If you hear a crow calling, it is a sure sign of death. Spit over your left and right shoulders and call out to the crows to fly away and take death with them.

I stood there starin at the wall like some kind of fool. Then I reached out and patted at it. It were real. Real and hard, and nary a crack nor sliver of light to show that there had ever been anything there but a wall.

I stopped, laid my ear against the bricks, and listened. Were someone movin acrost the floor on the other side?

I looked around the room for somethin, anythin to pick at the brick, but the closest thing to a tool were the horn spoon settin in the porridge bowl. I started for the spoon, then stopped. “Girl,” I said. “You could chip away at that brick wall for a year of Sundays and not get yerself out of here.”

“Yessum,” a deep voice whispered.

I swung round. The room were empty. My heart pounded.

“I must be goin out of my head,” I said, doubtin that I’d heard a real voice.

“Yessum, you must be goin out of your head,” the deep voice answered.

I shivered. Someone or somethin were in the room with me.

I turned in a slow circle, my eyes searchin everywhere but not wantin to find anythin.

“Am I dreamin again?” I asked.

No answer, just quiet.

I pinched myself hard on the arm.

“Ouch, I am not dreamin.”

Quiet.

“Where are you?” I asked, mad and scairt all twisted together inside me.

Quiet.

I shuffled slowly acrost the room, looked beside the bed, under the bed, and in the corners, but found nothin.

“Am I a prisoner?” I asked.

Quiet.

I looked up, down, held my breath, and waited for an answer, but the only sounds was the nearby caw, caw, cawin death calls of crows and the wind whistlin through the wooden slats high above me.

I spit over both shoulders and asked the crows to fly away and take death with them. Were that voice a death sperrit come lookin for me?

What were happenin? Were I a prisoner? Where were Zenobia? Were she caught and a prisoner now too?

The thick heat of summer had turned the little room into an oven, and I felt all played out. I climbed onto the bed and curled up like my grandpa’s old Delia dog. I felt too scairt to close my eyes, but I must’ve closed them and dozed, because I woke to the sound of a dull clunk and somethin slidin and scrapin below me.

My heart thumped. I pushed myself up and looked around the darkenin room, but I were alone. My fist pressed against my mouth, as though I could hold all my courage inside.

Another clunk and one big dark hand appeared beside the bed, snaked up, twisted, and turned full round, almost like it had eyes and were searchin for me.

I pressed my fist harder against my lips, bit into it, and moved back against the wall to get as far from the hand as I could. It slipped down the side of the bed and disappeared.

The bed shook. Now two big hands come. They reached up and pulled at the edge of the mattress.

I heard a loud scream. The scream come from me.