It was hard work with the clumsy makeshift rope and the limitations of his movement, but he found he could cut himself some slack with his left hand, rebalance, then allow the rope to feed through his other hand and run a decent rhythm. It was slow going, but the would-be rope was holding.

‘You okay?’

‘Yes, go faster!’ Meggy shouted back.

‘Got to take it steady,’ he said. ‘Be patient. How high above the floor do you think you are?’

‘I don’t know … maybe, like, three of me. It doesn’t make any difference anyway, just let the sheet thingy out. Her arm looks all funny, and her breathing’s weird, like she’s sucking through a straw.’

‘Shit,’ Xavier muttered under his breath.

He tried to let out another half a foot of sheet and heard a ripping.

‘Meggy, look up. Can you see where the sheet is going through the cavity?’

‘Too dark,’ she said.

The tiny scream was a knife in his heart. The sheet suddenly gave a few inches then stopped dramatically. He felt the movement of Meggy swinging in mid-air at the end of the length of material and grabbed frantically at the fabric that was still intact in his grasp.

‘Stay still!’ he ordered. ‘It must be snagged somewhere on the rafter.’

‘Like I’ve got a choice,’ the girl muttered. ‘Oh, gross, the ceiling is covered in brown stains and it stinks in here.’

‘Don’t worry about that now,’ Xavier told her, tying off the end he’d been holding around his waist, hoping the chair was heavy enough to balance the girl’s weight, then using his hands to pull himself across the floor to the cavity. He knew perfectly well what the stains on the ceiling were. Their cause was the same as the smell Meggy was complaining about. Decomposing bodies leaked fluid, and the plasterboard would have soaked it up like a sponge.

At the opening, he lowered himself to lie on his chest, jamming one arm across the other side to hold on tight, then leaning in to unhook the sheet.

Meggy’s problem was apparent straight away. A careless carpenter sometime in the previous hundred years had been sloppy with a nail, which had been left sticking from a section of wooden beam. The sheet’s tension had helped the nail to pierce the weave of the cotton, and the puncture had become a rip. Now, with every inch that he allowed Meggy to drop, the material was splitting further, and that meant it was weakening.

‘Holy shit,’ Meggy said.

‘It’s okay. I’m going to reach in and unhook the sheet, just—’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Not that. Look at the walls.’

He glanced down into the room. In spite of the limited view and the lack of natural light, he could see enough to catch the psychedelic patterning of the walls.

‘What the hell is that? Wallpaper?’