She pulled onto the shoulder opposite the holiday house and scanned the property for police cars. She half expected to find the property teeming with police, crime scene photographers and forensic investigators, but it was quiet and still. Someone had been there though. There were multiple muddy tyre marks leading in and out of the driveway, and strapped across the front gate was yellow tape that said, over and over, DO NOT ENTER.

Kate hoisted herself up and over the front gate – had she opened it, the police tape might have snapped – and started up the driveway on foot.

She supposed that technically what she was doing was trespassing on a crime scene, but this was her house, and she couldn’t shake the image of that manhole cover, slightly ajar. It beckoned her.

She weaved through the police tape and into the house. All the lights had been left on. There were heavy indentations in the carpet – boot prints from the police, she guessed. The banisters at the bottom of the staircase were flecked with white powder, as were all the doorhandles.

She fetched a torch from under the kitchen sink and a fold-out stepladder from the laundry. She took both upstairs to the master bedroom and set them down below the manhole cover. It was still open, just a sliver. She took care climbing the rickety ladder to the fourth rung. The lip of the manhole was thick with cobwebs and muck, but there were clean marks in the dust. Someone had been here recently. She wondered if the police were so thorough that they’d check the storage space in the roof, but it didn’t seem likely.

She slid the cover open. A layer of black hovered beyond. She trained the beam of her torch into the space, but all she saw were more cobwebs clinging to exposed ceiling rafters. She moved up to the top rung of the stepladder so that her head was inside the hole. If she really wanted to get a look inside, she was going to have to climb in. The ladder shook as she stepped off it, but thankfully it didn’t topple.

She found her feet, then shone the torch wildly around her immediate space, checking for spiders, before arcing it around the room to check for monsters and killers. The ceiling was low, its sloped walls packed with pink insulation. There was an old boogie board stored to the left of the manhole and a crate of old newspapers.

She shifted the torch beam down and gasped. There were bare footprints against the dusty floor, trailing deep into the storage space.

‘Hello?’ she called.