Serafina and the Black Cloak. Robert Beatty

the young master in his bedroom on the second floor, happened to wake and look out the window and see a mysterious girl walking alone in the night.

      Her pa never spoke of it, but she knew she wasn’t exactly normal-looking. She had a skinny little body, nothing but muscle, bone and sinew.

      She didn’t own a dress, so she wore one of her pa’s old work shirts, which she cinched round her narrow waist with a length of fibrous twine she’d scavenged from the workshop. He didn’t buy her any clothes because he didn’t want people in town to ask questions and start meddling; meddling was something he could never brook.

      Her long hair wasn’t a single color like normal people had, but varying shades of gold and light brown. Her face had a peculiar angularity in the cheeks. And she had large, steady amber eyes. She could see at night as well as she could during the day. Even her soundless hunting skills weren’t exactly normal. Every person she’d ever encountered, especially her pa, made so much noise when they walked that it was like they were one of the big Belgian draft horses that pulled the farm equipment in Mr Vanderbilt’s fields.

      And it all made her wonder, looking up at the windows of the great house. What did the people sleeping in those rooms dream of, with their one-coloured hair, and their long, pointy noses and their big bodies lying in their soft beds all through the glorious darkness of the night? What did they long for? What made them laugh or jump? What did they feel inside? When they had dinner at night, did the children eat the grits or just the chicken?

      As she glided down the stairs and back into the basement, she heard something in a distant corridor. She stopped and listened, but she couldn’t quite make it out. It wasn’t a rat. That much was certain. Something much larger. But what was it?

      Curious, she moved towards the sound.

      She went past her pa’s workshop, the kitchens and the other rooms she knew well, and into the deeper areas where she hunted less often. She heard doors closing, then the fall of footsteps and muffled noises. Her heart began to thump lightly in her chest. Someone was walking through the corridors of the basement. Her basement.

      She moved closer.

      It wasn’t the servant who collected the garbage each night, or one of the footmen fetching a late-night snack for a guest – she knew the sound of their footsteps well. Sometimes the butler’s assistant, who was eleven, would stop in the corridor and gobble down a few of the cookies from the silver tray that the butler had sent him to retrieve. She’d stand just round the corner from him in the darkness and pretend that they were friends just talking and enjoying each other’s company for a while. Then the boy would wipe the powdered sugar off his lips, and off he’d go, hurrying up the stairs to catch up on the time he’d lost. But this wasn’t him.

      Whoever it was, he wore what sounded like hard-soled shoes – expensive shoes. But a gentleman proper had no business coming down into this area of the house. Why was he wandering through the dark passages in the middle of the night?

      Increasingly curious, she followed the stranger, careful to avoid being seen. Whenever she snuck up close enough to almost see him, all she could make out was the shadow of a tall black shape carrying a dimly lit lantern. And there was another shadow there too, someone or something with him, but she didn’t dare creep close enough to see who or what it was.

      It was a vast basement with many different rooms, corridors and levels, which had been built into the slope of the earth beneath the house. Some areas, like the kitchens and the laundry, had smooth plaster walls and windows. The rooms there were plainly finished, but clean and dry, and well-suited to the daily work of the servants. The more distant reaches of the understructure delved deep into the damp and earthen burrows of the house’s massive foundation. Here the dark, hardened mortar oozed out from between the roughly hewn stone blocks that formed the walls and ceiling, and she seldom went there because it was cold, dirty and dank.

      Suddenly, the footsteps changed direction. They came towards her. Five screeching rats came running down the corridor ahead of the footfalls, more terrified than any rodents she had ever seen. Spiders crawled out of the cracks in the walls. Cockroaches and centipedes erupted from the earthen floor. Astounded by what she was seeing, she caught her breath and pressed herself to the wall, frozen in fear like a little rabbit kit trembling beneath the shadow of a passing hawk.

      As the man walked towards her, she heard another sound too. It was a shuffling agitation like a small person – slippered feet, perhaps a child – but there was something wrong. The child’s feet were scraping on the stone, sometimes sliding . . . the child was crippled . . . no . . . the child was being dragged.

      ‘No, sir! Please! No!’ the girl whimpered, her voice trembling with despair. ‘We’re not supposed to be down here.’ The girl spoke like someone who had been raised in a well-heeled family and attended a fancy school.

      ‘Don’t worry. We’re going right in here . . .’ the man said, stopping at the door just round the corner from Serafina. Now she could hear his breathing, the movement of his hands, and the rustle of his clothing. Flashes of heat scorched through her. She wanted to run, to flee, but she couldn’t get her legs to move.

      ‘There’s nothing to be frightened of, child,’ he said to the girl. ‘I’m not going to hurt you . . .’

      The way he said these words caused the hairs on the back of Serafina’s neck to rise. Don’t go with him, she thought. Don’t go!

      The girl sounded like she was just a little younger than her, and Serafina wanted to help her, but she couldn’t find the courage. She pressed herself against the wall, certain that she would be heard or seen. Her legs trembled, feeling as if they would crumble beneath her. She couldn’t see what happened next, but suddenly the girl let out a bloodcurdling scream. The piercing sound caused Serafina to jump, and she had to stifle her own scream. Then she heard a struggle as the girl tore away from the man and fled down the corridor.

      Run, girl! Run! Serafina thought.

      The man’s steps faded into the distance as he went after her. Serafina could tell that he wasn’t running full-out but moving steadily, relentlessly, like he knew the girl couldn’t escape him. Serafina’s pa had told her that’s how the red wolves chase down and kill deer in the mountains – with dogged stamina rather than bursts of speed.

      Serafina didn’t know what to do. Should she hide in a dark corner and hope he didn’t find her? Should she flee with the terror-stricken rats and spiders while she had the chance? She wanted to run back to her father, but what about the child? The girl was so helpless, so slow and weak and frightened, and, more than anything, she needed a friend to help her fight. Serafina wanted to be that friend; she wanted to help her, but she couldn’t bring herself to move in that direction.

      Then she heard the girl scream again. That dirty, rotten rat’s gonna kill her, Serafina thought. He’s gonna kill her.

      With a burst of anger and courage, she raced towards the sound. Her legs felt like explosions of speed. Her mind blazed with fear and exhilaration. She turned corner after corner. But when she came to the mossy stone stairway that led down into the deepest bowels of the sub-basement, she stopped, gasping for breath, and shook her head. It was a cold, wet, slimy, horrible place that she had always done her best to avoid – especially in the winter. She’d heard stories that they stored dead bodies in the sub-basement in the winter, when the ground was too frozen to dig a grave. Why in the world had the girl gone down there ?

      Serafina made her way haltingly down the wet, sticky stairs, lifting and shaking off her foot after each slimy step she took. When at last she reached the bottom, she followed a long, slanting corridor where the ceiling dripped with brown sludge. The whole dank, disgusting place gave her the jitters something fierce, but she kept going.

      You’ve got to help her, she told herself again. You can’t turn back.

      She wound her way through a labyrinth of twisting tunnels. She turned right, then left, then left, then right until she lost track of how far she’d gone. Then she heard the sound of fighting and shouting