Something scuffled across the wooden floor, just out of sight. Dorran took three sharp steps to round the barrier and raised his weapon. Clare followed, the lamp thrust in front of herself, poker aimed outwards like a spear.
The woman on the other side snarled. Her teeth jutted out of her jaw, protruding at odd angles, each one nearly three inches long. A bald head and the remains of a dress’s collar shone in Clare’s lamp. Her back curved into an S shape, bending in then out again in a way that made her spindly legs and overturned pelvis seem like they didn’t belong together.
Dorran’s crowbar was raised, but he didn’t move. The woman coiled, her muscles bunching as she prepared to spring, but then the distorted head rolled to the side. She hissed and scuttled back. The shadows coiled around her as she vanished into the wall.
Dorran’s crowbar dropped. He inhaled quickly, his breathing ragged, as his expression turned bitter. “I couldn’t do it.”
Clare rolled her shoulders, feeling the cold sweat sticking the dress to her back. “I couldn’t either.”
“She used to be human.” He turned his head aside. “She… she wore a dress. Did you see? She still had its collar around her neck. She was a woman not long ago.”
Human. Inhuman. Where do we draw the line? How much mercy can we show without bartering our own lives? Clare didn’t have an answer for that… or for Dorran’s next question.
“What did she do to earn that fate while we survived?”
They stared at each other for a moment, both lost, both conflicted. Then Dorran turned back towards the opening the woman had stepped through. Clare squinted at it. It looked like a door, except it was set into the back of the attic. Logically, the opening should look into the snowy, early-morning sky. Instead, its insides were pitch-black.
Clare took a step forward. Dorran held out a hand to keep her back, but she still craned her neck to see over his arm. “Where did she go?”
He shook his head. “I do not know. This should be the back wall. It makes no sense to have a door here, unless it’s a storage closet.”
He approached and reached his crowbar towards the wooden door. He nudged it closed, and Clare saw that it only looked like a door on one side. The other was covered by the same blue wallpaper that ran over the wall. The edge was jagged where it had been ripped, but once it was closed, it blended perfectly into the rest of the wall.
A secret door.
Dorran hooked the crowbar into its edge and pulled it open again. Clare leaned closer, lamp extended, to see inside. Behind the door was a passageway. It was wider and taller than she would have expected from the door’s size. Thick wooden steps led down. Clare stepped into the opening and stretched her lamp out as far as she could, but she still didn’t see the stairway’s end.
“Can you guess where it might go?” she asked Dorran.
He looked grim. “I have no idea. We should be standing above the east wing. But there is no way to reach the attic from that section of the house. And certainly not through a stairwell like this.”
“It probably explains how the creatures got into the rest of the house, though. The retractable attic ladders would be too complicated and noisy for them.”
He muttered something furious. “I don’t like this. If we go down there, I will no longer know the floor plan or how to escape if something goes wrong. We could be trapped.”
“We’ll have to follow it, though, won’t we?” Clare ran her fingers over the ragged wallpaper edge. The idea made her feel sick, but she couldn’t see any way around it. “If you don’t know where the passageway comes out, it’s probably another disguised door somewhere else in the house.”
Dorran was silent for a moment. His dark eyes darted across the stairs, then he rested his hand on Clare’s shoulder. “I would like you to return to your room.”
“We’ve already had this argument.”
“This is different. I don’t know how easily I can defend you in this passageway.”
“That’s okay.” She flexed her grip on the fire poker. “It will be safer with two of us. Besides, if we don’t know where the passageway lets out, no part of the house is safe. It might even open into our room. I saw one of the creatures in there, after all.”
“I sometimes wish you were less deft at logic,” he said. “Very well. Stay behind me and be careful.”
They took up the same positions—Dorran leading, Clare holding the lamp and following closely enough to light their way. The boards creaked as they stepped on them, but the noise seemed insulated, as though the walls were too thick to let it carry far. Their breathing echoed. It didn’t take long for the attic to feel like a distant world. Twenty steps in, the passageway turned at a right angle. It cut out the last traces of the natural light that had leaked through the attic’s roof. Clare started breathing through her mouth. A heavy musky scent seeped out of the passageway. It smelled like rotting flesh and oily hair. The farther she went, the stronger it became, until she almost gagged on it.
“I was hoping we might be in a disused staff passageway from an old edition of the house.” Dorran sounded hoarse. “But look at this.”
Clare moved closer to where he indicated on the wall. The lamplight revealed the support beams. They ran up the walls and over the ceiling like an archway. The wood was solid and carved into an elegant design. She frowned. “There isn’t anything like this in the other staff regions.”
“Exactly. And it has been dusted within the last month.” Dorran nodded for them to continue.
Now that Clare was thinking along those lines, it seemed equally strange that the hallway was so wide. She bent to see the floor and confirmed what she’d suspected—they were walking on dark wood. It was dusty and scuffed compared to the main parts of the house but no less decadent.
What is this place?
She had a suspicion, but she didn’t want to say it out loud. Dorran was stressed enough, and if she was reading the tension in his neck and the angle of his eyebrows correctly, he’d already had the same thought.
The stairs levelled out into a straight hallway, and they came to a halt. The passage continued ahead, but a narrower branch led to the left. Dorran looked over his shoulder to get Clare’s approval for their direction, and she nodded. They continued straight ahead.
In the distance, Clare thought she could see a trace of light on the right wall. It was fine—razor-thin and near the floor—and barely a meter long.
As they moved towards it, Clare became aware of subtle scratching noises surrounding her. Coupled with the unrelenting stench, it gave her the impression of being surrounded by rats. But the noise was wrong for rodents. She knew it from the week she’d spent trying to ignore it. Fingernails on stone. Fingernails on wood. She swallowed and tasted fear.
Dorran stayed alert, but his attention had turned to the sliver of light. When he reached it, he crouched to feel around it. Lamplight painted deep shadows over his face. He pressed his fingertips against the wall and pushed. A muted crunching noise echoed, then the section pushed out, swinging silently on well-oiled hinges.
They stepped through the opening, and Clare lowered her lamp as natural light replaced it. Dorran rubbed his palm against his forehead. Although his expression was stony, his lips twitched.
As Clare looked around them, she thought the scene was familiar. She recognised the tall walls, dark, intricate wallpaper, and elaborate architraves. A support pillar jutted out of the wall every ten feet. To her left, at the end of the hall, was a window that had once had a curtain hung over it.