He wishes for such a betrayal now. He would laugh with relief if she came wandering up, uninjured, whistling a song, asking what was the matter, clueless to their worry. But this time the game isn’t a game. This time, a building really has swallowed her up.
Reed grips two revolvers. He snaps off their safeties and starts up the first step. The wood cries out. A swirl of dust rises around his boot.
Lewis tells him to stop. He reaches into his duster. From a pocket he removes the owl, holding it out before him, cradling it in his long, thin hand. “We need to know what we’re walking into.” He pets it and its bronze feathers shimmer. The gears inside it whir and click. When he sends it off into the darkness, it flies noisily, its wings creaking.
At first they can hear it churning inside, moving up and down the stairs, looping through the rooms, occasionally thudding against a wall. There follows a long silence. They cock their heads to hear it better. Their eyes, trained on the black doorway, come unstuck, and they study each other with the questions no one need utter because no one can answer—Where is it? What should we do?
They don’t realize they’re holding their breath—not until they hear another thud, followed by a ticking and grinding—and all their chests deflate at once. They can see the owl. Deep in the house, it is a glimmering hint, like a candle cupped in a hand, and then it grows brighter as it wings toward them and bursts into the sunlight.
Lewis holds out an arm and it comes to a creaking stop and roosts there. He walks to the shaded side of the house. The others follow. Daylight makes the projection difficult to see. So does the cracked and warped siding. They squint their eyes and edge closer to make out the wobbling blur of the house. The owl circles rooms and bobbles down halls and nearly knocks into a light fixture dangling from the ceiling by a cord. Pictures have fallen from the walls. A chair lies on its side. The springs have coiled through couch cushions. But there are no birds roosting in the closets, no raccoons beneath the beds. Anything with a pulse knows better.
Then the owl bends around the corner and finds the basement, a dark door leading to a dark place. They can see only dimly. The stairs long ago collapsed like a rotten accordion. The plaster walls are crosshatched with claw marks. It is nearly impossible to see, given the speed and bob of the owl’s flight, but the floor is a nest of bones. Knobbed vertebrae. Basketed ribs. Skulls cavitied by black sockets. Among them, what appear to be fresher acquisitions, the empty sack of an opossum, two deer with bloodied necks, and Clark. At first she is a mere flash in the darkness, but the owl circles back to focus on her, a curl of a body, her face half-hidden by her hair. Yes, it is her.
Reed says, “How do we know if she’s even alive?”
“We don’t,” Lewis says, but he feels it. A pull.
It is then that the owl swoops upward and they see the ceiling from which the bats dangle. Their eyes are closed, their bodies hanging tightly together like a cluster of stalactites. How many of them, it is impossible to tell, because the projection is already past them, heading out of the basement, toward the hallway, the light at the end of it where Lewis waits with his arm extended.
The air is dim and hot. The smell, puffing from the basement, tangy and fertile like marrow spooned from a split bone. A bare patch has spread across the floor here, where the hardwood drops off into the darkness, a rough circle a few feet across. He touches the splinters of it and imagines claws scraped across it night after night. A landing pad for them as they climb out and drop into their den. Lewis opens his silver tin and takes a dose of white powder up his nose and feels a little braver for it.
The house creaks in the heat. Flies buzz in and out of the doorway. Otherwise, there is no sound. They do not speak, not even to whisper, when they tie one end of the rope to a heat register and the other to a lantern with a low wick. This they drop into the darkness.
Gawea and the doctor will remain above, their weapons ready, while the rest of them descend. Reed goes first. He tries to slide off the ledge as quietly as he can, but he carries two holstered revolvers and they clunk and scrape the wood. Then York bellies into the darkness. Lewis is last. The doctor gives him an encouraging squeeze on the shoulder and he lays his hand over hers. “You bring her back to us,” she says, and he says, “I will.”
Then he scoots to the edge and takes the rope and allows his weight to pull him down. He dangles there a moment, and when a fly lands on his face, he slaps himself in his hurry to brush it away—and loses his grip.
It is fifteen feet to the floor, the surface of it strewn with the remains of the staircase. And guano. And bones. They lie scattered in piles still webbed together by ligature and papery skin. Lewis falls into the horrible mush. He is muddied with guano and cut along his hip. But somehow the bats remain unfazed by the noise of his descent.
He stands and wipes himself off as best as he can. Reed told them beforehand not to look at the lantern, and yet that’s exactly what Lewis does, his eyes drawn to the only light in the room. He immediately turns away, blinking hard, trying to restore his eyes.