With both hands full of bags, Margot had to shuffle in an awkward dance to get the front door open. She tried not to look at the enormous Watcher’s silhouette in the living room as she turned into the kitchen.

A distant creaking noise came from somewhere deeper in the house, and Margot hesitated halfway to the fridge. She carefully lowered the bags onto the round table, listening.

There, again. A creak, low and slow and heavy, coming from somewhere behind and above. Like a rope being strained.

It’s an old house, mostly built from wood. Margot swallowed and tasted the acrid tang of fear. It’s going to make noises sometimes.

The noise came again, and this time it was accompanied by something louder. A shuffle, like a footstep.

They’re back. They’re back and they’re in my home.

Margot felt her pocket for her phone, and her heart missed a beat. She’d left it upstairs, in her room, that morning. Its battery had been dead, so she’d plugged it in to charge while she got dressed and had forgotten to retrieve it after.

The car keys were still in her hand. She could turn and leave before the intruder even knew she was here.

If it had been dark, she might have. At night, with the heavy cloud of stillness that the darkness brought, the world felt like it carried an extra layer of danger. That any risk, even small, would come with a cost.

But it wasn’t night. The sun streamed through the kitchen window at her back like courage, and in that moment, the fear was almost—not quite, but almost—overridden by her anger. And something more.

Curiosity.

She wanted to know who had slung ropes across her porch the previous night. And why they felt entitled to enter her home. She needed to see their face.

The dense light heated her back as Margot slid a blade out of the knife block at her side. It wasn’t large, but it was big enough to do damage. She held it at her side, half nestled in her skirt, as she slipped from the kitchen to the hallway.

17

The low creaking noise sounded again, distant but unrelenting. She pictured a noose hung somewhere on the higher floors, the dead weight of a body suspended from it, creaking the fibers.

Stop. Don’t think like that.

She followed the sound into the lounge room and past the ancient TV and the figure of twisted metal and bones. It loomed, dominating its wall, and she told herself she would cover it with the cloth again.