She shoved past the companions, hitting them with her shoulders, sending them rattling against the Dutch tiles. Nearly there, nearly there. She stubbed her toe and almost cried out for joy. It was a step – the first of the steps up to the garret.
She scrabbled for another match. The pack fell skittering to the floor but she managed to grab one stick, tight in her fist. She struck it on the wall and relit the candle.
The door to the garret was open.
Hiss. The sound made her nauseous. She could not stop – they were coming up close behind her. She stormed up the steps, whipped round and slammed the garret door shut. Just in time. Through the closing gap, she caught sight of a sinister painted smile and wide, vulpine eyes.
Her lungs seared in her chest. It was a labour to breathe with the dust and that dank, below-ground smell tainting the atmosphere. She felt close to fainting, and there was still the long run back to the bedroom. If she could get there. What if they barred her way out? What if they came through the door?
She spun around frantically, looking for the diary. Dust flew up like feathers in a hen-coop. As it cleared, she saw two glowing emerald eyes.
‘Jasper!’
She had never been so pleased to see a creature in all her life. She ran to the table where he lay and put her candle down. Greedily, her fingers burrowed into his fur. The warmth of his skin, the beat of blood behind his ear, was comforting beyond measure. Something else alive – naturally alive. He could not help her, but she would rather face the companions with him than brave them alone.
Mewing, Jasper stood and bowed in a long, luxurious stretch. His claws extended and retracted again. As they went in, they took a nick out of the surface below him. Leather. Worn and faded, but the scent was unmistakable. Jasper leapt elegantly to the floor and revealed what he had been sleeping on: ‘The Diary of Anne Bainbridge’. Elsie seized it and pressed it to her chest. It was still warm.
She should read it here – here, now, while she had the chance. Her fingers flicked through the pages but it was no good. She could not focus, could not read. It was all a jumble to her.
Just then, she felt it on her shoulder: sharp as the lick of a knife. Screaming, she whirled round. In the instant before the candle went out, she saw a wooden mouth grinning at her.
‘No! Jasper!’
His mew sounded at the other side of the room; his claws tapped as he swatted the door open and slunk away. He could see in the dark. She just had to follow him.
Lurching forwards, she gripped the diary in her hand and fumbled back the way she had come, towards the door and the staircase beyond. Or at least, she thought it was the way she had come. She could not see an inch before her nose. Companions must be massing round the door – she sensed them in the air: the force pressing down; malevolent, full of hate.
Her hand knocked against a table – papers slid to the floor. She couldn’t see, she couldn’t breathe . . .
All at once, the floor tilted beneath her. She grabbed at the air and felt a scream boiling out from her lips. Then she fell.
A corner of the diary jolted into her ribcage as she came to an abrupt stop. Her legs burnt, her chest squeezed. What had happened? Groaning, she kicked her feet out. She could move them. They were free, but she was stuck fast.
Understanding slammed into her: the floorboards had opened again. She was caught in the hole Mabel had fallen down.
Hiss, hiss.
Trapped, cornered. And all the while, the companions were coming closer.
She kicked wildly. She had to pull herself up, but one hand was clamped hard to her chest, nursing the diary, while the other waved uselessly in the dark, unable to catch hold of anything solid.
Hiss, hiss. She heard rather than saw them move: the slow, painful scrape of the wooden base against the floor. Pinpricks ran down her neck. Something hard pressed against the back of her head.
‘No, no, no!’
With a final desperate convulsion, she flailed her legs.
There was a long, low creak. Then suddenly she was falling, falling, until her spine smacked into the floor.
She lay paralysed by shock and pain.
At last, with great difficulty, she turned her head and saw the rocking horse sway at her side. The floor had given way. She was in the nursery.
ST JOSEPH’S HOSPITAL
It started with the blast of a whistle: shrill, nasal, ripping her from sleep. The world was hazy as she struggled to her feet.
Sounds echoed: boots slapping against the floor, shouts. Only the shriek of that whistle was distinct until the door banged open. Attendants piled into the room; she did not know which ones. They were difficult to distinguish, all hard-faced and lined with endurance. Their muscular arms seized hers and pulled them behind her back.
‘Mrs Bainbridge.’ Dr Shepherd’s voice. Relief alighted on her for an instant, but he shook his sandy head. ‘Mrs Bainbridge, I did not expect this. What has happened?’
What had happened?
He gestured to her left. ‘What has happened to the desk?’
She writhed in the attendants’ grip, twisting to see. Her desk had imploded. Drawers lay scattered on the floor; some upside down, some with the bottoms punched out. There were scores on the wood. Tooth marks? Yes, tooth marks. But whose?
Dr Shepherd approached it and squatted down, as if he were inspecting a scientific specimen. ‘Remarkable. Quite remarkable. How did it get like this?’
That was the question. Had another patient slipped into her room, while she slept? Surely she would have heard them? It would have to be someone with a key, the ability to lock and unlock doors, to move soundlessly when—
Dear God, no.
Wood; they always came from wood.
A gaunt nurse with cheekbones like blades stepped forward. ‘It’s what she does, doctor. She smashes everything to pieces.’
‘I am not certain that she did,’ muttered Dr Shepherd.
‘What?’
Confusion flickered over his features. She recalled it well: the exact moment she had started to doubt her own senses. ‘For a start, I do not believe Mrs Bainbridge is strong enough to do such damage. And then, look at her arms. There are no tears in her gown, no sign of blood or splinters on her hands.’ He withdrew a pencil and prodded a drawer. ‘I do not comprehend how a person could do this without injuring themselves.’
‘So you’re telling me the desk went and did this all by itself?’
‘No.’ He unbent his legs and bit on the end of his pencil. ‘No, that is, of course, impossible. But did you hear the crash? What was it that prompted the whistle to summon us here?’
‘I blew the whistle,’ the nurse said, raising her chin. ‘I heard an odd noise in here, and she’s usually quiet as death.’
‘A banging noise? She must have been going at it a good while, to get the desk in this state.’
‘No, not a banging. I only heard it for a few minutes. It sounded like – I don’t know. A scrape, like she had some kind of saw.’
He looked straight at Elsie. ‘Would you say,’ he asked, still addressing the nurse, ‘perhaps, that it sounded like a hiss?’
Her knees buckled.
‘Yes, that’s it, doctor. A kind of rasping hiss.’