C-r-e-a-k.

My body tenses. It’s just my mum going to the bathroom; any moment now I will hear the groan of the stairs. But I don’t. A minute passes and then there’s another soft creak. What’s she doing? I push myself up in bed, but all I hear is the crash of waves and the swish of blood in my ears.

And then I hear the noise I’ve been dreading: a scraping sound, as if someone is dragging their fingernails down the door. Maybe my mum’s doing some kind of protection spell. But why do it in the middle of the night? I swing my legs out of bed. Whoever’s there, I won’t be made to feel scared. I glance over at the snoring lump, deciding not to wake him. He was freaked out enough last time, and I don’t need a boy to hide behind. I’m capable of checking out the hallway myself.

I switch on the torch of my phone then tiptoe across the room and pause at the door. Should I ease it gently, or … Oh, to hell with this. I yank it open and something blurs at the edge of my vision: a figure with long hair.

I step back, my heart racing, and my phone slips from my hand. I try to grab it and it turns over in my fingers, the light momentarily blinding me. Cursing, I fumble and catch it just before it hits the floor. The torch has gone out and I switch it back on. Holding the phone out before me, I make my way along the landing. My breath quickens as I imagine what might be lurking in the darkness, but there’s no witch with cloudy white eyes and tangled black hair standing in the shadows. There’s no one at all.

Yet someone was here just now. I need to warn my mum. I walk to her door and then stop. What if it was her? She could have darted back into her room when I dropped my phone. I don’t think she’d frighten me just to make me believe her stories about witches, but what if Tom’s right? There’s only one way to be sure: I need to go downstairs and check the house.

No, Ivy. You need to stop coming up with stupid ideas and get into bed.

I hurry back into the bedroom and jump under the covers, relieved to hear Tom still snoring. Whatever’s out there can stay out there. Pulling the sleeping bag over my head, I curl up and shut my eyes. Usually when I can’t sleep, my brain likes to entertain me with reruns of my most embarrassing moments. Right now I’d gladly watch a highlights reel of my worst fails, but my mind has other ideas. It wants to convince me that someone is standing over my bed. Only it’s not one person; something tells me there’s a group of them.

My breath comes fast under the covers, the air moist and stinking of mould. I know there are people standing around me. I can sense their presence, feel the weight of their stare in the pinprick crawl of my skin. I imagine eight scrawny women with impossibly long arms grinning down at me. Only I’m not imagining it. I can hear the raspy catch of their breath.