The Stranger in Our House

by Sarah A. Denzil

Genres: Supernatural suspense

Synopsis

What would you do if your son became a stranger overnight?

Tired of their cramped London apartment, Aaron and Meera relocate to the idyllic village of Little Crake along with their two children, Noah and Uma. The new cottage looks out over the many miles of woodland beyond. It’s a far cry from their tiny flat and the perfect fresh start.

Until fifteen-year-old Noah wanders alone into the forest. For three days, a search party combs the woods. Aaron braces himself for the worst, convinced his son is lost forever. Until he finds Noah alive, hiding in the hollow of a tree. It feels like a second chance.

But why doesn’t Noah remember those three days in the woods? And why are there strange cuts slashed across his torso? Why did he cover himself in mud and hide away in an old oak tree?

Once a studious and gentle boy, Noah becomes a troublemaker at school. He withdraws from his family, sleepwalks at night, and creates eerie sketches of Dark Valley Forest. Aaron tells himself that Noah just needs time to readjust. He’ll soon be himself again. But Meera believes otherwise. This new version of Noah is harsh and cruel—a complete stranger.

A mother knows when something is wrong with her child. Aaron may be deluded, but she knows the boy who came back from the woods is not their son.

What readers are saying about The Stranger in Our House:

"I flew through this book so fast. I’d not recommend you to read it at night, as I did… but it was really fabulous! Well written and well-researched." -- Netgalley Reviewer, 5 stars

"One of those books that will captivate and fully engage you as you read... I highly recommend it!" -- Netgalley Reviewer, 5 stars

"I was invested from the first page, and I couldn't read this story fast enough!" -- Netgalley Reviewer, 5 stars

"Spooky and kept me on edge to the end!" -- Netgalley Reviewer, 5 stars

"This book keeps up such a good pace. There are constantly things happening, and the unsettling, creepy atmosphere is built throughout the book. There are twists and turns, and you just have no idea what's going to happen next.... or what's already happened either since you don't know whose account to believe. It really does get under your skin and has your hair standing on end in parts. It's everyone's worst nightmare and taps into that tiny part of you that does wonder..... what if?!" -- Netgalley Reviewer, 5 stars

 

Release date: February 7, 2023

Print pages: 267

Sample

Foreword

 

The following is a collation of diaries, news articles and text messages related to the Aiken family and what happened during their time in Little Crake. I have arranged them as best I can, in the order of the events as they happened. This is with permission of the surviving members of the family who wished to tell their story.

The purpose of this is for readers to make up their own minds about what happened here. I have decided to remain impartial, though some of my news articles do sway one way or the other, and I leave my final thoughts at the end.

You may find some of the passages distressing and the illustrations disturbing. Please proceed with caution.

Cameron Hollis

 

Publisher’s Note

Not every remaining member of the Aiken family approved the publishing of this book and wanted this to be known. While the author, and the publisher, obtained the collection from verified sources, a spokesperson from the family wished to make it known that this was done without their approval.

Permission was granted by all rights owners to publish primary sources, including therapist notes and diaries.

 

Aaron’s Diary

 

Thursday, 23 June

 

We found him today—three days of heart-stopping terror followed by the ache of pure relief. But I’m still pulled tight as a violin string. Dear God, what happened to him out there? The words are an earworm nestled deep in the canal. My wife, Meera, often regards me with dark desperation clouding her eyes. Answers—we crave them like they are air and we’re starved of oxygen. But right now, all I can do is hold Noah and thank the universe that he has come back to us.

Truth be told—and Meera can never know this—I lost faith at six minutes past six this evening. I checked my phone, saw the time, and thought, This is it. The police are about to find his body. I was deep inside Dark Valley Forest, calling Noah’s name, my face marred by tear streaks. Uma was at home, probably asleep, with Meera and my mother watching over her.

Words cannot express the sensation that spread over my skin as the trees watched me. It was as if my entire body was preparing to vomit out the contents of my stomach. My cold flesh readied itself for abdominal cramps. DS Tully advised me to put my head between my knees and wait for it to pass. I did, and I wasn’t sick, but I did cry, with the burly detective standing over me awkwardly, offering a polite but firm tap to the shoulder.

“Come on, now, Mr Aiken,” he said. “Don’t lose hope.”

I had lost hope. What a shameful, terrible thing for a father to do. We’d searched relentlessly, from painfully early in the morning until the darkness stretched between the oaks. We had no idea where he’d gone. We only knew that he stepped off the school bus in the centre of the village, as always, and then never came home. An eyewitness reported seeing him walking towards the woods. We’d been searching ever since.

The air still smelled faintly of smoke from the last dying embers of summer solstice bonfires. It was around seven p.m., I think. I was back on my feet, trudging across the damp ground.

Someone in the distance yelled, “Here!” and it rippled through the trees.

We ran. I didn’t allow my body to react with fear this time—I forced myself on, working through some sort of detachment between body and soul. My mind might have been floating up above the trees. My son needs me, I thought. I must be there for him. Nothing else mattered. I had no idea whether I was going to find my brown-eyed teenage son emerging from the trees with a sheepish grin on his face or a cold body tangled in thorns.

And then I reached a circular clearing with one great tree in the centre. All the other, lesser trees seemed to have backed away to allow this one monster to grow. Sun slanted through the twisted branches, turning DS Tully’s skin sepia. Dust particles floated before my eyes. When I tried to view the large oak in front of me, I squinted in the brightness. It took a few moments for me to realise what I was seeing. A part of me now longs for the time before, because what I saw will haunt me for the rest of my life.

Noah, folded in a way I didn’t think possible for a human being, was in the hollow of a tree. It was like someone had stuffed him in there. His legs were shoved up to his chest and his body pitched forwards so that his head rested on his knees. Noah was naked from the waist up, his torso smeared with mud so that you couldn’t see a single inch of his skin. From the waist down, he wore the school trousers he’d gone missing in. He had socks on but no shoes. A thin line of blood had trickled down from Noah to the forest floor.

The sight repulsed me. Yes, he was my son, but he was also a body stuffed in a tree trunk, dirty and strange. The sensation passed quickly, and I ran to him, tears hot behind my eyes, ready to spill. Noah’s life flashed through my jumbled thoughts. I was that sure he was dead.

And then he took a breath and lifted his head. I saw the whites of his eyes as he looked at me. His hand reached out. His bony, claw-like fingers grabbed my jacket and yanked me to him.

“Help me,” he croaked.

 

Aaron’s Diary

 

Friday, 24 June

 

I have decided for myself that the best way to deal with the events of the last week is to write it all down from the beginning. I am a writer, after all. Well, sort of. Maybe a failed writer would be a better description. Or a writer on a hiatus. Anyway, none of that matters, but what does matter is that I make an effort to process what happened to us as a family when Noah disappeared.

He's still in hospital, sore but otherwise physically okay. Mentally, I don’t know. More on that later.

Noah should be released soon, and his return home may become the next chapter in this story. But as I said, I want to go back to the start. For us, it begins with Little Crake. I need to figure out what drew us here in the first place.

Six months ago, my wife, Meera, uttered a few short words that changed the course of our lives: “I want the children to know clean air.”

We were living in Dagenham at the time, in the East End of London. It was the only part of the city we could afford. I mostly freelanced as a copywriter—and still do—with my meagre book royalties trickling in every quarter. Meera was a primary school teacher—and still is—which obviously does not pay a huge amount. But her parents had always offered to help us out with money. Her parents are well-off to the point of being comfortable and nothing more. They aren’t millionaires or excessively wealthy. It does help that Meera is an only child, though.

My dad had died not long after Meera and I got married. It was sudden—a terrible heart attack—but even with life insurance, Mum never had the funds to help us financially. She takes the kids for a week in the summer so we can have a break. That’s her way of being a good grandparent and mum.

After sitting down to work out our finances, we knew what we needed to do—head north, where the house prices were lower and there was an abundance of countryside. That meant moving quite far away from Meera’s family in London, but closer to my mum in Doncaster. Meera scoured Right Move and Monster, searching for houses and jobs. I could do my job from wherever I wanted, so I left it to her to choose our location.

She would show me her pros-and-cons lists in the evenings, tapping a pen against the notebook. “Moors or dales? What about the Pennines? Too far north?”

Soon she threw herself into the research until it became an obsession. I wished I could join in, but I always felt neutral about it all. The excitement never hit me like it had her. And then she found the Little Crake primary school and her enthusiasm only grew.

“Listen to this,” she said. “Little Crake is a small, friendly primary school in North Yorkshire, on the edge of Dark Valley Forest. This historic village dates back to the thirteenth century and is famous for its quarantine during the Great Plague of 1665. The school building itself is five hundred years old.” She gazed at me, her eyes brighter than I’d seen them in months. “I have to apply for this job. I want to live in this place already. There’s so much history.”

The rest, as they say, is history. We booked a B and B at the nearest town, Hawby, before Meera’s job interview. We took the kids to the Go Ape activity centre inside Dark Valley Forest. Uma, fearless as ever, went on the zipline three times. We had sandwiches and tea in a quaint coffee shop and wandered around the village, reading the historical plaques and the old stones used to mark its boundary.

Noah turned to me at some point in the day, and I remember he said, “The people here sacrificed themselves, didn’t they? They didn’t go anywhere. Like, how did they get food? How did they make a living? It must have been awful. Half of them died.”

Uma, our youngest at thirteen, looked sharply at Noah. I think she was spooked by the dark history but refused to show it. She may be fearless on a zipline, but Uma had a thing about ghosts and ghouls.

“That was a long time ago,” I pointed out. “Now this is a nice place to live with lots of opportunities for walks. Breathe in that air.” I made a point of sucking in a big lungful and blowing it out loudly.

“Dad, stop!” Uma said, her eyes drifting around the village, checking no one was watching. “So embarrassing.”

But Noah laughed at least. Meera seemed a bit distracted now we were here. Perhaps it was overwhelming for her to be in the place she’d researched so heavily. I had no idea if Little Crake lived up to her expectations based on her expressions. But she did read every plaque, mumbling the facts back to herself, like she was internalising them. We carried on walking, the roads narrowing, and that was where we found Woodsman Hut.

It might have once been a hut, but now it was a picture-perfect cottage with a neat front garden that stretched down to the lane. Pink climbing flowers framed the cheery yellow door, and the old windows had a certain character to them, like they might wink at any moment. Meera stood, staring, until a woman walked out of the front door. I tapped Meera on the arm, concerned that the woman had come to chastise us for gawping.

But she stopped on the path and called, “It’s going on the market, if you’re interested!”

I took in her outfit—the smart skirt suit, sensible heels, and blazer—and realised she was an estate agent, not the owner.

“Yes,” Meera said. “We’re very much interested.” She turned to me and grinned.

On the one hand, it was a beautiful cottage, and I hadn’t seen Meera smile like that for quite a while. But at the same time, the sudden acceleration blindsided me. Here we were, galloping ahead at a lightning-fast pace, when a few weeks ago, we’d been making pros and cons lists. Then it hit me. I’d assumed we wouldn’t go anywhere. But I’d been wrong, and I’d underestimated Meera’s need for change.

The estate agent beckoned us in, and the kids ran up the path. Meera slipped her hand into mine, lifted her shoulders, and grinned. As soon as I set foot into the house, I knew it was going to be ours. We were bewitched from the start.