Once Jo got the knack of passing through the attic and reaching the bottom of the room beneath it without stirring up all the filth, her exploration went quickly indeed. She determined on her third dive that there definitely wasn’t a fireplace in the chamber, but she waited until surfacing from her sixth to tell Jan that. Part of it was reluctance to pass through the black doorway that led to the rest of the house, but part of it was also curiosity about this first room—now that her eyes had adjusted to the murk, she could properly explore. A chair had worn down most of its back scraping against the ceiling, and other, less identifiable scraps of wood drifted around her as she idly investigated the chamber—one hillock on the floor revealed itself to be the remains of a bed, and another a heap of mud-infused cloth that disintegrated between her fingers when she prodded it. It should have been great fun, but the dark rectangle of the room’s only doorway seemed to watch her like an unblinking eye, and if she had her back to it for more than a few moments, she felt a stupid panic rise in her that would respond to neither wisdom nor begging, only a glance over her shoulder to verify that nothing terrible was lurking there.
