Sometime around dawn, Jason lapsed into a fitful doze, only to be woken by the alarm after what seemed like a few seconds. Instantly, his mind went into overdrive. Thinking back over the events of the night.
All of the windows, except for their bedroom, had been securely shut, with locks in place.
Yet, somehow, someone had got in.
In order to walk up and down his studio floor?
Emily was awake beside him. He could hear the soft crushing of her eyelashes as she lay, blinking. He rolled towards her and kissed her. ‘You OK?’ he asked.
‘Not really, no. You?’
‘I don’t think it was creaking floorboards.’
‘What did you see here, in our room?’ she asked.
‘It looked like someone moving across the floor.’
‘In high heels or hobnail boots?’
‘I just thought – thought I saw the shape of someone in the darkness.’ He shrugged. ‘Did you see the glance those coppers exchanged? They clearly thought we were nutters.’
‘I don’t think so.’ She kissed him. ‘I think what they thought was, here’s a couple just moved into a new place and are spooked out by unfamiliar noises in the night.’
He wasn’t sure how to answer her. Was she right?
‘We have to do something, Jason. We can’t live here like this. We’ve seen one bloody ghost, you’ve met a phantom vicar promising to arrange an exorcism and you’ve seen someone crushed to death out of your window. What have we moved into?’
‘Want to move out? We could go and stay in a hotel until we find something else?’
‘No. I love this house. There’s something very wrong, but are we going to let it drive us out?’
‘What does Louise say?’
‘That the house needs spiritual cleansing, that’s all. We’re on a historic site where there’ve been some tragic deaths. I don’t know – she says maybe there’s some old souls wandering around, spirits who don’t realize their bodies are dead. She’s going to talk to someone she knows who specializes in that stuff.’
‘Like, in asking ghosts to take their shoes off before they go clumping around in the middle of the night?’
She looked at him levelly and smiled. ‘We’ll get through this. We’ll get it sorted.’
‘We will.’