She found her phone several feet away. It lit up at her touch. A crack ran along one corner of the screen, but after the distance it fell, she was just grateful that it still worked. She opened the recent tab. Kant’s number was listed there, from when she’d called him after the bells rang. She pressed it.

The phone went straight to voice mail. Kant hadn’t recorded a message; a digital woman’s voice calmly informed Margot that the recipient was unavailable, but she could leave a message at the tone.

She ended the call before the beep. Kant would still be visiting his sister. He said he’d be back late that night.

Margot slumped her back against the wall as she scrolled through her other contacts. She hadn’t thought to get numbers for anyone else on the estate, and except for Kant, no one in her phone lived within twenty hours of her.

She’d had some half-formed idea of calling the winery’s manager and asking if she could stay in the staff’s accommodation that night. Or anywhere, really, as long as it was away from the house and the thing inside of it.

That was still an option. She could walk to the staff buildings and knock on doors until someone answered. She glanced toward the only visible window. Night had fully set in. She’d be walking by her phone’s light, and Witchety had told her not to stray too far from home after dusk.

How many of Witchety’s words do we take as gospel? Does she know what’s actually happening here, or is she just guessing?

Margot wrapped her arms around herself to ward against the cold and turned toward the stairs. Her foot hit something small. The book. She’d dropped it through the hatch first, and it now lay on the floor, its leather cover torn and threads from its binding hanging loose.

She picked it up and carried it carefully, making sure not to damage it any more than she already had.

Once downstairs, the house’s layout started to feel more familiar again. She switched on lights as she found them and worked her way to the kitchen. The book went onto the little table, then she turned the sink’s water to hot and leaned over the counter as she waited for it to heat.

Her fingers still held a smear from the stain, but it had now darkened into a heavy brown. It truly did look like blood. If she’d had more emotional fortitude, she would have examined it more closely, smelling or prodding at it, but her curiosity had been almost entirely drowned under revulsion. She poured liquid soap onto her hands and plunged them under the water, scrubbing and scrubbing again until the water had run clear for a solid five minutes and her fingers began to sting from the heat.