Dorran muttered something under his breath. Clare craned her neck to see him around a spool of wire. He’d set his lamp down and crouched beside a car’s motor. It looked old, grime speckling the once-bright metal. He felt around it, pulling out sockets and running his fingers across connections.
“Is that it?”
“Yes.” He kept his head down. “It needs parts, though. I will be a minute while I find them.”
The windows rattled as a fresh burst of air gusted past them. Clare forced herself to loosen her death grip on the lamp’s ring and straighten her back. She stepped away from Dorran, scanning the floor and shelves for anything that might slide easily over icy ground.
A drop cloth caught her eye. It wouldn’t be as good as a sled, but if she and Dorran both took an edge, it would be enough to cross the distance between the shed and the house. She pulled it down from a shelf and coughed as dust billowed around her.
Something cracked upstairs. Clare clutched the cloth, not daring to move, as she listened. The sound might have been a strained support beam adjusting. She began edging towards Dorran.
The shed was sealed. There were no signs of forced entry. It should be safe.
Dorran was lost in his own world. He sorted through a tool chest, his lips moving without making a sound as he picked out the implements he needed. Clare left the cloth beside him. She took a step towards the staircase against the wall.
Long-neglected spiderwebs decorated the structure. They shimmered in the sparse wind. Clare lifted her lamp and squinted up the length of the steps.
Don’t do it, her mind whispered. She looked over her shoulder. Dorran was still bent over the motor. It looked like it had been half pulled apart already. She could interrupt him and ask him to check the loft with her, but Clare pressed her lips together instead. The memory from that morning, when he’d gone into the passageways alone, was still clear in her mind. He thought he needed to protect her from this new world, but she was capable too. She had to be.
She placed a foot on the lowest step. It groaned, protesting the sudden pressure. The boards were thin and not well supported. Clare looked from her feet and up their length, towards the loft above.
Marks ran through the wood beside the stairs. Long, shallow scores. Clare carefully held out a hand. She pressed her fingertips to the marks and mimed scraping along them. They matched the scores left by long nails.
Don’t do it.
She stopped, one foot already on the next step, ready to lift her higher. From her position, a third up the stairs, she could see the lower level’s floor plan more clearly. Dorran’s light created a little orb of brightness among the jagged metal teeth and dulled blades filling the space. If she climbed just another foot or two, she would be able to see over the lip of the loft.
Her throat caught when she tried to swallow. Shaking fingers raised the lamp farther. She began to climb.
Chapter Fourteen
The loft’s back wall came into view. Clare froze, her skin crawling. A hunched shape was silhouetted beside the window. Clare stared and thought she could feel it staring back. The lamp’s light flickered. Clare exhaled a held breath. She was looking at a tattered coat hung on the wall.
Another step up. More of the wall was revealed. Old posters were plastered over it. Photos of beautiful beaches were now so old and tarnished that the water looked brown and the sand was tinged green. In pinups from old magazines, the girls beamed at the camera, peeking over their shoulders cheekily or gasping in surprise as a wind blew their skirts up. Every single one of them had their eyes clawed out. The marks cut into the wood beneath, so much like the scores marring the wall along the staircase.
On the final step up, the wood rocked under Clare’s foot, threatening to break. Beth’s voice played in her head on repeat. Don’t take risks. Don’t take risks. Don’t…
But she could see the attic. Mattresses were scattered over the wood, worn down until they were pocked with holes and bits of stuffing bloomed out of the wounds. An old, broken set of drawers had been co-opted from the house, its dark wood at sharp contrast with the lighter timber surrounding it. She saw crates filled with possessions… and a skeleton.
Discoloured bones sprawled across the loft’s floor. The skull was the closest. It seemed to leer at Clare, even with the lower jaw missing. Spikes of calcium poked out from the cranium, rising up like tiny mountains, protruding from the upper jaw and filling the eye sockets.
A hollow. Not human. At least, not when it died…
Her instincts begged her to step back. She couldn’t stop herself from looking further. Femurs and ribs dotted the mattresses, scattered over the place like debris. There were a lot of bones. Not enough for two skeletons. Too many for one. Clumps of hair lay about, as though they had been torn out and flung away. Many of the bones were cracked. They were stained a dark brown, as was the floor, the colour spreading in wide streaks. A handprint with seven fingers marred the closest wall.
There was a feast. Not recent. But not quite old, either.
Clare pressed a hand over her mouth. In the loft, the scent was almost overpowering. It had been nothing but a dusty musk on the lower floor. Now it reeked… of rot and of hollows.
She made to step back down the stairs but froze. Something moved. She fixed on the only window in the loft, a little round circle set into the back wall. It faced away from the brunt of the wind, and even though the glass was mottled with flecks of white, she could see something through it.
Her stomach rolled as she crept between the bones. No part of the floor was clean of gore. All she could do was step over it, doing her best to avoid disturbing the possessions that would never be picked up again. At the window, she had a view of the field leading to the forest. Twisted shapes crawled through the snow. Some of them shambled upright. Others crept on all fours, their spines twisting like a millipede’s, unfazed by the cold. One looked up.
Clare gasped and stepped back. She could have sworn the hollow had made eye contact with her. As she stumbled towards the edge of the loft, her shoe bumped into the skull. It skittered, twirling, towards the edge of the wooden platform. Clare grasped for it. She was too slow. It plunged over, the empty eye sockets glancing at her a final time before it disappeared. A second later, the bones shattered on the floor.
No. No. We can’t make noise.
“Clare?”
She ran for the stairs, breathless and fighting to keep her feet light, and plunged down the steps nearly recklessly. Dorran was frozen below, staring at the skull, the angles of his face sharp with alarm. He opened his mouth, but Clare motioned frantically.
She stumbled to a halt, and Dorran reached for her. She let him pull her close and rose onto her toes to whisper into his ear. “Hollows outside.”
“Ah.”
They kept still, holding each other, staring at the walls as they waited. Clare thought she heard snow crunch outside the door. Something was moving closer. It stopped by the wood. Seconds passed, and she imagined the creature outside, its bulging eyes staring blankly at the shed. Then the crunching came again, moving away. Clare closed her eyes and let her shoulders slump.
Dorran dipped his head to whisper into her ear, his warm breath gusting across her neck. “The motor is ready. We will wait until outside is clear then make a run for it. Where did the skull come from?”