Clare had to give credit where it was due. Madeline Morthorne had hidden the compartments well; the door’s edge lined up with the panelling in a way that made it nearly invisible. They had been disguised well enough to make Clare doubt her own sanity. Even Dorran, a prisoner in the building for his whole life, hadn’t known they existed.
“So, here is another one.” Dorran took the candle back and reached it through the opening.
Clare felt a squeeze of panic as she watched his arm disappear inside, the fearful part of her mind jabbering that it might never come out again. But Dorran only stayed inside the passageway long enough to make sure it was empty, then he stepped back and let the door creep closed again.
“At least now we have our answer. There are hollows left inside the building.” His eyes were hard as he turned from the concealed door to the window at the end of the hall, where the sky was steadily darkening. “We must make the doors a priority. Sealing them is the only way to ensure we will be safe.”
Clare nodded slowly. She thought she could hear distant noises moving through the house. Their sources were hard to pinpoint. It could have been wood flexing under the biting wind, hurried footsteps, or even her imagination.
In the two days since facing Madeline in the basement, they hadn’t seen or heard any sign of the hollows. She and Dorran still moved cautiously, bringing weapons whenever they ventured out of their room and locking doors behind themselves, but the monster was the first to actually show itself.
Dorran rubbed his hand across the back of his neck. “I suspect the only way to seal them effectively will be from the inside.” He sounded tense. His narrowed eyes flitted across the exposed wood.
The idea of creeping through the lightless, musky passages left her clammy. But she understood why it was necessary. Dorran didn’t know where the doors led out. Without seeing the inside of the passageways, their only alternative would be knocking against every square inch of the building—and that would take months. “It’ll be dangerous.”
“Yes. I’ll take precautions. You should—”
She knew what was coming and narrowed her eyes. “I’m not sitting in the bedroom.”
They glared at each other, both trying to win the war of wills. Dorran took a breath, and his voice softened. “Let us make a compromise. I will go in. You stand at the doors and mark their locations on a map.”
Clare gave his chest a light prod with the tip of her poker. “How about this for a compromise? We both go into the secret passageways, and neither of us dies.”
“That is not a compromise.” He was trying, and failing, to hide his laughter. “That is you winning yet another argument.”
“No, that is me not going insane because my Dorran selfishly keeps all of the danger to himself.” She reached up and pressed her hand to his cheek.
He was warm and solid, and he closed his eyes as he leaned into the touch.
“We agreed. We’re in this together.”
He tilted far enough to kiss her palm then sighed. “Very well. Together.”
Chapter Four
How many of them are there? The question had refused to leave Clare since she’d discovered Madeline and her maids had taken up residence in the secret parts of the house. Clare had thought she’d killed the woman. But when Dorran had gone to bury his mother’s body, he’d found it missing.
No one could survive a metal rod through the head, Clare kept telling herself. She was dead. The other hollows took her body away. That’s all.
But her doubt still lingered. The monsters could withstand incredible damage. Their own bones shredded their flesh, and they continued moving as though nothing were wrong. They could die. But they didn’t go down easily. And in the back of Clare’s mind was still the small terror that the matriarch continued to stalk the halls after she and Dorran went to bed. Maybe she watched them. Maybe she had plans for them, some plot to punish them for what they’d done to her.
Even if Madeline was gone, her memory certainly wasn’t. The figure they’d seen in the hall proved at least one of the maids lingered. Possibly more. Clare’s mind chewed over that question again and again. How many? How many?
Clare knelt by the fire in their bedroom and rekindled the embers. Out of every room in the house, it was the most secure. They had checked the walls to make sure there were no secret compartments. They had bolts on the doors. They kept their food there in case they weren’t able to reach the kitchens. The adjacent bathroom supplied water.
Dorran stood at a little side table behind Clare. He’d laid out three sheets of paper and drew the house’s layout, one floor on each sheet. It was a labour-intensive process. He was completely silent as he worked, and Clare gave him space.
The flames caught on one of the larger logs. The muffled hissing and popping were the only noises inside their room. The radio, which Clare had kept at her side constantly, sat on the mantel. She knew it would be smarter to turn it off and conserve the batteries since Beth wouldn’t be re-opening communications until the following morning, but she couldn’t bring herself to shut the machine off. The euphoria from speaking with her sister was still fresh, and if Beth tried to make contact again, she didn’t want to miss it. Even if it meant burning through their limited supply of batteries.
Her car had spare batteries, along with cases of food, water, and petrol. They were all things she and Dorran needed. But the car was an hour’s walk from Winterbourne, in Banksy Forest, which was home to an unknown number of hollows—and the last time Clare and Dorran had ventured there, the creatures had almost killed them.
“Clare.” Dorran had the sheets spread out across the floor ahead of himself and beckoned for her. She knelt at his side and admired the sharp, intricate lines he’d drawn.
“Here we are,” he said, indicating their room on the third floor. “The kitchen is here. The foyer is here. These are the stairs.”
He’d drawn the hallways cleanly, but instead of butting the rooms up against each other, he’d left space between them. The hidden passageways could be anywhere; he intended to add them into the map when he found them.
Dorran took out a red pen and drew three short, thick lines. “Here are the passageway entrances I know about. There is also a doorway into the attic that will have to be dealt with.”
“There’s going to be another one here,” Clare said, pointing to the hallway a little farther on from their room. “That’s where I first saw one of the creatures.”
Dorran marked the paper. “All right. What will be the best way to handle it? Start at the top and work our way down, or go from the ground up?”
“Ground up, I think.” Clare chewed on the corner of her lip. “They came in through the holes in the roof. If it’s possible to chase them out—and I think it might be; that one we saw in the hallway earlier was nervous enough to run rather than confront us—then going up will herd them outside without making us more vulnerable by opening the main door.”
“I agree. It will also make it safer to reach the gardens, which still need water daily.” Dorran clipped the top back onto the pen. His jaw worked as he examined the maps. “I don’t know if it’s possible to eradicate the creatures from the house entirely. As long as there are holes in the roof—and that will not be a small project to fix—then they can get back in. But as long as we can seal all of the doorways, we can keep them contained. They will have the hidden passageways, but we will have the rest of the house.”