The Vault was a vast cavern of a prison, dimly lit by meagre torches that hung from the pillars stretching up to the impossibly high ceiling. The far corners were shrouded in shadow and yet the Marquis never strayed more than a few feet from the door.
‘Should we not look for another way out?’ asked Lapsewood.
‘Wander into the darkness and you will become like one of those poor souls.’ The Marquis pointed out into the darkness. From the gloom came distant screams, animalistic groans and pained moans, echoing off the walls.
‘Who are they?’ asked Lapsewood, peering into the darkness.
‘Dissipated souls,’ the Marquis whispered. ‘Hundreds, thousands of them. Unable to escape this terrible hell hole and driven mad by their determination to find a crack through which to slip, they have been Ether Dust for so long they have forgotten their forms.’ He chuckled darkly. ‘Screaming dust. The stuff of nightmares even for us ghosts, wouldn’t you say?’
‘But you’ve stayed whole?’
‘Exactly,’ cried the Marquis. ‘One must never lose hope in the prevailing human spirit. What are we ghosts if not prevailing human spirits?’ He looked at Lapsewood, searching for some kind of acknowledgement of what he clearly considered an excellent speech.
‘I must get out,’ said Lapsewood. ‘The Black Rot is eating away at London. I must do something to prevent it.’
‘There is Black Rot in London?’ said the Marquis.
‘You know of it?’
‘Indeed,’ replied the Marquis. ‘Some years ago, when I was in Paris, they had a similar problem. There they called it la Pourriture Noire.’
‘Paris?’
‘Yes, I was staying there. The French Bureau has a much more liberal attitude towards Rogue ghosts.’
‘And buildings were getting infected in the same way?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you know how the buildings came to lose their ghosts?’
‘There is only one way to remove a Resident from its building,’ replied the Marquis. ‘Exorcism.’
‘Is it really possible?’ asked Lapsewood.
‘It is. Of course, the vast majority of exorcists can no more exorcise a house than they can urinate marmalade, but there are exceptions. There was one such exception in Paris at this time and it became briefly fashionable amongst the living to have their houses exorcised,’ replied the Marquis.
‘The living dispatching the dead?’ said Lapsewood.
The Marquis’ look darkened. ‘This was not dispatching,’ he said. ‘A true exorcist is not opening a door. He is calling the other side to drag the spirit through the crack in the veil between this world and the Void.’
‘But with no door—’
The Marquis interrupted him. ‘With no door the spirit’s soul is torn apart. It is split and splintered.’
‘What happened to the exorcist?’
‘Ah, now there lies the beauty of that city. So susceptible are the Parisians to fashion and so fickle and short of attention that it didn’t take long for the city’s gentry to grow tired of this man’s show. Exorcisms went the way of every other fashion.’
‘But he must have left many infected houses.’
‘Indeed he did. Most were filled by roaming spirits who stepped inside and found themselves trapped, but I remember one chateau in the south of the city which became so bad that the rot was visible from the outside. None would venture near it. Neither living nor dead. If a house gets that bad it looks elsewhere for an inhabitant.’
‘You mean it looks amongst the living?’
‘The living? No. The inanimate material of a house has no power of the living, no matter how badly infected it gets. They say this chateau drew something from the Void.’
Lapsewood looked with disbelief at the Marquis. ‘But . . . surely nothing can come back from the other side.’
‘You speak with such certainty for one who has only just learnt of these things.’
‘If what you say is true we must do something.’
‘Certainly something must be done,’ agreed the Marquis, ‘but we can do nothing on this side of that door. We must make our escape. Come, see . . .’ The Marquis beckoned him over to one of the walls.
‘I can’t see anything,’ replied Lapsewood.
‘Place your hand here.’ He pointed out a low part of the wall.
Lapsewood ran his hand along it and felt a tiny indentation. ‘What?’ he asked.
The Marquis laughed. ‘I have for some years now been chipping away at this wall using the nail of the large toe on my right foot.’
‘But these walls are thick. It would take thousands of years to actually make a hole to get through, if such a thing was even possible at all.’
‘That’s true, but look down here.’
The Marquis led him to another spot on the ground, where he had placed several chippings from the wall in rows and scratched rough lines on the ground.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Lapsewood.
‘It’s a chessboard, dear boy,’ proclaimed the Marquis.
‘A chessboard? What use is that in escaping?’
‘None whatsoever. I told you, the only way of escaping is to make a break for it whenever that guard opens the door, but it will help pass the time while we wait. Which will you be? Black or white? You have to imagine the colours, of course.’