by Darcy Coates
They cornered us. An ambush. The noise we heard was designed to lure us up here.
Clare met Dorran’s eyes and saw the same realisation flash through his. Then his gaze shifted, and he yelled, “Behind you!”
She could hear the clatter of teeth coming from her back, but she couldn’t look towards it. A second hollow crept out of the doorway behind Dorran, followed closely by a third.
We can’t stay here. We’re pinned from both sides. Continue to the room? Or retreat? Both directions were filled with the creatures. The bedroom was closest, but there was no certainty that it hadn’t been tampered with. Clare made a snap decision. “Follow!”
She charged along the hallway, towards their bedroom. Three hollows blocked her way, one still wearing the scraps of its maid uniform. Clare swung at the closest one, slamming the metal into its skull. The bones along her arm reverberated with the impact. Dorran closed in behind her, slashing with fierce precision, decapitating the remaining two monsters. Still more poured out of the concealed hallway, but they were already past it, racing for the door.
“Keys,” Dorran barked.
Clare dropped the crowbar as he tossed the keyring to her. The candle guttered as wax spilt off it, but the flame held. Dorran faced the oncoming swarm, feet planted, centre of gravity low, teeth bared. Clare bent over the door, fighting to fit the right key into the hole. The first hollow’s head tumbled past her legs. The two creatures behind it balked, backtracking from the blade, slowing the swarm.
The lock clicked open. Clare yelled Dorran’s name as she darted inside. He backed through the opening, weapon held at the ready, and Clare slammed the door behind him. Fingernails scraped across the wood as Clare put her shoulder against it and fumbled for the lock. Metal clicked as it turned, sealing them inside, and she stepped back, panting.
Dorran turned in a slow circle, examining their environment. “All right?”
“Fine. You?”
He gave a short nod then held out his hand for the candle. She passed it over. He moved through the room, searching every gap large enough to hide a human: the wardrobes, the bathroom, the space under the bed, and behind the thick red curtains flanking tall, narrow windows.
Clare pressed her palm into her forehead. The bedroom was exactly how she remembered it. A little dustier and a little darker, but the blankets were still strewn around the cold fireplace she and Dorran had spent their nights in front of. Her travel case—one of two cases she had brought from her home when the stillness first began—sat open in the corner, still holding an assortment of spare clothes and food.
She chuckled. The memories were strangely powerful. She had felt a lot in that room. The fear and shock as she realised the outside world no longer existed. The hope of hearing voices on the radio. The sharp pang of new love as she realised what Dorran meant to her.
He returned from the bathroom, posture relaxed despite the incessant scrabbling at the door. “We are safe.”
No matter what else the hollows were capable of, it seemed the locks had kept them out of the room during the past month. Clare and Dorran had already scoured every inch of the room in search of secret passageways and knew there were none. Clare rubbed at the back of her neck, an unsteady smile growing. “Any regrets about leaving the Evandale bunker now?”
He chuckled and placed the candle on the fireplace’s mantelpiece. “Dreaming about Winterbourne and actually standing in it are two very different experiences, aren’t they?”
“Sure are.” She tilted her head back, examining the ornate edging bordering the maddening wallpaper, and the way every single fixture and piece of furniture made it clear that they had cost a small fortune. The room had always intimidated her, as though it had resented her presence there. As though she weren’t worthy. Now, it stank of hollows, and the dust had dulled some of its lustre. It was starting to feel desolate, like a wealthy heiress who had chased off all of her friends and was spending her last years alone.
Some of Clare’s emotions must have appeared on her face. Dorran’s hand grazed over her neck, his voice soft. “Do you regret it? It is not too late to return to Evandale—”
“No,” she said, putting warmth into her words. “Don’t worry. No regrets here. This is our home, and it feels right to be back here, fighting our own fight. Though… you might get a different answer tomorrow, when I’m missing hot showers and central heating.”
He laughed and ran his hands through her hair. “You are a good woman.”
Clare leaned into his touch. Then her eyes peeked open to look at the door. The scrabbling noise had fallen silent. “They’re gone. Normally, they don’t give up if they can still hear you.”
“Not unless they’re being controlled.”
The tenseness in his voice was unmistakable. Clare pressed closer. “We still know so little about them. The maids might be operating under their last instructions—to stay hidden unless they have a chance to attack. It might just be blind, witless obedience at this point.”
“Hm.”
Clare frowned. Another, less pleasant thought occurred. “There were a lot of them, though.”
“I noticed that, as well.”
“How many maids did your mother have?”
“Twenty.”
Clare shook her head. “We killed at least half of them more than a month ago. They’ve got to be recruiting new members from the forest.”
“New members that follow the same instructions.”
“Wouldn’t have thought hollows would be much for peer pressure, huh?”
The shutters were pulling over Dorran’s face, hiding any sign of emotion. Clare tugged on his hand before he had a chance to lock himself away completely. “That’s a problem for a later day. Come on. It’s freezing in here; let’s get a fire started.”
They had left the fireplace well-stocked with wood and kindling. Clare worked on starting the flames while Dorran fetched basins of water from the bathroom for them to wash up. They opened some of the old tins from the travel case in the corner, heated up soup, and ate straight out of the pot.
An hour later, Clare sat on the fireside blankets while Dorran knelt behind her. He ran a comb through her damp hair, working out the tangles and cleaning it as well as he could without running water. He was silent, and Clare could feel his mind ticking over, feeling around an impossible puzzle with futile stubbornness. Is Madeline still alive?
Clare pulled him back to an easier, more urgent question. “What do we do now that we have our room secured?”
His hands fell still for a second then resumed. “The house is compromised. Before we left, we could move through it freely while the hollows hid in the secret passageways. But they seem to have grown bold. Perhaps from hunger.”
“So the first step is to reclaim our territory.”
“That is what I think. We need to ensure we can move between our room and the garden at will. We’ll seal the hidden doorways first, then scout the house until we are certain we are alone in it.”
Clare chewed on her lip. “We have food here to last us for a day or two, and water, but we’ll need to go back to the bus soon. The rest of our supplies are still there. Your family didn’t have any other fencing masks, did they?”
“No. But I’m sure we can improvise something. We will want the radio, as well.”
Clare nodded. Evandale Research Centre’s leader, Unathi, had implied it might take some time before they were ready to trial the cure, but she would broadcast a warning in advance of deployment. Clare couldn’t guess how long it might take the team to ensure the code was safe for humans, but it would help to be ready for it, whenever it was.
“We’ll need some way to move through the building,” Clare said. “The furnace will need stocking, and we’ll need to visit the garden daily.”
His fingertips grazed along the back of her head, and she shivered. “That can all wait until tomorrow. You are tired, and the night is black. At least now, here, we are safe.”
The wind
ows set into the wall looked out over the fields and the forest ringing the estate. A hollow screamed in the distance, the note rising into a painful screech before breaking. The echoes lingered, seemingly trapped in the frozen air.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Clare woke slowly. The fire had burnt down to embers, but it was still too early to see much outside of the golden glow. A face stared out at her from behind the fire. Beth’s face. She grinned, her eyes as lifeless as her smile.
Fear pulsed through Clare, but a second later, the emotion was gone. She blinked and saw she was only looking at the fireplace’s back wall, where the bumps and shadows in the stone had formed a pattern that resembled a face.
She felt behind herself for Dorran. He’d fallen asleep with her by the fire, his chest against her back, his arm over her waist in the familiar hug. Her back was cold, though. Her hand only touched air and empty blankets.
Clare rolled over to face the room. With the fire near dead and their candle extinguished, she had to squint through the moonlight drifting through the gauzy curtains. It ghosted across the furniture and ran up the walls in irregular streaks. The shadows were so deep, it took her a moment to find Dorran. He stood facing the door, arms at his sides, head tilted as though listening to something that came through the gap between the top of the door and its frame.
“Dorran?” She crawled out of bed, reaching for him.
He glanced at her. “Go back to sleep.”
Clare didn’t like the way he was whispering. She got her feet under herself and crossed the room, moving as quietly as she could. Near the door, she stopped to listen. Wind whistled through gaps in the stone, making a mournful, tuneless song. A door somewhere in the distance creaked then creaked again. It had been left open, Clare thought; its hinges complained as the breeze tugged on it incessantly. She couldn’t hear anything else.
Dorran didn’t move as she stepped up to his side. His skin looked colourless in the blueish light. His lips were set, his eyes unblinking. Uneasy prickles ran across Clare’s arms. She kept her voice to a whisper, just like Dorran had. “What’s wrong?”
He gave his head a small shake, his eyes not moving.
Clare rested her hand against his arm. She was shivering from the cold, and Dorran’s skin didn’t feel any warmer. How long has he been standing here?
The wind howled. In the distance, the unsecured door groaned again and again, moving like a pair of lungs struggling to breathe. The house unnerved Clare at night. There was never enough light, and it always had too many empty rooms. Dorran should have been familiar with the building, though. The creaks and rattles shouldn’t have bothered him. Even hearing a hollow shouldn’t have been enough to make him leave their bed.
She hated how dark it was. She hated how silent and tense Dorran felt. She slipped away from him, returned to the fire, and began stacking fresh kindling onto the embers. Dorran still didn’t speak, but his head turned slightly as he watched her.
“Come over here.” Clare held her hand. “Sit with me.”
He didn’t respond, half his attention on Clare, half on the door.
“You’ll freeze to death.” She struggled to force a smile. “It’s nice and cosy here.”
Finally, he moved, approaching Clare, and sank down at her side. His motions were stiff and halting, as though he had to think every movement through before performing it. Clare waited until he was settled, then she pulled the blankets around both of their shoulders to protect them from the chill while the fire regained its heat.
“I thought I heard her,” Dorran said at last.
Clare found his hands and pressed them. They were like ice. “Was it real, do you think? Or just a dream?”
“I… don’t know.” His eyes closed. “I was asleep when I first heard it. But then… it continued after I got up. Coming from just outside the door.”
Clare pictured her last memory of Madeline: rebar impaled through her skull, her eyes blank, her face twitching before she pitched backwards. She shouldn’t have survived that. But maybe she did. Maybe she lived just long enough for the thanites to start repairing her. We never found the body.
“What did she say?” Clare asked.
Dorran shook his head.
She scooted closer to him, her voice gentle but coaxing. “We’re in this together. It’s important that I know. Please tell me.”
“She said… she was going to hurt me for leaving. That…” His voice caught, and a shudder ran through him. “That she would skin you.”
“Lovely woman.” Clare leaned her head against Dorran’s chest. “So eloquent, so classy.”
A thin, choked laugh escaped Dorran. He sounded like he was in pain. Clare wrapped her arms around him as she waited for him to stop shaking.
“What will we do?”
The question was rhetorical, but Clare answered it anyway. “Guess I’d better impale her again.”
This time, the laughter sounded closer to something real. His hand found hers where she rested it on his chest and stroked it gently. “You’ll stay close to me, won’t you, Clare?”
“Of course I will.”
“I can endure almost anything. But I cannot endure losing you.”
“You won’t have to.” She tilted her head up to meet his gaze. His eyes were so dark and so full of fear, it hurt her to see them. “Do you want to leave?”
He looked towards the fire, silent. Clare thought she understood.
“You don’t want to leave, but you think we might have to.”
“Yes.”
Clare chewed her lip. They were no longer inexperienced at dealing with hollows. They had even faced two of the intelligent ones: one on the riverboat and one at Evandale. But this was different. Madeline knew the house like the back of her hand. She had access to all of the secret passageways, which Clare and Dorran were still unfamiliar with. And she had her loyal followers… the maids and, now, denizens from the forest, as well.
Even worse, she knew Dorran. She knew how to get under his skin, how to hurt him, and how to pick at all of the scabs she had spent her life creating. If Madeline truly was back, they either had to leave, and fast… or kill her. But Clare wasn’t sure they were capable of the latter. Not if her follower count had swelled.
She closed her eyes. It hurt to think of leaving when they had put so much at risk to get back to Winterbourne. But their sanctuary was starting to seem like the greater of two evils.
“It doesn’t have to be permanent,” Clare said. “We can travel to a town and try to contact other survivors. They might have more effective ways of killing hollows. Something we could use when we come back.”
Dorran’s fingers continued to trace over hers. She could feel the worry inside of him, eating him up. “We would be leaving the garden.”
“We can survive without it. We’ve done that before.” She nodded, using the words to reinforce her determination. “Worst-case scenario, we wait until the Evandale team activate the code. That will kill everything inside Winterbourne without any doubt left.”
“It might take months. Are you prepared to survive outside for that long?”
She licked her lips. “We can do that. We’ll find a farmhouse somewhere. Make it secure against hollows and looters. We’ll be all right.”
“Yes,” he whispered and kissed the top of her head. “At least we will be together.”
“Do you want to wait until dawn or try to leave now?”
For a moment, the only noise came from the fire and the creaking door in the distance. Then Dorran took a breath. “Wisdom says to wait until daylight and the protection it offers. But…”
“But they’ll be waiting for that,” Clare said.
“It might be better to move quickly, before they expect us to.”
“All right.” She tried to stop the nausea that wanted to rise through her. Madeline loved to play mind games, and she would be anticipating their next move. Their best chance of escaping her plans was to take a course she wouldn’t expec
t—and to take it quickly. “Let’s go. Right now, before she has a chance to react. We don’t need to bring anything. Most of what we own is already in the bus.”
We just need to get outside. Two minutes, at the most. She won’t be able to form a countermove in two minutes, will she? Once we’re in the bus, we’ll be secure. We’ll be out of here. And there’s nothing Madeline can do.
He clutched her hand. For a moment, neither of them moved, frozen in that space in front of the fire, listening to the wind, the creaking door, and their own heartbeats. Then they were on their feet, grabbing dressing gowns and tugging them on over their night clothes.
“Here,” Dorran whispered. He’d found her boots and knelt to help pull them over her feet. While he laced his own shoes, Clare retrieved their scarves and looped Dorran’s around his neck. The outside air wasn’t as brutal as it had been during the unnatural snows of Clare’s first stay at Winterbourne, but it was cold enough to bite.
Then Clare lit a lantern while Dorran found their weapons. They stopped by the door, both breathing heavily. Dorran waited for Clare’s nod. Then he turned the handle, and they stepped into the hall.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The bedroom had felt cold, but it wasn’t on par with the chill that permeated the hall. Clare’s breath emerged as a pallid cloud as she tried to read the shadows gathered around them. A tall shape loomed to their left. Clare gripped her crowbar, but the shape was only the door leading to the secret passageways. It hung open. A bitter, musty smell floated out, but nothing moved inside the darkness.
Dorran nodded towards the stairs. Clare lifted her lantern as she matched Dorran’s pace. Floorboards creaked under Clare’s feet, no matter how soft she tried to keep them. The house hadn’t been this noisy last time she was here—she was sure. The cold was warping it.
