Ahead, two sets of her shoe marks overlapped: one from when she’d followed the stain and the other, she believed, from when she’d entered the attic. But a third set existed. They showed bare soles, not shoeprints, overlapping her own careful steps.

Fear rose in Margot like a wave. The light flickered as she raised it to follow this new set of prints.

No. No. It’s after dark. You need to get out.

She ran her tongue across her teeth and lurched forward, following her own footsteps back toward the open hatch.

Each of her steps sang like a drum on the aged, creaking floor. And yet, the sound wasn’t isolated.

It’s an echo. She thought it so fiercely, so determinedly, that she almost believed it. Each of her steps was dogged by another sound: a second pair of feet only a few paces behind her.

Her heart was in her throat, her skin damp with cold perspiration. Ahead, the edge of the trapdoor emerged from the gloom. She aimed for it, eyes fixed straight ahead, one horrible thought running on repeat through her mind.

Can’t stop. If I stop, they’ll catch me.

The echoing, beating footsteps were gaining. She was at the door. Margot dropped into a slide, letting her legs scrape through the opening and into the level below. She threw the book down, afraid for what the harsh impact would do to its delicate binding but even more afraid of what would happen if she didn’t have both her hands, and swung around.

Her light grazed over empty air.

Margot, half hanging through the opening, her weight supported on her torso and arms, struggled to breathe. She flicked the phone’s light to either side, squinting into the dark, but all she managed to pick up were loosely drifting flecks of dust.

I was so sure… I thought someone was behind me…

She let her head slump, shaking half from the adrenaline and half from stifled, panicked laughter.

She’d done the very thing she’d been trying to avoid: she’d let the attic, and the superstitious fears, get in her head.

The space was empty after all. Empty except for a damp stain she couldn’t explain and a book that would probably turn out to be an old repair manual.

Margot slowly lowered herself farther through the opening, legs stretched and searching for purchase, until she touched the top of the stepladder. She placed the phone on the wood beside her shoulder to free up both arms, then reached behind herself and hauled on the open hatch.

It was heavy, and not designed to be shut from that angle, but Margot was not willing to climb back into the attic proper. On her third attempt it swung up and over, and Margot braced it above her head as she reached back to pick up her mobile.