the bones of our past - Lockwood x Lucy

The Ilwich Horror

A/N: 

"We'll be fine," he said.

They would, however, not be fine.

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Everything around her went dark the second she laid her hand atop the road. Lucy tried to block out all the outside sounds to concentrate better on the paranormal ones, and her reward came in the form of a faint crying noise.

There it was again, the same thing she'd heard just seconds ago.

Slowly, she opened up further, pushed herself more, in an attempt to get closer to the child and see what was wrong.

That was her mistake, in the end.

It started suddenly, that the crying was replaced by screaming. But once it had started, it filled her head to the brim. There was no more crying. There was no more child. So many people were screaming at her. And they were all so scared- No, they weren't scared. They were angry.

"Lucy, what are you feeling?"

Angry at her. So unbearably angry. It was her fault, after all, just her fault that they were all dead and had died in such pain-

"Lucy!"

And now they knew where she was.

In one go, she was pulled back into the real world violently as someone grabbed her by her shoulders. Her eyes flew open, half expecting to see the spirits already coming for her.

But it was just Lockwood, who had apparently torn her away from the road. He was looking her up and down, apparently checking her for any injuries.

Lucy wanted to speak, to say something, but only then did she realise how long she hadn't been breathing. Her breath sounded raspy to her own ears.

"Luce, are you alright?" Lockwood asked her, trying hard to catch her eye. He still had not let go of her shoulders. "You were screaming."

"Something bad happened here," she finally managed to utter. "I don't know what, but a lot of people died here, gruesomely."

"There was nothing written about any major incident in the newspapers", George intervened, looking sceptical. "That was one of the first things I checked for."

Mary hesitated before speaking. "There's also nothing that I know of. No old legends that we tell ourselves here or any folklore concerning this part of town. Or rather, concerning any part of this town, really."

Lucy looked up again to see that Lockwood's eyes hadn't left her face. "Again, I don't know what happened, but a lot of ghosts aren't happy about it." She did her best to stop her voice from wavering, to not let them see how deeply what she had heard and felt affected her. "Quite the opposite, actually: They are livid, and I'm pretty sure they want to kill us."

"Oh, well, that's news." George rolled his eyes but held out his hand to hoist her up.

She took it gratefully. "It's weird, but I also think that they kind of... know our location now from me touching the street."

"That sounds more like it," Lockwood said with a smile. He unsheathed his rapier. "Alright, so they are on their way. What do the temperatures say, George?"

George got out his thermometer again, walking a few steps closer to the road. "It's still normal here, well above freezing. On the street it's... two degrees colder, and on the left-hand side it's warmer again."