A long silence stretched between them. Somewhere downstairs, Lorna and Oliver searched similar rooms, perhaps sharing similar arguments, but Maeve could not hear them. Last night, she had sworn she would be different around them. Stronger. A few pithy comments from Ellie, and already she was crumbling. She had to hold it together.
“I didn’t mean to upset you. I’d always hoped you’d do well.”
But she couldn’t.
“Don’t lie, Ellie. You never thought of me at all.” Maeve rattled the handle of the door to the attic. “I’ll go downstairs and find the key.”
“Shouldn’t I go with you?”
“I’d really rather you didn’t.”
Tears blurred her vision as she hurried away from Ellie, and she hated herself for it. She hugged her arms to herself and tried to squeeze the anxiety out. Why did she always cry when she was stressed? Why couldn’t she get angry or haughty? Why did it have to be sadness? This was all Callum’s fault. If he hadn’t died, she could be living a normal life. Maybe even a successful one. But she knew this was stupid even as she thought it. It wasn’t Callum’s fault she was here, just like it wasn’t his fault when she failed her maths exam or broke the teakettle or didn’t budget properly and ran out of grocery money. How many times had he paid for her lunch or got her dinner at the pub? She’d lost count, but she knew how many times she’d returned the favor. Zero was an easy number to remember. But this weekend, it was a chance to fix that, wasn’t it?
Lost in thought, she didn’t see the rope until she bumped into it. She’d wandered past the main staircase over to the wing of the house closed for renovation. The thin rope blocking off the closed wing swung limply back and forth from her touch. She grabbed it to steady it, but then smacked it in frustration. Why had she told Ellie about looking her up on Facebook? Why couldn’t she keep her mouth shut? She hit the rope again. No. No more tears. There was no reason to cry. She smacked the rope once more, and the weak catch that secured it to the wall broke. One end of the rope dropped to the floor.
“Of course,” she muttered and bent down to retrieve it, thinking she could somehow re-secure it.
As she lifted the end, she heard a sneeze.
She looked down into the darkened wing.
“Hello?”
Silence.
She looked behind her, but there was no one there. She didn’t expect there to be. The sound had come from the closed wing. No one was supposed to be down there.
“Hello?”
No answer. She let the rope fall. She couldn’t see far down the hall. The doors to all the rooms were shut and there were no windows to let the daylight in.
She listened. More silence.
And then, a faint creak, like a door being shut very softly. She’d heard that creak before. Last night.
Maeve hurried back to the main staircase and ran all the way down to the lobby. Lorna’s and Oliver’s voices carried up from the cellar as she turned at the bottom of the stairs and followed the narrow hallway that led to the back of the house. The windows back here looked out onto the distant hills, the bitter gray sky dampening the day.
If she followed this hall to the right, she would be walking underneath the closed wing above, wouldn’t she?
A scream echoed through the house.
Maeve froze.
“Ellie,” she whispered.
Ellie screamed again. Maeve rushed back to the lobby, running into Oliver and Lorna, who were coming out of the dining room.
“Where is she?” Ollie asked.
“I don’t know. Upstairs?”
Oliver ran for the stairs. Maeve followed alongside.
“You two were supposed to stay together!” he yelled back at her.
“I thought I saw someone!”
Lorna grabbed her arm. “Who did you see?”
“No one. I mean, I thought I heard someone.”
“Hollis?” Oliver asked as they reached the second-floor landing.
“I don’t know.”
“But you heard them downstairs? Why did you leave Ellie?”
“I didn’t! I mean I did but—”
Ellie screamed again and this time didn’t stop.
They reached the top floor, and the narrower hall condensed the sound. Oliver tracked it to a closed door on their right.
“Ellie? What’s happening? What’s wrong? Ellie!”
The knob rattled. The door held firm.
“Ellie, let me in!”
Oliver landed a kick to the door.
“Ow! Fucking hell.”
The door didn’t move, but Oliver limped back. “Who installed these fucking doors? What did they do? Cement the fucking hinges? Ellie!”
“Hush,” said Lorna. “Listen.”
Maeve noticed, too. The screaming had stopped. In the quiet, she heard the lock unbolt. Then Ellie stood before them, holding her left arm as if wounded but otherwise apparently unharmed. She forced her way through them and staggered down the hall.
“Ellie, love,” Oliver said, going after her. “Calm down. It’s all right. I’m here. Calm down. Tell us what happened.”
He tried to take her arm, tried to hold her, but Ellie kept turning away, passively resisting as she stopped and started down the hall, Oliver trailing after her. She paused at a wall sconce and held her arm under the light, examining a wound—red marks that looked like scratches. What could have done that to her? Maeve thought. Who could have done that, when Lorna and Oliver had been downstairs?
Ellie crumpled to the floor, her face shining from tears.
“What happened?” Lorna asked Maeve.
“I don’t know. I told you I thought I heard someone. I mean, I went to find a key for the attic, and that’s when I thought I heard someone, so I went downstairs and that’s where I was when I heard her scream.”
“You heard someone up here, so you went downstairs?” Oliver snapped. “What the fuck sense does that make? You were running away, was that it?”
“I wasn’t—I got my words jumbled. I went downstairs to find a key for the attic, and then I thought I heard someone, and then—”
“Stop. Look.” Ellie’s whisper silenced them. She shook her head back and forth, like she was having a seizure, and pointed at the room. “Just look!”
“Okay. Okay.” Oliver rubbed Ellie’s shoulder, then went to look into the room.
His face went gray and he staggered back, stricken by the same shock as Ellie. Maeve exchanged a glance with Lorna. Then they viewed the room together.
The walls were the same pale shade of yellow as those of Caldwell Street and were specked with hardened Blu Tack. A large wooden wardrobe, angled to the right from a missing leg, leaned against one wall, and empty Chicken Cottage boxes littered the floor. A Bon Jovi poster was taped above a box-spring bed.
This was Hollis’s old bedroom, a near-exact replica. The only difference was the position of the opened window, the curtain wet and blowing from the rain. But this wasn’t what had Oliver dry-retching or Ellie muttering to herself. It was what lay on the bed.
They didn’t need to check if he was alive. Half his skull was caved in. Blood drenched the entire left side of his face down to the collar of his yellow jacket.
“Hollis,” Maeve whispered. His clouded right eye stared at her, and Maeve couldn’t look anymore.