I venture further in, still brandishing the torch, still trying to keep hold of my courage.

‘Hello?’

Nothing but the wind.

I go over to the dining table, pick up my laptop and tuck it under my arm. I snatch up the photo of Robert too, push it inside my mac pocket. The hairs on my forearms are standing up. I can’t shake a feeling of jamais vu, as if I’m watching myself through the wrong end of a telescope again. It feels like sitting alone in bed while someone runs around the outside of your house, or waking up to find that house on fire and a mummified bird in your bedside drawer. And then deciding to forget that any of those things happened. Because they don’t belong in your life. Because you have no intention of ever facing anything at all.

And then I hear a metal click – familiar and loud. The bathroom door swings open on a long, low creak. The bathroom beyond is in darkness. All I can see of the person standing motionless inside its doorway is a vague outline against the shadows. I’m standing in the light, but they’re hidden in the dark.

I step back again. Once. Twice. It feels like I’m falling, the ground rushing up to meet me. Too fast to stop.

‘Who are you?’ My voice is tremulous. My chattering teeth are the loudest thing in the answering silence.

When the figure moves, I shriek. When something flies out of the darkness towards me before hitting the floor in a sickening wet thud less than two feet away, I shriek louder. It’s a dead crow, bloodied and slick with rain.

‘Leave me alone!’

The click near the standard lamp is my only warning before the room is plunged into blackness. I drop the torch and laptop and run for the door. Because I can feel that second someone else in the darkness, closer than the standard lamp now – close enough that I can hear their too-loud intake of breath before they hold it. The hackles on my neck send shudder after shudder down the length of my spine as I battle to pull open the latch, but I don’t stop, I don’t look behind me. I wrench open the door, run out onto the path and back towards the farm so fast that my legs start to seize and my body pitches forwards. Only the panic of falling, the terror of being caught, keeps me going, keeps my legs moving.

When I reach the farm, I sprint inside, slip on the doormat as I spin round to slam the door shut behind me. Only when I’ve locked the mortice do I stop to draw breath, go back over to the kitchen window. I can’t see anything at all. The blackhouse is in darkness.

I look at my own silhouette in the glass. And see Mum’s face instead, thin, white, and eaten by shadows.

It’s coming. It’s close.

*