She stood up. Head throbbing. Scarface was waiting for her outside the barn. Between the two of them they’d managed to get him outside into the fresh air and sunlight – half walking, half crawling – Ella struggling to hold him up and pull him along. She wondered now how on earth they were going to get the two of them and this heavy old rucksack away from the farm and to the woods where Scarface’s hideout was.

Best not to think about that. Best to just keep going.

She looked up the staircase. The humming of the flies filled the house. Filled her head. She could just turn now and go out of the front door. Leave the house behind.

Don’t look in any other rooms …

Why not? What was in here? Why did he always come here after they’d been out hunting and never let her in? What was his secret? And he must have thousands. Like being able to speak. That was a big one. She really knew nothing about him.

Before Ella knew what she was doing she was climbing the stairs, following her torch beam like a moth as it slid up the mouldy stair carpet.

The house smelt worse upstairs, and it wasn’t just the smell of damp. There was something else. The charred, sour, smoky smell from the fire. The walls up here were black. Light came in through the broken roof and she looked up at a cold grey sky. There was a closed and charred bedroom door right in front of her. Why was she here? This was stupid. When someone tells you not to open a door, you don’t open it, do you?

All you can think about, though, is what might be on the other side. And this would probably be her only chance to find out.

She got her torch ready, pointing straight ahead, and pushed the door open. At first she couldn’t work out what she was seeing.

And then she understood.

Chapter 17

17

The bedroom was full of heads. A great mound of them, carefully stacked. The ones at the bottom were not much more than skulls, with the flesh dried up and the skin stretched and brown, bones and teeth showing through. But, as each layer piled up towards the ceiling, the heads got fresher and fresher. Some of the ones on the top layer Ella recognized as grown-ups they’d hunted together. Not that any dead grown-up ever really looked fresh – they were rotten and eaten away even before they died.

There was a thick covering of flies crawling over the mound, and maggots everywhere, wriggling in the eye sockets and spilling out of open mouths. They were shiny and pale. Munching away. Plus, there was something else. That wormy grey stuff she’d seen dripping from Scarface’s bag. It oozed here and there from the heads on the top row, trickling down to the skulls below.