“When I’m away, the woman who cleans the place brings her son to stay,” he said. “He’s about the same age as you, I’d say, but he’s got a bit more meat on his bones. I don’t reckon he’ll miss a set of pajamas, do you?” The man’s voice was warm and soft, unconcerned. The boy thought of how he had smiled at him in the grass, smiled down at the ruined body of his mother. “You can eat the food, lad. It’s safe.”

Was it safe? The boy wasn’t sure. Hesitantly, he curled his hand around the glass of milk but didn’t pick it up. Food was a tease, a punishment, a myth.

“How did you get those scars on your neck, Michael? The marks around your wrists.”

The boy looked up. The man was still smiling, but the light from the big windows collected in his false eye, turning it into a flat piece of opaque glass. There was a clatter of claws against polished wood, and he knew that the big black dog was behind him again.

“There’s always a family everyone whispers about, in every town,” continued the man. He sounded faintly amused. “I know that better than most. A family that keeps its secrets, keeps to itself. Rumors and tales grow from those families, like ivy on a house, and most of the time the stories are just nasty gossip, a load of vicious nonsense from old women with too much time on their hands. And then, sometimes, the stories are true, aye, Michael? Something else I know a little about.” He took a slow breath in through his nostrils. “You’re safe now, lad.”

“I can’t stay here.” It was the first complete sentence he’d said in months, and it felt strange in his mouth, alien. “They’ll come for me.” He didn’t say who.

The man’s smile widened.

“Just do as I say, lad.”

“They’ll come.”

It was three whole days before they came.

In that time, Michael had had four more baths—the smell of the prison cupboard seemed to hang around him—and he had slept in an old-fashioned room with big windows, filled with a blank, white autumnal sky. At night he kept the light on and slipped out of bed repeatedly to check that the door hadn’t been locked. He couldn’t keep it open, because he could see a sliver of stairs beyond it. During the day he had been allowed to wander the house, feet moving silently out of habit, and he quickly realized that the man was alone here, apart from the dog, and that the rooms seemed endless. Some of them were locked, which gave him a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach, but Michael put his back to those doors and headed elsewhere. Sometimes, he would catch the big black dog watching him, an indistinct shape at the top of stairs or across the landing, and he would beckon to it, but the dog did nothing but grin wetly at him.