𝐇𝐨𝐦𝐞┃ Anthony Lockwood┃2┃

Chapter Fifty Four - Imminent Disaster Ends Bickering

The good news first. Lockwood & Co's arrival caused no outcry, no sudden alarm or attack. They were in a dimly lit chamber and, though it had plenty of horrors in it, no one from the Rotwell Institute was there. The corrugated sides of the building rose up in a gentle arch high overhead. Soft lights hung on the walls, electric wires trailing between them. The floor was boarded with cheap wood. A partition wall at the far end opened onto another room, but that one would do for that moment. It was a laboratory.

Three long metal tables ran the length of the space, with chairs and shelved trolleys between them. On these, neatly separated by lengths of chain, sat a great variety of apparatus: silver-glass flasks, tubes and beakers, loops of iron piping, flaring Bunsen burners, crackling electromagnetic coils. Some of the flasks were small, others of colossal size, and all glowed with supernatural energy. You could see the Sources that powered them pressed against the dirty glass – yellowed jawbones, femurs, ribs and crania, and rusted lumps of metal that had once been helmets, swords or arm-rings. These were psychic artefacts of the battle that had taken place here, and the ghosts that clung to them were visible too. Every container glowed with other-light, with eerie blues and yellows, with darkly sinister greens. The walls of the room swam with conflicting colours. And, all of the vessels were being experimented on – heated, compressed, electrocuted, frozen... Plasm swirled against silver-glass: Nola caught a glimpse of twisted faces, impossibly contorted, pluming round and round. The vessels were sealed. She could not hear the imprisoned voices, but she certainly sensed their screams.

"Look at all this..." Kipps said.

George whistled. "It's like my bedroom."

Lockwood peered at a bulbous glass beaker in which violet plasm boiled and bubbled above a flame. "Can you tell what they're doing here?"

"Ectoplasmic research, mainly." George said. "They're testing how it responds to stuff. To heat, to cold... This one's suspended in a vacuum – look. That's interesting: see how diffuse the plasm's become... And they're trying to galvanize this spirit with a succession of electric shocks." He shook his head. "I could tell them that technique doesn't work. Tried that on our skull a year or more back. Didn't alter its plasm at all. Just made it grumpy."

Nola had been listening out for the skull when she entered the room, but without success. She was staring at a rushing centrifuge, which whirled its imprisoned ghost on an endless loop. "It's not right." Nola said. "It's not... healthy."

George looked at her. "I've been doing this sort of stuff for years."

"I rest my case."

"It's all part of trying to understand the Problem, James." Lockwood said. "Finding out what makes ghosts tick. It's a bit extreme, but there's nothing exactly wrong here."

She didn't answer, initially. Lockwood had no love for ghosts. Neither he nor George ever spared much sympathy for them. Nola? It wasn't quite that simple. Her past came crawling into her mind like an unwanted curse. "Have you ever thought that they don't want to be experimented on?" Her voice was low. "That, perhaps, they would prefer to just innocently get on with their own business and not be poked and prodded at for something they can't help? Hm?"

The group fell silent. Holly and Kipps felt slightly out of the loop, having no idea what Nola was actually getting at. Lockwood and George did, however. They both looked at their feet awkwardly, swarmed with guilt, knowing full well that Nola was indirectly addressing her previous horrors with Agent Phillips.

Kipps grunted. "Question is, where are the people? I mean, there's all these half-finished experiments... Must be something better going on next door."

This was obviously true, and the laboratory, with all its cruel marvels, did not detain the agents for long. They moved towards the partition at the far side of the shed. As they did so, George gave a cry. He swooped onto the nearest table. "Yes! Yes! That's what I wanted to find!"