The Dead Sing Below

Andrew Farren moved to a cheap Victorian cottage in rural Shropshire so his grieving seven-year-old daughter could finally sleep. She sleeps beautifully now. She also talks to a boy who lives under the floor, hums a lullaby nobody taught her, and draws the same picture again and again: a child in a narrow black doorway, with one word beneath it. Behind the cellar plasterboard, Andrew finds a sealed brick arch. Three children vanished from this village. None were ever found.