She wasn’t going to look in the direction of the effigy. She wasn’t going to think about its accruement of spoons and keys and tiny metal talismans, and how the clinking noise sounded so horribly like something brushing past them to set them jangling.

Instead, she crossed to the front door, locked it, and picked up the axe she’d left nearby. Then she faced the passage that led to the stairs. She knew the path to her room. It wasn’t far. Only a minute away, less if she ran.

Don’t run. Don’t let them know you’re scared.

Her throat ached as she swallowed. Her legs were too heavy, but Margot forced them to move, dragging her along the hallway, toward the steps she could barely see. The axe was uncomfortably heavy. She’d thought it would be reassuring, but the cold metal pressed against her skin in a way that made her shiver.

She waited until she was well past the living room’s archway before pressing the flashlight button on her phone.

The stairs emerged from the darkness, like landmarks in a foggy night. They seemed to lead higher than she remembered them. Margot climbed. The patchy runner crinkled beneath her shoes.

A bell, hidden somewhere in a room above, chimed once. Margot froze, eyes directed upward, but the echoes faded without repeating.

Just the wind.

She wanted to believe that.

Get to your room. Close the door and don’t open it again until morning.

She climbed faster. Her cell phone’s light flashed across each step ahead, dizzyingly bright on close-by surfaces and paltry on everything farther away. She didn’t turn back or shine the light behind herself. Not even when she felt haunted by the sensation that there was something just behind her, something with pinprick-light eyes and cold skin.

Stop it. Stop thinking like that—stop imagining things—

A floorboard several steps behind Margot creaked, and she broke into a full sprint, taking the stairs two at a time, not stopping until she was on the landing and could put her back to a wall.

Her light flashed over the stairwell. It was empty.

She didn’t linger but pushed off the wall, her steps hurried, her breathing shallow. Her door was easy to find; she’d left it open that morning. She shoved into it and felt for the light. The switch turned but no power came on.

Margot tried to repress the fear that was creeping up through her, but it was like a living thing, oozing out of her lungs and crawling into her throat, where it choked even the faintest attempts at noise.

The bulb must have blown. Or maybe the circuit breaker tripped; that would explain why the other lights were turned off too.