Sarah knew she should check beneath the bed but was unable to bring herself to do it. She was just waiting for a hand to shoot out and grab her by the ankle. ‘Stay calm,’ she whispered to herself, creeping out of the room. Her persecutor wasn’t here because that wasn’t how the story went. She recalled Robin’s partly open bedroom door, and how she’d been too scared to look inside. Her young mind had completed the most horrific of puzzles. By then, she knew her funny, cute, annoying little brother was dead. She had missed him every day since. The newspapers said he had still been cuddling his teddy when he was shot. It was quick and painless. He would not have known. It was a tiny crumb of hope, but she clung to it. What sort of a monster could have ended his life? Sarah rubbed the back of her neck. It felt like the walls were closing in. If evil had a home, it was Blackhall Manor.

She recalled the battle on the landing and how her mother had fought to protect her family. Why were dark forces so prevalent here? Fear sharpened Sarah’s senses as the pipes in her father’s study rattled in discontent. She swallowed down the grief that had always held her back. But there was something else. A sense of her old life ending. Of fighting for a future which had been denied to her so far. Sweat dampened her palms as she forced herself on.

‘Jahmelia?’ she called, approaching Robin’s room. Her candle wavered, her pulse quickening as she rested her hand on the old brass door-knob. She didn’t want to see the evidence of what had taken place there. She started as her parents’ bedroom door creaked open further down the corridor. Was Jahmelia in the wardrobe? But police had searched every inch of this place. Besides, there was no wardrobe, was there? Yet parts of this house seemed to have been recreated, like a stage set. Sarah swallowed back the tears that threatened. She had never felt so alone.

Turning away from Robin’s room, she sensed unseen forces crowding around her as she carried on down the dark passage. She stood before her parents’ old bedroom – the place where her childhood ended. I died here, she thought, her attention drawn to the wardrobe in the centre of the floor. She recognised it from her grandparents’ old room. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to set the scene. But this time the room flickered with the light of candles melting on the window ledge. What was she supposed to do now? She opened her mouth to call Jahmelia’s name, the quiet click of a shotgun making her freeze. She should have known. The stab vest she was wearing would not save her now.

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