face. “Like we’ve got a choice. You see anything, let me know.”

Lockwood went over to the window, which was almost as tall as he was. He rubbed a circle in the filthy glass, brushing off a thin crusting of ice. “We’re overlooking the street,” he said. “I can see ghost-lamps far below. Okay. The Source must be here somewhere. We can all feel it. Go cautiously, and let’s get this done.”

The search began. We moved like climbers laboring at altitude: it was slow, painful, painstaking. All around us the dreadful psychic weight bore down.

There were recent handprints by the hatch, perhaps where the police had made their cursory inspection. Otherwise, no one had been in the attic for years. In places, the floor had been roughly boarded, and Lockwood pointed out the thick layers of dust lying over everything. We noticed certain swirls and curling patterns traced faintly into that dust, as if it had been stirred by curious motions of the air, but no footprints at all.

George poked in the corners with his rapier, winding cobwebs around his blade.

I stood in the middle, listening.

Beyond the freezing rafters, beyond the cobwebs, the wind howled around the roof. Rain lashed against tiles; I could hear it running down the pitch and drumming onto the window. The fabric of the building trembled.

Inside, however, it was quiet. I could no longer hear the whispering of the ghosts in the rooms below.

No sounds, no apparitions, not even any ghost-fog.

Just vicious cold.

We gathered at last in the center of the attic. I was grimy, tense, and shivering; Lockwood, pale and irritable. George was trying to get a mass of sticky cobwebs off his rapier, rubbing the blade against the edge of his boot.

“What do you think?” Lockwood said. “I’ve no idea where it can be. Any thoughts?”

George raised a hand. “Yes. I’m hungry. We should eat.”

I blinked at him. “How can you possibly think about eating now?”

“Very easily. Mortal fear gives me an appetite.”

Lockwood grinned. “Then it’s a pity you haven’t any sandwiches. You left them in your bag, back down with the ghosts.”

“I know. I was thinking of sharing Lucy’s.”

This made me roll my eyes. Mid-roll, my eyes stopped dead.

“Lucy?” Lockwood was always first to notice when anything was wrong.

I took a moment before replying. “Is it me,” I said slowly, “or is there something lying on that beam?”

It was the crossbeam almost directly overhead. Cobwebs hung down from it, merging with the shadows of the eaves. Above was a funny patch of darkness that might have been part of the beam, or part of an object resting directly on it. You couldn’t really see it from below, except for something poking out on one side that might have been hair.

We regarded it in silence.

“Ladder, George,” Lockwood said.

George went to get the ladder, pulling it upward through the hatch. “Those guys are still down there,” he reported. “Just standing around the chains. Looks like they’re waiting for something.”

We set the ladder against the beam.

“You want my advice?” In its jar, the ghost had stirred. “The worst thing you can do is go up and look. Just chuck a magnesium flare and run away.”

I reported this to Lockwood. He shook his head. “If it’s the Source,” he said, “we have to seal it. One of us has to climb up. How about you, George? Seeing as how you went for the broom closet just now.”

George’s face generally expresses as much emotion as a bowl of custard. It didn’t display overwhelming delight now.

“Unless you want me to?” Lockwood said.

“No, no…that’s fine. Hand me a net, then.”

At the heart of every haunting is a Source—an object or place to which that particular ghostly phenomenon is tethered. If you snuff this out—for instance, by covering it with a Seal, such as a silver chain net—you seal up the supernatural power. So George took his net, ready-folded in its plastic case, and started up the ladder. Lockwood and I waited below.

The ladder jerked and trembled as George climbed.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” the skull in the ghost-jar said.

George climbed out of the lantern light, drew close to the shaded beam. I took my sword from my belt. Lockwood hefted his in his hand. We met each other’s eyes.

“Yes, if anything’s going to happen,” Lockwood murmured, “I’d say it’s likely to happen just about—”

Shimmering white tentacles erupted from the beam. They were glassy and featureless, with stubby tips. They uncoiled with ferocious speed—some aiming high for George; some striking low at Lockwood and me.

“Just about now, really,” Lockwood said.

Down swung the tentacles. We scattered, Lockwood diving toward the window, me toward the hatch. High above, George jerked away, dropping the chain net, losing his balance. The ladder toppled back. It wedged against the angle of the roof behind, knocking George’s feet clear, leaving him dangling by two hands from the topmost rung.

A tendril flopped against the floorboards next to me, merged with them, went through. It was made of ectoplasmic matter. Unless you wanted to die, you had to prevent it touching your bare skin. I gave a frantic jump sideways, tripped, and dropped my sword.

Worse than dropped it—it vanished through the open hatch to fall among the ghosts below.

High above, things weren’t much better. Letting go of the ladder with one hand, George tore a magnesium flare from his belt and lobbed it at the coils. It missed them completely, erupted against the roof in a brilliant explosion, and sent a cascade of white-hot burning salt and iron down on Lockwood, setting his clothes aflame.