Sarah shrugged. “No.”
“Well, you’re not scared there, all on your own, are you?”
“Of course not.”
Putting the phone down, she wished her mother hadn’t said that. She hadn’t been scared, but now the house seemed dim and gloomy, with the rain pattering on the windows and the early October gloom closing in. She went around turning all the lights on. Then she stopped.
A door had closed upstairs.
Standing still, she listened, her heart thudding.
A floor-board creaked.
Then she was sure.
Someone was walking across the floor of her room.
Chapter 4
Broken Nails
“Matt?” she said.
The foot-steps stopped.
The silence was worse than anything. “Matt? Are you up there?”
The silence waited for her. The silence listened to her fear.
Slowly, she began to climb the stairs. They were old, and they went up in a long curve. She could see rain on the sky-light in the roof. It made strange rippling shadows down the walls.
Her foot crunched something and she leaned down and picked it up, its wetness a shock. A dead leaf. She turned and looked down at the front door, but it was closed firmly. Had Matt come in? She hadn’t heard him.
She dropped the leaf and climbed another three steps. As she came closer to the landing her heart-beat seemed louder. She was sweating and her hand on the rail was cold.
All the bedroom doors were closed, apart from hers.
Her door was ajar.
She could see the corner of her bed, the side of her wardrobe.
He was in there. It had to be Matt. He had to be looking for the silver box.
She crept closer. There were wind chimes hanging from her ceiling, small metal chimes of elephants and tigers. She could see them spinning, hear the faint silvery tinkle they made in the breeze.
She grabbed the door handle and took a deep breath. Then she flung the door open and stormed in.
No one was there.
The curtains moved in the stillness. The belt of her bathrobe swung softly to and fro.
She let out her breath.
There was a smell.
A wet, cloying smell, like something rotten.
And the bottom drawer of her wardrobe had been opened, because a trail of purple shirt hung out of it, the old purple shirt she didn’t wear any more, that she had used to wrap the silver box in.
With a gasp of anger she knelt and tugged at it. If he’d ...
But the box was still there, still locked.
Still rattling when she shook it.
*********
Later, after dinner, Matt was lying on the couch watching TV. She walked in and stood in front of the screen.
He twisted his neck to look around at her. “What’s up now?”
“Don’t you even try that again. Or I’ll speak to Gareth.”
“Try what, drama queen?” Matt said.
“That box is mine. Stay out of my things, creep.”
One black-lined eye flickered at her. “Don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”
“Yeah. Right.”
In the kitchen she said to Gareth, “Where do you get keys made?”
“You need a key?”
“Oh, not for a door or anything big. Just ... I have an old jewelry box and I’d like to be able to lock it. My dad gave it to me.”
She knew he wouldn’t ask any more questions about it if she said that, and he didn’t. “Oh, right. Well, a cobbler, I suppose, or a jewelers if it’s really old. There’s a shop in Marston, down that little side street by the stream. I could take it for you, if you – ”
“No.” She shook her head. “That’s OK. I’ll take it myself.”
*********
She woke up late in the night.
She was lying on her side, with her face to the wall. All she could see were the blurred, close-up sneakers of a band on a poster that she was already bored with. But her eyes were wide, her back prickling with sweat.
Someone was sitting on her bed.
It wasn’t a dream.
She could feel a weight dipping the mattress, smell that odd, leafy smell.
She kept very still, listening to the rattle of the box in his hands, feeling terror ice her skin. Then she sat up and turned her head.
A boy was sitting next to her.
He was small and had dirty, tangled dark hair and a thin, frail face. He had one earring, and when he looked up his eyes were lit with a faint green glimmer. For a moment he just looked at her, and then he turned back to the box.
She stared at his hands.
He was tugging at the box, trying to force it open with his broken nails, smearing it with dirt. He worked at it, getting more and more desperate. Then he said, “I can’t do it. I just can’t.”
There was a sadness in his voice that chilled her. She sat up, slowly.
“Who are you?”
He shot her a glance. “I need the key. Do you have the key?”
She shook her head. He wasn’t real. He couldn’t be real, because his was the face she had seen in the painting, and in her dream.
“I gave the box to you,” he said. “Because I knew you could bring it out.”
“Out?”
“Of the tree.”
She drew her knees up under her. “How did you get in here?”
He threw the box on the bed in despair and looked at her. Then he lifted his hand and pushed it through her, through the poster, through the wall.
“It was easy,” he said in a whisper.
Chapter 5
The Shop by the Stream
Sarah almost screamed.
But the boy just shrugged. He tapped the box with one dirty finger. “I need the key. I need you to get me the key.”
She huddled herself up, pulling the bedclothes tight around her. She wanted to shiver and shiver, to back away from those fingers that had moved right into her skin. She asked in a hushed voice, “Where is it?”
“Lost.” He looked at her. “Some trees grow keys. Ash does. But not oak.”
It meant nothing to her. Perhaps the boy sensed that, because he shrank back and leaned against the wall, his head dropped as if in misery. Locking his long dirty fingers together, he said, “I’m trapped here.”
“Trapped?”
He turned his eyes sideways. They were dark and bitter. “I was a thief once. I picked pockets, stole purses, snatched watches. Do people still do that?”
“Cell phones,” she said, thinking of Matt’s anger when his had been stolen.
The boy’s gaze flickered. “This is what happened to me. I stole a package from a man in the street. I pushed him and he fell, and I ran away with it. I felt gleeful, and proud. But he called after me, strange words in a foreign language, and I looked back and saw he was pointing at me, a long bony finger. He was calling down a curse on me.”
He rubbed his hands together. She saw how the thin wrists stuck out from the ragged sleeves, how his shoes were a web of holes.
“He killed me,” he said in a whisper.
Sarah’s lips were dry, so she licked them and murmured, “How?”
“Sickness. The town was always full of sickness. I opened the package but it only contained a box. This box. And it was empty. Weakness came over me. I hadn’t eaten for days. I felt feverish and hot. So I slipped away, out here into the hills. It was a freezing night and I knew I wouldn’t see the end of it. I lay down in the leaves at the foot of the tree, made a hollow in them, curled up shivering. And I died, holding the box.”
Sarah didn’t want to think about that. So she said, “But the box isn’t empty.”
“Not now.” He turned his dark gaze on her. “Don’t you see? He cursed me for all time. He has locked my soul into the box.”
She stared at him. Outside the wind was rising. She heard it thrash in the bare branches, heard it whip along the corner of the house.
“I know your name,” he said, suddenly sly. “Your name is Sarah. I’ve heard them call you, your mother, your brother ...”