Adam Nevill - House of Small Shadows

The glass coffin had been placed before an antique telescope made from brass and mounted on a wooden tripod. The lens faced an arched window. Catherine had seen the window from outside the building when down in the lane. She remembered the star charts and photographs of the night sky in M. H. Mason’s study; the obsessiveness of a talented amateur that was barely scientific. This is where Mason had looked to further reaches, and implored the sky for a meaning that he had found an absence of in his own world.

As he went mad.

Catherine turned her attention to the monogrammed leather trunk, but made sure to cast her eyes into the shadows between the hummocks of sheeted storage, though she wasn’t sure what she suspected could move within these darker places. But this was definitely the same leather trunk she had seen in the unoccupied hotel room in Green Willow after Edith first made contact. She had seen it again in the nursery.

The brass clasps were turned upwards, the trunk was unlocked.

Catherine took her hand from her mouth and steadied her fingers enough to hold the clasps. She stifled her breath, then tugged the lid of the trunk upwards with all of her might. The lid flipped backwards with a squeak and slapped against the rear panel.

She stepped away, sunk to a crouch, the scalpel held out front.

The top of the case was fully open. It was lined with what looked like oilcloth. Nothing rose from the musty confines.

She leant forward and peered inside.

When the noise from the Frenophone abruptly stopped, the sudden silence of the attic was obliterated by her own scream.

Catherine couldn’t stop her body shaking. It took a while to realize she was also stepping from one foot to another, as if wet and trying to dry off and keep warm. Using what remained of her wits, she guessed she was going into shock.

Because Edith’s lifeless form lay inside the trunk. Collapsed like a doll with its mouth open. Entirely white eyes were turned upwards inside the small skull. And Catherine knew from a glance there wasn’t a single breath of life inside the woman. It appeared the figure had just been dropped inside. Perhaps once some unspeakable function was over.

Uncovered by the disordered hem of the gown she wore, Edith Mason’s little feet were sealed inside ankle boots that buttoned up the side. Fixed to the heels of her footwear were ugly iron callipers, which disappeared inside the multitude of petticoats and skirts beneath the black dress.

Catherine didn’t know where to go next, but she moved to the staircase she had climbed to enter the attic. She was only able to focus on getting out of the foul room at the summit of the house, one step at a time.

On her way down the flight of stairs, she became aware she was descending into bright red light. The second-floor passageway that contained the attic entrance was now better lit than she thought it was possible for the corridor to be.

Down each side of the wood-panelled walls the glass shades of the lamps now burned brightly and the light issued was no longer murky like sunlight trapped inside syrup. Instead the wall lights possessed an incandescence that stimulated an emotion within her that was so unfamiliar, it took her a few moments to identify her reaction to the new visibility: reassurance.

This new light must be another trick of the Red House, of Maude, the killer, or both.

Or whatever else inhabited the building that could not be seen.

Stop it!

She steadied herself against a wall before moving on. She was being directed to something she could not second-guess.

Play along and identify it.

Sudden jolts of recollection made her whimper. Edith’s collapsed and lifeless body. The separation of flesh on Mike’s back, that black slit. A cold, bloodless breast above the murky surface of the fluid in the bath. The crinkled face of Edith’s mother, those supple but limp hands. Catherine tried to douse the sparks of recent memory before they lit her up with panic.

The preposterous and sickening nature of what she had been made to confront in both the workshop and the attic she didn’t so much refuse to examine, but was now unable to consider. If she even tried to, she knew she would fall to pieces and not be able to put herself back together again.

She raised her face to sniff at the air that now blossomed with a floral aroma. The corridor was infused with a scent of roses. And the air was warm enough for the blood to return to her skin.

Perhaps it was another trick, or a late welcome from a building she must resist. But she could not suppress her gratitude for the return of her sight, and for a smell beyond the caustic burn of the chemicals, and for something to touch her skin that wasn’t cold.

The Red House was silent.

She moved on with the scalpel held out front. As she passed the closed doors in the passage, she watched them closely and felt her neck tense once they were behind her. She was as wary of the building as she would be of a violent bully that occasionally smiled at her.

At the stairwell she looked over her shoulder. The corridor remained empty and well lit.

The fragrance of flowers was even more potent by the stairs, as if the aroma filled the great stairwell to the roof. The wooden floors and walls of the adjoining passage were also lit with a hearty crimson radiance from wall lights that had previously emitted a murky glow.

She peered over the banister rail. The hall floor looked as if it had been recently polished and buffed. She went to the arched window of the landing, opposite the corridor that held Edith’s room and the nursery. Drew the heavy curtains to be confronted with a wooden shutter. She opened the shutters and peered through.

Saw nothing but her own pale and haggard face in the reflection. The glass was so clean and the world beyond the window so black, the pane functioned as a mirror. Over her shoulders, she saw the second floor of the Red House tunnel away into the distance.

A casement window. She put the scalpel down upon the little padded bench before the pane of glass and gripped the latch. Turned it and gingerly pushed the window open onto cold air and a night so still, lightless and silent, she could have been looking into a void. The windows of the ground floor must have been concealed behind drapes and shutters too, because not a streak of light escaped from below to illumine the absence.

Where had the people with the candles gone? Were they like Edith and Mason, the fly-keeper? Did they come alive and then fall down like dolls? She killed the train of thought because it made her hands tremble.

Catherine sat down upon the window seat and pulled her ankles together, placed her hands between her knees and began to rock backwards and forwards. She did it out of habit in moments of great anxiety, and God knew there had been a few of those.

What to do?

The doors to the rooms downstairs were locked and their windows were unavailable to her for an escape. She would never be able to bring herself to jump from a first-floor window, unless the place was on fire.

Had the world truly been removed from outside these solid walls?

Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!

Where was Maude? She must have turned up the lights and locked the front and back doors. Catherine stood up. Her vision blurred with hot tears. ‘Maude! Maude!’

No one answered.

She clenched her jaws and looked at the scalpel to usher a spurt of lunatic courage, then ran back at the corridor housing Edith’s bedroom and the nursery. She turned the door handle of the nursery. Locked. Ran to the door across the corridor and tried that. Locked. Worked her way back down to the end of the passage and yanked at the handle of every door. Locked, locked, locked, locked.