Page 24 of The Angel Maker

Scritch.

Very slowly, Alan turns his head to look up the stairs. The landing above, where they double back on themselves, is dark and empty. The air is still. But while there shouldn’t be anybody else in the house, he senses a presence up there anyway, somewhere high above him.

Scritch.

Like a fingernail curling against wood.

He glances back. Across the hall, the door to the front room is open, but the angle is such that Edward is out of sight. Alan turns back to the stairs. And after a moment’s hesitation, he starts tentatively up them. Each creaks gently under his weight. When he reaches the first landing, his heart is beating hard and the silence has begun buzzing.

Scritch.

The sound draws him up, all the way to the top floor of the house, and then down the dark corridor that leads to his father’s chambers. The heavyoak door there is closed, but when he reaches out for the iron handle, it turns with a quietcrickingnoise.

The door opens.

He swallows nervously.

Edward has been in here before, but Alan never has. This room is out of bounds; it is one of their father’s strictest rules. Alan blinks as he looks around now. It is a gilded room—far richer than the rest of the house. The carpet is soft and plush, the furniture ornate and expensive. Glinting brass fittings surround an elaborate fireplace in the chimney breast. The walls are bare aside from a single painting, hung so as to overlook the whole room. Alan finds himself staring at it for a few seconds in horror. It shows a tortured saint, arms nailed out, half the skin of his face peeled off and hanging down like a necktie, the ridges of exposed muscle dotted with beads of blood.

Scritch…

He looks ahead.

There is a closed door at the far side of the room. And even though the scratching sound is no louder here than it was in the hall far below, he can tell it is coming from somewhere on the other side.

Beckoning him.

He walks slowly across the room, every footstep farther into this forbidden place like a blasphemy that sets the silence ringing a little louder.

He reaches the door and presses his ear against the old wood—

SCRITCH.

—and then jerks back, his heart fluttering in his chest like a bird.

There is something on the other side of the door. He takes a few seconds to calm himself and then reaches out and turns the metal ring.

Pulls the door open toward him.

A narrow stone corridor. There is very little light, but he can just make out what seems to be a large room a short distance ahead. And as he stares into the darkness there, he has the impression that something is looking back at him. A shadow within a shadow.

He whispers.

“Is that someone there?”

But then he senses a different presence, this time behind him.

“What are you doing?”

He turns quickly to see Edward has followed him upstairs.

His brother is standing on the far side of the room, his eyes filled with rage and his face contorted with hatred and disbelief. Alan can tell Edward would kill him for this disobedience right now if he could.

But Edward always does what he is told—always follows their father’s instructions to the letter—and he has remained beyond the threshold to the chamber. His fists are opening and closing powerlessly by his sides.

“Get back out here now.”

Alan stares at him like a rabbit caught in headlights. Even if it means a beating—or worse—the instinct to obey the order is strong. It is all he has ever done in the past. Except that everything has changed now, hasn’t it? An end is approaching. A chance for things to be different. And he realizesthatfeeling is much stronger than the urge to follow the order he has been given.

---