‘Please let me in,’ Jim said again. The smoke around him seemed to mingle with the gathering fog.
The sound of the boy’s inhuman voice shocked Jenny into action. ‘Not bloomin’ likely!’ she told him, and slammed the front door shut. She turned the key in the lock and shot the bolts.
Alerted by the sound of the door slamming, Vastra was almost immediately on the scene. Strax strode purposefully after her.
‘It’s Jim,’ Harry explained, breathless and frightened. ‘He’s gone peculiar. Like his insides are full of smoke or something.’
‘Or something,’ Jenny agreed.
‘Stand back from the door,’ Strax instructed.
‘Don’t do anything stupid, Strax,’ Jenny said.
‘No,’ Vastra said, ‘he’s right – stand back from the door now!’
As Jenny obeyed the instructions of her mistress and hurried back down the hallway, they could all see it. The faintest curls of smoke were edging round the door frame. More forced its way through the letterbox. It gathered close to the door, thickening as more of the grotesque miasma found its way inside.
‘Strax,’ Vastra said, ‘where is the best place in the house to defend?’
‘Not the drawing room,’ Jenny said, checking.
Smoke was forcing its way round the sash windows and puffing out from behind the curtains. As Jenny watched, more smoke wafted out of the fireplace and drifted across the room towards her.
She closed the door quickly. ‘It’s coming down the chimney!’
‘Then an internal chamber,’ Strax suggested. ‘Where there are no windows or outside openings. I suggest the room where we set up the isolation tank.’
‘No windows in there,’ Vastra agreed.
‘No chimney, neither,’ Jenny added.
They were already moving, hurrying back to the room they had so recently vacated. Jenny bundled young Harry ahead of her.
Behind them, smoke continued to gather in the hallway. It thickened and merged, hardening into an outline – a silhouette within which the smoke drifted and pulsed…
But it was not only from the front of the house that the smoke was mounting its assault. It seeped in round windows and outside doors. It poured down chimneys and cascaded out through fireplaces. By the time Vastra and her companions reached the room that was their destination, a pall of smoke hung in the air before them. More rolled along low to the ground, like mist coming off a river.
The smoke thickened, forming shapes – tendrils that reached out to clutch at Vastra and the others. Ethereal hands clawed at the air. Faces leered up from the rolling fog.
‘Don’t breathe it in,’ Vastra ordered. ‘We have to get through it – close your eyes, hold your breath, and run!’
‘I shall go last,’ Strax said.
‘More heroics?’ Jenny chided.
‘Any of you that falter, I will assist. I shall carry you if I have to.’
‘Thank you,’ Jenny said, moved by his uncharacteristic concern.
‘And anyone infected by this smoke,’ Strax went on, ‘I will tear to pieces. For their own good, of course.’
No one ventured thanks for this. They all ran, eyes closed, breath held, for the door through which they hoped and prayed safety lay. The smoke clutched and tore at them. It dragged claws through Harry’s hair and grabbed at Jenny. It closed about Vastra and threw itself at Strax.
But they stumbled onwards, and somehow managed to burst through the foggy barrier and out the other side.
Vastra fumbled for the handle, threw the door wide. They tumbled inside and Strax pushed the door shut behind them. He slammed it so hard that it was forced into the frame, sealing the edges tight.
‘That should keep the smoke out,’ Jenny said.
But Harry was not so sure. With the perception of youth, he pointed out her error: ‘Keyhole!’
Sure enough, a wisp of smoke was already curling through this narrow aperture. Strax placed his hand over the keyhole, cutting off access for the nebulous creature.
‘I shall stand here while you all escape,’ he declared.
‘Escape how?’ Vastra asked. ‘There are no other doors and no windows. That is why we came here.’
Strax gave a grunt that might have been understanding or disagreement. ‘There is a way. One which I prepared a while ago for such an eventuality.’
‘You thought we’d be besieged in here by a smoke demon?’ Jenny said. ‘That’s foresight.’
‘An escape route is always valuable. Forward planning is essential. There is only one small problem.’
‘Which is?’
‘I shall have to effect the escape. Only my structure is of sufficient resilience and potency. I cannot perform this task and keep my finger over the keyhole.’
‘We have no need of escape yet,’ Vastra told him.
She was holding a copy of The Times, and as the others watched she shredded it into strips with her claws. Jenny realised at once her mistress’s purpose. While the door was tight in its frame, there was still a small gap beneath. Smoke was seeping through – a thin mist for the moment, but soon it would thicken and coagulate.
With Harry’s help, Jenny and Vastra twisted the strips of paper and pushed them into the gap. Harry took another strip and gestured for Strax to move his hand. As soon as the troll-like creature obliged, he forced his twist of paper into the keyhole, thereby obstructing it entirely.
‘Now what?’ Jenny asked.
‘Now we wait,’ Vastra said. ‘That smoke creature is here for a purpose. I imagine we shall soon discover what the purpose is.’
‘It’s purpose is assault,’ Strax told her. ‘It means to kill us all.’
‘Perhaps – but why?’
‘We know about it,’ Jenny said. ‘Perhaps that’s enough?’
They did not have long to wait to find out. Jim’s voice, although they all knew it no longer emanated from Jim, came to them through the door – muffled and uninflected.
‘You cannot escape,’ the voice said.
‘You cannot get in,’ Vastra called back through the door. ‘What do you want?’
‘To be complete,’ came the level reply.
‘Complete? What’s it mean?’ Harry asked.
Vastra walked over to the glass tank. The smoke inside swirled angrily round the open and empty toffee tin.
‘Is this what it wants?’ she wondered aloud.
‘Incomplete is painful,’ the voice from beyond the door said. ‘We must be whole if we are to grow and thicken and blot out the sun. We must be complete if we are to encircle and envelop this world and hold it in our grasp.’
‘Good,’ Strax said.
The others looked at him.
‘Because,’ he explained, ‘this means we have a hostage.’
‘Return the rest of us, and we shall let you go free,’ the voice said.
‘What guarantee do we have of that?’ Vastra asked.
‘You have… my word.’
‘Not enough,’ Strax snarled. ‘We shall arrange a hostage exchange on our terms at a location and time of our choosing under controlled conditions according to the protocols of the Shadow Proclamation.’
There was a pause, as if the smoke was considering.
‘If we give them back the rest of this stuff, they’re going to destroy the world!’ Jenny pointed out.
‘We can at least play for time,’ Vastra said.
The answer to this came from within the room, a quiet whisper in the voice of the ill-fated Jim:
‘You have no time left.’
The smoke in the glass tank was a face – Jim’s face, staring out at them. The foggy mouth twisted into a ghastly smile. Then the whole visage seemed to burst apart into mist – mist that at once reformed in the shape of a fist.
The fist punched forwards, shattering the side of the tank. Fragments of glass flew across the room, whipping past Harry’s face. Smoke poured out from the tank, like water cascading through the broken glass. Vastra and the others watched in horror as the smoke congealed before them into the sinister shape of Able Hecklington.