Gradually, the walls and the floor turned paper-white in the moonlight. The window frames looked like they were made from bone.
Tiny scutterings inside the walls set their eyes wandering, but they saw nothing out of the ordinary and they sat musing on what the noises might be, trying not to let their imaginations catch fire. The night brought out something ancient in them, and they heard it in their breathing and felt it on their skin, like electricity, making them charged and alert.
‘Are you scared?’ whispered Rosie eventually.
‘Yes,’ said Daniel, staring into the dark places hiding from the moon to try and see if anything was there.
‘More scared than you are of Mason?’
‘No. I want to stay. We need to find that flask. Give Mason what he wants and get him out of our lives for good.’
‘Yes,’ said Rosie. ‘We certainly both want that.’
He opened the silver-plated box lying on the floor beside them and stared at the gold wedding band and the finger and the lock of hair in their separate compartments, all hooked to the clasp on the underside of the lid with black, woolly twine. Daniel kept looking at them for some time in the moonlight. But he shut the lid eventually.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I don’t remember anything.’
Rosie sat up and looked at him and smiled. And then she closed her eyes.
When Daniel started to feel little pricks of pain in his chest, he knew that Rosie was trying to make the fit again. ‘Rosie, be careful,’ he said. ‘Please. Let’s try looking for the last symbol instead.’
But her face twitched and jerked and he wasn’t sure she could hear him.
When the pain rang clean in his chest like a bell, he gasped and tried to move his arms to shake Rosie out of her trance. But they were turning numb. There was no strength in them at all. ‘Rosie!’ But his voice was so pitiful that he could barely hear it himself.
He started to hear the ticking sound inside his head. Like an alarm clock about to go off. Or a bomb about to explode. He remembered how Lawson’s hand had detonated in a red mist and it scared him so much that he managed to summon all his strength and raised his arms towards Rosie as well as he could.
‘Rosie! Stop!’
When she collapsed forward, he had no strength to catch her and her head cannoned on to the floorboards with a crack.
The pain was gone from him immediately and, as the strength flowed back into his arms, he lifted up her limp body gently. ‘Rosie! Rosie! Wake up! What have you done?’
There was blood coming from her nose and it was thick and dark and velvety. It fell in drops to the floor, splashing into the dust. He checked her hands. Inspected her for any signs of damage. But there were none that he could see.
‘You said you wouldn’t leave,’ said Daniel, rocking her gently. ‘You promised.’
He felt her tense in his arms and then shudder, her eyes popping wide open as if waking from a terrible dream.
‘Oh, Daniel!’ she gasped as more blood came out of her nose, making her sputter and cough. ‘I saw Lawson. He was here in this room. He was kneeling.’ And she waved a hand towards the hearth.
‘Rosie, what did you do? What’s happened?’
She put her hands to her mouth as the blood ran down into it from her nose and she wiped it away. ‘I’m OK. I’m still here. I pushed as far as I dared. I stopped when I heard your voice. I’m OK. Go and look over there.’ She pointed at the hearth again. ‘Lawson was there. I’m sure of it.’
Daniel stood up and knelt down in front of the fireplace, searching for anything that might seem odd or out of place. The moon was shining in through the window behind him and he inspected everything in the hearth by its silvery light. Written beneath the grate on one of the tiles in black pen was another symbol, shining like wet paint in the moonlight. Quickly, he started testing each tile until he found a loose one, which he prised up with his fingernails. A tooth beneath it, a molar with a long tendril of root, attached to a black piece of twine. After plucking it out, he crouched down beside Rosie as she opened the silver box and he placed the tooth into the last empty compartment, hooking it to the clasp on the underside of the lid. When Rosie closed the box, Daniel heard something and looked round, trying to see what was there in the room with them.
‘What?’ asked Rosie.
‘A scratching sound, can’t you hear it?’
Rosie shook her head, her tongue wiggling in the corner of her mouth as she listened harder.
And then they both saw it, a grey column of fine mist rising from a section of the floor. It coalesced slowly into the blurry shape of a head and torso and arms. It was a man of sorts, up to his waist in the floorboards, until he drifted free of them to reveal his whole body. He was hazy. Indistinct. As if fashioned from a delicate silk that was constantly catching in a draught. He stood taller than either Daniel or Rosie, his cloudy grey feet hovering above the floor. The features of his face were blurred, but the eyes were bright blue and watched them keenly.
‘Who are you? Where’s Lawson?’ asked the man in a voice that sounded like dry leaves rattling in the wind. When he moved nearer to Daniel, the boy took a step back.
‘Dead,’ he said quickly.
‘Then what about the flask? Who has it now?’ The man drifted even closer. ‘You should tell me the truth. I can see a lot of things about a person if I want to, much more than when I was alive.’ The blue eyes burned bright in the blurred face. ‘So I already know you didn’t mean to kill Lawson.’ Closer and closer the man came. ‘What else is there, hiding deep down inside you?’
Daniel felt Rosie behind him, her hand clutching hold of his, the fingers clenching tighter.
‘Stay away from us,’ he shouted at the man. But the creature swept forward as if blown by a sharp gust of wind and plunged a blurry arm deep into Daniel’s chest, making the boy gasp.
‘I can’t hurt you,’ the man whispered. ‘There’s no need to be scared of me. Not like Mason.’
Daniel tried to step back, but he seemed fixed to the man, a chill burning steadily colder inside him.
‘Now I see everything.’ And the man laughed and pulled out his arm. ‘If you think Mason’s going to retire when you give him that flask, you’re wrong. He told Lawson the same thing, but he didn’t believe it. Mason uses people then tosses them away like dirty rags. Nobody rats on him because they don’t get the chance. He doesn’t trust anyone. But it keeps him alive, at the top of the pile. He killed me on a whim a few months ago just because I’d done a job for him. Lawson knew better than to trust him. That’s why he put me here to make a deal with me.’ He pointed at the silver box. ‘Lawson knew how to keep a person in the world even after they’d died.’
‘What sort of a deal did he make with you?’ asked Daniel.
‘To draw Mason into a trap you have to be clever. He’s paranoid. Alert to any trick. Lawson knew he’d need me to help him. He’s been waiting for weeks to tell Mason about the flask, winding him tighter and tighter until he wants it so much he’s ready to burst. And I bet he is now. So tell him the flask he so desperately wants is hidden here, that the ghost of Ashwell Lodge is the only one who can reveal it to him. Use the charms that Lawson made. Put them back where they were. Let Mason find them so he can see me. I’ll lead him to a place from which he’ll never return. But bring the flask with you too. I want what Lawson promised me. I’ll only help you if I know you can give me what I want.’
‘Where is it? Where’s the flask?’ asked Daniel.
‘Lawson kept it here. But the last time he came he took it away with him. When he didn’t come back, I thought he’d left me here forever, trapped in this place.’ The man began to drift down into the floor, disappearing from view. ‘If you can find the flask and bring it with you then you can get rid of Mason. It’s the only way to save yourselves from him now.’