“Give it back!”
“It’s mine!”
“Jane said I could play with it!”
“Jane’s stupid!”
“You’re stupid!”
“Huh-uh. I’ve got the dolly, and you d—Oh!”
Something hard clatters against a wall and falls to the floor. Kicking and scuffling sounds fill the subsequent silence, followed by the rip of torn hair and the wail of a hurt child.
“I hate you!”
“Good! I’m going back without you!”
The small, quick footfalls pad down the passageway, go straight through the first intersection, speed up, falter, turn left at the second intersection, stumble to a stop just past the third.
“Rebecca?”
No response.
“Rebecca? I’m lost.”
No response.
“Rebecca? Can you hear me? I’m sorry I threw your dolly.”
No response.
“Rebecca?”
Small fists bang against the wall.
“I want out! I want out! I want out!”
A flutter-thump sounds, as though Rachel trips, then tumbles to the floor. The banging at the wall increases and then fades, followed only by the occasional scritch of fingernails looking for purchase in the cracks of the dusty wall.
And then the noise of Evangeline’s foot colliding with the other side.
Evangeline gasped and jerked away, reeling so hard at the agony in her head she stumbled against the wainscoting and crumpled in a heap.
“Miss Pemberton?” came Mr. Lioncroft’s hesitant voice from somewhere high above her head. “Miss Pemberton? Are you all right?”
“To the right,” she managed, still sprawled on her back with her eyes squeezed tight. “You have to go to the right, then right again at the first intersection and straight through the second. Hurry. She’s just a dozen meters past, looking for her doll.”
“What?”
“I told you Rebecca was looking for her dolly,” Rachel put in. “I told you.”
Despite the fury of her headache, Evangeline forced her eyes open. “You said she dropped the doll,” she corrected her with a stern smile, “not that you took it from her and threw it.”
Rachel’s jaw dropped open. She closed it with a snap, shoved her nose in the air, and turned back to her uncle. “Can you find Rebecca? And the dolly?”
Brow furrowed, Mr. Lioncroft glanced from Rachel to Evangeline and back again. “I’ll try my damnedest.”
He set the little girl down and disappeared into the fathomless shadows.
