"Are you all right?" Will called back to him, the sound of his voice quiet and muffled in the strange house.
"I think so." Chester straightened up and stretched his head back, rubbing his neck to alleviate the soreness. "Feels like I was hit with a basketball." As he inclined his head forward again, he noticed something.
"Hey, Will, you should see this."
"What's up?"
"Looks like someone broke in here before us," Chester replied nervously.
9
The small fire pirouetted on the scraps of timber, filling the earthen chamber with flickering light. Sarah was rotating a makeshift spit over the flames, on which two small carcasses were skewered. The sight and smell of the gently browning meat made her realize how hungry she was. The cat must have felt the same way, if the necklaces of milky drool dangling for its muzzle were anything to go by.
"Good work," she said with a sidelong glance at the animal, which hadn't needed any encouragement to go out and forage food for both of them. In fact, it had seemed relieved to do what it was trained for. In the Colony, its role as a Hunter would have been to trap vermin, particularly eyeless rat, which was considered a rare delicacy.
In the light of the fire, Sarah had an opportunity to inspect the cat more thoroughly. Its bald skin, like an old, partially deflated balloon, was crisscrossed with lacerations and, around its neck, a number of these were a livid purple and had clearly been recently inflicted.
Across one of its shoulders was a nasty-looking gouge, flecked with spots of sickly yellow. The injury was bothering the cat, since it kept trying to clean the wound with its forepaw. Sarah knew she'd have to attend to the injury before long — it was badly infected. That was, if she wanted the animal to live. But considering the possibility of some kind of link with her family, she felt she couldn't just desert it.
"So who did you belong to? Cal or my… my… husband? " she asked, finding it difficult to utter the word. She gently stroked the cat's cheek as it continued to stare fixedly at the roasting carcasses. It wasn't wearing a collar with any form of identification, but this didn't surprise her. It wasn't common practice in the Colony, as Hunters were expected to move through narrow passages and crawlways, and a collar might catch on rocks and hinder the animal in the chase.
Sarah coughed and rubbed her eyes. It wasn't an entirely satisfactory arrangement to have a fire burning underground; the kindling, which was too damp to begin with, had to be kept aloft from the pools of water on the chamber floor by a platform she'd fashioned from a pile of rocks. And, since there was nowhere for the smoke to go, it was filling the chamber so thickly that her eyes kept weeping.
Above all else, she hoped that they were far enough away from anybody that the smell of cooking wouldn't be detected. She consulted her watch. It was nearly twenty-four hours since the incident, and any searches, particularly using dogs, would be unlikely to extend as far as the wasteland above. The police would be concentrating their efforts of the immediate area of the crime scene and on the Common itself.
No, she didn't think it at all likely that she would be discovered here — in any case, none of the police would have the finely developed sense of smell that most Colonists possessed. It occurred to her how remarkably safe she felt down here in the excavation — and being underground again probably played no small part in this. The earthen hollow was a home away from home.
She took up her knife and dug the tip into each carcass.
"Right, dinner's ready," she announced to the cat at her side. It was rapidly switching its expectant gaze from her to the food and back again, with all the regularity of a metronome. She slipped the first carcass, the pigeon, from the spit and onto a folded newspaper in her lap.
"Careful. Hot," she warned, dangling the still-impaled squirrel in front of the cat. But she was wasting her breath: The cat lunged forward, snapping its jaws around the carcass and snatching it off. It immediately scurried away into a dark corner where she could hear it eating noisily, all the time purring furiously.
She juggled the pigeon from one hand to the other, blowing on it as if it were a hot potato. When it had cooled sufficiently, she quickly started on one of the wings, nipping at the meat with her teeth. As she moved on to the breast, tearing off slivers and devouring them appreciatively, she began to assess her situation.
Her cardinal rule for survival was never to stay put for any longer than she had to, particularly when the heat was on. Although her face was a mess from the fight with the policemen, she'd cleaned off the blood and done her best to mask the worst of the bruises. She'd used her makeup kit for this, something she carried with her wherever she went, since her lack of pigmentation, her albinism, forced her to use a blend of sunscreen and foundation cream to protect herself from the sun. So she felt confident that her appearance wouldn't attract attention if she decided to set foot outside the dugout.
Sucking thoughtfully on a tiny bone, she remembered the papers she'd taken from the doormat in the Burrowses' house. She wiped the grease from her hands with a handkerchief and pulled out the clutch of letters from her bag. These were the usual fliers for plumbing services and freelance house painters, which she examined one by one under the light from the dying fire before she fed them to the flames. Then she came across something that looked far more interesting, a manila envelope with a badly typed label. It was to the attention of Mrs. C. Burrows, and the return address was the local services agency.
Sarah wasted no time tearing it open. As she read it, somewhere in the shadows there was a sharp snapping noise: The cat cracked open the squirrel's skull between its jaws, then licked greedily at the animal's exposed brain with its rasping tongue.
Sarah looked up from the letter. Suddenly her path became clear.
10
Will and Cal waded back through the dust to the front door and directed their lights where Chester was pointing. He was right — the edge of the door had been broken off, and not so long ago, if the lighter-colored wood that had been exposed was anything to go by.
"Looks new to me," Chester noted.
"We didn’t do that, did we?" Will asked Cal, who shook his head. "Then we should give this place the once-over, just to make sure," he said.
Keeping together, they moved down the hallway until they reached a pair of large doors, which they flung open. The dust rose up in waves ahead of them, like a visual premonition of their every move. But even before it had begun to settle, they were taking in the size of the room and its impressive features. The depth of the skirting and the elaborate ceiling moldings — an intricate lattice of plasterwork interlacing above them — hinted at its former grandeur. It could have been a ballroom or a formal dining room, given its dimensions and position in the house. As they stood around in the middle of the room, they couldn't help but chuckle because the whole scenario was so unexpected and inexplicable.
Will sneezed several times, irritated by the dust. "I'll tell you something," he said, sniffing and wiping his nose.
"What?" Chester asked.
"This place is a disgrace. It's even worse than my bedroom back home."
"Yep, the maid definitely missed this room!" Chester laughed. As he made the motions of pushing a vacuum cleaner around the floor, he and Will completely cracked up, howling with laughter.
Shaking his head, Cal gave them a look as if they'd taken leave of their senses. The boys resumed their exploration, padding gently through the dust and checking the adjoining rooms. They were mostly small utility rooms, all similarly bare, so they retraced their steps to the hallway, where Will pushed open a door at the foot of one of the staircases.
"Hey! Books!" he said. "It's a library!"
Except for two large windows that had their shutters closed, the walls were covered with shelf upon shelf of books, all the way up to the high ceiling. The room was some one hundred feet square, and toward its farthest end was a table, around which a couple of chairs lay toppled over.
All three of them spotted the fo
otprints at the same time: They were difficult to miss in the otherwise perfect carpet of dust. Cal placed his boot inside one, measuring it for size. There were a couple of inches between his toes and the front of the imprint. He and Will caught each other's eye, and Will nodded at him, then began to peer nervously into the shadowy corners of the room.
"The tracks go over there," Chester whispered. "To the table."
The footprints led from the door where the boys now stood, over to the shelves, and then circled around the table several times, disappearing into a jumbled confusion behind it.
"Whoever it was," Cal observed, they went back out again." He was stooping to examine another, less obvious set of tracks that went past a wall of shelves, then meandered back toward the door.
Will had stepped farther into the room and was holding up his light to inspect the corners. "Yeah, it's empty," he confirmed as the others joined him by the long table.
They fell silent, listening to the occasional fluttering and high-pitched call from the bats on the other side of the shutters.
"I'm not going back out there, not until those bloodsucking beasties have gone away again," Chester said as he leaned against the table. His shoulders sagged as he blew wearily through his lips.
"Yes, I think we should stop here for a while," Will agreed, heaving off his rucksack and placing it on the table next to Chester.
"So are we going to check out the rest of the house or not?" Cal pressed Will.
"Don't know about you two, but I need something to eat first," Chester cut in.
Will noticed how, quite suddenly, Chester's speech had become slurred. All the walking they'd done, and the attack of the bats, had obviously taken it out of him. Will reminded himself that his friend was probably still suffering from the aftereffects of the rough treatment he'd received in the Hold.
Making his way toward the door, Will turned to Chester. "Why don't you keep an eye on things here while Cal and I…" he said, trailing off as the books on the shelves caught his eye. "These bindings are awesome," he said, scanning his light over them. "They're pretty old."
"Really," Chester said disinterestedly. He undid the flap on Will's pack and fished out an apple.
"Yeah. This one's interesting. It's called The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul by…" He wiped away the dust and then leaned in to peer at the rest of the gilt lettering on the dark leather spine. "By Reverend Philip Doddridge."
"Sounds gripping," Chester commented through a mouthful of apple.
Will gently slid the book out from between the other grand-looking tomes and flipped it open. Fragments of the pages spewed up into his face, the rest of the paper reduced to a powdery residue that seeped onto the floor by his feet.
"Blast!" he said, holding up the empty book cover with an expression of pure disappointment on his face. "What a shame. Must be the heat."
"Looking forward to a good read, were you," Chester chuckled as he lobbed the apple core over his shoulder and then began to root around in the rucksack for more food.
"Ha-ha. Very funny," Will retorted.
"Let just get on with it, shall we?" Cal said impatiently.
Will ventured upstairs with his brother to check that the rest of the house was indeed unoccupied. Among all the empty rooms, Cal came across a small washroom. This consisted of a limescale-encrusted tap protruding from the tiled wall over an old copper bowl set into a wooden shelf. He pushed back the lever at the top of the tap. There was a knocking sound that seemed to come from the walls themselves.
As the racket continued, transforming into a low, whining vibration, will bounded out of the room he'd been investigating and down the long corridor that led back to the landing. He paused to look over the splintered balustrade to the hall below, then dashed into the corridor where Cal had gone. Calling his brother's name, he stuck his head through each doorway until he found him.
"What's going on? What have you done?" Will demanded.
Cal didn't answer. He was staring fixedly at the tap. As Will watched, a dark molasseslike fluid oozed from it, and then clear water flowed from the spout with a huge gush, much to the boys' delight.
"Do you think it's safe to drink?" Will asked.
"Ahhh, beautiful. Nothing wrong with that! Must be from a spring."
"Well, at least we've solved our water problem," Will congratulated him.
* * * * *
Having gorged himself on food, Chester slept for several hours atop the library table. When he finally awoke and learned of the washroom discovery from Will, he slipped out to have a look for himself and didn't reappear for some time.
When he finally did come back, the skin on his face and neck was red and blotchy where he'd evidently aggravated his eczema in an attempt to scrub off the ingrained dirt, and his hair was wet and slicked back. The way he looked now, in his cleaned-up state, reminded will of how they'd once been. It brought back memories of less troubled times before they stumbled upon the Colony, of their life back in Highfield.
"That's better," Chester mumbled self-consciously, avoiding the others' gazes. Cal, who had been taking a nap on the floor, propped himself up and, still not fully awake, regarded Chester with a kind of bleary amusement.
"Why'd you do that?" he asked wryly.
"Smelled yourself lately?" Chester fired back at him.
"No."
"I have," Chester said, wrinkling his nose. "And it's not very pleasant!"
"Well, I think washing up's a great idea," Will instantly spoke out to spare Chester any further embarrassment, but Cal's comments seemed not to bother him in the slightest. Chester was totally preoccupied by something on the end of his pinkie finger, which he'd just been using to pick away energetically at his ear.
"And I'm going to do just the same," Will proclaimed as Chester started on his other ear, ramming a finger repeatedly into it.
Will rummaged around in his rucksack for some clean clothes, then took a second to examine his shoulder, wondering whether it was time to change the dressing on the wound. Through the rends in his shirt, he gingerly probed the area around the bandage, then decided he needed to remove the shirt altogether in order to see what state it was in.
"Will, what happened to you?" Chester said, forgetting his ear for the moment and turning quite pale. He'd caught sight of the large patch of dark crimson showing through the bandage on Will's shoulder.
"From the stalker attack," Will told him. He bit his lip, then groaned as he lifted the dressing to look underneath. "Yuck!" he exclaimed. "I definitely could do with a new poultice." He turned to his pack and hunted through the side pockets for the spare bandage and the small parcels of powder that Imago had given him.
"I didn't realize it had been that bad," Chester said. "Want any help?"
"No, really… feels better now, anyway," Will replied, lying through his teeth.
"OK," Chester said, his face still displaying his squeamishness as he tried to smile but only managed a grimace.
And, despite his initial reaction at Chester's efforts to clean himself up, Cal, too, took the opportunity to slip out of the room and wash himself in the tepid water once Will had returned.
* * * * *
The hours seemed to pass more slowly within the house, as if it was somehow isolated from everything outside. And the absolute hush that pervaded the interior gave the impression that it was itself asleep. This stillness affected the three boys; they made not the least effort to talk and instead took catnaps on the long library table, using the backpacks as pillows.
But eventually Will began to feel restless and found that he couldn't sleep. To pass the time, he resumed his investigation of the library, wondering who had lived in the house. He went from shelf to shelf, reading the titles on the ancient hand-tooled spines, which mostly had esoteric religious themes and must have been written centuries ago. It was an exercise in frustration, because he knew all the pages inside would be nothing more than confetti and dust. Nevertheless, he was fascinated by the obs
cure names of the authors and the ludicrously long titles. It had almost developed into a contest to try to find a book he'd actually heard of when he came across something curious.
On a lower shelf, a set of matching books appeared to have no titles at all. After wiping off the grime, Will could see they had covers of deep burgundy, and that the tiniest gilt stars were picked out at three equidistant points on each of their spines.
He tried to take out one of the volumes, but unlike the other books, which had disappointed him with the usual avalanche of silt from their disintegrated pages, this one resisted, as if it was somehow stuck in place. Even more strange, the book itself felt solid. He tried again but it wouldn't move, so instead he selected another in the series and attempted to lever that one out, with the same result. But he noticed that the entire series, which occupied about a foot and a half of the shelf, had shifted ever so slightly as he'd applied more force. He felt a flush of elation that, at last, he'd found something he might be able to actually read and, puzzled as to why the books seemed to be glued together, used both hands to pull at them.
They slid out in one block, all the volumes together, and Will placed them on the floor by his feet. They felt heavy, and the pages even appeared to be intact. But he couldn't pry away any of the individual books. He felt the tops of the pages, picking at them with a fingernail to see if they would part. Then he rapped a knuckle against them. They gave a hollow sound — and it dawned on Will that the books weren't made of paper, but of wood, carved very precisely to resemble the roughly cut leaves of old volumes. He felt around the back and found a catch, which he pushed open. With a creak, the top flipped up. It was a lid with an invisible hinge. These weren't books at all. This was a box.
With a rush of excitement, he hastily plucked out the layer of tattered cloth he found inside and peered in. The dark oak interior contained odd-looking objects. He lifted one out.