The Boy in the Smoke (5 page)

“I’ve looked everywhere,” he said, turning around to leave. “And there’s no—”

There was a little girl in the hall, directly in his path, just a few feet away. She was about four, maybe, with brown hair. She held the rail of the steps with one hand and a doll in the other. Where she had come from, he had no idea. He’d heard nothing, and only seconds had passed.

He felt a tickle in his chest.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hello,” the girl replied.

What the hell kind of a test was this?

“There’s a  …  child up here,” he yelled. “Should I  …  bring her down with me?”

No one responded below.

“Did you hear me?” he called again.

The child plucked at her doll’s hair, pinching clump after clump.

“What’s your name?” the girl asked. “I’m Alexandria.”

“I’m Stephen.”

“Hello, Stephen. This is my house.”

Something about this girl was not right. Her clothes, for example, were like nothing he’d ever seen. And he knew people who shopped at some very exclusive boutiques and dressed their kids up in all kinds of exotic and adorable outfits. This seemed to be a kind of  …  pinafore? Was that the word he wanted? A little pink dress with what looked like an apron sewn onto the front?

“There’s a chip in my doll’s face,” she said, holding up the doll. There was indeed a small chip missing from its stark white cheek, right next to the eye.

“I’m sure it can be fixed,” he said. Not that he had any idea whether or not that was acually true.

He looked around for any signs of cameras. Maybe someone in a lab somewhere was collecting data on his startle reflex? Something? Someone in a lab was likely laughing their ass off.

“Not many people talk to me,” the girl said. “They get afraid of me.”

“They do?”

“I do get angry sometimes.”

She hung her head shyly again.

Even if this girl was—as he had decided—some kind of plant, she was still a small child and her lines didn’t seem rehearsed. So he had serious questions about who might let their little girl sit around in creepy old bookshops at night to freak out people who had recently been admitted to mental health facilities.

This was a test. Stephen understood tests. He passed tests. He had to continue.

“Why would anyone be afraid of you?” he asked.

“Because I threw Andy into the fire.”

“Your doll?”

“My brother.”

“You threw your brother into the fire?” he asked.

She nodded again.

“He was little,” she explained. “And he made a lot of noise. So I put him in the fire. Everyone was angry.”

Stephen felt his muscles freezing up—hands first, then his arms, then a locking in the legs, rendering him unable to move.

“He didn’t make a noise after that,” she said, pulling on the doll’s hair some more. “But everything smelled bad. Mummy was very angry. She held my head under the water in the bath.”

The steel-haired woman was suddenly in view, standing at the end of the hall. Her sudden appearance caused Stephen to jump and his heart to race around a bit. She also hadn’t made a sound.

“Stephen,” she said, “that torch you have with you. Keep it switched on, and touch the child with it.”

“What?”

“Just do as I say. Gentle now. Keep it on, and touch the girl with it.”

The little girl looked up at Stephen curiously. Stephen looked once again for the cameras, but he would never find them. You could hide a camera in anything.

“Stephen,” the woman said, with a firm voice, “I realize this is an odd instruction, but follow it. Simply touch the child with the torch.”

Stephen felt a wall of refusal building inside of him. He didn’t like the way he was being treated, or the child was being treated—both of them creeping around in a bookstore like two unwilling players in a piece of crap performance art.

“No,” he said.

“Why not?”

“What’s happening, Stephen?” the girl asked.

“I have no idea,” Stephen replied. He moved to put his arm around her in protection, but when he did so, something felt wrong. He looked down to see that about one-quarter of his hand appeared to be inside of Alexandria’s arm.

“Stephen,” the woman said again. “Do it.”

He checked again. Hand, definitely sticking into the arm. He pulled his fingers back quickly.

A projection, surely. This was all a trick, and it had to end. He pushed the torch in Alexandria’s direction, and the moment it made contact, her eyes went wide and she seemed to let out a silent scream  … 

 …  or something. Because then there was a light, bright, white, flooding the hallway and blinding him for a moment. Then there was a rush of air, like a massive industrial fan—or a dozen massive industrial fans had all gone on at once. Then the rush stopped, and there was a strange, new smell in the air, vaguely floral, and vaguely like a wood-burning fire—but really neither one adequately described it.

When his eyes adjusted again, the steely woman was gone. As was Alexandria.

Stephen got up quickly and leaned over the rail.

“What the hell was that?” he called. He hurried down the steps, two at a time. Felicia was waiting for him downstairs with an expression of polite interest.

“What  … ” Stephen pointed up at the ceiling. “Just  …  what?”

“Why don’t you sit,” Felicia said, pointing at a chair. “Talk to me about what just happened.”

“
What just happened
? Is this some kind of Derren Brown thing or—”

“Stephen,” she said, “calm down. Sit. Talk to me. Tell me exactly what you saw.”

Stephen did not sit. He paced from the chair to the glass-fronted bookcase.

“You sent me to talk to some
child
who said she threw her brother in a fire,” Stephen said, his voice rising to a yell. “And then she said her mum drowned her in a bath. And then that woman said to touch the girl with the torch, as if that isn’t creepy. And then the girl isn’t even there. What is she? How did you project—”

“There is no projection.”

“Or reflection, whatever. Some trick with glass and light. What the hell is this supposed to be?”

“It’s not a trick,” Felicia said calmly.

“I should report you,” Stephen said, pointing his finger.

“Report me for what?”

“This can’t be ethical, what you’re doing. Are you even a doctor?”

“No,” she said.

He hadn’t really expected to be right on that one, and it stopped him.

“What’s going on?” he said. “Who are you?”

He noticed he sounded more calm, but he was anything but.

“You’re now standing in what many people consider to be the most haunted building in London,” Felicia said. “Aside from the Tower.”

“You’re telling me that you brought me here because this building is full of
ghosts
? That’s what this is about?”

“These things are hard to measure,” Felicia replied. “We have to rely on anecdotal evidence, but there’s quite a lot about this place. Eight people have been reported to have gone mad with fright after staying upstairs, and three have reportedly died.”

Stephen laughed—a dark, unhappy laugh—and put his head in his hands.

“Stephen, listen to me,” she said. “The world is more complicated than you know. You’re rational. As am I. Most ghost
sightings
are not real. But that is not the same thing as saying ghosts are not real. Many supposed ghost sightings are the products of suggestion—the mind’s desire to find patterns in randomness, so shapes are seen in shadows, ordinary noises become whispering voices, the cold breeze from under the door becomes a spectral presence. That’s all well understood. Actual ghosts—”

“No,” Stephen said, shaking his head. “No.”

“Please let me finish. Actual ghosts are  …  well, we don’t know precisely, but they appear to be a malfunction of some kind. Leftover energy that does not disperse quite as it should.”

“Take me back to the hospital,” Stephen said.

“Let me finish. There is a reason there are so many stories. There is a reason the stories go back through so much of history. We understand very little about it, but here is what we do know—people who truly can see ghosts develop the ability after a close brush with death. Also, this event—whatever it is—needs to take place between the ages of fourteen and eighteen or so. There can be slight variations, depending on individual brain chemistry, but that’s generally how it works. We don’t have enough data to know if it runs in families.”

“Fine,” Stephen said, raising his hands. “I’ll go myself.”

He went to the door, only to find it locked. He shook it once, then turned back to Felicia.

“This has to be illegal now,” he said. “Open this door. I signed myself into the hospital, but I never agreed to be locked in.”

“We’re not in the hospital.”

“Which means this is tantamount to false imprisonment, most likely. I’ll break the pane if you don’t open it right now.”

Felicia didn’t move, so Stephen grabbed an iron doorstop from the ground and lifted it.

“You have a valuable ability,” she said. “You could serve your country.”

She joined him at the door and pointed to a car idling at the kerbside, maybe twenty yards away. It was a prim and anonymous-looking black Mercedes.

“The driver of that car is instructed to take you to Thames House,” she said. “Do you know what Thames House is?”

“You’re talking about the headquarters of MI5?”

“I am. There is someone there who wishes to speak with you. Listen to what he has to say.”

“Now you’re telling me I’m going to go talk to some
spies
,” he said.

“Security services, not spies, necessarily. The very location should give you some confidence that this is no prank. Just go, listen, and then you’ll be returned to the hospital.”

“You’re not coming?”

“No,” she said. “I will not be coming. My role in this is over.”

“And if I wanted to go back now?”

“Then the car would take you. But you’d wonder forever about what they wanted to say to you at MI5.”

Annoyingly, she was right.

“What about the torch?” he asked, holding it up. “Explain this.”

She took the torch from him.

“Go and get in the car,” she said.

She wasn’t lying.

The car cruised down to the Embankment Road, turning by Westminster Bridge and heading along to Vauxhall, stopping in front of the massive structure that was Thames House. Stephen had read enough and seen enough to know the building by sight. The driver said nothing at all for the entire trip, and continued to say nothing now that they had stopped. Stephen let himself out, and immediately saw that there was a man sitting on the wide steps leading up to the grand arch that fronted the building. He had very striking white hair, which didn’t quite match his face, which was young and clean shaven. He wore an elegantly tailored but nondescript grey suit—a light summer one that didn’t crumple in the heat.

“Stephen Dene,” the man said, standing and extending his hand. “I expect you’ve had rather a strange evening.”

The matter-of-factness of the man’s voice was soothing.

“I’m Thorpe,” the man said. “Come inside. Unless you want to walk. It’s nicer out here than in there, but it’s your choice.”

Part of Stephen wanted to go inside, just to be assured that this man
could
go inside. But a bigger part believed him, and preferred the cooling night air and being able to walk. Also, he could simply run off if he chose to do so.

“Outside,” he said.

“All right. Let’s walk a bit.”

The stretch of the river along Vauxhall was darker than the path further up, and the bushes rattled a bit as they passed. Rats? Drunks? It was hard to tell.

“I’ve read your records,” Thorpe said. “Quite impressive.”

Stephen had no reply to that. That was simply what people said to you when you went to Eton, that you were impressive.

“We’ve come to recruit you,” Thorpe said.

“Recruit me for
what
?”

“To restart a group that hasn’t been functional since the early 1990s. It appears that London is a city plagued by the departed. This causes any number of problems, anything from disruptions on Tube lines to accidents or even death. So, for years, we had a group who could see and deal with these issues. It’s not something we really want getting out—that we run a unit that deals with ghosts. And, as I said, the last unit was disbanded some time ago. But it’s been decided that it must be reopened. And we’d like you to be at the head of it.”

“Me? How did you even
find
me?”

“We’ve been looking for someone like you for a long time. We had feelers out at hospitals and clinics. We were looking for someone around your age, someone who had just had a close brush with death, someone who then reported seeing  … ”

“ …  ghosts.”

“Ghosts, yes. When you turned up, we acted quickly. You have everything we’re looking for—a fine academic record, high-scoring, rational, good levels of physical fitness, and some experience in leadership. Eton certainly trains for that.”

“And you want me to run a group?” Stephen said. “What kind of group?”

“Technically, a police unit. Much of the work is done under the auspices of other professions, to allow access to various places. So you could be uniformed police, or work for the Underground, or British Gas…”

“A police officer?” Stephen said, stopping him. “I could become a
police officer
?”

“Yes. Does that interest you?”

It definitely interested him, but it still all felt like a trick.

“What was the business with the torch?” Stephen asked.

Thorpe reached his hand into his pocket and produced a plastic vial. He illuminated his palm with his phone, revealing that the vial contained two small, clear stones.

“These are diamonds,” he said. “Not particularly valuable ones. They’re small and flawed. There is a third one of this set, which is located in the torch you handled earlier. When a current is run through these stones, they produce something—I’m not going to pretend to know what—but something that dismisses whatever the thing  …  the  …  ghost.”

“You’re joking,” Stephen said.