The Unquiet House by Alison Littlewood

didn’t move and she strained harder, gripping it with both hands, then banging into the door with her shoulder. She stopped, found herself opening her mouth to call out, then closed it again. Someone had come into the house and come up the stairs and heard her in here and they were here now, holding the handle from the other side. It must be Charlie, playing another joke. She’d left the front door unlocked, and the back. That had been stupid. Why on earth had she done that? Especially after what she thought she’d seen in the night.
    She let go of the handle and stepped back. Her hand was shaking. She bent and looked at the strip of light under the door, then, quietly, she knelt and pushed her face as close to the floor as she could.
    She thought she could see something partially blocking the light, but she couldn’t get low enough to see it properly. She stood again, knocking her head against the shelf and bit her lip. She didn’t want to cry out – she wasn’t sure who might hear her. She grabbed the handle again, quickly, as if to take someone by surprise, and jerked on it, but it still didn’t move.
    She stepped back, breathing hard. Who the hell would do this? Some joke this was, sneaking up on someone in their own house – a woman, on her own – and scaring her.
    ‘Who’s there?’ Her voice was sharp, although she’d meant for it to be louder. ‘Who is it?’
    As she listened the music changed to some seventies thing: Marc Bolan singing T. Rex’s ‘Metal Guru’.
    She banged on the door, hard, the blows wrenching her shoulder, but she didn’t care, and when the door didn’t open she did it again, harder. Then tears came, fucking
tears
, but she blinked them back.
Charlie
, she thought. She didn’t know why, only that his name was there: someone she could go to for help, or someone who would play tricks, put a dirty old suit back in her room as if to say, there: that’s the real owner, come home again. She didn’t know which Charlie he was.
    She grabbed the handle and wrenched hard on it, bruising her palm, and this time it came free. She gasped in spite of herself and pushed, and something outside rattled against the base of the door. The door gave a little further and then it stopped. She hammered on it this time, hard,
blam-blam-blam!
    There was no sound from the other side, only the radio going on and on, though the tone of the music seemed to have changed.
    ‘Let me out.’ Emma’s voice didn’t waver: good. She didn’t want to betray her fear, didn’t want to give them the satisfaction. Who was it, anyway? What the hell gave them the right? She gave the door a kick for good measure and again it rattled but it did not open.
    ‘
Shit
.’
    Emma could feel her hand resting against the wood. It was still shaking. Her knees felt shaky too; she wanted to sit down. She looked behind her, into the dark, as if she would find some answer there, but it did not come. She looked back at the door. It no longer felt as if anyone was there. It didn’t feel as if anyone was going to help. The house was empty and it was hers, only hers. And her parents couldn’t come to her, full of concern at the noise she’d made. There was no one here she knew, no neighbour or friend to look in on her. She couldn’t shout through the ceiling to bring Jackie and Liam. There was only the church with its quiet graveyard and no one there – and anyway, even if she could shout loud enough, she’d put on the radio – the
radio
, for God’s sake – just as if she’d wanted to drown out her own calls for help.
    She remembered the dreams she’d had before she’d come to Mire House, the ones in which she simply disappeared, with no one to miss her or look for her, and she curled her hands into fists. There must be someone she could contact. She reached for her back pocket and found it empty. Where had she put her mobile phone? She peered around but it was still dark, so she ran her hands across each shelf, finding