Merry awoke with the sure sense that something had awoken her. Not the sound of the wind screaming or the windows creaking, but a deliberate, unnatural sound. Her skin tingled with a kind of charge, like the electricity of another person, the nearness of them, or their glance, sliding over you. She opened her eye, blinked in the darkness, heart pounding.

She reached out, making sure she didn’t knock over her glass of water, and grabbed her Maglite torch. She always kept it handy, as power cuts were common. It was heavy and powerful and a good weapon. With a quick pulse of terror at what she might see, she switched it on.

No one. Nothing out of place. Her bedroom looked normal. Her door wasn’t closed, but pulled to, with an inch or two of space, just as she’d left it. But something was different. A disturbance in the air. An echo that lingered in the memory banks of her mind: a sound like a drawer opening and closing, slowly, softly, covertly.

Brandishing her torch, she got out of bed. She thought later that she should have just pulled the covers up over her head, but that wasn’t her way. Never turn from a challenge, said her father’s voice in her head. Maybe it had been her parents and Gawain, she thought, returning home after all. She glanced at her clock. Four thirty. Not a chance.

Holding her breath, heart pounding, she crossed her bedroom, feet soft on the wooden floor. Then one of the floorboards creaked as she put her weight on it, and, from downstairs, she thought she heard another creak above the roar of the wind.

She pushed open her door, sidled into the hallway, scanning the darkness with the beam of her torch. Everything looked normal. Down the stairs, step by step, down to the phone she had left on the kitchen table. Call for help, said the voice in her head. But downstairs was where whoever it was lurked . . .

Another step, and another, breath trapped in her throat with a lump of fear that grew with each second. And then a waft of pure cold and a click. The bottom step . . . the open hallway was before her, but there was no one. Not a hint of anyone, not there or in any of the rooms. Merry hurried through each one, checking wardrobes, the pantry, the broom cupboard.

There was no sign of any disturbance, just that buzz in the air.

But Merry, with her limited vision, didn’t see the tiny patches of damp on the hall rug that stood by the front door, the melted flakes of snow that had blown through in that quick second while the door had opened and closed again.

Last, she checked the boot room. Clear. She bit her lip, glanced around, peered through the window into the snow-strewn darkness outside. She thought she saw something moving, a large shape. She pulled on her boots, her hat, her long down coat. She pushed open the door, aimed the torch.

It was Jacintha, sheltering under a tree in the garden, shaking snow from her mane. How the heck had she got out of her stable, wondered Merry. Hadn’t she secured the bolt properly? Or had the wind worked it free? Was that what she had heard? The banging of the stable door?

Concern for her pony trumped her earlier fears. She shut the house door behind her and hurried over to her pony.

‘Hey, Jac. You little escape artist. Let’s get you back inside again.’

She took hold of her pony’s halter and, leaning in against the pummelling wind, she led her from the garden, across the concrete forecourt and towards the stables. A great bang sounded and Merry saw the stable door thud shut. She walked Jacintha up to it, pulled it open, sheltered her pony inside.

Her fingers stuck to the icy metal as she pushed home the bolt. She made sure it was all the way in. She’d been so cold when she stabled Jacintha hours earlier, maybe she just hadn’t secured the bolt properly?

She shivered again, cold despite her layers, but chilled too by leftover fear. She turned and hurried back towards the farmhouse. But she was moving too fast and suddenly her feet shot from under her as she skidded on the ice-covered concrete. She fell awkwardly, putting out her hands to brace her fall, let go of the torch which clattered to the ground. And went out.

Darkness closed around her. Merry felt a pulse of fear. She pushed herself up, blinked, wiped the snow from her face. She should have waited until her eye adjusted to the night, but she was scared and cold and desperate to get back inside, so she hurried on, hardly seeing where she was going. And then she hit something, or something hit her, slicing through the air, and she was falling again, too hard, too fast. With a thud, she fell backwards against the ground. Her head hit first. The blow knocked her unconscious. The snow spiralled down, covering her.

Merry awoke with a blaze of pain. Cold pain burning her. She let out a low moan, pushed herself to sitting. Had to get inside, in the warm. She got up, walked very slowly, on shaking legs. The snow still fell and the wind still howled. She walked, hands before her, checking for obstacles. The house was fifty yards away, but this was a route she should have known blindfolded. She blundered through the snow, and then there was the dark bulk of her house, looming through the blizzard.

Almost sobbing with relief, she yanked open the back door, got inside, pushed the door shut.

This time she locked it.

Still wearing her boots and her sodden clothes, turning on lights as she went, she hurried to the front door, locked that too. She climbed the stairs, went into the bathroom, ran the bath, hot tap only.

Shivering violently while it filled, she ran through her home, turning on every light. How could she have been so stupid, she chided herself. No one was there. No one in their right mind would be out on a night like this. Nor could they be. All the roads were impassable. Nothing had been disturbed. Money lay in plain sight on the hall desk where her father had left it. Silver photo frames stood untouched. The book! she thought then, panic gripping her. She fell to the floor in her bedroom, pulled out the chest, hauled up the floorboard, dragged out the plastic bag. And there was her book, safe and wholly undisturbed. Fingers shaking, she replaced it, hauled back the chest.

It had all been her imagination, that and her failure to secure the stable door properly. Nothing but her own fault. It must have been a gust of wind that pummelled into her, or maybe a broken branch, flying through the air, knocking her over. She could have died of hypothermia out there in the blizzard. Her parents would have returned to find her frozen body. Stiff and blue and dead. She let out another sob, then, leaving all the lights blazing, as if that way she could keep the darkness at bay, she lay down in the scalding bath.

A trick of her body made the water feel cold against her freezing skin. Only when she swirled it around her could she feel its warmth. She lay there, letting out water as the bath cooled, refilling it with hot water again until finally, she had stopped shaking. She got out, quickly towelled herself dry, put on her warmest pyjamas, turned on her heated blanket and got into her bed. Through the haze of exhaustion and relief, her mind turned in on itself, posing the same questions over and over. Was it the chieftain’s ghostly spirit, a living breathing thief, or just a figment of her imagination?