He could see her pale face peering up at him from the bottom of the stairs, in the half-light. She was holding a broom as if it were a weapon, in two shaking hands. Her eyes were expressionless. He didn’t know how much she understood but she said something back in rapid Japanese and then she turned and went silently down.
Back in his ruined room, Coulton stared at the trunk, uncertain. He could hear the drughr shifting, moving its limbs within. But it no longer struggled.
He tried to make sense of it. He didn’t see how a simple thing like a trunk could stop a drughr. Weren’t they supposed to be able to pass through walls? Weren’t they supposed to be huge, powerful, far too massive to stumble by chance into a trunk and not get out? Hell, his missed punch shouldn’t even hardly of stunned it.
He glared at the trunk, unsure what to do. The inn felt very quiet. Slowly, always facing the thing, he began to pick up the mess, righting the furniture, stooping to sweep up the dust, the splintered pieces of the screen. When he was done he set his hands on his hips, peered about. The room still looked a mess.
When he could think of nothing else to do, he sat cross-legged in front of the trunk, and just watched it. He was of a mind to wait for Jacob. He got up and paced to the window and glanced out at the rain and then he went back and folded his arms and stared at the trunk some more. It was late. And that was when he heard his name.
“Mr. Coulton?” called a voice, muffled. “You still there? Coulton!”
He pulled the gun from his pocket, his blood pounding. Several minutes passed. It hadn’t sounded much like a monster. He grimaced. How stupid are you, man? he thought.
“Please!” the voice called.
Mighty fucking stupid, Coulton thought. And then he stepped forward, and swiftly unbuckled the lock, and threw the lid wide.
Inside was a kid.
Folded awkwardly into the bottom of the trunk. A fucking kid. Scrawny and naked and dirty, with her freckled nose running and her cropped red hair all thatched and lice-ridden like it hadn’t been washed in her entire bloody life. It was cut like a boy’s and with her skinny neck and long narrow face she looked, Coulton thought, like a particularly bony, already-plucked chicken.
She was looking woozily up at him, surprised, her mouth open, a gap between her front teeth, as if she couldn’t believe he’d hit her, the left side of her narrow face already darkening where he’d struck. And then all of a sudden she sat crookedly up, and scowled at him, and rubbed at her sore head.
“Jesus,” she said. “What you gone and done that for?”
He kept his revolver aimed at her heart. “What are you?” he whispered. “Show me your real self. Show me.”
She stared at him like he was crazy.
“Show me!” he shouted.
“Oy!” she shouted right back. “I ain’t deaf! I heared you.” She started feeling her jaw, gingerly, glowering up at him. “What you gone and hit me for, anyhow? Ow.”
He frowned, suddenly unsure. He was watching her, turning it all over in his head. It didn’t make sense. He reached carefully behind him, took out his nightshirt, threw it across. “Put this on, for God’s sake.”
She did so. It hung off her in a great pool of cotton at her feet. Her hands were lost in the sleeves. She stuck out a sleeve in greeting. “Me name’s Ribs,” she said, by way of introduction. Then she saw his face. “Aw, what. You ain’t never seen a invisible girl before?”
He blinked. “Is that a joke?”
All of a sudden she gave him a quick sly grin. “You was so scared! Oh you was!”
“I weren’t,” he said.
“Near wet your pants, you did. Oh it hurts to laugh. But I can’t help it. You should’ve seen your face.”
“You should see yours now,” he muttered. He rested the revolver in his lap but kept the hammer cocked. “What’re you doin, followin us, then? I never heard of a talent what could make a kid invisible.”
“Sweet holy baby Jesus,” she said with mock seriousness. She opened her eyes very wide. “If you ain’t heard of a thing, it can’t be so, I reckon.”
“You got a real nice way about you.”
“Why thank you, Mr. Coulton, sir.”
“Ribs ain’t any kind of a name.”
“Tell it to me mum.”
“Where’s she at, then?”
“Alas, I am but a poor unfortunate, Mr. Coulton sir. Me tale is most tragic.” She curtsied in his long nightshirt, looking ridiculous. “I were born nowhere, I were raised everywhere. Poverty were me da. Loneliness were me mum.”