I find a doorway and make my way to the voice. There’s a movement in the shadows. My heart hammers and my ears ring as my gut liquefies and I think I’m going to shit myself. I clench, sweat covering my skin, half-glad of the distraction from the moving thing in front of me. It shifts again and I make out a hand in the gloom, then an arm that’s attached to . . . a semi-familiar person. I grab onto something—a doorway?—and breathe, the sweat drying to cold. I peer more closely into the dark.

The old goat’s trapped under something. A bookshelf? There’s hardly any daylight left, and the piles of stuff in front of the window aren’t letting in much of what there is. I can’t see the walls. I wouldn’t even know where to start to look for a light switch.

“Are you okay?” My voice is close to steady.

“I’m stuck.”

I make my way over to her. Put my shaking hands under the uppermost corner of the bookshelf and lift. It’s so heavy I can’t shift it. She’s lucky there’s so much stuff on the floor or it would’ve crushed her. As it is, she’s probably just made a goat-shaped dent. I swallow a giggle at that and my hands stop trembling.

She’s lying there in the dark, just watching me. I crouch in the stinking mess and try to think.

Okay. What about a tunnel? I leave a pile of what might be newspapers under one end of the bookcase and start to shovel stuff out from under the other side. She gets what I’m doing and tries to wiggle her way out. It takes some time. I’m sweating again when she finally pulls her whole body out.

She sits on the floor in front of me, panting. All that deep breathing . . . I guess she’s used to the smell.

“Thank you.”

I shrug, relieved to have someone next to me even if it’s her.

“Let me get you a drink and something to eat.” She pushes to her feet and stumbles off toward the kitchen like nothing unusual’s happened and this is just a normal old house, not one stuffed to the gills with—I look around. Books, magazines, bottles, clothes; I can see a milk crate full of corks, a plastic tub of dolls—everything.

I pick my way after her, stepping over what I hope’s a matted old toy and around jars with liquid in them. I don’t look too close.

The kitchen is . . . well, if it wasn’t the same layout as our house, I don’t think I’d know it was a kitchen. She fusses around and pulls an old tin from somewhere.

“Aha. Here. Have a biscuit.”

I know enough about germs to know that’s a bad idea.