Tom has been gone two days. The house is quiet and still, and Maren has restored a sense of order to the place. Aurelia settles the girls into their beds, but the process takes longer than it does back home: both Coco and especially Gaia are unsettled by the change in their environment. Gaia doesn’t like the house, well-stocked playroom notwithstanding. “It’s scary, Mumma,” she says, turning to look at the window, where a full moon is silhouetting the huge willow tree that sits right next to the house. By day, the tree is beautiful, a kind of tree-waterfall hybrid, but at night the leaves that drape from its branches resemble tentacles, or witchy fingers. She rises from the bed and tugs the curtains closer to block out the view.
“There,” she tells Gaia. “Nothing to be afraid of. See?”
She sits beside Gaia and strokes her forehead to calm her, but just then Aurelia stiffens.
“What’s wrong, Mumma?” Gaia murmurs when she feels her mother straighten, primed to get up.
Aurelia shushes her. Her instincts home in on the source of the sound. A low human voice, or perhaps the low growl of an animal. A bear, perhaps. She knows the sound came from the basement. This makes no sense. How could she possibly hear such a low sound from two levels down? And yet she did.
All the hairs on Aurelia’s arms stand on end.
“Stay here,” Aurelia whispers to her, rising to inspect the noise.
“Where are you going, Mumma?” Gaia says, swinging her legs over the side to follow her.
“Stay here,” Aurelia says again, in a voice that fixes Gaia to the bed. Seeing Gaia’s face, she softens. “You stay in bed, sweetheart, OK?”
“But why . . . ?”
She sighs. “Look, I think I heard a noise downstairs. I’m just going to check it out, OK?” She forces a smile, but Gaia recognizes that strained, false look immediately and her worry doubles in size. She wiggles back down under the covers and tries hard not to cry.
Aurelia heads downstairs. No sign of Maren anywhere. She likes to take a walk once a day. She must be out. She pats the pocket of her cardigan to ensure her mobile phone is at hand. Before she reaches the bottom stair she takes out the phone to check she’s got a signal—yes—then freezes as she hears the sound again.
Aurelia.
A voice. It said her name.
It came from the basement.
Quickly she taps her phone and calls Tom. He can’t do anything from where he is, at least not physically, but if it’s an intruder she wants him to know about it. No answer. Damn him. He never answers his phone when there’s a genuine emergency—she thinks back ruefully to when she was in labor with Coco—but mysteriously manages to answer clients, cold callers, and wrong numbers on the first ring.
She wraps her fingers around the handle of the basement door. Her heart is pounding furiously. Upstairs she can hear the drumming of little feet along creaking floorboards. Gaia, terrified for her mother and straining to listen out for her.
She opens the door as quietly as she can. A blast of cold, damp air. She holds her breath and leans into the stillness. No sound, yet her instincts are ringing like bells, telling her that someone—or something—is down there. And they are requesting her presence. She places a foot on the first stair. The walls are raw stone, the darkness impenetrable.
She tries Tom’s number again, and while it rings she calls out, “Hello?”
Something shifts. She senses it immediately—she’s been heard. Whoever is down there heard her. She thinks back to the figure she saw in the doorway of their bedroom earlier in the week. A woman. It could have been a man. She’s not sure. But she saw someone.
The silence changes quality, and the knowledge of it sends a shiver all over her body.
“Hello? Aurelia, you OK?”
Tom’s on the line. She presses the phone to her ear. “I’m in the basement,” she says in a low voice.
“Why are you in the basement?”
“I’m just at the door. I think someone’s down here.”
“Someone?”
“I heard . . . noises.”
“Shut the basement door right now and go back inside the house. I’m calling the police.”
She draws a breath. “Tom, the police are miles away. By the time they get here, Basecamp will be built and decorated.”
She holds the phone away from her ear and listens hard to the darkness. Her instincts tell her that whatever was down there