They go through a door and then down a hallway, and suddenly they are steeped in moonlight. They are standing at the top of the gallery overlooking a grand staircase. From a skylight overhead, partially broken, wind rattles through empty panes. Moonlight falls strong from there, and the vaulted space floods with light. The lower floor is dark.
Beyond the sound of the wind, is there something else? A thread of music suggests itself to Nathan, who follows the melody in his head. As if someone with a clear voice is singing softly in a distant room. He misses the words, but the sound is very pure.
Roy keeps the flashlight at his side, in spite of the darkness. They pick their way forward carefully. The floor is solid all the way to the top of the stairs, and the stairs seem solid too, but there is the hole in the skylight and a pool of water beneath it. One can see the water from the gallery, a patch of reflection in the deep darkness. The four of them stand at the top of the stairs looking at each other.
"We should explore up here first." Randy's tone makes it clear that he is reluctant to descend into that well of darkness.
"But after that, we have to go down there." Burke squares his shoulders.
The rooms on the second floor are small and plain, like the rooms in any farmhouse Nathan has ever seen. The floors have held up, though the boards sag in a few places and groan in many. The rooms have a desolate feeling, containing little beyond scraps of furniture, the chimney from an old gas lantern, a tin plate with a bit of candle. In one room, beside an unshuttered window, they find a nearly whole chair, casting its long moon shadow across dust and cobwebs. It has a delicate look, like something that might once have faced a woman's vanity table, with slender, curved legs and one thin, spidery arm. Beneath the cake of dust that shields the cushion is a dark stain. Roy uses the flashlight here for the first time, and they see the startling pink of the cushion, the patina of dust. The dark stain's resemblance to old blood is unnerving; even Burke, buffeted by his bravura, seems wary at the sight. "I wonder why they left this," he says. "They took everything else."
"That's blood, ain't it?" Randy asks.
"It looks like it might be." Roy's answer is bland.
"Maybe this is the room where the slave cut the master's head off," Nathan suggests, and they all look at him.
"Jesus."
"Or maybe not." Nathan looks around. "There would be a lot more blood than just this."
That is enough for the others. They head out of the room, all but Nathan. He goes on standing there. He finds a place in the wallpaper, another stain like a bloody hand outlined in a pane of moonlight thrown from the window. "There's another stain," he says. "Maybe this is the right room, after all."
Nor is he teasing them, entirely. He is seeing the room a different way. His hands glide along the back of the chair, and when he realizes where he is again, he is counting strands of spider web on the fireplace mantel.
Then without another thought he carries the chair to the fireplace and sets it at an angle to one side. He lifts it by the remaining arm. He studies the chair from behind, as if judging its placement. Then he backs away.
They stay perfectly still and take deep breaths.
"Why did you do that?" Roy asks.
Nathan blinks. The question strikes him as odd. "I think it looks better there."
"He's fucking with us." Burke stands with his fists clenched.
"I'm not fucking with anybody."
Roy laughs and then Randy follows his lead. His body tense, Burke glares at Nathan.
"Let's go." Roy leads them out of the room.
The rest of the rooms they visit are bare, and they find no other evidence of occupation, neither ghostly nor otherwise; except, near the door of one room, Nathan discovers a doll's foot made of thick porcelain and covered with dust. He cleans it, white and pink, on the tail of his shirt. Nathan turns the foot around and around in his hand. Then, without asking anybody, he replaces the porcelain foot in the dust, in the same position as before, but clean and shining.
They find narrow stairways leading to the attic, these at the back of the house, open to access; and they find service stairways leading down, also at the back of the house; but the entrances are boarded off beyond a couple of steps. They enter many rooms full of dirt and dust, spider webs and leaves, branches and dead birds, bits of broken glass.
Nathan still hears the music, the tiny sound like singing at the back of all the other sounds, the creaking floors and the house settling, the wind through broken windows. He can tell the others are listening like he is and he wonders, he is suspicious that they are hearing other songs. Maybe they are even getting the words too.
