Episode 97 · Three Walls

Around eleven, the lights were out throughout the house except for the lamp in the hall, which Soles had not turned off for some time, so that no one would step at night on the latch side of the cellar trapdoor.

Krista slept on the sofa under Mina’s blanket, her knees drawn up. Soles lay on his back in his room, the blade in its leather strap on the nightstand, his eyes open in the dark.

The house settled its weight as it did every night. Beams onto walls, walls onto foundation, foundation onto earth. Soles felt it without meaning to, like breathing.

Then, in the kitchen, Lucky rose from his blanket. He did not bark.

He growled low, toward the wall.

Soles sat up without turning on the light.

The wall between the kitchen and hall had grown heavier. The plaster was the same, with the same thin crack above the switch that Kale had promised for years to fill. But the wall no longer bore only its own weight. Someone was leaning against it from the inside, waiting.

Then the second. The hall wall by the coat rack.

Soles undid the knot in the strap and drew the blade. The hilt settled into his palm in that tight, low grip that was not his and that no one had taught him.

The third did not come. Or it had come and stood somewhere Soles could not yet feel it.

— Krista, he said, not loudly. Don’t move.

The sofa creaked. Krista was already up.

The wall beside the coat rack emptied.

Soles reached the hall in three strides, half a step too late. The Hunter had come out of the wall the way a man steps out of shallow water, unhurried, his gloves tight around his wrists. He held Krista with one arm around her neck, her back against his chest, her feet barely touching the floor.

He merely held out his free hand toward Soles, palm up.

Waiting.

Soles understood what was being asked before he understood why it was being asked this way. The blade was three paces from the outstretched hand. The man could come and take it. He did not. He held out his hand like a customs officer at a checkpoint.

Lucky hurled himself out of the kitchen.

The dog caught the second Hunter by the thigh just as the man emerged from the kitchen wall. The man made no sound. He picked Lucky up by the scruff and threw him down the hall. Lucky struck the windowsill with a dull thud, rolled, and did not get up at once. Mina barked hoarsely from the corner.

The second Hunter came toward Soles.

Soles did not look at him. He looked at the floor.

Beneath the feet of the one holding Krista was the cellar trapdoor. Kale had made it of oak planks, hinged on the side by the door. The hatch would hold any weight on the hinge side. On the latch side it held only if you stood straight.

— Krista, he said. Step left.

Krista, who counted shelves and nights and entries, understood. She threw all her weight to the left at once, like a sack splitting open. The Hunter did exactly what anyone holding a falling person would do: he stepped after her.

Onto the latch side.

The old plank sagged beneath him with the crack of a bone. The trapdoor swung down, and the Hunter plunged waist-deep into the cellar opening, one leg jammed between the boards. The arm around Krista’s neck released her. She rolled away across the floor, drawing breath with a high whistle.

The second Hunter reached Soles.

He did not strike. He caught Soles’s right wrist in both hands, as the one in the round room had done, and began prying his fingers from the hilt one by one with a craftsman’s patience. Soles rammed him with his shoulder. His rib exploded in his chest like a broken window, and for a moment he saw nothing but white. His little finger came free of the hilt. Then his ring finger.

The one who counted told him where the elbow would be. There was no time for elbows. Soles let his knees give way and fell with the man still on him. As he fell, he clenched his hand around the hilt with all the strength he had left and pulled the blade upward through the Hunter’s gloved fingers.

The blade cut through the glove like paper. It cut what lay beneath it too. And it cut Soles’s own left palm, which crossed its path as he tried to break his fall, from thumb to wrist, a thin cold line that only afterward began to burn.

The Hunter released him.

He stood without hurry, his cut hand hanging at his side. He looked at the blade, still in Soles’s fist, wet and black in the lamplight.

The first Hunter had already vanished into the cellar dark. Soles felt the cellar wall grow heavy for an instant and then empty again.

The second backed up to the wall. He pressed his back against it the way you press against the door of a room you want to enter, and the wall admitted him. A lighter patch remained on the plaster at shoulder height. And a blood mark in the shape of fingers.

Only then did Soles feel the weight in the third wall, the one facing the yard. It emptied last, slowly, like a breath held too long.

The house settled back into itself.

Soles stayed on his knees, a dull ache behind his eyes and blood at his nose, breathing in short half-breaths because his rib allowed no more. Then he heard a whimper from the end of the hall and crawled toward it.

Lucky lay beneath the windowsill, his front paw tucked beneath him. When Soles touched him, the dog licked his cut wrist and got up awkwardly on three legs.

— I know, Soles said. I know. You were the best.

Krista braced herself against the wall and sat up. A red mark as wide as an arm crossed her throat. She looked at his hand.

— You cut your hand.

— He cut me.

— You cut yourself. With that. I saw.

The line was straight and clean, the kind of cut only a good blade makes. It did not hurt much yet. It would.

Krista crawled over and took his hand, turned it toward the light as she would turn an old page. Her fingers were shaking. His were too.

— Why didn’t he take it? she said softly. You held it the whole time. He was three paces away. He held out his hand like a…

She stopped.

— Like a customs officer, Soles said.

They stayed on the hall floor, between the broken trapdoor and the limping dog, until Mina came from her corner and sat between them, her white muzzle on Krista’s knee.

— Are you all right? Soles asked her.

Krista looked at him. A moment too long.

— Yes, she said.

Soles believed her. It did not occur to him not to.