voice drawled. ‘Go right. It’s the third door along.’
Senka stopped in front of the door and listened. What if the Prince was there already? Then he’d be in really hot water.
But no, it was quiet inside.
He knocked, gently at first, then with his fist.
Still no sound.
Maybe they’d gone out. But no – when he looked he could see light coming out from under the door, very faint.
He pushed the door, and it opened.
A rough table and on it a candle-end in a clay bowl, with splints of wood lying beside it. That was about all he could see at first.
‘Hello?’ Senka called, and took off his cap.
No one answered. But he had to keep the banter brief – he didn’t want the Prince to catch him here.
Senka lit one of the splinters and held it above his head. What was up with these Siniukhins, then? Why were they so quiet?
There was a woman lying on a bench by the wall, sleeping. And on the floor under the bench there was a kid – still a baby, only three, or maybe even two.
The woman was lying on her back, and she’d covered her eyes with something black. Uncle Zot’s wife used to put cotton wool soaked in sage tea on her eyes at night, so she wouldn’t get wrinkles. Women were fools, everyone knew that. They looked horrifying like that, as if they had holes in their faces, not eyes.
‘Hey, Auntie, get up! This is the no time for dozing,’ Senka said, approaching her. ‘Where’s the man of the house? I’ve got something to—’
He gagged. It wasn’t cotton wool on the woman’s eyes, it was mush. It had clotted in the hollows of her sockets and some had overflowed down her temple towards her ear. And it wasn’t black, no, it was red. And Mrs Siniukhin’s neck was all wet and shiny too.
Senka fluttered his peepers for a bit before he caught on: someone had slit the woman’s throat and gouged her eyes out – that was it.
He tried to scream, but all that came out was: ‘Hic!’
Then he squatted down on his haunches to take a look at the kid. He was dead too, and where his eyes should be there were two dark holes, only little ones – he wasn’t too big himself.
‘Hic,’ Senka went. ‘Hic, hic, hic.’
And he kept on hiccuping, he just couldn’t stop.
Senka backed away from that horrible bench, stumbled over something soft and almost fell.
When he held the light down, he saw a young lad, about twelve, lying there. He had no eyes either, they’d been gouged out too.
‘Blimey!’ Senka finally managed to say. ‘That’s awful!’
He was all set to dash back to the door, but suddenly he heard a voice coming from a dark corner.
‘Mitya,’ the voice called, all low and pitiful. ‘Has he gone? Did he hurt your mother? Eh? I can’t hear . . . Look what he did to me, the animal. . . Come here, come . . .’
There was a chintz curtain hanging across the corner. Should he run for it or should he go over there?
He went over. Pulled the curtain back.
He saw a wooden bed. There was a man on it, feeling his chest –it was soaked in blood. And he had no eyes, just like the others. This had to be the pen-pusher, Siniukhin.
Senka tried to explain that Mitya, and his mum, and the little kid, had all been slaughtered, but all he did was hiccup.
‘Shut up and listen,’ said Siniukhin, licking his lips. He looked like he was smiling, and Senka turned away, so as not to see that no-eyed smile. ‘Listen now, my strength’s almost gone. I’m on my way out, Mitya. But never mind, that’s all right. I lived a bad life, a sinful life, but at least I can die like a man. Maybe that will earn me forgiveness . . . I didn’t tell him, you know! He ripped my chest open with that knife of his, but I bore it all . . . I pretended to be dead, but I’m still alive!’ The pen-pusher laughed, and something gurgled in his throat. ‘Listen, son, remember . . . That secret place I told you about, this is how you get there: you know the underground hall with the vaulting and the brick pillars? You know it, of course you do . . . Well, in there, behind the last pillar on the right, right in the very corner, you can