THE DOOR SHUTS behind me, and I am in darkness. There’s a panic in my chest like a bird beating its wings against glass before I realize that this is the darkness of shadows, not the impenetrable dark that swallowed Miranda.
Miranda*
Whatever was chasing me is gone now, or I hope it is. I stretch my fingers out, ball them into fists, stretch them again, trying to get feeling back into my extremities. The hall is narrow and featureless. Only one way to go.
I haven’t gone far when I reach an intersection, other hallways leading left and right. An arrow is carved in the wall in a dozen frantic lines, pointing left. They look like old lines carved on a tree trunk, swelling shut. As if the house is healing over them.
Do I trust it?
I touch my fingers to the gouges. They don’t belong. Made by someone who didn’t belong. I turn left.
I pass a door to my right and don’t stop. The hallway hooks, hooks again. More doors. No windows, no source of light, but I can see through the gloom—not well, but a bit. The hallway branches again. Three directions this time, and something scratched in the floor itself, but the head of the arrow is gone. Only a few narrow, broken lines remain, and those are scabbing over. Left or right? I’ll have to guess.
I turn right. Down another hall, just like the rest. Three doors. A turn. And then—
An intersection up ahead, but that’s not what stops me. Light, gold-yellow, creeps along the floor and along the walls. The source of it is moving toward the intersection from the left-hand hall. And with it, footsteps and a soft, gentle chiming. I take a tentative step forward, then halt.
Watch for her light. Warning? Or instruction?
There has been nothing kind in this place.
The light is drawing closer. I turn, ready to hurry back the way I came. I just stepped around the corner, and yet behind me the hall stretches straight and narrow until it vanishes into the dark. No corner to duck behind. Nowhere to run, except the doors to either side of me.
I hesitate. The light spills farther toward me, oozing across the floor. Where it touches the walls, gouges appear, deep rents in the plaster and something meaty and soft behind it, pale as milk.
I can’t stay. I reach for the nearest door, my hand closing around the handle—
And it’s already open, and opening wider.
She stares at me, mouth agape. Becca. Hair tumble-wild around her face, skin streaked with dust, pupils blown wide. And then her eyes dart past me, and she hisses between her teeth.
“Get in!”
She yanks me through the door, shuts it fast—halting just shy of the frame, so it makes no noise. She leaves it open a slit and peers into the crack. My heart hammering, I look past her as the light swings around the corner and into view.
It’s a woman, carrying a candle in an old-fashioned holder, the kind with a loop on one side. She wears a mushroom-colored dress, Victorian, high-collared and formal, and her hair is pinned up on her head.
She has no face. The shapes of a face are hinted at, but no eyes, no mouth, no nostrils. Only a pattern like bark. Like the striations in the sky. She walks on slippered feet, steady and deliberate, the flame never flickering. With every step, something chimes softly. She draws close. Draws even with our door.
Becca reaches back and grabs my hand, squeezing tight. Quiet, the touch seems to say, but I can’t even breathe; I couldn’t make a sound if I wanted to.
Across the hall, behind the other door, something makes a muffled flapping. The woman pauses. Becca’s grip tightens. The woman half turns, away from us.
Her back is hollow. No spine, no flesh, no organs. Only a smooth cavity from her shoulder blades to her hips, and five tiny, silver bells hanging from silvery thread, chiming softly as she moves.
She opens the door across the hall. The light spills in, but all I can make out is a frantic flutter of movement. A quick thump-thump-thump. She strides in with sudden purpose, and I lose sight of her. Another sound, a keening, begins but cuts off quickly, and then she returns with brisk steps. She shuts the door and returns to her position in the center of the hall, bells ringing clink-clink-clink.
She rolls her neck from side to side, smooths her skirts with one hand, and resumes her walk. One deliberate step after another. The light draws past, draws away. The chiming of bells fades.
Becca turns to me. I expect—joy, perhaps. Relief. Anything of what I’m feeling, this overwhelming crash of emotion that steals every word from me.
But her face is crumpled. She puts a hand to my cheek, shaking her head. “Oh, Sara,” she says. “You shouldn’t have come.”