Screaming Staircase (Lockwood & Co. #1) – Review

The Screaming Staircase

Lockwood & Co. (#1)

 
by Jonathan Stroud
 
Disney-Hyperion, 2013
 
416 Pages
 
Middle Grade (8-12 and up)

 

 
Lockwood & Co. is a new series from Jonathan Stroud, (author of the Bartimaeus trilogy,) that introduces us to a world where the problem of ghosts has been growing. To be “ghost-touched” means pain or even death. Strong ghost lights flash on at intervals at each corner and running water is used as a barrier to protect the larger government buildings. Visitations have been growing in frequency over the years, and no one knows why in this alternate reality.
 
Only kids can see spirits, so they have been organized into agencies to find and disarm the sources of Visitations. They are overseen by DEPRAC out of Scotland Yard (The Department of Psychic Research and Control, much like if Hellboy’s B.P.R.D. went public), and the young agents train through leveled qualifications.
 
The agencies are dominated by the larger organizations that were founded by the first ghost researchers, Fittes and Rottwell, both of which outfit their (sometimes conceited) agents with the best equipment that can be bought (and sometimes even unapproved new tech from their secretive research departments… and say, what is that odd, mysterious harp symbol?)
 
The book serves as a guide to a new mythos. Like a monstrumologist’s omnibus, a bestiary of ghost types that differentiates Level One manifestations like specters and apparitions from Level Two — (and even the rare Level Threes). It offers new terminology such as ghostlock and malaise, and introduces the use of lavender and magnesium flares to combat spirits as well as fencing with iron swords, and documents the resultant growth of the iron industry.
 
The series kicks off with a bang that will draw you into this and the following books with drooling anticipation. A decaying skeleton walled up years ago, a locket around its neck, magnesium flares, a fire, jumping out a window…
 
We learn about how Lucy Carlyle, the narrator, came to work for Lockwood and her unusual interview process. She did well for a time under her former employer, Mister Jacobs. In fact, she should have already taken her 4th grade; she has the skills… but her apprenticeship with Jacobs had ended… well, badly.
 
Lucy then introduces us to George, who is overweight and wears glasses… and is a bit of a slob, who is the researcher of the group and often does some of the most important ground-laying work on a case. He’s annoying, but soon grows on Lucy.
 
Then, there is of course Lockwood himself, tall and handsome, one of the few kids to own an agency without adult supervisors (adults –who can’t see spirits, but can certainly avoid any immature decisions being put before safety concerns–). He is impulsive but has a charming smile and the skill to use it. But he has a few secrets, such as the room off the landing that he requests never be opened… yet does not keep locked.
 

The priests scattered iron on the tracks where the accident occurred; they put silver coins on the corpse’s eyes; they hung an iron charm around its neck to break the connection with his ghost. These precautions did the job fine. He never came back. Even if he had, my mother said, it wouldn’t have caused us any problems. He’d only have haunted the local pub.

 
Lucy makes another mistake or two, a recklessly thrown magnesium flare ending in Lockwood getting ghost-touched… and this: the homeowners will have the agency shut down if Lockwood doesn’t pay up the 60 thousand quid to repair the damage the ensuing fire did to the upper level of their house.
 
She feels driven to keep the strong spirit’s locket despite her responsibility to report it and have it incinerated at Fittes’ furnaces, and she doesn’t even tell anyone she has it until a manifestation appears in her bedroom. Lockwood is understandably angry at first… before he realizes it may be their ticket to success: a high profile ghost with a human interest story behind it for the front page.
 
They are all-too-soon contacted because of the newspaper article, and are hired to take on Combe Carey Hall, one of the most haunted places in town. It used to be an old priory, and three skilled agents from the large Fittes agency already died trying to resolve the visitation. One was never found. The entire investigation has to be undertaken according to the owner’s strict rules, no incendiaries like magnesium flares. Given the danger of a cluster of Type II apparitions, and the lack of time given to properly research, Lockwood & Co. wonder if they are being set up. Does the screaming staircase have any link with the strange inscription found on the locket?
 
The nightmare begins. The door locks behind them, and the team finds out where the green-walled “Red Room” gets its name. Blood pours from the ceiling, and if the ectoplasm makes contact, they will be ghost touched, possibly killed.
 

“Forty-six degrees,” he said, “and falling.”
“I’m starting to detect malaise,” I said. “Anyone else pick that up?”
They nodded. Yes, it was starting. That old familiar drooping of the spirits, that leaden weight pressing cruelly on your heart, so that all you wanted to do was curl up in a ball and close your eyes…

 
Stroud’s writing is skillful, displaying a mastery of foreshadowing as he slowly reveals each character’s’ history in a way that depicts their personalities and makes us deeply care whether they survive the next haunting. The cases are thrilling. I could read an entire book of nothing more than Stroud’s descriptions of different hauntings and their sources. I wonder if he’ll ever devise a five-minute mystery book based in the world of Lockwood & Co.?