Page 26 of We Live Here Now

25

Emily

I’m feeling calm and rational and determined to stay that way even though the afternoon is turning dark as I pull into the drive where Larkin Lodge waits, unwelcoming in the gloom. Behind me the moors are already being swallowed up by cold mist. I wish we’d moved in spring. Everything is better in the spring. Spring is all about the joy of life. Winter is death, and right now, in this freezing January, we’re caught tight in its grip.

Inside, I turn all the lights on, and after eating a leftovers sandwich I swallow some painkillers and go up to bed, needing to take the weight off and lie still for a while. The book of Poe short stories is on the table and I read the first, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” a dark little story of murder and guilt, before opting for my Kindle and something cheerier as day descends into dusk outside.

After a couple of hours, the pills are thankfully taking the edge off the pain. I stand to stretch and then go to the window to look out, hoping to maybe see lights on at the vicarage, beacons of life to ease my silent isolation, but all I can see is the claustrophobic mist spilling over the wall from the moor and making its way up to the house.

I’m going downstairs to get something else to eat before calling it a night when a noise stops me in my slow tracks. It’s quiet at first, and I listen for several seconds before it comes again. A creaking sound. It’s an old house , I tell myself again like a mantra. Old houses make noises.

But these noises are coming from the third floor.

Reluctant but unable to ignore it, I peer up to the darkness of the next landing. The sounds come again. A click followed by a pause and then a long creak. Another pause, then a creak and a click again.

Click. Creeeeak.

Pause.

Creeeeak. Click.

When I swallow, my throat makes a quiet click of its own. There’s a moment of silence and then it comes again.

Click. Creeeeak.

Pause.

Creeeeak. Click.

My body chills, my breath caught in my chest as I listen. I know what it is, I realize as it comes again— Click. Creeeeak. Pause. Creeeeak. Click.

It’s a door slowly opening and then closing. Over and over.

I don’t want to go up there—I don’t want to go up there at all —but I need to see for myself. I turn on the landing light and take the stairs slowly to a point where, if I stretch, my eyes can just see above the floor of the upstairs landing through the balustrades.

In the gloom, the round door handle of the primary suite twists slowly— click —and then the door opens a few inches— creeeeak —giving me a glimpse of an ominous darkness beyond, and then after a moment’s pause creaks and clicks shut again. I stare, not trusting my own eyes. How can the handle be turning itself?

I watch as it repeats, my palms gripping the wood until they’re slick with sweat, and then it repeats again.

On the third time, in the pause between the door opening and closing, the scratching starts. The scratching I heard before. Scraaatch scraaaatch . Like nails dragging on wood.

As if something is trying to crawl out and is being pulled back into the room.