Marlowe dropped her suitcase in shock. It thumped over, then slid down the stairs behind them.
The screaming continued.
Sean crashed through the door from the conservatory, skidding on the marble tiles as he rushed into the atrium.
“You all right?” he called up to them, even though it was transparently obvious none of them were the source of the screams.
“It’s not us!” Marlowe said.
At the same moment, Plum blurted, “It’s outside!”
The four of them rushed outside together, through the main doors, back out past the terrace edge, and onto the cobbled path.
No one was there.
The shrieks were moving, as if the screamer was being carried forcibly away from the house.
Sean lowered his head like a bull and charged after the screams.
Plum’s heart jumped into her throat and stayed there, pounding terror into her veins as the girls followed.
They reached the row of stunted palm trees.
“This way!” Sean said. He lunged forward, the particular lunge of someone who’s done a lot of lunges.
The scream cut off abruptly, then sounded again, still in front of them but now off to the side, both toward the cliff edge and into the spiky and waxy bushes that bordered it.
“We’re coming!” Sofia yelled. “Where are you?”
The scream paused, only for the barest of moments. It started again, with renewed vigor, then stopped again.
“They’re being killed!” Marlowe cried. Plum, her friends, and Sean stood in the windswept grass, waiting for the intermittent scream to come again.
“They’re getting weaker, maybe?” Plum suggested.
“Oh no, oh no,” Marlowe chanted, hugging herself.
“Why do you think that?” Sean asked Plum. His frown drew his scalp forward.
“The screaming was constant when we came out here,” Plum explained.
“Maybe they heard us. She heard us—it’s a woman, right?” Sofia asked.
The scream was very high, but before Plum could answer, the scream came again.
It was uncanny, a high shriek that sounded nearly like words, or a single word. Plum could almost make it out.
“That way!” Marlowe pointed exactly as the scream cut off again.
They crashed forward into thorn-spiked branches.
“Impossible,” Sean muttered. “There’s nothing here, it’s too low. We’d see something.”
As if to underscore his words, at that precise moment, the dense wall of green bushes in front of them shivered violently.