The beam of the flashlight cut through the darkness like a knife. “It’s a second stairwell,” Charlie called back to us. The light swung wildly over the floor, walls, and ceiling. “I don’t think there’s a light.”
I went next, testing the floor carefully. The space behind the pantry was actually a small landing, not unlike the one upstairs that lead to the attic. The air was musty and stale, and dust danced under the yellow light.
“Where does it go?” I craned my head up and peered into the black above us.
Charlie stepped gingerly onto the first step and shone the flashlight up to where the stairs curved in on themselves. “Up,” he said.
“Thanks, genius.”
He pointed the flashlight under his chin and grinned, turning his face into a ghoulish mask. “Coming?”
The stairs creaked underfoot as I picked my way up, fingers clutching at the ancient banister.
“Careful,” Ransom called from the doorway. “You don’t want to fall through.”
He was right. Charlie and I moved slowly up the stairs. Leah and Ransom trailed behind us, our way lit only by the narrow beam of the flashlight. Cobwebs stretched overhead like a gauzy curtain, and every footstep raised dust. The walls crowded close, forced us to climb single file.
“What was this, do you think?” Leah’s voice broke through the gloom.
“Servant’s stair, most likely,” Ransom answered.
Ahead of me, Charlie stopped on a small landing. To his left, the stairs curved ninety degrees before continuing upwards. But he shined the light to his right. A doorframe, complete with hinges but missing the door, was set in the wall. The opening was boarded over from the opposite side with narrow strips of wood over plaster. Charlie switched the light off, plunging us all into darkness.
“What the hell, Charlie?” Leah gripped the back of my shirt. “This isn’t funny. Turn the light back on!”
“Look,” he said.
Light streamed through tiny cracks in the doorway, each as thin as a sheet of paper. Charlie pressed himself against the wall. “It’s my bedroom,” he murmured. “This is right over my desk.”
Icy fingers trailed down my spine. “Like a peephole?”
He stepped back. He found my arm in the dark and guided me to the wall. I had to stand on my toes to see out, but the crack was wide enough for me to see his unmade bed, the pile of dirty laundry in front of his dresser. My breath caught. “This is so weird.”
“Very creepy,” Leah agreed from over my shoulder, her breath tickling the back of my neck. “Can we turn the light back on now?”
Charlie obliged. I blinked against the sudden glare. He looked pale, almost ghostly in the half-light. I reached out and grabbed his hand, squeezing his fingers once. He smiled down at me.
We climbed the next flight of stairs. Each of us moved more quickly, though I wasn’t sure if it was because the stairs had been sturdy up to that point or because everyone else was as unnerved by the spyhole into Charlie’s bedroom as I was.
On the third floor, the stairs opened up to a small landing. The flashlight danced over the splintery wood floor, the cracked plaster walls. A small round window in one wall was covered over with black paper.
Ahead of us was a door. Not a boarded-up frame like the one below us, but a proper door with a cut glass knob, like the one that led to the room off the side of the attic.
Charlie tried the knob.
Locked.
“Why would anyone do that?” Leah asked.
Charlie didn’t answer, but he didn’t let go of my hand right away. Instead, he walked me a few feet away, handed me the flashlight, and gave my fingers a quick squeeze before letting go. Then he threw himself at the door, shoulder first.
He hit it with a dull thud and dropped to the floor in a heap, dust rising around him. He rolled onto his back and hissed with pain.
I dropped to my knees beside him. “What’s the matter with you?” I grabbed his good shoulder and shook him. “Are you crazy?”
He sat up and winced. “It looks easier in the movies,” he said. “That really hurt.”
“We’re breaking down the door?” Leah asked from the top step. “Is that really the best idea?”
“Do you have a key?” Charlie asked. He climbed to his feet stiffly, rubbing his shoulder.
She shrugged. “Fair enough.”
“Let me try,” Ransom said. “Step back.”
He raised his foot, and with one expert kick, the wood around the knob splintered.
He did it again, and again. Finally, the latch broke away from the rest of the door with an earsplitting crack, and the door gaped open. Ransom stepped back and grinned down at us. A thin layer of sweat and dirt mixed with the flour that covered his forehead, turning him an odd shade of gray.
“Ladies first?” Charlie asked.
“You’re just chicken.”
He leaned down, his hand on the small of my back, his lips brushing against my ear, sending a chill down my spine that had nothing to do with whatever was waiting for us behind the door. “You did promise to protect me.”
I leaned forward and gave the door a firm push. With a creak that sounded almost like a sigh of relief, the remaining wood gave way, and the door swung open. I shined the flashlight into the darkness beyond.
The narrow beam bounced over a small and crowded room, even smaller than Charlie’s room downstairs. Paint peeled from the ceiling and walls and covered the floor. Everything was covered in layers of inches-thick dust. Sheets of paper, tacked to the walls, moved softly as I moved into the room, giving the sensation that the room was alive. A narrow bed in the corner lay stripped bare, the sheets and blankets crumpled at its foot. Long tears rent the mattress, exposing the springs underneath, like someone had taken a knife to it. On the floor next to the bed, a pillow lay in shreds on a cushion of feathers. The hair on the back of my neck prickled, and I was glad when Charlie’s hand slipped into mine.
“Looks like someone was angry,” Ransom said from behind us.
Books spread across the floor, like they had been flung off the low shelves that ran along the bottom of the walls. Dust-covered candles stood on the desk, the top of the chest of drawers, the nightstand. Wax had melted and hardened into pools in several spots on a narrow writing desk tucked under one of the dormer windows. The drawer was pulled out and turned over, its contents strewn around the floor. The chair lay on its side nearby, its cushion ripped, just like the mattress and pillow. I stepped closer to the desk. I’d barely moved when the ground crunched beneath my foot.
“What’s this?” On the floor, a picture frame lay face down. I picked it up carefully and winced when shards of glass tinkled to the floor. The silver frame had turned black with age, but the picture was in almost-perfect shape. It was one of those stiff and posed early-twentieth century portraits where everyone stared so seriously at the camera. Two of the three people in the picture had Charlie’s clear eyes and long, straight nose. The girl wore a straight, ankle-length dress and had light hair piled on top of her head and a ghost of smile on her lips. Boys in a black suits sat on either side of her, one with fair hair parted down the middle. His face was serious, eyes cold. The other boy’s head was missing, the paper torn out. “More ancestors?” I handed it to Charlie.
“Maybe.” He frowned down at the frame and set it back on the nightstand. “Why would someone lock all of this away?”
I leaned closer to the writing desk. Strange symbols and patterns were burned into the wood. I fought back a shiver. “Maybe you should ask your Grams.”
“Yeah, I can see that conversation now. ‘Hey, Grams, you know that room hidden behind the wall in the attic, behind the secret passageway in the pantry? Why was it trashed and sealed up?’”
“You think she was the one who did this?”
He shook his head. “This room has been shut for a long time. Longer than she’s been alive, maybe. She might not even know about it.”
Ransom stepped close to the wall. “Can I have the light?”
My fingers tightened on the plastic handle for half a heartbeat, but I passed it to him. He shone it close to the wall, close enough that we could see each of the sheets of paper was covered with a blood-red scrawl. Goosebumps crawled over my skin.
“What does it say?” Leah hovered in the doorway. She still hadn’t set foot in the room. Not that I blamed her.
Ransom cleared his throat. “It’s a poem,” he said. “Or at least the beginning of one.”
“Come on, read it.”
Ransom’s voice was clear and cold as he read from the wall. “She walks in beauty, like the night / Of cloudless climes and starry skies; / And all that’s best of dark and bright / Meet in her aspect and her eyes: / Thus mellow’d to that tender light / Which heaven to gaudy day denies.”
“That’s Byron, isn’t it?” Leah asked.
“You just know that off the top of your head?” Charlie asked. He sounded impressed.
She lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I like poetry,” she explained.
“Byron sounds about right,” Ransom said. “But I think it’s only the first stanza.”
He moved the light on to the next sheet of paper. A strangled sound came from deep in his throat, but he continued. “She walks in beauty, like the night.” The light scanned the wall, over the fluttering scraps of paper. He handed the flashlight back to me. “They all say the same thing.”
“So someone was really into poetry. No big deal,” Leah said. “Why don’t we go back downstairs?”
I picked up a book covered in green leather from the pile on the desk. It was heavier than it looked and stiff from years of disuse. The binding creaked as I carefully opened it to a page in the middle, marked with a scrap of faded brown ribbon. Neat, boxy script flowed in two columns down the page. Delicate vines and red and white flowers twisted along the edges of the pages, and smaller red petals drifted down around the text. I looked closer, trying to decipher the writing. But it was in French—heavily abbreviated French, at that—and despite three years of Madame Harper’s best efforts, I couldn’t read it.
Charlie leaned over my shoulder. “Hands,” he said, tracing the illustrations with his finger. “Those… those are hands.”
He was right—they weren’t flowers after all, but arrangements of severed hands made to look like flowers, dripping blood. Not petals.
The book hit the floor with a dull thud. My skin crawled, and I stepped backwards, right into Charlie. His hands closed around my arms to steady me, even as the walls and ceiling seemed to press closer and closer.
Ransom threw open heavy curtains that I hadn’t noticed, and his breath caught. “Holy shit.”
Pale moonlight filtered through the glass, covering everything in the room in a soft glow. The yard spread out beneath us, right up to the edge of the forest.
Right where she stood, a pale white wraith, dress twisting around her ankles. She didn’t flicker this time, she didn’t flit from tree to tree. She seemed more solid, somehow. More real.
She raised her arm and pointed up at the house. Up at the window, where we stood.
Up at me.
The ring hanging from my necklace grew hot against my skin, and I clawed at it, trying to get it away from me before it burned me.
“Are you okay? Amelia? You’re shaking.” Leah’s voice sounded like it came from far away. She stepped toward me, arms outstretched.
I lurched away from her and fled the room. I made it as far as the second-floor landing before my legs turned to jelly and the floor rushed up to meet me.