Only minutes had passed since I’d come upstairs. Rage had burned away my fear: I felt as though that pure white light ran through my veins. I pulled the scissors from my pocket, clutching them like a zip knife, checked to make sure the remaining dart was where I could easily grab it. I took a few steps down the hall and stopped.
To either side was a door. Neither betrayed any trace of light or sound. I looked from one to the other, chose the one on my left, and walked inside.
Immediately I was assaulted by a smell. Not the hot fetor of the bedroom but a strong chemical odor like that I’d detected in the shed. I ran a hand across the wall until I found a light switch. I gave my eyes a few seconds to adjust and tightened my hand around the scissors.
There was no one in the room. Black plastic sheeting had been nailed over the windows. Metal shelving held camera equipment and a digital printer, big enough to reproduce photos the size of the one in the studio downstairs. Work lights were clamped to the shelves, aimed toward the far wall.
But this wasn’t a darkroom. There was no sink, no trays for chemical baths, no clothesline to hold drying negs or prints. The shelves were filled with large jars, and for a moment I thought I’d stumbled on a cold room designed to store pickles and jams put up by Freya. I edged closer to the shelves, pulled one of the jars toward me, and almost dropped it.
The jar was filled with human teeth, some still attached to a jawbone. They floated in a cloudy liquid, along with flakes of white particulate. I shoved the jar back onto the shelf, averting my eyes from the others, but not before I glimpsed what looked like a distorted, doll-sized face pressed against the glass.
I turned, the edge of the scissors biting into my palm. Beneath the blacked-out windows was a bed, covered with the same plastic sheeting. A delicate array of white objects was arranged across it—bones, small ones, disarticulated so I couldn’t tell what kind of animal they’d come from. The image of the dead fox popped into my head, disappearing when I saw a human rib cage at the head of the bed, small enough that it could have encircled a basketball, with strands of dark hair woven between the ribs.
I backed away and stepped out into the hall, whirled, and found myself staring at Gwilym Birdhouse. He wore a bathrobe, his hair tousled and face creased from sleep, and held a gun with an almost cartoonishly long barrel, pointed at me. A tranquilizer gun. He raised it, the mouth inches from my right eye.
Before I could move, someone struck me from behind. I heard a pneumatic hiss as I fell, catching myself before I hit the floor.
I looked up and saw Tindra. She stared at Birdhouse with the same fathomless gaze as when she’d first recounted her abuse, her eyes dead-black. Birdhouse looked at her, stunned.
“Tindra?”
She didn’t move. I saw the dart he’d fired embedded in the wall beside her. As Birdhouse took a step backward, I grabbed the dart from my pocket and lunged at him, burying the tip in his neck and squeezing it.
Birdhouse flailed at me, arms pinwheeling. His gaze fixed on Tindra as he gave a hoarse cry and sank to his knees. I watched, ready to kick if he made any move. But he slowly dropped to the floor, as though lowering himself into bed. His eyes never left Tindra. After a minute, his expression relaxed, and he grew still.
Tindra stared at him, walked over, and nudged his face with her foot. From the room at the end of the hall came the same rhythmic sound, like someone pounding a tom-tom. I ran toward the stairs. I didn’t need to see what happened next.