Secrets in the Dark

by Darcy Coates

  “The stable hands used to sleep in the loft,” Dorran said. He was already moving deeper into the space, his keen eyes glinting in the light as he scanned the tools. “You might have seen the second building we passed. That was the stables. All of the horses are at Gould with the family—”

  His voice caught. Clare bit her lip. His family had been on the way to Gould; they had never reached it. She wondered how far the caravan had gotten. Not a huge distance, she guessed. Madeline and her maids had returned to the house within days.

  What happened to the rest of the family and the other staff members? Are they dead? Out there, deformed, wandering the countryside? Or like Madeline, do they remember the house? Do they want to return to it?

  Dorran’s shoulders were hunched, but his voice remained steady. “I will find the motor. Could you look for something to make it easier to carry? A wheelbarrow or a sled, perhaps?”

  “Right.” Clare left her mask and radio on the table by the door. Even under the layers, she was shaking, and she didn’t think it was all cold. Her eyes kept drifting towards the loft. Shadows thrown from her lamp darted across the ceiling. She hated not knowing what was up there.

  She stepped around the partitions carefully, not touching anything but her eyes always moving. The shed had been used not only to store cars, but to repair them, as well. A host of spare parts littered the place, and in some areas, they were piled up into rusty heaps.

  A board flexed above her. She looked up, staring at the loft’s underside, her heart in her throat. Just the wind. It’s a wooden building. It’s going to groan occasionally.

  Dorran muttered something under his breath. Clare craned her neck to see him around a spool of wire. He’d set his lamp down and crouched beside a car’s motor. It looked old, grime speckling the once-bright metal. He felt around it, pulling out sockets and running his fingers across connections.

  “Is that it?”

  “Yes.” He kept his head down. “It needs parts, though. I will be a minute while I find them.”

  The windows rattled as a fresh burst of air gusted past them. Clare forced herself to loosen her death grip on the lamp’s ring and straighten her back. She stepped away from Dorran, scanning the floor and shelves for anything that might slide easily over icy ground.

  A drop cloth caught her eye. It wouldn’t be as good as a sled, but if she and Dorran both took an edge, it would be enough to cross the distance between the shed and the house. She pulled it down from a shelf and coughed as dust billowed around her.

  Something cracked upstairs. Clare clutched the cloth, not daring to move, as she listened. The sound might have been a strained support beam adjusting. She began edging towards Dorran.

  The shed was sealed. There were no signs of forced entry. It should be safe.

  Dorran was lost in his own world. He sorted through a tool chest, his lips moving without making a sound as he picked out the implements he needed. Clare left the cloth beside him. She took a step towards the staircase against the wall.

  Long-neglected spiderwebs decorated the structure. They shimmered in the sparse wind. Clare lifted her lamp and squinted up the length of the steps.

  Don’t do it, her mind whispered. She looked over her shoulder. Dorran was still bent over the motor. It looked like it had been half pulled apart already. She could interrupt him and ask him to check the loft with her, but Clare pressed her lips together instead. The memory from that morning, when he’d gone into the passageways alone, was still clear in her mind. He thought he needed to protect her from this new world, but she was capable too. She had to be.

  She placed a foot on the lowest step. It groaned, protesting the sudden pressure. The boards were thin and not well supported. Clare looked from her feet and up their length, towards the loft above.

  Marks ran through the wood beside the stairs. Long, shallow scores. Clare carefully held out a hand. She pressed her fingertips to the marks and mimed scraping along them. They matched the scores left by long nails.

  Don’t do it.

  She stopped, one foot already on the next step, ready to lift her higher. From her position, a third up the stairs, she could see the lower level’s floor plan more clearly. Dorran’s light created a little orb of brightness among the jagged metal teeth and dulled blades filling the space. If she climbed just another foot or two, she would be able to see over the lip of the loft.

  Her throat caught when she tried to swallow. Shaking fingers raised the lamp farther. She began to climb.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The loft’s back wall came into view. Clare froze, her skin crawling. A hunched shape was silhouetted beside the window. Clare stared and thought she could feel it staring back. The lamp’s light flickered. Clare exhaled a held breath. She was looking at a tattered coat hung on the wall.

  Another step up. More of the wall was revealed. Old posters were plastered over it. Photos of beautiful beaches were now so old and tarnished that the water looked brown and the sand was tinged green. In pinups from old magazines, the girls beamed at the camera, peeking over their shoulders cheekily or gasping in surprise as a wind blew their skirts up. Every single one of them had their eyes clawed out. The marks cut into the wood beneath, so much like the scores marring the wall along the staircase.

  On the final step up, the wood rocked under Clare’s foot, threatening to break. Beth’s voice played in her head on repeat. Don’t take risks. Don’t take risks. Don’t…

  But she could see the attic. Mattresses were scattered over the wood, worn down until they were pocked with holes and bits of stuffing bloomed out of the wounds. An old, broken set of drawers had been co-opted from the house, its dark wood at sharp contrast with the lighter timber surrounding it. She saw crates filled with possessions… and a skeleton.

  Discoloured bones sprawled across the loft’s floor. The skull was the closest. It seemed to leer at Clare, even with the lower jaw missing. Spikes of calcium poked out from the cranium, rising up like tiny mountains, protruding from the upper jaw and filling the eye sockets.

  A hollow. Not human. At least, not when it died…

  Her instincts begged her to step back. She couldn’t stop herself from looking further. Femurs and ribs dotted the mattresses, scattered over the place like debris. There were a lot of bones. Not enough for two skeletons. Too many for one. Clumps of hair lay about, as though they had been torn out and flung away. Many of the bones were cracked. They were stained a dark brown, as was the floor, the colour spreading in wide streaks. A handprint with seven fingers marred the closest wall.

  There was a feast. Not recent. But not quite old, either.

  Clare pressed a hand over her mouth. In the loft, the scent was almost overpowering. It had been nothing but a dusty musk on the lower floor. Now it reeked… of rot and of hollows.

  She made to step back down the stairs but froze. Something moved. She fixed on the only window in the loft, a little round circle set into the back wall. It faced away from the brunt of the wind, and even though the glass was mottled with flecks of white, she could see something through it.

  Her stomach rolled as she crept between the bones. No part of the floor was clean of gore. All she could do was step over it, doing her best to avoid disturbing the possessions that would never be picked up again. At the window, she had a view of the field leading to the forest. Twisted shapes crawled through the snow. Some of them shambled upright. Others crept on all fours, their spines twisting like a millipede’s, unfazed by the cold. One looked up.

  Clare gasped and stepped back. She could have sworn the hollow had made eye contact with her. As she stumbled towards the edge of the loft, her shoe bumped into the skull. It skittered, twirling, towards the edge of the wooden platform. Clare grasped for it. She was too slow. It plunged over, the empty eye sockets glancing at her a final time before it disappeared. A second later, the bones shattered on the floor.

  No. No. We can’t make noise.

  “Clare?”

  She r
an for the stairs, breathless and fighting to keep her feet light, and plunged down the steps nearly recklessly. Dorran was frozen below, staring at the skull, the angles of his face sharp with alarm. He opened his mouth, but Clare motioned frantically.

  She stumbled to a halt, and Dorran reached for her. She let him pull her close and rose onto her toes to whisper into his ear. “Hollows outside.”

  “Ah.”

  They kept still, holding each other, staring at the walls as they waited. Clare thought she heard snow crunch outside the door. Something was moving closer. It stopped by the wood. Seconds passed, and she imagined the creature outside, its bulging eyes staring blankly at the shed. Then the crunching came again, moving away. Clare closed her eyes and let her shoulders slump.

  Dorran dipped his head to whisper into her ear, his warm breath gusting across her neck. “The motor is ready. We will wait until outside is clear then make a run for it. Where did the skull come from?”

  “Hollows,” Clare said. The fractured bones rested not far from her feet. The cranium had been cracked open like a coconut. It hadn’t been clear while it was whole, but now she could see the calcified protrusions reached inside too. They would have been digging into its brain. “I think it died from the mutations. Something—probably things—ate it.”

  He muttered something she couldn’t hear then said, “I had thought the barn would be secure.”

  “There’s nothing alive up there. We should be okay.”

  The radio crackled. Clare flinched. She’d left it switched on, but with its static muffled by the wind, it had been nearly forgotten on the table by the barn door. As Beth turned her half of the pair on, the volume spiked into a near-painful whine. White noise hissed through the barn. Then Beth said, “Clare? Are you there?”

  She ran for the radio, swearing under her breath, and tried to turn down the volume. The dial was stuck. Something heavy hit the barn door beside her, and Clare held the radio close to her chest as she stepped away. Dorran didn’t speak, but he picked up a metal pipe from the nearest bench.

  “Clare?” Beth’s voice was tight and far too loud.

  She pressed the button to turn on her audio, and whispered, “I’m here. I can’t talk right now.”

  “What? What’s happening?”

  “Please! Be quiet!”

  Another heavy thud came from door. The scratching sounds were growing louder. The wood trembled as hands pried at it. Do they know how to open it? Are they smart enough to figure it out?

  Dorran backed up until he stood beside Clare. His dark eyes darted over the space, watching the walls. She couldn’t tell how many hollows were outside. But there were a lot. They were closing in on every side. Clare’s heart skipped a beat as sudden realisation hit her. She tugged on Dorran’s sleeve. “They’ll have a way in.”

  The voice crackled through the radio again. “Clare, what’s happening? Are you all right?”

  “Fine. Can’t talk.” Clare struggled with the dial, trying to turn Beth’s volume off without breaking the radio. It remained stuck. “The door was closed when we arrived, but if there are bones in the loft, there must be another way in.”

  “Damn it,” he muttered. He flexed his hands around the metal pipe.

  The front door banged again. A gap appeared along its edge. Long, spindly fingers poked through, feeling and squirming.

  “Mask,” Dorran hissed, passing one to Clare. She braced the radio between her knees while she fit on her mask. She was under no delusions that it would shield her that day. The hollows had heard human voices. The creatures were in a frenzy, and the chance for Dorran and Clare to slip out unharassed had passed.

  “Clare, I can’t hear you.” There was something strange about how Beth spoke. Something beyond the usual worry. If she’d had more time, Clare would have been able to focus on it—but the door grated in another inch, and she could see grey skin writhing outside as the creatures jostled for space.

  “They might have dug a hole or broken through the walls,” Dorran whispered. “Look for the other entrance. We might be able to get out while they’re focussed on the main door.”

  They moved away from the shuddering wood and silently stepped between the support beams and dividing walls. Clare cradled the radio against her chest as they passed Dorran’s motor. He’d placed it on the sheet, ready to carry it out, along with a stack of tools and supplies. She hated to think that they might have to leave it behind.

  A cold breeze stung her cheeks. Clare turned in its direction and beckoned to Dorran. They stepped around the shell of a vehicle, its seats and innards gutted, and Clare caught the glow of pale light splashed across the floor.

  In the shed’s corner, half hidden behind a tangle of barbed wire, the wood had rotted. Hollows had clawed at the decaying walls and floors, creating a hole that was just barely large enough for a person to squirm between. Clare crouched to look through. There was no snow blocking the other side. Cold light glared off muddy ground.

  “Clare.” Beth was crying. “I need to talk to you.”

  Biting her lip until it ached, Clare fumbled with the radio’s settings. She couldn’t answer; the noise would give them away. Instead, she flipped a switch, muting Beth.

  Dorran held up a finger for her to wait, then he dropped to his chest and crawled beneath the barbed wire. He moved quickly but carefully, pipe held at the ready, as he approached the gap. His forearms passed through, then he froze.

  “Dorran?” Clare whispered.

  He lurched back, pulling away from the splintered gap too quickly. The barbed wire caught across the mask. A long, bowed arm shot through the hole after him, snatching at his face.

  Clare moved without thinking. She smashed the radio down onto the hand, hard enough to crush bone. The tough plastic case fractured, and the volume boomed. Suddenly, Clare couldn’t hear herself underneath the popping, hissing white noise.

  “Go!” Dorran yelled, shoving her. He wrenched himself out from the wire, leaving the mask behind. Specks of blood flecked across Clare’s arm. She turned and ran deeper into the barn as an elongated, hissing face peered through the opening.

  “No, no,” Clare whispered. She pressed the volume buttons. It wouldn’t quieten. Beth’s breathing echoed around them.

  “Clare.” Magnified, the regret and sadness in Beth’s voice was unbearable.

  The hollows responded to the word. Metal scraped as they fought to get through the barbed wire. Up ahead, the sliding door jumped on its runners. Arms stretched through the gap, blindly grasping at the air.

  The radio wouldn’t turn off. She had no choice. She dropped it and flinched as it hit the wood floor with a clatter. Dorran grasped her hand, and together, they ran for the stairs leading to the loft. Their footsteps were drowned out by Beth’s echoing words.

  “I really need to talk to you, sweetheart. Please.” She took a tight breath. “It’s… things… things aren’t great here.”

  They were halfway up the stairs. The door shuddered as it was nearly wrenched off its frame. Clare kept her eyes ahead, focussed on the upper landing, the graveyard for the unknown hollow.

  As they gained the loft, Dorran tugged her downwards. They dropped to their knees and crawled through the bones and dried gore to reach the back wall. They didn’t stop moving until they were under the window. Out of sight of the main floor, they pressed their backs to the wall and watched the top of the stairs, their legs pulled close to their chests.

  The door banged again. Then the struggling noises transformed into something much worse. Flesh rubbing over flesh. Clare imagined them pouring through the gap, tumbling over each other in their eagerness for food. How many? her mind asked then answered itself with, Too many.

  “I don’t have long, sweetheart.” Beth’s voice carried clearly through the building, even under the pattering feet and scrabbling fingers. “The… the ventilation system went down this morning. The bunker is airtight. I can’t…” She took another ragged breath. “The only way to get
fresh air would be to open the door. And…”

  No. No. Clare shook her head, her heart hammering. The fencing mask was suddenly suffocating her; she wrenched it off.

  “I hope you can hear me. I hope you’re all right. I don’t know how long the air will last me. I’ll stay as long as I can. But… I’ll see. I’ll see. It might be easier to get it over with quickly.”

  Clare wanted to scream. The radio was out of reach. She could hear the hollows moving over it, searching for the source of the voice. She leaned forward. Dorran pulled on her arm, dragging her back, holding her still.

  “I think this might be goodbye, though.” Beth said it as though she’d only just realised it herself. For a beat, the only noise came from the monsters—the raw, close sounds of the creatures in the barn and the distant, tinny noise of hollows prying at Beth’s bunker door. Then she took a shuddering breath. “Don’t come looking for me. I know you want to, but you can’t. Stay where you are. Stay safe. And I want you to know… I… I love you. So much. If I’ve done anything to hurt you—if there’s anything you regret… about how I raised you… or anything I did…”

  Clare was drowning. Tears dripped off her chin. She wanted to scream to her sister. The noises were physical pains inside her, aching worse with every second she held them in.

  “I’m so sorry. I love you. Goodbye.”

  The radio clicked. Steady, harsh static took its place. It wasn’t loud enough to drown out the furious chatter or the sounds of the hollows spreading across the ground floor.

  Chapter Fifteen

  No. Please. Beth. No.

  Dorran moved his hand over her mouth. She realised she was moaning. She couldn’t stop. He muffled the noise as he rocked her, whispering into her hair. “Shh. Quiet, now. I have you. Shh.”

  Creatures probed the clutter downstairs. They were spreading out, searching frantically. It would only be a matter of minutes, if that, until they worked their way up the stairs.