...humanity walks ever on a thin crust over terrific abysses. -- Arnold Bennett, The Old Wives' Tale

If Dani's life had taught her anything, it was that mysterious, out-of-nowhere recollections of trivial facts were rarely coincidences. God or Fate or whatever was in control of the universe had a terrible sense of humour and even worse timing. She hadn't thought of Beechview House for years. She couldn't remember ever being through its gates. Yet now she had been dragged into a mystery involving it.

There were far too many mysteries lately. First Courtney's murder while holding Dani's phone number. Then the unknown someone who had directed Claire to Dani. Now Beechview House and its supposed occupant.

Really. Was it too much to expect some peace and quiet once in a while?

~~~~

Finding an excuse to travel to Enniskillen without the children was as hard as Dani feared. She had only to mention the possibility of going there alone, and was immediately almost deafened by a chorus of, "But we want to go too!"

"I have to go and visit my parents," Dani said, using the first excuse that popped into her head. "Do you really want to see them again?"

Suddenly none of the children looked nearly as enthusiastic.

"Why do you have to go and visit them?" Jack asked. "They're horrible!"

Dani felt torn between the truth of what he said and the urge to tell him to respect his elders. "They're still my parents. And my mother's ill." Yet another lie. "She gets even grumpier than normal when she's ill."

None of the children felt any wish to go with her after that.

~~~~

For once Fate had something helpful in store for Dani. It came in the form of a field trip to the Tayto factory[1] for the younger children. That meant the only children at the house would be the teenagers -- plus Max, but they were old enough to keep an eye on him. And they would be at school for most of the day.

So Dani prepared lunches for all of them, dropped them off at school, and set off on the long, arduous journey to Enniskillen.

Really, she thought to herself, if I'd known I would have to come back here so often I'd never had moved so far away.

She'd had her reasons for moving so far away. But after forty miles of driving for the second time in two months, they suddenly didn't seem such good reasons.

Finally she reached the town. She parked on a side-street a short distance away from Beechview House. Then she walked up to the house. It was just as she remembered it -- the glassless windows like empty eye-sockets, the front door off its hinges, the upstairs windows hidden under a mass of ivy. It certainly didn't look as if anyone had lived there recently. The garden was overgrown and choked with weeds. Grass grew amidst the gravel of the driveway.

The gate had long since fallen off its hinges. Now it lay, a heap of rusty metal, on the ground. Dani strode purposefully through the empty gateway. She'd learnt years ago that if a person tried to sneak into somewhere they weren't supposed to be, someone would notice and be suspicious. But if you openly walked into a place, making no attempt to hide your presence, everyone would assume you had a good reason for being there.

She boldly marched up to the front door. Unlike the gate it wasn't lying on the ground. Instead it was slumped against the wall at an awkward angle. Anyone who wanted to enter the house that way would have to clamber over it and the pile of debris that had collected around it.

Dani could think of very few things likely to draw more attention than if she broke her leg trying to climb over all that.

Instead she walked round to the side of the house. Here she couldn't be seen from the street, and here was an empty window-frame that she could climb through.

Once through the window she found herself in a small bedroom. A mouldering bedstead lay on the floor, half-covered by the desecrated corpse of a mattress. Squeaking and shuffling inside the mattress indicated a nest of mice had taken up residence. The floorboards creaked ominously beneath Dani's feet. It certainly didn't look as if anyone had been here in years.

Dani stepped carefully over the mattress, half-expecting the floor to collapse beneath her, and crept cautiously to the door.

~~~~

Claire was bored.

At first glance it would be hard to imagine how anyone could be bored in a place like this. She sat in a conservatory that doubled as a study, with glass walls and a row of window-seats that doubled as bookshelves -- the panels had been removed from their fronts and shelves had been placed in their hollow centres, apparently to save space. Why anyone would need to save space when they lived in a literal mansion was something Claire didn't quite grasp.

Beatrix and Patrick had left her on her own here, with a large, leather-bound history book to read. (She had her suspicions about what sort of leather that book's cover was made from. It wasn't as tough as ordinary leather, and there was a faint coppery smell clinging to it.) The book was all about the history of vampires attempting to blend in with humans. So far, the verdict was "very bad idea, never works, don't even try". Claire had started to read it, gotten hopelessly confused by the plethora of names and dates that meant nothing to her, and finally gave up.

Now she was bored. There was nowhere to go but miles of open countryside, and Beatrix was very firm in her belief that proper vampires never went out in the daytime anyway.

Claire got up and wandered around the conservatory, idly glancing at the many different objects there. A stained glass table, a collection of butterflies pinned to the wall, two hideous sculptures of caricatured human faces, and at least a hundred books. Only about twenty of the books were in English. Outside the window was nothing but trees, the garden, and endless hills in the distance.

A faint sound caught her attention. She stopped and listened. It had come from upstairs. It sounded like... a shout? But who would be shouting in the manor? There was no one here except herself and the Barbarys. She'd never heard them shout at each other. Quite the opposite, in fact. It was strange and unsettling, how they seemed able to have a whole conversation by staring at each other and not saying a word. Yet someone was definitely shouting.

From the conservatory Claire had a good view of the driveway. No one had driven or walked up it.

There was some mystery here. It was an easy to solve one, so she slipped out of the room and down the hall.

She realised quickly that she had been mistaken about the noise. It wasn't shouting. It was someone speaking at a normal volume, and occasionally raising their voice. When they spoke normally she heard only a distant murmur. When they raised their voice she only caught the occasional word. Unless she was much mistaken, it was Patrick speaking. She couldn't hear Beatrix's voice at all. Which was quite odd, because she'd never heard Patrick speak for any length of time before, and certainly not without Beatrix replying to whatever he'd said.

Claire advanced slowly down the hall. With each step the voice grew clearer, though she could still only catch one word in ten. And now she could tell that Beatrix was replying, but her responses were invariably short and spoken in a low voice.

The few words she could hear made very little sense. It sounded as if they were having two completely different conversations at once. One minute they were talking about going to Belfast, the next about some mysterious woman whose good opinion they were anxious not to lose.

She reached the end of the hallway. It opened out into the manor's entrance hall. The main staircase stood just in front of her. Quietly she began to creep up the stairs.

"It's none of our business," she heard Beatrix say clearly. "Nor does it affect us."

"But I spoke to Sirius and he said Christian is very worried about it," Patrick protested. "And soon it will affect us. You've heard the rumours."

Claire reached the top of the staircase and leant against the banister, listening intently. Who were Sirius and Christian, and what rumours had Beatrix heard?

Beatrix said something Claire couldn't hear. Louder, she added, "No. Decidedly not. That's my last word on the subject."

The sound of approaching footsteps warned Claire that one or both of the siblings was about to catch her eavesdropping. She turned and fled silently down the stairs. She still didn't know what they'd been arguing about.

~~~~

"Owww!"

Shouting while exploring an abandoned -- yet possibly inhabited -- house was not a good idea. It had a tendency to attract all the wrong sort of attention. Dani felt she could be excused, under the circumstances. Especially when the circumstances in question involved her foot going right through the dining room floor.

Once the shock and pain wore off, Dani took stock of the situation. One foot was still on relatively solid floor. The other foot had plunged through the floor, leaving her clinging to the wall to keep her balance. Judging by the throbbing in her leg, she'd received several bruises at the very least.

Slowly, trying to avoid the jagged edges around the hole, she pulled her foot out. Her shin was already turning purple. The skin had been scraped right off her ankle. It stung terribly when she tried to put her weight on that foot. Dani gingerly took a step forward, avoiding any parts of the floor that looked particularly rotten. Her ankle and shin ached with a bone-deep, throbbing sort of pain, but at least she could still walk.

Exploring an empty house with a sore leg was no one's idea of fun. Dani's mind very helpfully provided her with a list of all the germs she had almost certainly come in contact with. As if the pain isn't enough, she thought with a wince. She would have to go to the nearest pharmacy and buy plasters or cream or something that would reduce the chance of infection.

She paused in the doorway connecting the dining room with the sitting room. Was it really safe to continue searching the house? No one was likely to take up residence in a house where they might fall through the floor at any minute.

Dani had just decided she would turn and leave when she heard something that made her freeze. Was that a footstep?

The faintest rustle of movement upstairs confirmed her suspicions. There was something else in this house. Perhaps it wasn't a person. Perhaps it was an animal. But it was there, and it was moving.

Common sense said to leave the house immediately. For once Dani was inclined to listen to common sense. She took a step back. The rustling continued. It had started to her right. Now it was directly overhead, and moving to her left. Whatever the source of the noise was, it was walking around.

A creak on the stairway told her it was walking down the stairs. Dani turned abruptly and retreated back across the dining room. The pain in her foot was completely forgotten.

The flicker of a shadow against the wall was the only warning she got before she walked into something. Or rather, someone.

"Hotaru!"

"Dani!"

All sounds upstairs faded into insignificance in the face of this shock. Some part of Dani's mind absently noted that the sounds had stopped anyway. The rest of her mind was much more preoccupied with the fact that Hotaru, who should be in school right now, was instead standing in front of her. Hotaru, for her part, stared at Dani as if she was a ghost. With a visible effort she pasted a smile onto her face.

"Fancy meeting you here!" she said with forced cheerfulness.

Dani didn't answer.

An awful silence fell. The very house itself seemed to be holding its breath. Hotaru sidled backwards. If she was hoping to avoid notice, she failed miserably.

"I'd like a word, if you don't mind," Dani said in the tone used by disapproving parents and teachers everywhere.

Hotaru winced and gave up her escape attempt.

"What, in the name of all that's holy, are you doing here?"

Chapter Footnotes:

[1] Tayto factory = Also called Tayto Castle; this is where Tayto crisps are made. One of my schools went there on a trip, so I'm assuming it's a fairly common place for primary schools to take their students on field trips.