Overhead, footsteps hit the stairs like grenades on a battlefield. Dust and grit shook down around her, pieces of grime landing in her hair.
A heavy shadow tromped up the spine of the staircase, momentarily blotting out the horizontal strips of light that peeked through the thread-thin cracks between the rise and tread of each step.
“I know I heard something,” Varen’s dad muttered when he reached the top landing.
“What you heard,” Bruce grunted, “is an old house full of noisy ghosts. You won’t find anything up there, Mr. Nethers. At least nothing tangible enough for you to lay your hands on and bully around.”
“Ghosts . . .? I don’t believe in ghosts.”
He began to descend, the step she had dropped through complaining the loudest beneath his weight.
“If you see my son,” Varen’s dad said, his tone calmer now, more controlled—businesslike, “tell him he needs to come home. So his stepmother can get some rest. So that goddamned cat of his will stop its whining.”
After that, the footsteps began to fade away. Like a storm that had blown itself out, the thundering tapered off into hollow thudding, growing farther and farther away until she heard the jingle of the bells, followed by the slamming of the front door.
Bruce’s whistling breath dissolved into a stream of fresh coughing. Listening, Isobel heard him shuffle off, panting and winded.
She looked down at her phone as it buzzed yet again.
She flipped it open, ignoring the scroll of texts waiting for her.
IS HE LEAVING? she typed.
NO. NOT YET, Gwen texted back. HE’S SITTING IN HIS CAR. I THINK HE’S CRYING. ARE YOU OKAY?
Crying? Isobel reread the text. She found the image difficult to conjure.
YEAH. I’M OKAY. TEXT ME WHEN HE LEAVES AND I’LL COME OUT.
K. HE’S JUST SITTING THERE WITH HIS FACE IN HIS HANDS. WHAT HAPPENED???
I’LL TELL YOU IN A SEC. WATCH HIM.
Isobel shut her phone and tucked it into her coat pocket. She straightened and, lifting her arms above her head, pushed against the loose board. She had to hit it twice with the side of her fist to dislodge it from where it had become pressed into place. The action sent not only a cloud of dust particles surging around, but also new shoots of fresh white light. Isobel poked her head through and, shifting one foot forward, angled herself so as to set the board aside.
Her toe brushed against something solid. It fell over with a quiet clank.
Isobel ducked back into the hole again. She looked down at her feet to see a half-melted candle in a tiny glass holder. She tilted her head at it, then glanced over her shoulder.
Beyond the crisscrossing frame of two-by-fours that supported the staircase, Isobel saw a small box-shaped area—a tiny room. A gray sleeping bag lay unrolled and pushed against the left side of the cramped crawlspace, its pillow positioned in the crook of one corner.
Her hands fell from the board. She swiveled away from the underbelly of the stairs toward the pocket of space, which was no bigger than the inside of a small walk-in closet.
Stepping forward, Isobel ducked and threaded her way through the support beams.
Drawings lined the plaster wall right next to the sleeping bag, the pictures etched in a soft and looping hand that Isobel recognized right away. Some of the etchings had even been colored with paint.
An image of a horse seemingly made of smoke reared its head, eyes bugging, hooves pawing at the air. A patch of clouds lit by purple lightning rolled beside a tuft of white lilies, their heads drooping under crowns of raindrops. Black trees marked the center of the wall. Tall and pencil thin, their limbs tangled with one another to create a twisted net dotted with the limp bodies of shriveled leaves. Or were those birds?
Isobel’s eyes followed the sprawl of the mural to the images closest to the sleeping bag’s pillow. There, the likeness of a certain Siamese cat seemed to hover just over the place where the sleeper might lay his head. The painted cat had a bright and curious look on her face, her eyes beaming through the gloom, the perfect piercing hue of ice.
Isobel sank to kneel on a thin burgundy throw rug sprawled across the concrete floor. Nearby, a pack of matches lay on top of a pile of books, next to a brass dish filled with the ashen bodies of burned incense cones, their stale scent barely detectable.
A small wooden box sat beside the books, its sides and lid carved in bas-relief with delicate rose patterns. A short stack of spiral-bound notebooks occupied the opposite corner, several sheets of loose-leaf paper sticking out around the edges. A coffee mug full of pens, pencils, charcoal sticks, and paintbrushes sat sandwiched between the notebooks and a bin full of multicolored paint tubes.
