by Darcy Coates
She was ignoring Clare, wholly focussed on her son. Clare couldn’t contain a grim smile. She held her chained hands above her head as she rolled onto her back. The underside of Madeline’s abdomen was immediately above her; it was a roiling mess of the sharp, insect-like claws crosscutting as they burst out from the remains of her dress. Clare pulled her knees up to her chest and kicked upwards, driving her boots into that nest of appendages, pain sparking through her injured leg.
Madeline’s gasp, raw and ragged through her newly formed throats, was one of the most satisfying things Clare had ever heard. She’d stolen the matriarch’s balance and tilted the angle of her legs to the side, rolling Madeline forward to meet her son.
Dorran was ready. He raised the fuel container, spraying the last of the flaming liquid onto Madeline. Clare flinched as fiery drops rained around her. Madeline howled. She buckled, the legs twitching in discordant directions as she clawed at the flames spread across her torso and face. Stumbling backwards, she fell to the floor.
The cavern was a maze of flames. The last of the hollows chattered as they clawed their way into the tunnels to escape the heat and smoke. The toxic smell of burnt fuel was rapidly thickening; Clare pressed her face into her arm as she coughed.
All of the anger fled from Dorran’s expression. It was replaced with stark grey horror as he staggered to her. His hands ran across her hair then to her hands, stained with her own drying blood. “I am so sorry. My darling. Oh, I am sorry.”
“Hey,” she said, smiling despite how badly she shook. “You okay?”
His hands hovered over Clare’s arm where Madeline had torn the skin. It wasn’t bad; the cut was no larger than an inch and not deep. They had both had worse. But Dorran stared at it with so much pain in his expression that it seemed as though the guilt were crushing him.
He’s in shock. This must be like a living nightmare for him. She wanted to ask him to check his mother, to make sure she was truly dead this time, but she wasn’t certain he could handle it. Clare swallowed and pushed some levity into her voice, hoping it would knock him out of the panic that was consuming him. “No more family reunions, okay? They don’t work out for either of us.”
His eyes were uncomprehending.
Clare felt a cold trickle of fear move into her chest. Dorran stood at her side, but he felt like a stranger. There was almost nothing of the man she loved left in his expression. What if Madeline got her wish? What if she finally broke him?
“Hey,” she tried again, softening her voice even further. “Everything’s okay. I love you.”
“I love you,” he echoed, the words emotionless. Then he blinked, and his eyes began to shine with unshed tears, and his hands clutched for hers as feeling returned to his voice. “I love you, Clare. I’m so sorry—Clare—”
He was back. Clare grinned, trying not to cry herself. Her manacled hands were numb from lack of blood flow, but she still held him in return. “We’re okay, Dorran. I’m not hurt. You did great.”
“Oh,” he said, and his head dropped against hers as his arms wrapped around her. He was close enough that Clare could kiss his neck, so she did. He tasted like dust and smoke.
“Hey,” she whispered, not wanting to rush him, but aware that they were horribly vulnerable. The fire was gradually dying as it exhausted its fuel. Smoke was filling the chamber, sapping the oxygen and making it harder to see. Breathing was becoming painful. It was keeping the other hollows away, but not for much longer. And she needed to be certain that Madeline was dead. Because, if she was, the other hollows would no longer be heeding the matriarch’s instructions. And they were hungry. “D’you think we can find a way to get me out of these?”
“Yes. Hold on—” Dorran bent over the manacles, exploring their welds and the chains, searching for weakness.
Clare turned her head aside as she coughed. Something twitched through the smoke in her peripheral vision. She barely had enough air in her lungs to call, “Dorran! Behind!”
Madeline lurched towards them. Blackened skin cracked as her arms reached out, her legs jerking erratically as the nerves misfired. Her face was barely recognisable. The skin was charred and lined with rivers of red. The original mouth, the one that had grown flesh around the rebar, pulsed in time with her heartbeat. Her eyes had turned grey as they cooked. She was blind, but she had still heard their voices. And she was coming for them.
Dorran twisted to face his mother as her blackened fingers gripped either side of his head. The pulsing mouth, still bearing the rebar, loomed above him. He was pinned between Madeline and the dais, and Madeline raised four of her insect legs, their tips aimed towards him.
He seemed frozen. Madeline’s fingertips crumbled as she dug them into the sides of his head. The pulsing mouth was growing closer and closer, as though she hoped to eat him, or impale him on the same rebar that had forever deformed her face.
Clare yelled, “Dorran!”
He flinched then responded, reaching up to grasp the rebar. The legs stabbed down, aiming to impale Dorran, but hit the stone platform instead as he twisted the metal bar. The blind eyes rolled up. Her hands spasmed, and her legs thrashed. The pulsing mouth gushed a clot of black, rotting blood. Dorran kept pushing. The skin around her neck cracked. Madeline could no longer support her own body weight. Her legs fell out from under her, and the force wrenched her head back. Burnt flesh separated. Dorran gasped and dropped the rebar, which still speared his mother’s decapitated head.
The insect legs continued to twitch for a full minute after Madeline fell. Slowly, they coiled inward, curling up like a dead spider. Dorran stared down at her until the last shivers subsided, then he shakily bent to pick something off her body. He staggered back to Clare, his eyes wide and wild. A necklace was clasped in his soot-coated hand, and suspended from it was a silver key.
Dorran fit the key into Clare’s manacles. It was old and tarnished, and it scraped in the lock. The metal clicked as it unlocked.
Clare pulled her hands free and massaged where the metal had bitten into her skin. Dorran still looked ashen. He stayed close to her, one hand on her arm, as he stared at his mother’s body. He needed time to process what had happened, to come to terms with it, maybe even to grieve. But time was something they didn’t have. Clare took his hand, rubbing it, trying to draw his attention. “We need to get back to the room. This is almost over. Unathi made another announcement while you were gone. They’re activating the code today, at sundown.”
“Ah.” He blinked and shook his head, as though trying to clear it. “Sundown. Back to the room. You’ll be safe there—”
Something screamed in the passageways behind them. The flames had almost completely burnt out, leaving just smoke and the odour of fuel in its place. Clare searched, but the torches weren’t bright enough to show any movement around the room’s peripheral. The creatures would be out there, though. And they would be closing in. She pulled on Dorran’s hand. “We have to go.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Clare dropped her legs over the side of the dais. She couldn’t see far, but she could feel the hollows moving closer. She tried to orient herself, to remember the way out, but there were at least a dozen crevices in the walls, and she couldn’t recall which direction she’d come from.
“Dorran.”
He’d been staring at the corpse behind the dais, but at Clare’s voice, he blinked and focussed back on her. “Yes?”
“Do you remember which way I came from?”
“Ah. That way.” He indicated towards one of the nearer walls.
They set off, each step long as they crossed the uneven stone floor. There had to be a faster way back to their room, but it would involve travelling through the concealed passageways, and the circuit was still too unfamiliar to risk trying it. The route out through the wine cellar would be slower, but at least they wouldn’t become lost.
“Clare, careful.”
Something moved along the shadowed walls ahead. Multiple bodies scuttled li
ke cockroaches, teeth gnashing.
A flash of colour stood out among the stone. Clare recognised the knife she’d brought with her, the one the hollows had knocked out of her hand, and beside it lay a small red cylinder. She quickly scooped them both up, frowning at the red tube. “A flare. But I didn’t bring one. Dorran, did—?”
A vicious noise rose from passageway ahead. Clare wiped the knife clean on her shirt, ensuring she wouldn’t lose her grip on it again. Dorran moved closer to her and swept one arm out, placing himself in front of her. The sounds floating from the hallway set Clare’s teeth on edge. Full of violence and fury, they rose until they seemed to be shaking the walls around them. The hollows slinking around the edge of the cavern disappeared into the tunnel, moving towards the sounds.
It’s like wildcats fighting. Or a madman’s screams. Clare’s mouth was dry. She held the knife tightly, prepared to fight whatever might appear in the opening. Nothing did. Instead, the noise broke off, its echoes taking longer to fade.
“What was that?” Clare asked.
Dorran’s breathing was shallow. He could only shake his head.
The sounds had come from the path they needed to take. Clare didn’t want to move towards it. But they had no alternatives. She clenched her teeth then lit the flare.
For a moment, the hissing flame masked every other noise. Clare extended the light, painting red across the rough walls as she stepped forward. Dorran moved like a ghost at her side, his hand just barely resting on her arm to tell her he was still with her. She was grateful. She didn’t think she could endure being separated from him again that day.
The glow of the flare revealed the passageway in increments. It was disconcertingly still. Clare kept looking for the source of the screams, waiting for movement ahead, but it looked no different to the passageway she had followed an hour before. Water pooled on the floor, shimmering red in her light. Scratches ran along the walls where claws had cut into them, but Clare suspected the marks had been made weeks before.
Then her shoe landed in something she had assumed was water, and Clare’s heart lurched. The liquid didn’t move quite like water was supposed to. It was thicker, rippling lazily out from the impact. Clare stepped back and scraped her shoe over the ground. It left a smear.
The water had looked red. She had assumed it was tinted by the glow of the flare, but it didn’t need any light to colour it. She had stepped into blood.
“Clare.” Dorran nodded to the side.
At first glance, the shape seemed to be a broken rock kicked into the corner. Clare extended the flare towards it. Two empty eye sockets stared back at her. The grey skin was pinched too tight over the bones, the jaws hanging open in an imitation of a scream. The hollow was already dead.
The hellish noise came again. It was distant, farther along the passageway they needed to take. Dorran’s hand tightened over her arm, and she thought she could feel his pulse beating as quickly as hers did.
“The hollows are fighting,” she whispered.
“They must have been denied meals for a long time. Perhaps now… now that Madeline is dead… they are seeking food wherever they can find it.”
Clare gave a stiff nod. Everything she knew about hollows told her they didn’t see their companions as prey and only resorted to consuming one another when they were trapped or when the others were already dead. Before Clare and Dorran had left Winterbourne, Madeline had been sacrificing members of her party to satisfy the surviving hollows’ appetites. Clare assumed the habit had continued, perhaps in greater numbers once the creatures from the forest had been brought inside.
It made no sense for hollows to fight amongst themselves, especially when there was human prey within the mansion. But very little of Winterbourne’s situation was natural. Now that Madeline no longer controlled the creatures, Clare couldn’t guess what they might resort to.
Get somewhere safe. Quickly.
She pushed forward, hastening her steps, trying not to look at the pools of blood she walked through. Vicious screams rang through the building. They were louder than Clare had ever heard—ferocious, wild, and terrifying. Every fibre of her being focussed on the only thing that mattered—getting behind a door that locked, where they could wait out the remaining hours until sundown.
The flare was dying. Clare thought they were close to the door to the cellar. She shook the flare, trying to get some more life into it, but it hissed a final time and fizzled out.
No. She hit it against her palm, but the glow was gone. There was no natural light in the subterranean levels. It made no difference whether she kept her eyes open or closed them. Already, she was starting to forget what the hallway looked like. She reached out but only touched air.
Dorran’s fingers ran down her arm until he found her hand. “I think I know the way,” he whispered.
His hand tugged, and Clare followed. Her eyes were wide but blind. Her mind conjured up images of a swarm of hollows slinking through the hallway ahead, open jaws aiming for them. The smell was everywhere. Clare told herself she would be able to hear if hollows were approaching, but her breathing and faltering footsteps seemed deafening.
She tried not to think about what would happen if the monsters came across them in the darkness. There would be no way to defend themselves. No way to run…
The atmosphere seemed to change. The air was a fraction cleaner, and the scent of smoke was replaced by dust. Dorran led them to the right, and Clare thought that meant they had entered the wine cellar. Her suspicions were confirmed as a bottle clinked, and Dorran adjusted their direction.
Clare’s hand was clammy. She wanted to pull it out of Dorran’s and wipe it clean, but his grip was like steel. For good reason. If we were to be separated now…
Her shoulder grazed one of the walls. She flinched, squeezing her eyes closed reflexively. Then the hand in hers abruptly pushed back, halting her steps. Clare had a split-second image of an unseen hollow biting into Dorran’s face. She prepared to drag him backwards. Then Dorran’s voice floated out of the darkness near her ear. “The stairs are ahead. Move carefully.”
He led her upwards. Clare reached one arm out as she shuffled forward. Her boots hit the lowest stair, and she stepped up, misjudged its width, and nearly lost her balance. Dorran dragged her back, bracing her, until she had a flat surface under her feet again.
Her breathing shallow, she tested the stair’s width, bumping her feet into its back before trusting her weight to it. The climb was agonizingly slow, but they had to be cautious. The stairs had no railing, and a fall from that height would crack their heads open like eggs.
Something hissed behind them. Dread ran through Clare. She tried to guess how far behind it was, but the question was nearly immaterial. The hollows weren’t hindered by the darkness. It would only take seconds for it to catch up to them.
Dorran tugged on her, and they began to move faster, racing up the stairs. The coldness stung Clare’s cheeks, and the exertion ached deep in her leg. Even though she could feel the ground beneath her feet, she had lost her sense of which direction was up.
She misstepped, her toes sliding off the edge of the stone, and keeled forward. Dorran gasped and pulled on her hand to keep her up, but she still hit the stairs. The knife clattered as it fell from her grip. Her outstretched palm lost a layer of skin, but she barely felt it. Every fibre of her being was focussed on getting to the top of the stairs, away from the creature below them.
She felt the strange sensation of something passing her without touching her. It was so fast and so faint that she wasn’t sure she could trust her judgement. She scrambled upright, her heart thundering.
A scream shook the air ahead of them. Clare flinched, bracing for claws across her shoulders or teeth sinking into her throat, but nothing came. The screams gurgled, descending into something like incoherent ravings. A wet, tearing sound caused the wails to break off abruptly. Something heavy hit the floor. Claws scrabbled on stone. The hollows were fighting instead of com
ing after Clare and Dorran. That makes no sense.
She didn’t have enough of her mind left to wonder about it. In the distance, she saw a whisper of light.
“The stairs end,” Dorran said.
Even with the warning, Clare still tried to step up, and her world rocked as her foot plunged through emptiness. She put out her hand, found the wall, and righted herself.
“The garden,” she whispered. We don’t need to get to the room. We only need to get somewhere secure. Somewhere with a lock. She hated moving through the darkness, not knowing what horrors might surround them. The sooner they found a safe place, the better, and their room was two floors above them.
Her shoulder brushed the immense archway leading into the cellar. To her right was the passageway taking them back to the main sections of the house. The fleeting traces of light came from there, refractions from the foyer’s windows.
The garden would be to her left, but as Clare turned towards it, uneasiness ran through her like shivers. Normally, light came through the window in the door. It was a small and muted glow, but it had always acted as a beacon towards the room. Now, though, there was only darkness ahead.
Dorran didn’t try to move. Clare held her breath, knowing he must be listening. She strained to hear but didn’t detect any signs of life ahead.
She said, “The lights should be on at this time of day, shouldn’t they?”
“It is possible the generator ran dry…”
Clare felt the wariness in him. She knew him too well to believe he would forget to refuel the generator. She didn’t want to hound him, but chewing noises rose from the cellar’s stairwell, and she didn’t want to think about what would happen once the surviving hollow finished its feast. “Dorran?”
He made a quiet noise of dissatisfaction then stepped forward. He had a better sense of the space than Clare did and moved with confidence. The dark felt like it was burning Clare’s eyes, so she closed them and followed in Dorran’s wake, trusting him not to lead her into any obstacles. Then he came to an abrupt halt, pushing her back. She waited as stress burned her insides.