Silence in the Shadows

by Darcy Coates

  A small black fly crawled out, then spiralled into the air.

  No. No, please, no.

  Specks of blood painted the inside of the window, obscuring the shapes beyond. Flies hummed, revelling in their feast.

  No. Not them.

  She reached for the door’s handle. Her pulse rushed in her ears, drowning out every other sound. The handle was cool under her fingertips. Another fly crawled out of the broken door. Clare pulled and felt the subtle click as the door’s latch disengaged. Her mind screamed at her to leave, to walk away, but her heart had to know. She had to be certain. She pulled, and the door rocked open.

  An ashen, decaying limb flopped out. A head rocked backwards, mouth gaping open. Empty eye sockets, their contents liquefied by bacteria and consumed by flies, stared towards Clare. The corpse had died against the door, scrambling to get out.

  Clare pressed the back of her hand against her mouth. The rushing in her ears was louder. It’s a hollow.

  She sucked in a breath, and the air whistled painfully in her throat. The body had decayed far enough that, at first glance, it had passed as a human corpse. But it still bore the unmistakable signs. The skull had almost no hair. The body was naked. And the fingers that had scrabbled at the door before death had cracked, too-long nails.

  A kitchen knife was embedded under its chin, cutting deep enough into the throat to expose the spine. The hollow had died before the thanites could repair the damage.

  Clare pressed a hand against the car’s roof to keep herself steady. Several tins had been left in the car’s floor, but they had been opened and emptied, and flies now feasted on the remnants. Clare saw a small white box: the painkillers she had given Owen. The box’s lid hung open, and a strip of metal poked out. The little alcoves that held the pills were all empty.

  She held her breath to lean over the hollow and look into the back seats. They were empty. The ring that had hung from the rear-view mirror was gone. Clare stepped back and closed her eyes as gratitude ran through her. They had left the car voluntarily. There had been enough time to gather their most valuable supplies. Most likely, the hollow they had killed had torn the tyre and pulled them off the road, and they had been forced to move to a different vehicle. She hoped they were still out there, still safe, in their search for a permanent residence.

  “Clare.”

  She barely had time to jolt at the booming voice. Then Dorran’s hands were on her, pulling her away from the car. The rushing in her ears was subsiding. Another noise was encroaching. The low, hissing chatter of air pushed through a damaged throat.

  Oh.

  Clare was lifted off her feet. She yelped, clutching at Dorran’s jacket. He held her tightly as he carried her away from the sedan. She glanced back at it and saw a twisted creature dragging itself across the street towards it. The hollow had lost both of its legs and used its hands to scrape its naked torso across the asphalt. The jaw shivered as it hissed at them, already at the door Clare had just been standing in.

  Dorran bounded up the bus’s step and dropped Clare into the passenger seat. Then he reached back outside. The backpack—the one he had brought into the house in their search for supplies—had been left near the front wheel. He pulled it in then slammed the door behind them.

  “Sorry,” Clare managed. “Sorry, I should’ve been watching more closely—”

  “We’re okay.” In the muted light of the bus’s interior, shadows cut hard lines across his features. He seemed paler than normal. “It didn’t get you, so we’re okay. Was that—”

  “Owen’s car.” Clare had already told Dorran about the man who had repaired their bus while he was unconscious, and he nodded, recognising the name. “He wasn’t there.”

  “Thank heaven.” Dorran sank into the driver’s seat and turned the key. Broken fingers began digging at the bus’s walls, but he pulled away from the curb before the creatures could get a proper grip. “Wherever he is, we’ll hope he’s still safe.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  With a soft powdering of snow capping its shingles and window casings, Winterbourne looked beautiful. Clare leaned forward in her seat to see better as their bus rolled out from the cover of the pine forest. Insipid sunlight glinted off a hundred dark windows. The field around the mansion was empty except for the lines of decorative shrubs spaced across the front court.

  As they passed the groundskeeper’s cottage, Clare glanced at her companion. Dorran’s expression was unreadable. She knew he had to be feeling a lot at the sight of his home. He’d wanted to return, but she was also aware that the bad memories outweighed the good. She opened her mouth, but Dorran spoke first.

  “We didn’t have enough time to block off all of the concealed passageways before we left, so we will need to be cautious. We don’t know how many of the creatures are still inside the house.”

  “We’ll start by protecting the most important rooms,” Clare agreed. “The garden and the bedroom.”

  The bus neared the shallow steps leading up to the courtyard, and Dorran turned it around before parking. There were no hollows in sight, but that didn’t mean they weren’t watching. She squinted, trying to see through the dark windows. It was impossible to know what might be on the other side, looking back out.

  Four weeks since we left Winterbourne. The realisation came as a shock. The trip, which Clare had first hoped would only take a day, had spread out in increments. At the same time, she had seen and experienced so much in that intermediate month that it could have been a lifetime.

  Dorran parked. As the engine’s rumble died, a perfect silence filled the bus. Neither of them moved, but simply stared up at the building. It was vast, once home to dozens of family and hundreds of staff. Three floors housed countless rooms and twisting passageways that Clare was still unfamiliar with. She struggled to understand the emotions running through her. There was dread, but there was also the faintly warm sensation of seeing an old friend again. And on top of it was the sense that this had been inevitable. No matter what, they were destined to end up at the old house again, staring up at its stony, unforgiving features.

  Dorran’s voice was only a little shaky. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes.” I think. I hope.

  He found her hand and squeezed it. Then they both rose, picked up their weapons, and pressed the bus’s door open.

  The air was brutally cold. Fresh snow glittered around them, shining like a million diamonds, its glimmer promising heat but without delivering any. Clare shivered. She patted the bus’s door as she left, a final thank-you for carrying them as far as it had.

  Dorran’s boots crunched into the snow covering the entryway’s lowest step. Clare kept close to his side, the crowbar clutched in her fist, as they ascended towards the front door. To their right was the pond alongside the building. A thin layer of ice coated it, and through that, Clare thought she could see a head, its eyes bulging as they stared up towards the sky, mouth opened in a voiceless scream—one of the hollows Dorran had lured into the lake. She swallowed and turned away.

  The doors were closed, like she and Dorran had left them. They weren’t locked, though. Old, tired hinges complained as they turned. As the door swung inwards, a beam of light entered through the opening and spread across the tile foyer, up the dark wood panelling, and over the staircase leading to the upper floors.

  The stench was overwhelming. Clare squinted against the musty, sickly rotting scent of hollows.

  “Ah,” Dorran said. His grip on Clare’s hand tightened.

  Ahead of them, in the foyer’s centre, an effigy had been built out of bones. Femurs, skulls, ribs, and pelvic bones had been stacked over each other, tied together with strings of human hair, to create a statue nearly ten feet high. Three skulls had been bound together for the head. Angular limbs ran out from the waist, not unlike a smaller version of the spider monster they had passed in the tunnel. Something—blood, probably—had been used to paint the effigy in messy, irregular strokes of brown.

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nbsp; Clare moved closer to Dorran, so that he could feel her warmth at his side. It wasn’t hard to guess what the hideous construction represented.

  Did they create it as a tribute to her? Was their loyalty really so strong that they wanted to memorialise her, even though she was no longer controlling them?

  Clare didn’t like to think about the alternative: that Dorran’s mother, Madeline Morthorne, had survived, or that she had commissioned the statue herself to preside over the house’s foyer. That couldn’t be possible. Clare had forced the fire poker through Madeline’s skull herself. The woman was dead. She couldn’t hurt them any longer.

  Except she can. Even if she’s gone, her memory is still here. Not just in the statue, but in the house, in every pore of this building.

  The awful blankness had fallen over Dorran’s features. She remembered the expression all too well from her first days at Winterbourne, when he had been withdrawn so deeply into himself that Clare had struggled to get any kind of reading on him.

  “She’s dead,” Clare said.

  Dorran’s eyes flicked down to meet hers before returning to the statue. He nodded, but the bleak panic in his eyes made her heart ache for him. His hand was clammy. Clare tugged on it, pulling him away.

  “Let’s go to the garden first. I want to see what we’re working with.”

  Finally, he turned away from the bones. The garden had always been a sanctuary for him, and now, it would be a way to focus them both. The food in their bus wouldn’t last forever. They needed to know whether the hastily constructed watering-and-heating system had survived their absence, or whether they would need to venture back into the town for food.

  Clare kept watch over Dorran as they moved through the back rooms and into the gloomy, stone-walled servants’ areas. Some presence returned to him as the effigy vanished behind them. He glanced over the rooms they passed. Clare startled when he spoke.

  “They have made use of our home in our absence.”

  As she looked around herself, Clare saw he was right. Furniture was overturned. Broken crockery and fresh scratches marred the kitchen. In some areas, blood splattered over walls and floors.

  They’ve been eating each other. That’s where the bones came from.

  They stepped into the massive stone chamber behind the kitchens and paused at the table to light one of the candles stored there. To Clare’s left was the archway leading down to the wine cellar. Unable to suppress the twist of anxiety, she quickly looked away. To their right was another set of stairs leading to the furnace room. And straight ahead, the garden waited.

  The lights were still on. Clare felt her eyebrows rise. Dorran had constructed a heating-and-watering system designed to maintain the garden for two or three days while they travelled to Beth. It had never been intended to last four weeks. It should have run out of fuel long ago.

  She tried to look through the blurred window as Dorran unlocked the door. The metal groaned as it opened outwards, and Dorran lowered his candle and weapon.

  “How…?” Dorran stepped through the doorway with Clare close in his wake. They both stopped just inside the threshold, staring in wonder at the maze of green ahead of them.

  The garden had flourished. All of the plants that had been only seedlings on Clare and Dorran’s departure had grown and overflowed their beds. Trails of ripening cherry tomatoes hung nearly to the floor. Salad leaves burst up like miniature, multi-coloured explosions. Green peas had not only followed their designated stakes, but branched outwards, attempting to strangle their neighbours in their enthusiasm.

  “Oh.” Clare, grinning, pressed a hand to her chest. “It’s beautiful.”

  It should have been impossible. In that moment, she didn’t care. The overhead lights were on, bathing the scene in a warm glow. The plants were lush, welcoming, and vibrant. It felt like home.

  Dorran moved forward to explore between the garden beds. Without human intervention, the plants had grown as they pleased, turning into something that looked more like a jungle than a garden. Clare ran her fingertips across a crop of spinach as she looked over the riot of green. They had more than enough to keep her and Dorran fed. It wasn’t as sophisticated as Johann’s garden in the research institute, and they didn’t have any crops to mill into bread or turn into tofu. Still, it was earthy, rich, and fresh, and Clare loved it.

  Dorran turned back to her. His earlier stress had evaporated. He grinned as he lifted a twirling tendril to show her a pumpkin flower.

  “It will need some work,” he said, laughing. “I don’t think there will be any way to get the tomatoes onto their trellises without snapping the branches, but…”

  “It lived. It thrived.”

  “That it did.” He returned to her and kissed her deeply. “I think we will be just fine, my darling.”

  Clare rested her forehead against Dorran’s chest. The organic smell of the garden had expunged the lingering scent of hollows. The room was warm, the lights were bright, and she felt safe. She would be happy to live there, she thought.

  Heavy footsteps thumped along a hallway above them. The staggering gait seemed to lurch drunkenly. It only lasted a second then fell silent.

  Dorran kept his arms around Clare, but he had tensed. He dropped his head to rest it on top of Clare’s then inhaled deeply, seeming to brace himself.

  “We have to secure the house,” he said.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “We should choose one priority room,” Dorran said. Clare led the way out of the garden, and he locked the door behind them. “Somewhere with food, running water, and warmth.”

  “The upstairs bedroom?”

  “That’s what I was thinking. As long as the hollows left it untouched, at least. We’ll go there first, see if we can secure it, then consider our next move.” His glance was tense. “Stay behind me. If we’re confronted—”

  “Retreat instead of engage.” She pressed him into a brief hug. “I remember.”

  “I need you to be safe, above all else.”

  “You know I will be.”

  He matched her smile. “Sorry. I worry.”

  “Yeah. I do, as well.”

  They turned towards the hallway. The upstairs rooms were silent. Clare didn’t trust the quiet, though. The stench in the house was too strong and fresh for how little confrontation they had encountered.

  She took up the candleholder in one hand and the crowbar in her other, and shadowed Dorran as he led her back into the foyer. A wooden support beam to Clare’s left creaked, and she swung towards it, but Dorran didn’t flinch. He’d lived in the house long enough to know which noises came from the building’s age and which were foreign.

  The entered the foyer from the back. Light shone through the snow-caked windows, breaking through gaps in the statue’s bones and hair lashings. Dorran spared the statue only a glance before skirting around it to reach the stairs.

  Dust had coated most surfaces in their absence. When Clare first arrived at Winterbourne, the building had been nearly pristine, having recently been tended by dozens of maids. They had left their duties behind, along with their humanity, though. The dark wooden railings had seen their shine dampened, and the gilded frames around the paintings were coated with a thin layer of grey, much like snow had coated the building.

  They reached the top of the second flight of stairs. Clare had made this journey often enough to remember it. Ahead, partway along the dim hall, was their bedroom. If she continued onwards, the passageway branched into four, each terminating in a window overlooking the field surrounding Winterbourne. She and Dorran stood at the top of the stairs just long enough to listen for noise, then they began moving forward.

  A sigh echoed from behind them. Clare turned, and the candle flickered from the sudden motion. She stretched it ahead of herself, willing it to pierce through the shadows clustering around the passageway’s innumerable side tables and display cases. She could have sworn Winterbourne hadn’t been this dark when she and Dorran left.


  They closed the curtains, she realised. At the end of the hallways were windows, but the thick cloth shades had been drawn down to block them.

  She wondered how much they had used the building in her and Dorran’s absence. Maybe they had treated it like their own castle, sleeping in the beds, crawling through the rooms, staring out of the windows once night fell. Maybe the hallways had been full of them right up until the bus’s engine cut through the cold air. The building was perfect for them; dark, enclosed, and cold.

  Dorran held the hatchet at his side, the pose deceptively relaxed. Clare could feel the energy in his muscles, carefully contained, poised to move at the slightest provocation. His other hand grazed Clare’s shoulder, not quite holding her, but ready to pull her away from some unseen threat.

  Behind him, in the hallway that led to their room, movement caught Clare’s eye. One of the panels in the wall slid out. An arm moved through it, long, as thin as a stick, and tipped with claw-like fingers.

  She barely had time to draw a breath. The hollow lunged out of the opening with incredible speed. Its movements were silent except for the muffled click of its bones grinding against each other. An elongated head stretched farther as the jaw opened, aiming at Dorran’s back.

  Clare lunged, breaking out from under his hand and pushing him aside as she put her crowbar between the hollow’s maw and Dorran. The teeth clashed around the metal with a noise that made Clare flinch. She shoved back, pushing the monster away. It released the crowbar, and Clare angled the point at the monster’s head. She thrust forward. Pain shot into her hands and along her arms as she used brute force to break through its skull. The hollow stood for a second, hanging off the end of the crowbar, one eye bulging and the other sunk into its skull. Then it dropped, its weight dragging the crowbar down until the angle let it slide off with a sluicing noise.

  The candle threatened to die then stabilised. Clare looked behind herself. Dorran stood a pace away, panting, his hatchet bloodied. A dead hollow lay at his feet. Behind it, a second compartment in the hall had opened just a few paces behind where Clare had stood.