The dining room was right next door. Nick had it furnished like a display, laid out like there was going to be a banquet as soon as they brought the plates out. There had to be salt in one of those ridiculous silver salt cellars, didn’t there? Shit, she hoped so.
She sprinted out into the hall and into the next room, grabbing the salt cellar from the middle of the table, tipping it over into her hand. Tiny white grains came out.
Thank you.She didn’t even know who or what she was thanking. It didn’t matter. She shoved it into her jeans pocket. Just for good measure she grabbed a candle and matches from the mantelpiece. Armed as best she could be, she headed back to the study.
Sally was waiting, a half-formed shape by the doorway to the darkness.
‘You’ve got to stop with the wind now,’ Alex said as she took a moment to light the candle and felt the whole room still, like the entire house was holding its breath. Her own chest was aching with anxiety but she had to get a hold of herself. Maeve was down there somewhere.
So was Blaise Chambers and whatever he had worshipped.
Maeve’s circlet lay on the table and she grabbed it, sliding it onto her wrist. Then, cupping her hand around the flame, Alex started down the stairs into the dark.
CHAPTER 37
ALEX
The stairs led inexorably downwards, longer than the ones to the cellar which Alex had only glimpsed. If Nick had been keen to keep her out of there, he’d be losing his mind at the thought of his daughter down here alone. Alex edged her way down the treacherous steps. They were steep and uneven in height, the stone old and worn smooth. The candlelight flickered around her, sending shadows dancing wildly. Oh, what she would have given for one of the high-powered torches with her equipment upstairs, or even her bloody phone. But there wasn’t time to fetch anything now. She’d wasted enough time finding the candle and the salt. It would have to do.
The sense of a presence at her back, the touch of phantom fingers on her shoulders pushing her forward told her that Sally was there too. And Sally was terrified. Maeve was down here, and in danger.
Finally, Alex reached the bottom. The ground underfoot was compacted earth and a huge empty space stretched out ahead of her, a circular undercroft, lined with old, uneven brickwork. She knew this place, she realised. She’d seen it in the notebook, a floorplan. So her grandfather had known about the door and what was hidden under his study.
It was vast, running from the front of the house to what must be almost as far as the kitchen to the back. Open, empty, and dark…
And in the middle, a very small figure, bathed in an eerie light, stood as still as any statue.
‘Maeve?’ Alex whispered, and her voice echoed around them, bouncing back to her far too loud, the single word multiplying into a cacophony that couldn’t be natural. She could hear laughter behind it, terrible mocking laughter. It didn’t sound like Chambers either. Nor was it like the birdsong laughter in the woods.
This was something else, unnatural and ancient.
Alex grabbed the salt cellar, brandishing it like a weapon.
‘Maeve, love, come here. Let’s get out of this place.’
But Maeve didn’t move. Not even a shudder. She was staring fixedly at the floor and, as Alex reached her, she saw there was a pool of something dark and unpleasant collected there, in a hollow in the floor. Like tar, or old blood, or…Alex didn’t want to consider what else it might be. The first two were bad enough.
And it glowed. The light, watery and sickly as it was, came from it. Bioluminescence, she tried to tell herself, or some kind of mineral or….
Ectoplasm, a voice in the back of her mind supplied. Possibly a memory of Daphne. But tainted. Because Daphne didn’t sound like that.
In that hospital in Texas they’d seen it running down the walls. And she’d said that it could be creosote and rainwater, but the samples they collected showed nothing at all. Gabe still had a jar of that somewhere in the apartment, old and dried out and flaking like paint. He liked to bring it out at parties.
The smell was the worst. It clawed at her nose – rot and putrescence, like something had died down here. A lot of things probably. She didn’t want to think about what they might be.And Maeve was standing right over it, staring into its depths. Transfixed.
Alex moved closer, wary not to startle the child, or fall on the uneven ground. The candle was flickering again, in danger of going out, which was the last thing she wanted. And the sense of Sally was still there, a wall of ice behind her pushing her forward. But even Sally was growing weaker now, down here, any strength she had gathered draining out of her into that hole in the ground.
Exhaustion swept over Alex in a wave, followed by despair. Her limbs suddenly felt leaden and heavy, but she pushed onwards. This wasn’t normal. None of this was normal.
Whatever lurked down here was drawing strength from her now. From her and from Maeve.
‘Maeve, love,’ she tried again. ‘Maeve, you have to come back with me now.’
‘I can’t.’ Maeve’s voice sounded very calm, very still. ‘He’ll hurt you.’
The girl was holding another of her little charms, her hand a fist at its edge. The leaves and flowers trembled, her own tension translating to them. Her arm stretched out over the pool, but she didn’t let it go. Tears streaked her face.
‘There’s no one here, love,’ Alex told her. That was a lie, but she needed to make Maeve move. ‘No one to hurt me. How did you even get down here?’
