“That should be pretty much done.” Lucky plugged in the final cable.
“We’ll just test that they work and—”
The machine beeped, and the screen flashed to life. It showed the upstairs
hallway. Lucky stared at it for a moment then frowned. “It shouldn’t be doing
that unless it caught movement.”
Ruby had her eyes fixed on the screen and her hands clasped in her lap.
Her lips tightened.
The computer beeped again. The hallway remained empty.
“All right, it’s obviously malfunctioning.” Lucky turned towards the
stairway. “I’ll see if I can find what the problem is.”
Beep. I folded my arms across my chest. Lucky’s boots thumped up the
stairs, beating at the already-weary planks, then he appeared in the lower
corner of the camera’s screen. He raised a hand towards the camera, and it
beeped.
“Do you see anything?” I called.
“No cobwebs,” he yelled back. “No protrusions or drapes that could be
shifting. Hang on a moment.” He backed up the hallway, watching the
camera and moving his arms to check the sensor’s range. Something shifted
in the upper corner of the screen. I leaned forward and squinted. The
camera’s frame captured the bottom half of the doorway at the end of the
hall. A grey shape moved inside. The curtains? No…
Lucky was nearly halfway down the hallway, but he hadn’t turned. The
door shifted inwards. The grey shape moved again, and my heart flipped. It
definitely wasn’t curtains. “Lucky!”
“What?” A scowl darkened his face as he continued to search for what
had caused the motion sensor to go off. I stood so sharply that my chair fell
over. The sallow woman paced down the hallway, advancing on Lucky, a
length of chains clenched in her grey hands.
“Lucky, behind you!”
He started to turn. “What are you talking ab—”
A bright flash blinded me. When I blinked my eyes open, the house wasalmost perfectly dark.
My breathing was a rasping grate in my ears. I felt blindly, and my
fingers found the table’s edge. “Ruby?”
“I’m here.” She sounded calm. Almost too much so.
“Don’t move.” I turned towards the stairs. The curtains were still drawn
from when we’d hidden from Raul the night before, and almost no moonlight
made it into the house. I found the bannister with my shins, and from there, I
fumbled my way onto the steps. “Lucky!”
“I must have tripped the power,” he called back. “Hang on. ”
“Lucky, there was a woman behind you—”
My words were drowned out by a sharp cry. I couldn’t breathe. My feet
tripped over a stair, and I hit the boards with a heavy thud. “Lucky!”
Marwick House was silent. I scrambled upwards, using all four limbs to
gain the hallway. The air tasted bitter—worse than the burning cake—and I
choked on it. The house was too dark. I felt forward, searching for Lucky by
touch. My eyes were wide but blind, and my fingers grazed only cool air.
“Lucky?”
I stretched farther forward, reaching into the shadows. Clammy, cool
fingers touched mine.
The sensation was unlike anything I’d experienced before. The skin felt
unnaturally spongy and too cold. My first thought was that I’d brushed hands
with a corpse. I gasped and recoiled. A whining buzz filled the hallway, and
the lights flickered as they came on one at a time.
Lucky crouched against the wall a few paces away from me. His face was
grey and pocked with perspiration, and he clutched a hand over his forearm.
“You okay?” I crawled towards him. The bitter smell had disappeared
when the lights came on. I could breathe again.
“What…” His eyes shifted from me to the hallway behind himself. He
took his hand away, and I saw three red scores marking his upper arm, like
scratches left by fi ngernails. He stared at them, then his Adam’s apple
bobbed as he swallowed. “Did you do this?”
“No. There was someone behind you.” Wariness grew over his
expression, and I rushed on, desperate to make him believe. “It was a woman.
Ruby saw it, too—ask her!”
A beep echoed from downstairs as the motion detector went off again.
Lucky and I stared at each other for a moment, then Lucky spoke, his voice
raspy. “We shouldn’t leave her alone.”I stood and offered him a hand up, but he didn’t take it. Bright blood welled in the cuts on his arm, but at least it wasn’t flowing. He rose, not
meeting my eyes, and pressed past me to reach the stairwell. “Ask Ruby,” I begged. “I’m not lying!” I jogged to catch up to him and nearly bumped into his back. He’d frozen
on the top of the stairs.