Gallant(40)

They could never touch her.

And yet, now, pressed back against a moldering wall in a hidden passage of the house that is not Gallant, she can feel the ghoul’s hand over her mouth. And it is not the hint of a hand, not spider silk or mist, but long-rotten fruit and too-dry sticks, a bone-dry palm forced tight over her lips.

If she could scream, she would.

But she can’t, so she fights, tries to force the ghoul off, fingers sinking through tattered cloth and hollow ribs, but the ghoul only twists her round and leans in close, its ruined face inches from her own, and in the silver dark, there’s no menace in its filmy eyes, only a silent plea to be still.

Past her pounding heart, Olivia tries to listen to the room beyond the wall. She hears the splinter of the door, the steady beat of the soldier’s boots as it crosses the study, passing from the wood onto the thin rug. She pictures its narrow, wolfish frame as it stalks around the desk. A knee touching down, and the metal gauntlet scraping the ground, and then—no. The soft drag of something being freed, the flutter of loose paper. Her mother’s journal. Olivia’s hands ache and her lungs burn. She has to go back for it, but she can’t, she can’t, so instead, she breathes against the rotting fingers, inhaling dead leaves and ash.

Until at last, the steps withdraw.

The silence drags long and flat.

The ghoul’s palm falls away.

It retreats a step, and in the eerie almost-light that permeates the house, she sees it is—or was—a man, her uncle’s age, perhaps, the same strong jaw and deep-set eyes she’s come to know as Prior.

Its hands drift up in surrender, or perhaps apology. She doesn’t understand, not until the fingers trace through the air, in something that is not sign language—not the kind she learned—but the gestures are slow, readable.

You . . . asked . . . for . . . help.

Olivia stares at the ghoul. She did, when she was hiding in the hall. But it was only a thought, a prayer, a silent plea, neither spoken nor signed.

How did you hear me? she asks, but the ghoul’s attention twitches back toward the hidden door. Its face contorts, and then it gestures down the darkened passage.

You must go, it says. The shadow is coming back.

The shadow? she asks, but the ghoul turns her round to face the narrow hall. The dim silver light doesn’t seem to reach more than a foot. Beyond, the darkness is a wall.

A ruined hand drifts past her as it points.

That way.

But her eyes hang on the withered hand. Olivia turns back. The mouse. The flowers. Twice she’s touched the dead and brought them back to life, and so she reaches out to touch the ghoul’s broken chest, but it catches her wrist and shakes its head.

Why not? she thinks.

Its other hand drags through the air. Not yours.

She doesn’t understand, but the ghoul doesn’t give her time to ask again. It turns her away from the hidden door and the wolf lurking beyond, and even though she cannot see it now, she can feel the warning in its touch. Go.

Thank you, she thinks, and the ghoul’s fingers tighten on her shoulder. A single, brief squeeze, and then she is nudged forward. Down the corridor.

Ahead, the darkness is as thick as paint, and she half expects to feel it hold against her fingers. But when she takes a step, the wall draws back, the silver light moving with her, reaching only a few inches ahead. She brings her hand to the walls, the passage narrow enough that she can touch both sides with elbows bent.

She looks back, but the ghoul is gone.

Step by step, she feels her way forward, hands skating over old stone, hoping nothing else reaches out of the dark.

At last, she finds the other door.

She hesitates, unsure where it leads, if she’s about to step out into the ballroom or the foyer. She presses her ear to the wood and listens for something, anything, on the other side, and hears nothing. A soft push, and the door whispers open onto the narrow alcove just outside the kitchen.

Like everything else in this house, it is the same, and not at all.

A deep crack runs across one wall. The floorboards rise and fall, as if roots are pushing up beneath them. There are no pots on the stove, no bread on the table, no smell of stew or toast or anything but ash, as if a heavy layer has settled over everything. A single apple sits on the splintered counter, withered and dry, the ghost of long, thin fingers left in the dust beside it.

Fear prickles up her spine.

In her mind, those same fingers tap on the edge of a chair, bone showing through torn white skin. Those fingers catch a dancer’s wrist and draw her in. Those fingers brush her death away like dust.

Olivia drags her gaze to the small side door by the pantry, a glass insert looking out onto the night. Not the garden unraveling behind the house, but the front drive, the fountain, the road beyond.

She rushes toward the narrow door, and in five steps she is there, bursting out of the house and into the night like a body coming up for air. She doesn’t know where to go, back to the impossible wall or down the empty road, but one has already refused her, so she decides to try the other. She starts across the drive, the gravel biting into her bare feet. Shh, shh, shh, it says, too loud, as she hurries past the fountain, where the stone woman looms, her outstretched hand broken off, her billowing dress in tatters, rocks littering the empty pool and—

But it’s not empty.

There, on the floor of the fountain, lies a boy.