The idea of sharing her home with the monsters, no matter how contained they were, left her stomach squirming. But Dorran was right; there was no way to get rid of them completely.
She realised he was watching her and forced a smile. “Do you have nails?”
“Yes. In the basement. As well as boards. The house was constantly in need of repair during my mother’s rein; we will not be short of supplies.”
“Let’s get this done, then.”
He smiled at her, and the fondness in his expression was almost enough to melt the queasy sensation.
They collected the equipment they would need. Thick jackets to ward off the cold. Gloves and scarves for protection against bites. Dorran strapped a sheathed knife under his coat then fussed over Clare, making sure she had small blades tucked into pockets within easy reach. Then they both retrieved a main weapon: the poker for Clare and a hatchet for Dorran.
Clare carried the maps and a lamp as she followed Dorran. She sucked in a breath as they left the warmth of their bedroom and pulled her scarf up to cover her mouth and nose.
Getting from their room to the basement was a short hike. Clare watched the sun through the windows they passed. Small flakes of snow were snatched at and hurled around by the wind. Gradually, natural light was filtered out as they descended deeper into Winterbourne.
The staff’s areas were shabby and old compared to the rest of the house. Dust, which hadn’t been tolerated in any of the family’s many rooms, had gathered across a lot of the tools. Dorran picked out a can full of nails from the shelves behind their indoor garden and passed them to Clare. “Would you carry these?”
“Sure.” She took the hammer as well, then Dorran bent to reach a stack of wood piled underneath the shelves.
“I can help—” Clare reached towards Dorran as he hauled out eight of the planks.
“I have this.” His voice was a fraction tighter than usual, but he didn’t hesitate as he hefted the planks to carry them across his shoulder.
Clare pressed her lips together. Dorran never complained, but she worried for him. Neither of them were in peak shape. They had run out of meat, and the tinned soup—their only source of food left—wasn’t meeting their caloric needs. Both of them were trying to recover from injuries while simultaneously dealing with the cold, the stress, and the exertion that Winterbourne demanded. Sometimes, she had the sense that they were being held together by will alone. She didn’t know what would happen when their resilience finally failed.
Dorran, breathing heavily, stopped in the cathedral-like room that bridged the basement, the wine cellar, the garden, and the hallway back to the main parts of the house. He adjusted the boards on his shoulder and glanced at Clare. “Wine cellar?”
“Yep.” She knew why he was asking. Of all the rooms in the house, she hated the cellar the most. The cold stone space seemed to leak hostility, and her skin prickled whenever she neared it. But it needed to be dealt with first—it held an entryway to a hidden chamber the hollows had been living in.
Dorran hesitated, his dark eyes questioning. She made herself smile. He gave a brief smile in return then stepped towards the cellar stairs.
Clare shivered as she passed through the massive stone archway. The change in atmosphere was palpable. The hairs rose along her arms, and no matter how thick the jacket was, it never seemed enough to keep out the damp, frozen air. She held the lamp ahead of herself and kept close enough to Dorran to light his feet. As the steps led down, the grey stone created endless echoes that bounced across the walls. The candle’s light felt muted. It shone off Dorran’s back, shimmering in his dark hair and across the wooden planks, but never reaching far enough to see ahead of him.
The steps levelled out into a stone floor. Shelves rose around Clare, the bottles glinting in a way that reminded her of eyes in the dark. She kept her breathing shallow, her ears straining to pick up any unnatural noises as Dorran wove between the shelves. In the distance, she caught the sound of dripping, and behind her, something that might have been a sigh or an echo. Dorran was moving too fast. Clare started to lose him amongst the shelves. She broke into a jog and staggered as her shoe clipped an uneven stone. She caught her balance against one of the shelves. Its bottles clinked as they rocked in their holders.
Dorran had stopped. Even though he faced her, he looked half like a stranger. His deep-set eyes were full of shadows. The candlelight painted unnatural angles over his face as its flame guttered. They stared at each other, unmoving, and Clare’s heart felt like it was about to burst.
“Clare? Are you all right?” His voice was distorted by the wine cellar’s echoes.
Clare didn’t trust herself to speak, but she gave two quick nods. Dorran adjusted his hold on the boards and held out a hand, and Clare moved to his side. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders. They walked side by side, and for a moment, Clare could hear only their breaths.
They reached the back wall. Clare recognised the place she’d seen a hollow one scrabbling at the ground. She nodded towards it. “The door must be somewhere here.”
Dorran bent and let the wood fall against the end of the closest shelf. “Keep the light steady.”
She held it high while Dorran explored the wall. His gloved fingers dug into the gaps between the stones, feeling for any sort of opening.
A soft noise intruded. A shudder ran through Clare, and the candle flickered. The scratching noises were back. Fingernails on stone… digging, digging, digging.
“Dorran.” She kept her voice to a whisper. “Do you hear that? The scratching noises?”
He stopped his search. They both held their breaths. The scratching ran around them, distorted but persistent. Clare strained to hear where it was coming from. The cellar was disorienting, and the noise was so faint, it was almost possible to lose it under the sound of her pulse.
Dorran watched her, his expression unreadable. “Do you still hear it?”
“Yes. Don’t you?”
He frowned, staring into the blackness, and after a moment, he shook his head. “I do not.”
Clare swallowed around the lump in her throat. “I’m not imagining it.”
“No. You’re not.” He stripped off his gloves as he stood. A finger brushed loose hair back behind her ear. His eyes were sad but intense. “I promised you I would not doubt you again. And I don’t. You are better at hearing them than me. Please, stand guard. Tell me if they come closer.”
She nodded. Dorran’s fingers lingered a moment, grazing her jaw, then fell away. He turned back to the wall and ran his hands across the surface.
He believes me. She couldn’t hear the scratching noise any longer. Part of her already wanted to believe she’d imagined it. The cellar was making her paranoid, and it would be easy to extrapolate a simple echo into something malevolent. But the other part of her held steady. She’d doubted her senses once before, and it had nearly killed Dorran. She wouldn’t make that mistake again.
Dorran pressed his shoulder against part of the wall. It shifted back. Hinges, old and rusty, groaned as they turned, and the door drifted inwards.
“There.” His smile glinted in the thin light. “We found it. Are you ready?”
She didn’t feel ready. Dorran waited in the opening, his dark eyes trying to read hers. She knew he would let her return upstairs, into the safety and warmth of their room, if she asked. He would probably even be grateful for it. But that would mean he would have to enter the passageway alone. Clare’s fingers ached from how hard she gripped the lamp, but she lifted her chin and stepped through the doorway.