THE DOORS, FLOORS, AND WALLS OF THE BUREAU were constructed in a way that made them impossible to pass through. Lapsewood didn't know how it was done, but it was one of the things he liked about the place. Apart from the obvious advantage of preventing anyone from wandering into private meetings, it helped sustain the pretense that the Bureau was as real as any other place of work. Lapsewood felt the satisfaction of knuckle against solid wood as he knocked on the door with HOUSING DEPARTMENT engraved on its golden plaque.
"Enter," called Mrs. Pringle.
Lapsewood stepped inside. Alice's face was still at the forefront of his mind, but General Colt's secretary could not have been less like her. She was old and haggard. She had been ghost-born in the late seventeenth century, judging by her clothes, and had the look of one who had not so much died as rotted away.
"Yes?" she said. She looked up from the novel she was reading and peered at Lapsewood over the top of her glasses.
"The Mystery of Edwin Drood," said Lapsewood, reading the title. "Dickens's unfinished novel."
"Actually, Mr. Dickens was kind enough to supply me with the final chapters posthumously," she replied, unsmiling. "Can I help you?"
"Mr. Lapsewood, transfer from Dispatch," he announced.
She looked him up and down. "Oh, really? Oh, dear. Well, go on in."
Lapsewood went through toward the main office. He could see that its walls were lined with large dusty books, hundreds of volumes detailing every rule, law, bylaw, edict, clause, and guideline that made up the complex Bureaucratic Procedure. General Colt was sitting with his feet on the desk, eyes shut, his enormous walrus mustache moving in time to the sound of his heavy breathing. The rest of his face was covered by a wide-brimmed hat.
Lapsewood paused before entering the room and turned back to Mrs. Pringle. "He appears to be asleep," he said.
"Yes," she replied.
"But that's impossible. Ghosts can't sleep."
Mrs. Pringle placed a finger at the point she was up to in her book and looked up. "You'd be surprised by the lengths some people will go to avoid signing a batch of New Resident Allocation documents." In spite of the fact that she shouted this, her words apparently went unheard by the general.
"Should I come back later?" asked Lapsewood.
"I'd give him a nudge if I were you."
Lapsewood stepped inside the room.
"And close the door," added Mrs. Pringle.
Lapsewood pulled the door shut, hoping the sound would rouse him, but the general continued to snore. He coughed. Nothing. "Ahem," he said. Still no movement.
Lapsewood went around the back of the desk and, ever so slowly, nudged one of the general's supporting elbows and then quickly darted back to the other side.
The general sat up with a start. "What? Why the … Who are you?"
"Lapsewood, sir," he said. "Dispatch. Colonel Penhaligan sent me."
"Pen-hal-igan?" he repeated, in a pronounced accent that Lapsewood vaguely placed as coming from somewhere in the southern states of America. "Oh, yes. Penhaligan." He looked at Lapsewood. "Are you quite sure he sent you?"
"Positive, sir."
"Well, you won't do at all. Not at all, son."
"Penhaligan never had any complaints about my work, sir."
"Why did he send you here, then?"
Lapsewood didn't respond.
"What we have here," continued General Colt, "if I'm not very much mistaken, is a fob-off, and I don't care for being fobbed off. You trying to fob me off, boy?"
"No, sir."
General Colt stood up, walked around in a small circle, and sat back down.
"Perhaps if you could let me know the nature of the work, I might be able to assist," said Lapsewood.
"The nature of the work, as you put it, is that I need someone with haunting experience, someone with a brain, someone with legitimate contacts in the living world and a current Polter-license."
"You mean a Prowler, sir?"
"Exactly, and just looking at you, I'd be willing to bet that you haven't so much as stepped out of this building since the day you died. Am I right? Don't answer that. I know I'm right."
"My work has been mostly office-bound till now, but—"
"Don't give me any flannel," interrupted the furious general. "You're about as useful as a three-legged horse."
Lapsewood wondered whether a three-legged horse was better or worse than a donkey.
General Colt pulled out a large silver gun from his holster. "I'd put you down if you weren't already dead."
Worse, thought Lapsewood. Definitely worse.
General Colt aimed at the ceiling and pulled the trigger. There was a loud bang.
"No firearms!" screamed Mrs. Pringle from the other side of the door.
"Old witch," muttered General Colt.
Lapsewood wondered whether the general really would have shot him if he thought it would do any harm. He feared the man would have. Perhaps he should have taken Colonel Penhaligan's first offer to resolve his unfinished business.
But, quite aside from the fear of stepping through the Unseen Door into whatever lay on the other side, Lapsewood hadn't the faintest idea what could be left unfinished in his wholly unremarkable life.
"I can do it," he said in a shaky voice.
"What was that, boy?" demanded General Colt.
"I can do it, whatever it is you need doing. I'm sure I can do it. What I lack in experience I make up for in determination and initiative."
General Colt laughed and holstered his gun. "You got guts, boy. I'll give you that." He removed his hat, placing it on the table, and Lapsewood's eyes were drawn to the perfectly round hole in the general's temple revealing the gray matter inside his skull. General Colt noticed him looking. "Ah, I see you've spotted my old death wound. I tell you, if my own gun hadn't jammed on me, I'd have hit that son of a gun first. Still, the man who gave me this brain ventilation swung for his crime. I was there. I watched his ghost rise up from his limp, hanging body and go straight through to the other side. Whereas I ended up with a job here. So who's laughing now, eh? Don't answer that."
"What do you need me for, sir?" asked Lapsewood.
"What do you know about haunted houses?"
"They're houses with ghosts in them?" ventured Lapsewood.
"I'm beginning to see why Penhaligan was willing to let you go." General Colt raised his eyebrows. "Yes, houses with ghosts in them. Do you know why this happens?" he asked, as though addressing a child, and a simple one, at that.
"It's something to do with … or it's because of … Actually, no. I don't think I do know."
"Let me enlighten you," said General Colt. "Houses are made of physical materials—wood, brick, stone, and so on— but even inanimate objects can retain the imprint of a life that comes into regular contact with them."
"You mean like how a medium can use an object such as a ring to contact a spirit?" said Lapsewood.
"Don't interrupt. But yes. A building has much more contact with life than a ring, though. It contains life. Think of it like the shell of a hermit crab. You've heard of hermit crabs, I suppose? Don't answer that. The fact is that structures that contain life for a very long time get used to it. They come to require it. Over time, they come to need life. Are you following me?"
"Houses need life, sir."
"It's not just houses, Lapsewood. All buildings. Theaters, churches, pubs … barns, even. Anything with four walls and a roof. And if a house that has become accustomed to a great deal of life suddenly finds itself empty, it latches on to a soul and holds the ghost back. It becomes a prison for that spirit, even after new tenants move in."
"So if someone dies in an empty old house … or theater or whatever it is, then the building hangs on to the ghost?"
"Exactly. The force of that sudden departure turns the house into a prison, holding back the ghost of the newly departed soul. This is why haunted houses are all old and have been, at some point, empty."
"Are you telling me that houses are … well, alive, sir?"
"Alive? Of course not. Structures have no thoughts or feelings. You can't have a meaningful conversation with a cowshed. People would think you had gone mad. No, the spirit's life force seeps into the inanimate materials of the building. The spirit and the building become inseparable. Think of it this way: when you were still alive, did you ever walk into a place that appeared to have a character of its own, something beyond the furnishings and wallpaper?"
"Yes, my Aunt Maud's place was like that. It was always really cold and—"
"Don't interrupt," barked General Colt. "I don't give a feathered fig about your Aunt Maud's place. I'm talking about the special relationship between a house and a ghost. If a ghost becomes bound to a home, the ghost and the home become reliant on each other. Do you follow me? Don't answer that. Anyway, here at the Housing Department we act as a point of liaison for housebound spirits, dealing with their requests for Polter-licenses, Opacity Permission applications, correspondence, and so on. Our small team of Outreach Workers spends their time visiting each Resident. It can be a lonely life, stuck in an attic for eternity. And then there are all the problems they have when new, living tenants move in, changing the wallpaper, throwing out furniture—you know the kind of thing."
"And why, exactly, do you need me?"
"One of my Outreach Workers has gone missing." He looked down at a piece of paper in front of him. "Doris McNally's her name."
"Missing?" said Lapsewood nervously.
"Yep, disappeared without a trace. She covers the London area. Lots of haunted houses there, but she stopped reporting in a couple of weeks ago. Probably got fed up and went Rogue. So, you see, what I really need is a Prowler. Tracking down ghosts is no task for a pen pusher."
"I can do it," said Lapsewood, with what he hoped would sound like confidence.
"I seriously doubt that, boy, but since I'm not exactly drowning in options here …"
The general reached under the desk, and, for a moment, Lapsewood thought he was going for his gun again. To his relief, Colt opened a drawer and pulled out a file. "This is a copy of the London Tenancy List. It itemizes every haunted house in London in the right-hand column. The left has its Resident and the date of their ghost-birth. Doris has the other copy. I need you to go to London and find her. It involved enough paperwork getting you here in the first place. Assigning a new Outreach Worker will take months."
Lapsewood picked up the list. "I'll do it, sir."
"Confidence," said General Colt, grinning. "That's what I like to see. Have I misjudged you, boy? Don't answer that. Mrs. Pringle will issue you all the licenses and permissions you'll need. Now, unless you've got any more questions, I've an important appointment with Mr. Wingrave. Good luck, Lackwood."
"Lapsewood, sir."
General Colt stood up and walked out of the room. "Mrs. Pringle, I'll be out for the rest of the day," he announced. "Get my caddie to meet me on the fairway."