House of Bones by Graham Masterton Page B

wide-eyed. “No … I didn’t hear anything.”
    John listened for a moment longer and then continued upstairs. They reached the landing and looked around. All of the bedroom doors were closed, and there was the dead, warm and airless smell of a closed-up house in summer.
    John opened the first door on the right. It swung back silently and swiftly, almost as if somebody were opening it from the inside. The room was in semi-darkness because the curtains were drawn. It was wallpapered with florid pink flowers. He could see the end of a bed covered in a brown candlewick bedspread, and an upright wooden chair. “Nothing,” he said, and he was just about to close the door again when Lucy pointed and whispered, “
Look
.”
    â€œWhat?” he said. “I can’t see anything.”
    â€œDown by the bedside table.
There
.”
    John frowned into the gloom and then he saw what Lucy was pointing at. At first he had thoughtit was just another flower on the wallpaper, but as his eyes focused he saw what it really was.
    A human skull, half-buried in the wall, its eye-sockets revealing nothing but wallpaper, its mouth stretched wide as if it were screaming at them.

11
    John pushed the door open a little wider and stepped into the room. He bent down a respectful distance from the skull and peered at it intently. “That’s horrible. It’s not very big, is it? It must be a woman or a child.”
    â€œThis looks like a child’s bedroom, doesn’t it?” said Lucy. “A little girl’s probably. Oh God, do you think that could be
her
?”
    â€œThis is the proof we’ve been looking for,” said John. “I bet all of the properties on Mr Vane’s special list are the same. People come to live in them and the houses suck them in.”
    â€œYes, but who would want to come and live here? Not with something like
this
in the wall.”
    John felt very grim. “Don’t worry,” he told her.“I expect Mr Vane gives his properties the onceover before he shows anybody around. But I wonder why this skull is sticking out like this?”
    Lucy said, “That poor little girl. I hope she didn’t suffer.”
    John thought of Liam’s last desperate appeal for help as he was sucked into the wall, but said nothing.
    Lucy knelt down close to the skull. Then she suddenly said, “Look at this. Look what she’s got round her neck.”
    John came closer. Now he could see that looped around the base of the skull was a small silver crucifix on a silver chain. The wall had taken her in as far as that but no further.
    They heard more noises. A creak, and then a sound like a door being very carefully closed. “We’d better go now,” said Lucy. “We’ve got to think what we’re going to do next.”
    â€œCall the police, of course, as soon as we can. But let’s make sure that we stay around here until they come. We don’t want the evidence destroyed this time.”
    They left the bedroom. Lucy locked the door and dropped the key into John’s coat pocket.
    They reached the top of the stairs and were just starting to go down them when John heard the dragging noise again. He stopped, and gripped Lucy’s shoulder. “There – you must have heard it that time.”
    â€œI don’t know. It sounded like—”
    She stopped, with her mouth open. Around the corner in the corridor appeared the tall, dark figure with its pale ivory face. But even though it still had the same frightening calmness, it was no longer the lifeless wooden statue that John had found on the bed. It moved towards them gracefully and swiftly, almost
gliding
rather than walking, its eyes unblinking, its face handsome and serene. As it moved, it was accompanied by the soft dragging noise that they had heard before: its cloak-hem, sweeping the floor.
    For a long, long second, John didn’t know how to move his arms or