Free The Servants by Michael Marshall Smith

Thursday afternoon. Mark’s mother didn’t believe in God, but she liked stained glass, and once in a while he’d found himself wander-m i c h a e l m a r s h a l l s m i t h ing around some big old church while she stood and gazed up at figures made of colored light. Something lingered in the air within these places, Mark had noticed. A heaviness that said it was somewhere that had known movement and singing, and would do again, however still and quiet it might seem right now. It was like an echo. You knew something must have made the sound, even if it wasn’t there anymore. The vibration persisted and the noise reached you eventually, long after the cause of the sound had gone.
    Mark took a couple of steps down the corridor. The soft creak of his feet on the broken floorboards grounded him. It was just an empty space, less frightening even than a London side street. Someone could suddenly appear from the other end of one of those, or from an alleyway you hadn’t seen. The only way into this place was through the door Mark had just shut behind him. It was safe. Very dirty, and strangesmelling, but safe. He was all alone, and could explore.
    He was just about to take another step when something caught his eye. He peered more closely at the narrow door to the butler’s pantry. It was hanging open, just a little. Hadn’t she shut it, when they’d been in here the other day?
    Yes, he thought so—to show him where the wax had been, the way they sealed it in the old days. So . . . why would it be open now? It could be that the floor wasn’t level, and the door had fallen open the way they did sometimes. Though . . . when Mark pushed it lightly with his finger, it didn’t fall back to where it had been. Maybe the old lady had been in here again by herself and opened it.
     
    t h e s e r va n t s
    It could be that, maybe. It must be.
    Mark found he was breathing a little more shallowly than before.
    He turned from the door and took a couple more steps along the corridor. There was something else on his mind now. He’d begun to notice a quiet sound. A cooing sound, he thought. Another pigeon, or maybe even the same one, had found its way through a broken pane in the skylight and down into the kitchen. Maybe it knew, somehow, that birds had once lived there, and so thought it was okay to be there as well, even though the chickens were long gone. But the sound wasn’t actually quite right. It was like a pigeon, but more muffled. A pigeon went coo-coo . Or sometimes coo-coo-coo . This noise was longer and had a different rhythm.
    He leaned forward, peered cautiously around into the side corridor. It was utterly black. There was no way the dim light from the kitchen could make it around the corner, and that part had no windows to the outside. He squinted, letting his eyes adjust, trying to see if . . .
    Then he took a hurried step back.
    For a moment, he thought he’d seen a faint yellow flicker from the end of the corridor.
    Like a candle, far back in the shadows.
    He closed his eyes tightly. Opened them again. He couldn’t see the light anymore.
    It had probably never been there. It was just his eyes trying to make sense of the darkness, forming something out of nothing. He heard the pigeon once more, or something
     
    m i c h a e l m a r s h a l l s m i t h like it. Now it sounded more like a quiet laugh. Not a man’s laugh, but like a young woman, or a girl, amused by something a friend had said, but trying to keep her laughter soft and low so nobody else could hear it.
    But it must just be a pigeon. He could hear a faint flapping sound now, too. That proved it.
    He’d just heard a bird. That was all.
    He took a few more steps, moving even slower. The flapping sound hadn’t stopped, and he knew that being confronted by a bird suddenly flying out of nowhere would be more than scary enough.
    Maybe he should actually stop here, go back out. He’d had another look—he didn’t need to see everything . . . The