CHAPTER ONE
WHISPERS
The night was cold and still. The curtains were too thin to block out the moonlight, which stretched over the carpet in quivering dabs and strange shapes from where it managed to worm its way through the forest’s boughs.
A sliver of the light fell over the sleeping girl’s face, making her squirm to avoid it. She rolled over and opened her eyes. The dolls and stuffed animals spread about the room watched her with plastic eyes, their comforting influence dissipated in the cold blue light of night-time.
The girl sat up and pushed her hair out of her face. She thought she’d heard the voices through her dreams; they were becoming clearer, though, almost clear enough to understand.
“Hello?” She kept her voice quiet so she wouldn’t disturb her parents as they slept in their room down the hallway. “Is that you, little friends?”
There, so faint that she almost could have imagined it, was the soft scratching noise that accompanied the voice. The girl slid her feet off the bed, shivering in the cold air but too entranced to search for her dressing gown. Her toes dug into the carpet as she circled her bed, trying to find the source of the noise. It seemed to come from all around her, below her feet and above her head. The curtains fluttered as the wind picked up, and the old house groaned under the weight of its years.
“Hello, little friends?” she repeated.
The voices answered her, urging her to come to them. She closed her eyes and stretched out her hands, rotating in a slow circle, listening to the sounds. They seemed to fade and strengthen, depending on the direction she faced. She stopped turning when they were at their loudest, and took a hesitant step forward. The voices rose in volume and urgency as she moved closer, and the girl could feel her fingers shaking as she reached for her invisible companions.
They had never been so clear before. The voices were slowly merging, their echoes and mutters colliding into a single voice. As the girl’s fingers tapped against her bedroom wall, she finally understood them.
“Yes,” she said, breathless, her heart fluttering like a frantic trapped bird. “Yes, I’ll help you, little friends.”
FIRST DAY
I waved at the Gillespies' car as it crawled down their driveway, weaving between thickets of trees, then started its journey to the couples' retreat two states away.
Their house stood at my back. It was an old mansion, three stories tall and built mostly of sandstone blocks. The porch had been beautiful once, but the hardwood boards below my sneakers had lost their shine and were developing cracks, and the white paint on the doorway pillars was peeling.
The Gillespies had entrusted the house to my care for the month while they “built on their foundation,” as Mrs Gillespie had put it. But judging by the way the couple actively avoided touching each other, I suspected the foundation had washed away years ago, and the retreat was a final effort to keep their marriage from being submerged entirely.
Their house seemed to echo that sentiment. It was a magnificent building—way beyond what I could ever hope to afford with my part-time retail job and a useless English degree—but the years hadn't done it any favours. The floorboards creaked under my feet as I passed the threshold and looked around the lounge room. It was clean, at least, but the furniture had a shabby past-its-prime look, and the off-white walls were edging towards a dingy grey.
I dropped the house key on the coffee table as I passed it, along with a slip of paper with Mrs Gillespie's mobile printed in a neat, feminine script. Beyond the lounge room was the dining room. A twelve-seater dark-wood table took pride of place below an actual chandelier.
“Wow.” I gazed at the crystal beauty as it sparkled in the dim light, hinting at a history of glamorous dinner parties and decadent lifestyles.
I ran my hand through my messy hair, trying to pull out some of the knots. I hadn't washed it the night before, and it felt greasy between my fingers. Settle in first, shower later.
Mrs Gillespie had told me my room was the last door on the left at the end of the second-floor hallway, so I grabbed my travel case and pulled it up the curved stairway. The hallway stretched the length of the house, with four doors on each side, and I was winded by the time I pushed open the last door. I found myself in a neat room with a large window overlooking the woods behind the property.
My suitcase was heavy, loaded with clothes, books, and my laptop, and I heaved it onto the bed to unpack. There might not have been a chandelier in my room, but it did have sconces set into the wall and patterned wallpaper that looked as though it belonged in the 1920s. For all I knew, that might have been when the house was last renovated.
As I hung my T-shirts and jeans in the dark-wood dresser, I couldn't stop marvelling at how clean it was. The room had a stuffy feeling that had made me assume every surface would be covered with dust and cobwebs, but Mrs Gillespie must have been thorough in her sprucing. Despite this, it felt closed in and musty, and as soon as I'd finished hanging up the clothes, I unlocked and opened the windows to let in fresh air.
A slope, spotted with clumps of rocks and spindly weeds, ran down behind the building to meet the pine woods fifty meters away. The trees had to be old; some of them looked so large I would have had no chance of touching my hands if I tried to embrace them. Their tips stretched above my window, possibly even above the roof of the house, and patchy bushes and vines filled in the spaces around their trunks.
I leaned on the windowsill, closing my eyes and inhaling deeply to savour the smell. The air felt so much clearer and crisper here, away from the smog of the city, and I began to pick up faint animal noises from the woods.
A shiver ran down my spine and I grinned to myself. As much as the Gillespies needed their couples' retreat, I thought I might have needed the housesitting job even more. I hadn't fully settled in, and already I felt lighter, as though the stress from the last eight months of studying and working was loosening its hold.
I twirled away from the window and ran back to my travel case, suddenly eager to finish unpacking and explore the house. I kicked my spare shoes under the bed, left the toiletries on my bedside table for when I found the bathroom, then unceremoniously dumped the laptop and books onto the desk standing opposite the bed.
“Good enough.” I grinned and shoved the travel case inside the wardrobe, then left my room, itching to see the rest of the house. I tried the first door down the hallway, but to my disappointment, it was locked.
Maybe Mrs Gillespie didn't want me getting nosy and only gave me access to some parts of the house. The thought was like a bucket of cold water dropped over me; I loved old buildings, and part of the thrill of the trip had been the opportunity to explore and enjoy the sprawling gothic mansion. Not actually seeing much of it would have been devastating.
I tried the next door down the hallway, expecting it to also be locked, but I was thrilled when it opened without protest. Beyond the door was another bedroom, smaller than and not quite as clean as mine. I grinned to myself as I looked through it. Unlike my room with its off-white walls and pale-blue bedspread, this new room was decorated all in shades of maroon. Golden leafy designs adorned the wallpaper, which was peeling in many places, exposing a darker wallpaper behind it. The bedspread looked decades old and held a stack of limp blood-red pillows.
“Gorgeous,” I murmured to myself, then darted back into the hallway to look into the next room. It was the same size as the last, but had no furniture at all—just a rug rolled into a coil in the corner and a broom leaning against the wall.
The door opposite that room opened into a bathroom that was old-fashioned but large, with a clawed tub. A wide mirror hung above the sink, and the relatively modern shower had probably been installed within the last decade.
The final room was clearly the master bedroom, probably where the Gillespies slept. The queen-sized bed had been hastily made, and the wardrobe doors stood open, showing it was still half-full. Guess I'm not the only one who packs in a hurry. I didn't want to snoop around their personal things too much, so I left the room without touching anything.
The end of the hallway split into two: to the right was the staircase to the ground floor, and to the left was a staircase going up to the third level. I hesitated, savouring the possibilities of what the top floor might hold, but I knew it made more sense to familiarise myself with the functional parts of the house first. I reluctantly took the stairs down, vowing to explore the upstairs rooms to my heart's content after I’d showered and sorted out dinner.
The lowest level had a strange arrangement, with doors in odd places and clashing aesthetics. I went from the living room to the dining room, then into the kitchen, which was disconcertingly modern compared to the rest of the house. A magnet held a piece of paper to the fridge's silver door; “Please help yourself.” I opened the doors and found bacon, vegetables, eggs, milk, and a packet of meat. At least I wasn't going to starve before I could get to the shops in the town half an hour away.
I hadn't realised how remote the Gillespies' house was until I'd arrived. I'd caught a taxi from the train station in the town, and by the time we'd driven past farmland, uphill through the narrow, winding roads hedged on both sides by woods, and eventually pulled up at the brooding stone building, the fare had grown to nearly twice what I'd expected. That meant I didn't have the budget to go into town as often as I'd planned, and I would have to do my shopping in large, infrequent batches.
Not that I minded too much, though. I found the isolation exhilarating. I felt as though I could do anything—anything!—and no one would know or care. There was no cranky Mrs Bobinsky upstairs to complain to the landlord if I watched a movie, and no one to care how loud I played my music.
“I could do anything,” I said in wonder as I strolled through the kitchen. “I could spend the entire month naked, and no one would know or care.”
I jogged back into the dining room and followed its other door into what I guessed was a library. The walls were covered in shelves, though they held only about a dozen books grouped together on one shelf.
“What a shame,” I muttered as I read the names on the books' spines. They were depressingly dull: a few investment guides, a smattering of self-help books with tritely optimistic titles, an encyclopedia, a dictionary, and four novels—all thrillers by the same author. Good thing I brought my own books.
Past the library was a study, which seemed to be Mr Gillespie's domain. Neat stacks of papers sat on the desk, and the walls were hung with large photos of nature scenes. I didn't look any further—partly because I didn't want to intrude on what was probably his personal area, and partly because I had no interest in his job.
Beyond that was a hallway that seemed to lead back to the staircase, then the laundry and a large, empty area that I could only imagine was meant to be a ballroom. I went back to the hallway and looked up and down its length, marvelling at the house’s size. It felt more like a small hotel than a home, and I tried to imagine the Gillespies living there, only passing each other infrequently in the sprawling building. It held far more space than two people could possibly have needed.
FIRST NIGHT
My toothbrush clattered as I dropped it into the small blue cup perched at the edge of the sink. I used my hands to scoop the running water into my mouth. Even the tap water tasted different than it did in the city; it was crisper and less sanitised. I closed my eyes, imagining I was drinking from a stream.
My face had become pasty and pale, I noticed as I blinked at my reflection in the mirror. I would have to sit in the sun a few times while I had the chance. My freshly washed hair was beginning to frizz as it dried, and my white pyjamas looked too bright against the dull-grey bathroom walls.
“Who paints a bathroom grey?” I asked my reflection. The entire house seemed shrouded by a feeling of gloom, as though the long years had muted and drained its colours. It didn't help that all of the lights were dim, either by design or because of a lack of cleaning, and shadows encroached on the rooms with a cold persistence. I didn't mind too much, though; I found something pretty about the house's dark aura. In the same way funeral flowers can be beautiful.
“That's enough morbidity for tonight,” my reflection told me. “Bedtime.”
I glanced at the stairwell to my left as I exited the bathroom. The wooden steps leading upwards disappeared into shadow after the first meter, teasing me with possibilities. I hadn't visited the upstairs rooms yet; figuring out how to start the stoves to cook dinner had taken a frustrating forty minutes. Then I'd gotten distracted reading one of the books I'd brought. By the time I closed it, it was well into the night, and I could hear owls calling to each other outside the window.
We’ll explore tomorrow.
My room felt welcoming, maybe because of the dozen novels I'd stacked on the desk and beside my bed. I took a final look out the window. The pines’ silhouettes stood proudly against the sky as the half-moon cast a thin white light across their tips.
“Goodnight,” I whispered, half to myself and half to the house, then I turned out the light and crawled into bed.
* * *
A rasping, scratching noise permeated my dreams, where I walked long hallways without doors. Turning around corner after corner, like a rat in a maze, I chased the sound but never gained on it.
I turned a final corner and saw the hall had led me into a graveyard. Bleached-white headstones stuck out of the raw dirt like crooked teeth, and when I tried to back away, I found my escape blocked by a cold stone wall.
I woke with a jolt.
The dream hadn't quite been a nightmare, but it had been disquieting, and my heart was racing. I rubbed my hair out of my face and fumbled to turn on the bedside lamp. It took me a moment to realise part of my dream hadn’t ended with my waking: a soft scraping sound was barely audible over my ragged breathing. I held still, listening as hard as I could. It sounded like nails clawing at wood.
The cold night air made me shiver as I stumbled out of bed and pulled on my sneakers. I grabbed my jacket out of the wardrobe and tugged it over my pyjamas before slinking into the hallway.
The walkway to my left ended in a large window overlooking the woods. The moon cast just enough light for me to see without searching for a switch, so I walked through the house slowly and carefully, searching for the source of the noise. Now that I was listening, a multitude of other sounds crept into my awareness: deep creaking from below my feet; occasional rattling from the floor above my head; then a moaning, grinding sound from inside the wall, where the plumbing became active.
I'd heard it said that some old houses breathed, and the Gillespies' building certainly did. The house felt like a living creature, resting in the middle of the countryside, whiling away its years in hibernation. The windows were its eyes, the shingles plated its back. That would make me… what?
“A parasite.” I snorted in laughter. The sound echoed strangely in the empty hallway. My hand landed on the glass doorknob of the room beside mine, and I gave it a twist just in case. As it had during the day, the lock stayed resistant.
I took the stairwell down to the first floor. The wooden steps whined under my feet as the plumbing farther back in the building gave a final rattle then quieted. The house looked completely different at night. What was dim and dingy during the day became almost luminous under the effects of the moon and stars. The wallpaper seemed more vivid, the wood seemed a richer colour, and the secrets hidden in the darkness felt a thousand times more alluring—especially when the shadows writhed across the floor and bloomed out of every corner.
I let myself out the front door without thinking about what I was doing. The desire to see the outside of the building—the whole of the house, I thought, the true house—had been growing without me even realising it. Standing on the lawn, I was able to look at its three-story facade. Its black windows watched over the driveway like dark eyes.
Icy dew from the grass stuck on my ankles and the hem of my pyjama pants as I walked through it. Like the inside of the building, the outside hadn’t been maintained well, and the grass grew thin and too tall. Tiny insects, shocked out of their sleep, flicked away from me as I walked through their homes. A solitary owl called from behind me.
I rounded the corner of the building to have a closer look at the woods. Their branches moved in the breeze, a mess of shadows that could hide innumerable monsters. I looked to my right, away from the woods, and gazed at the side of the house.
My window was easy to find, located nearly at the end of the building, on the second level. I'd left the bedside light on, and the square of glass glowed like a beacon. The window next to it belonged to the locked room. It was different from the others; while every other window in the house sat flush against the wall, that one extended out in a bay shape. I tried to picture it from the inside: there was probably a seat below the window, so that whoever stayed in the room could sit there with an unmatched view of the outside world.
It seemed bizarre that the door was locked. Every other room I'd tried, including the Gillespies' personal bedroom, had been left open. What’s in there?
I started to lose track of time as I gazed at the window, mesmerised by its possibilities. Everything was so perfectly still that when the curtains fluttered, I actually jumped.
It's just the breeze catching them. I watched the pale shapes hidden behind the glass swirl and sway for a moment before falling still again. The shock had jolted me out of my sleepy daze. I became acutely aware of how cold the wind was and folded my arms across my chest, shuffling on the spot to try to increase the circulation to my numbing feet.
The owl above my head hooted its displeasure at my presence, and I took that as my cue to go back to sleep. You may rule the world by day, but the creatures of the night demand their privacy.
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