But he was sure he had seen a figure, and he was equally sure it could not have gone back downstairs without passing him. It must still be somewhere here, perhaps hiding fearfully from the thunder, or even from Michael himself. Nell’s small daughter, Beth, hated thunderstorms, and always shut herself into a narrow storeroom at the back of the shop.
He looked into the partially built flats, finding nothing, and began to have the feeling of having fallen into the kind of nightmare where the dreamer embarks on a panic-stricken chase for something he never reaches. Was there anywhere else he ought to check? Yes, a further flight of stairs at the end of this landing, small, half-hidden, dusty-looking. Attic floor? It seemed to be where the thudding was coming from.
The movement came again, no more than a blurred outline, but more substantial than the shadows that clustered there. It was small enough to be a child, but there was something about it that was not entirely childlike. Michael hesitated, then went up the stairs, which swayed slightly, and creaked like the crack of doom. They had not done so when the small figure went up them.
The attic floor was dim and warm and there were huge pools of shadows and a thick smell of dirt. Michael had the sensation of the immense old roof pressing down on him.
Massive beams spanned the open space overhead; stringy cobwebs dripped from them, and thick swathes of roofing felt hung down in tatters. Shreds of light trickled through in those places. It was to be hoped that Jack Hurst and his men would make the roof sound before the flats were actually sold.
Items of discarded household junk lay around – old bits of broken furniture including several dismantled iron bed-frames. They were small beds – children’s beds?
The attic looked as if it had once been split into two or three separate rooms; there were vague outlines of door posts and of a couple of piles of rubble that might be a collapsed wall. At the far end a door looked as if it opened on to an inner room that must be situated on the corner of the house, almost under the eaves. Servants’ rooms, thought Michael. Cramped and airless. Cold in winter and stiflingly hot in summer. There was an unhappy feel to the place, but there was no sign of the small figure, and the strange hammering had stopped. He would go back downstairs and find one of the workmen to ask if a child was known to be in the house.
But to make sure there was no one here, he went over to the door in the corner and tried the handle. It resisted, but the second time he tried, a soft voice from the other side of the door – a voice that was within inches of him – said, ‘Are you there?’
Michael leapt back from the door, as if it had burned him, then took a deep breath and called out, as he had done earlier: ‘Hello? Is someone there? Are you trapped?’ His voice sounded strange in the enclosed space. ‘Is someone there?’ he said again, a little louder.
The lightning flickered again, showing up the worn joists and the crumbling floorboards, and thunder growled again. Then silence and blackness closed down once more. Michael, his vision still fuzzy, was momentarily dazzled by the flickers of light. But he waited, and after a moment the voice came again.
‘Children, are you here? I shall find you, you know …’
Prickles of unease tinged with fear scraped across Michael’s skin, but he tried the handle again, this time pushing harder. It protested and creaked like the crack of doom, then it opened.