Saige was reminded of the day her mother died. Elaine’s eyes had been the same. An opaque marble, the skin around them darkened by black-purple veins. Whatever had been inside her mother that day now had control of Zoe.
Saige didn’t realise she’d scooted back against the wall until she felt the cold pressure of it strike her arm.
God, I’m trapped.
Zoe twitched with an unnatural jerk. The thing inside her raised her slender arm and beckoned Saige to come forward. Saige was struck with déjà vu.
Just like the ghost from the party.
Zoe’s lips formed into a malicious smile. She turned and traversed the hallway without taking strides.
“Do you want answers?” The spectre’s voice rolled thick and slow through the dark, quiet, yet somehow Saige heard it among the thunder and deluge outside.
Yes.
She wanted to save Zoe. She wanted to spare her brother heartache. She desperately wanted to know the real reason why her mother died.
Saige forced courage into her heart. She slipped away from the wall, imagining herself as Alice down the rabbit hole. Lightning continued to play havoc with her eyes. She sensed the cold sweat that ran down her back now soak into the half slip beneath her dress.
Zoe disappeared around the corner. The ends of her dress blew after her, reminding Saige of dark, running blood. The spectre didn’t move fast, but Saige maintained distance between them as she slipped around the bend and continued her pursuit.
The halls and passages had changed again.
Have the walls sprouted legs and rearranged themselves?
She knew what she was suggesting defied physics, but Saige was starting to realise that little in Wolvercraft Manor could be explained by science.
She followed Zoe to one of the larger, more striking staircases. This one always reminded Saige of the grand staircase from the Opera Garnier, only much narrower and more compact. The white marble staircase was decorated with statue torchères that would have looked more at home in a garden. Tiny cherub faces had been carved into the balustrade, but they were so old and soured by age that their noses had flattened and their smiles now resembled grisly snarls. Saige remembered what her mother had once called them and shivered. Little demons.
Zoe drifted up the stairs. The only thing that looked alive about her was the red dress and her long black hair, which moved through the air as though suspended in water. A chill crept across Saige’s bones, sinking right into her marrow. Zoe’s feet dragged horribly, toes hitting each step and jittering. It was the exact way people’s feet twitched when they were hanged.
Oh God! Zoe! What has this thing done to you?
Saige crept up the stairs, trying to pace her breathing, but the tightness in her lungs forced her to gasp for air like she was drowning. Zoe reached the third storey and slid silently down the hall.
I can’t let Zoe get hurt, or worse, be killed. It will destroy Xav.
Lightning brightened the windows, thunder following only a few seconds later. It sounded as though the sky and earth had collided. Saige dashed up the last few stairs and hurried into the hallway. She pressed a shaky hand to her chest.
The hallway was empty.
Zoe was gone.
Shit! Shit!
Saige searched her phone for a signal, but the little bars across the top of the screen were empty. She blinked at the useless device in her hand.
A creak made her jump. Saige’s ears pricked as she peered into the dark. At the end of the hall, intermittent lightning revealed one of the heavy doors swinging open.
It’s just the wind.
But she knew she was lying to herself. Zoe had gone in there.
Saige forced one foot in front of the other, painfully aware of how loud her breathing was. She pressed deeper down the passage. Lightning splashed patchy illuminance across the wall. It wasn’t a door that Zoe had entered but a wall panel that had opened, connected on hinges from the inside.
A secret doorway.
Does Dad even know about this? Aunt Prue?
Saige peered inside, but it was too dark to see anything besides grime-caked stone walls. It was a sort of tight passage, barely wide enough for someone to scrape their shoulders through. She moved closer, raising her phone for light. Saige inhaled damp air and mould. She dared to move a little closer.
Someone—or something—latched on to her shoulder.
Saige screamed. Her heart flipped unpleasantly as she twirled around, ready for fight or flight.
“Jesus, Saige! Stop! Stop! It’s me! It’s me!”
She stumbled backward. The light from her phone bathed Jasper’s face.
He stared, open-mouthed. His normally styled hair was a sweat-induced mess around his face. He must have run his fingers through it one too many times. “Where the hell have you been? I’ve been looking all over the place for you.”
His arms encircled her, pulling her in close.
This time, Saige let him. She’d never been happier to see another person in her life. “Don’t sneak up on me ever again.”
“Okay, I won’t, but, Saige, you can’t wander off and go on a solo adventure through the house.”
“I didn’t. Something in this place… it separated us.”
Silver radiance shone from his hand. Saige realised that at some point Jasper had gone to the basement and grabbed a flashlight.
He came back for me?
Jasper pressed his lips together. His eyes darted left and right. “Come on. Let’s go. I don’t want to spend a moment longer in this part of the house.”
“Jasper, we can’t!” Saige pointed at the secret trapdoor. “Zoe’s down there. I think she’s in trouble.”
He took one look at the dark entry and shook his head. “Yeah, that’s not happening. Saige, I know you’re sweet, innocent, annoyingly naïve, but trust me, I’ve watched enough scary flicks in my life to know rule number one: never go down a creepy passage.”
He pulled her away from the door. At the same time, a bloodcurdling scream cut through the eerie stillness inside, rolling up into the house with a chilling echo. Saige clung tighter to Jasper. Then the sound was snuffed out. Like a hand over a mouth. Or a flame gusted by wind.
Or a life meeting a sudden, tragic end.
All comforting thoughts.
Saige grabbed the flashlight out of his hand. She scrambled inside the secret passage.
“Bad idea, Saige.”
But he hurried in after her.
It was a tight fit. She manoeuvred her body, sliding carefully along the walls, flinching when stone scoured her exposed skin. The flashlight revealed a few metres ahead, dust mites floating through the dark. Wherever the passage led, the damp stale air smelt like something had died there. Saige coughed. The crushingly cold air made it hard to draw breath.
They clambered into a room filled with malodorous rot. Saige nearly gagged. It was a chamber of some kind. She pointed the flashlight across the walls. Panic skittered in multiple directions through her stomach. Before them stood a line of cells. A wooden gallows occupied the left corner of the room, the noose still intact, as though it waited patiently for its next victim. Rusty electric shock equipment had been left abandoned on a wooden desk, the legs coated in filth. The bars that ran along the cells had tarnished so badly that a coppery stench stained the room.
Her jugular vein pounded. “What is this place?”
She felt Jasper’s grip on the back of her dress. She didn’t know if he was trying to keep her close or if he was afraid of being left behind. “It’s some kind of torture chamber. Look.”
He pointed his phone in the direction of the ceiling. Light washed over the stone. Hanging like some kind of twisted consecration cross was a black swastika centred in a white circle and bordered by red. A flag. Still hanging after decades of disuse.
Jasper’s brown eyes sought hers. “Ashvall was occupied by the Nazis. Wolvercraft Manor was their headquarters, right?”
Saige swallowed. “Historians always believed the prisons were concealed somewhere beneath the house. Nothing was ever found.”
“That’s because it’s up here, hidden behind Wolvercraft’s walls.”
She wrapped a hand around her mouth, afraid she’d be sick. How many of Ashvall’s citizens had disappeared in this house? How many prisoners and members of the French resistance were secretly shipped from Normandy into Wolvercraft, never to see the light of day again? Where were their bodies? Buried out in the gardens in a mass grave? Entombed in the walls?
Something in one of the cells caught Saige’s eye. She tilted forward. The flashlight revealed words scratched into the stone floor.
In life I was afraid. In death I am fearless. They will all pay.
She shivered but shifted closer. She couldn’t make out whether the sentences had been scratched into the stone with a rock or… fingernails.
“What is that?” Jasper darted toward something behind the gallows.
Saige hurried after him, afraid to put distance between them. She caught movement too. A horde of cables rasped and groaned against the far wall. They slid down, taut and strained. The high-pitched screech of the cables reminded her of the way pigs squealed when they were stressed or afraid.
It must be carrying something heavy.
Jasper shot her a worried frown. “It’s some kind of elevator. It’s going down. And by the look of things—” He peered up at the ceiling. There was a square hole where the cables descended. “—it goes up as well. It must travel up and down the house.”
Saige bit her lower lip, knowing she must have chewed off most of her red lipstick by now. “A secret elevator… inside the walls?”
Why would Frederick George Wolvercraft, the house’s original owner, have a secret elevator built that would ride down into the bowels of the building?
Why is there a frigging torture chamber inside the house?
Jasper flinched. The cables continued to chafe as they descended. “Someone is going down.”
Saige aimed the flashlight into the shaft. The light barely surpassed five metres. “It must be Zoe.”
Or the thing that has her.
The cables ground to a halt with a deafening shriek. A moment later, they rolled in ascension. The elevator was coming back up.
Something saw the light.
Jasper backed away. “Saige, it’s time to leave. I’d very much like for us to go now.”
“Agreed.”
The tension inside her was engulfing, bordering on smothering. Macabre curiosity and a desire to spare her brother’s feelings had brought her down here, but now Saige only sensed evil.
To hell with Zoe. Sorry, Xav.
The cables were climbing faster. The antiquated equipment juddered and grinded up the shaft, moving impossibly fast.
The pair scrambled across the chamber back into the narrow passage.
Saige gasped.
Have the walls moved closer?
The space seemed tighter than she remembered.
“Saige?” Jasper’s voice was frantic behind her. “There’s something in the chamber.”
“I’m hurrying,” she cried back.
She could feel it now too. A cold presence that drowned the air with misery and desolation. The frosty sensation drove so deep into her bones that she wondered how she didn’t turn into an ice figurine right there. Her breath clouded around her face in white plumes. The flashlight flickered once, twice, and then went out. She reached for Jasper’s hand behind her and clung tight, his fingers her only comfort. She never thought of herself as being claustrophobic, but at that moment, she truly feared dying between these walls.
Saige dropped the useless flashlight, feeling the wall to guide her way instead. She’d never been happier to see the erratic flashes of lightning that lit the hallway beyond. She struggled out of the passage and turned to help Jasper. Whatever was behind him was close, but it was too dark to make out its features. All she knew was it was something unearthly and monstrous.
Jasper slammed the trapdoor closed. Together they ran. Down the hallway. Down the stairs. Past empty bedrooms and living chambers. They were nearly upon the staircase that would lead them to the lower floor when Saige spotted something pale and translucent out on the balcony. The woman—the ghost she had seen at the party, the one wearing her dress—stood out in the rain. The glass doors were open, the deluge surging inside, saturating the curtains and carpet. The woman looked completely dry. The torrent showered right through her body, making little razor cuts in her transparent flesh. She smiled at Saige. It wasn’t a nice grin.
Jasper’s voice faltered beside her. “Saige, it has a knife.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, hoping it was an illusion.
But when she opened her eyes, the ghost was still there. Jasper was right. In the spectre’s hand was a wicked-looking knife.
The ghost’s lips parted. Her voice come out in a piercing cry. “She knows.”
Before Saige could register what was happening, the wraith brough the knife to her own throat and slit—
Saige screamed, aghast by the cloud of squirting blood. She clung to Jasper’s lapels and buried her face in his jacket.
Oh my God. She cut her throat. She cut her throat!
Something hot and sticky trickled down her dress. She pulled away from Jasper, the sight of her gown eliciting more screams. Blood ran down her black-and-gold flapper dress, soaking the material.
It’s her blood!
I’m wearing her dress!
Saige screeched and flung her arms like she was being attacked by a swarm of hostile
bees. “Get it off me. Get the dress off me.”
Jasper’s face was tinged green. His fingers ran down the zipper at her back. She scampered out of the dress, not caring that she stood only in a bra and underwear. She cried and ground the heels of her hands into her eyes. Saige was vaguely aware of Jasper holding on to her, trying to soothe her with consoling words, but she was too afraid and nauseated to make much sense out of anything. Her legs collapsed beneath her. Glittering black spots danced across her vision. She was glad when her head hit the floor, drowned in darkness.