Craven Manor(39)

The kitchens didn’t hold any trace of salt, and Daniel spent a few minutes checking the surrounding rooms—the mess hall, the washing room, and the dining room—without luck.

He was resigned to walking to town when he caught sight of a narrow door in the back of the mess hall. He opened it, expecting to find a cupboard, and instead stepped into a small room filled with hessian sacks. Dark ink had been used to write SALT across their fronts, and Daniel lifted his eyebrows. There were half a dozen bags in the room, and each one was about as large as his torso.

That’s a lot of salt. Maybe it snows during winter, and they used it to clear the road. Or maybe they just like really, really salty food.

He fetched a rusted knife from the kitchens and sliced a hole in the top of one of the bags. A crust had formed where moisture had leaked through the porous material, but once he broke through it, he found the salt underneath was still soft. He collected a saucepan that had survived the centuries of neglect and shovelled handfuls of salt into it.

Bran’s request had been vague enough to make Daniel nervous. He worked best with explicit instructions that he could follow to the letter. Telling him to scatter salt across the tower’s threshold left him with all sorts of questions, such as how much, where exactly, and the most obvious one—why? He erred on the side of caution and brought half a saucepan of the grainy substance.

Daniel held the saucepan in one hand and a candle in his other as he climbed the stairs. Shadows were progressing over the walls as morning transformed to afternoon. Darkness had fallen over Annalise’s portrait again, and all Daniel could see of the image were the wide whites of her eyes.

He slowed as he reached the third floor’s landing. Straight ahead were the short stone walkway and the black door with its broken locks and white cross. Even from where he stood at the top of the stairs, he could hear the scraping, scrabbling noise coming from the other side of the wood. The sense of foreboding crashed over him and tightened his chest until it was hard to draw air.

It will be fine. Go and season the door, just like regular people do all the time.

He stepped closer. The scraping had taken on a different cadence to the night before; it now held the cracking undertones of splintering wood. Daniel had a sudden mental image of the door being chipped down millimetre by millimetre by the unseen being’s nails. How long until it dug through the door? And what would happen when it did?

He half ran the final three steps to the door. Desperation to do his job and get away from the nauseating hallway overwhelmed him.

He dropped to his knees and looked down. The line of glittering crystal formations was still visible in the low light, and realisation clicked into place. Someone had poured salt there decades before, but moisture had melted it and re-formed it into the elaborate crystal structures. That gave him a guideline for his work, at least.

He dunked his hand into the salt and pulled out a fistful. Starting on the left side of the door, he dribbled a thick, unbroken line from the wall and across the passageway, trying to get it as close as he could to the base of the tar-black door.

The scratching noise changed. It became faster, harsher, fiercer. Hairs rose across the back of Daniel’s neck as he ran his salt line to the opposite wall. He didn’t stop until the white grains butted up against the stone, but he still held some of the powder in his fist. On an impulse, he threw it at the door.

The salt scattered against the dark wood, and a loud, gurgling, wailing sound emanated from behind it. Daniel pressed his hands against his ears to block it out, but the macabre scream had gotten inside his skull. He felt as though he would never escape from it. The noise was angry and grieving, and the emotions in it made him want to cower into a ball.

Then it faded, and the stone hallway was silent again. Daniel found he was panting. He knelt there for several minutes, waiting for the scratching to start up again, but the tower remained silent.

“Mr. Kane.”

Daniel startled at his name and twisted to look behind himself. His candle lit only the few feet around him, but at the end of the hallway, in the juncture where the stairs’ landing split into the hallways, he thought he could see a silhouette. “Hello?”

“Come and speak in my office. The room at the end of the hallway.” The voice was too distinct to mistake. Bran’s crackling, gasping voice sounded worse when magnified by the empty halls.

The silhouette turned and stepped out of sight.

Daniel’s throat was too dry for his answer to be louder than a whisper. “Okay.” Clutching his candle, he rose onto unsteady legs and trotted back to the crossroads. He couldn’t see Bran. Daniel took a bracing breath then turned left, the direction Bran had vanished into.

Craven Manor’s hallways seemed to extend for miles. Daniel knew it was only his racing pulse and stress that made them seem endless, but it was hard not to feel dwarfed by the patterned walls that squeezed on either side. In his candle’s light, the open door at the end of the hall looked like an abyss. Even when he reached its threshold, his light couldn’t penetrate more than a patch of the long-decayed rug covering the room’s wooden floor. “Bran?”

“Enter.”

He stepped inside and flinched as the door glided shut behind him. He didn’t think it was his imagination that the candle had lost strength inside Bran’s study. He caught glimpses of a bookcase full of rotting volumes on one wall and a cold fireplace on the other. A massive window—easily two arm-spans wide—took up the opposite wall, but its heavy drapes were drawn, blocking out the light. Daniel still couldn’t see Bran.