ou refuse Stacey’s kind invitation and hurry away, trying to ignore her contemptuous stare.

That night you pull the wardrobe over in front of the door. You check the windows and windowsill, then lock the window. Then you get under the bed with your doona and pillow and put on your Walkman as loud as the batteries will let you, so that you can’t hear anything that happens outside. You lie there all night, shivering with fear. It’s a stormy night, and often the windows shake and the glass rattles with the strength of the wind. Every time it happens you think your life is about to end. You expect to see a group of ghostly figures come drifting in through the walls to surround the bed, dragging you out and hugging you with their cold clammy bony arms, inviting you to join them, deep in the dark earth . . . AAAAGGHHH! What was that? Oh. Just your teddy bear falling off the bed. You forget that you’re way too old for teddy bears and you clutch it like you’re drowning and it’s a lifesaver.

In the morning you crawl out from under the bed feeling a little sore and cramped, and also feeling a little silly. How could you have believed all that rubbish Stacey told you? Ghosts, phooey! The room’s pretty stuffy because you didn’t let any fresh air in during the night. So you go over to the window to open it.

And that’s when you see it.

On the outside of the glass are scratch marks. What could have caused them? Surely not . . . human hands? Surely not . . . someone trying to get in? With your own hands shaking, you pull up the window. And there on the sill, old and yellowed and cracked where it was caught under the window sash, is something that definitely wasn’t there the night before: a single solitary human fingernail.