bang in the stillness. Somewhere in the house a door slammed causing Ava to flinch involuntarily and turn to Killian.
‘Don’t let anything Hope said spook you,’ he shook his head in amusement. ‘Some of the windows upstairs are either broken or missing panes, so as soon as we opened the front entrance it created a draft.’
Ava nodded, it made sense. She lifted the beam of her flashlight a little higher and the light caught on the dust motes spinning in the air, displaced by their sudden intrusion. Directly above the staircase seemed to be a second-floor balcony draped with huge curtains of delicate spider webs which fluttered slightly, but it was still too dark to see beyond that.
‘We’ll be able to get a better sense of the place once all the boarded windows on the ground level are uncovered,’ Killian told her as she followed him to the left through a doorway and into what looked like a library. It was hard to tell; it was so dark she could only catch glimpses of her surroundings under the beams from their flashlights.
She lost sight of Killian after a moment, though she could hear him moving around close to her. She let her beam of light sweep across the far wall revealing rows of bookcases. The glass doors hung open or simply hung off their hinges as if a small tornado had blown through the place, and the floor was littered with the carcasses of splayed books, pages torn, spines broken. It would all have to go of course, Ava mused to herself. Even the books still on the shelves were probably infested with silverfish.
The drapes at the window had all but rotted away, nothing more than moth eaten shrouds hanging limply from either side of the boarded window. Ava moved further into the room, the ground uneven from the debris, some of which seemed to crunch under her feet. She lifted her flashlight to the ceiling and saw large chunks of plaster had crumbled away revealing thin strips of lath.
Something brushed against her leg and she dipped her beam of light down, but she couldn’t see anything. She took another small tentative step forward and heard the unmistakable grind of cracking glass under her sneaker. She glanced down again, and this time found a small framed photograph lying on the floor.
Reaching down she grasped the edge of the frame and lifted it, tilting it slightly to allow the shards of loose broken glass to fall to the dusty floor. Once she was sure she wouldn’t cut her fingers on the glass she lifted the flashlight and shone it on the picture.
In it was a rather austere looking woman perched on a chair, her back so straight it looked as if it were bolted in place. Her waist was tiny thanks to a tightly laced corset beneath her dress which had large puffy sleeves. Beside her with his hand chastely resting on her shoulder, stood a tall, smartly dressed man, with neatly parted hair, a curved moustache and a pocket watch on a chain, tucked into his waistcoat. The other side of the woman was a small boy of maybe six years. He too had neatly parted hair, a stiff white collar and short pants which stopped just above his knees.
She felt Killian move closer, felt the solid presence of his body standing just behind her. The tiny hairs on the back of her neck and her arms rose, as if she were suddenly surrounded by static electricity, which prickled long her skin and buzzed in her ears. Somewhere in the room she heard a weird sound, not quite the tick of a clock, more like a clicking, whirring mechanism.
‘Do you hear that?’ she asked Killian as he stood silently behind her… Killian? She repeated when he didn’t answer.
‘Ava?’ Killian called out, the beam of his own flashlight hovering somewhere outside the entrance to the room.
She spun around, her flashlight flickering across the darkened room, her heart beating a little faster. That was strange, she could’ve sworn he’d been standing behind her.
‘I’m coming,’ she replied quickly as she turned and headed out. She didn’t notice as one of the glass fronted doors creaked and swung inward twenty degrees, revealing a tall shadow hovering behind her.
‘Killian?’ Ava stepped back into the foyer still holding the picture.
‘Over here,’ his muffled voice replied. ‘Careful there’s a small step down into the room.’
She crossed over toward the other side of the wide staircase. Following his