The cottage looked no less run down in the morning. If anything, the bright light made it worse. The paint was peeling, windows were cracked, and there were weeds so tall that they reached my knees. But it wasn't the house that made me pause, halfway up the path.
It was the crows.
Six of them, sitting in a neat row along the roofline. Not moving. Not calling out. Just… watching.
I tried to laugh it off. Just birds. Nothing more. But their eyes followed me as I walked, glossy and dark and too still. I kept my gaze fixed on the door and didn't look up again until I was safely inside.
The air smelled like old paper and mildew. I opened the front windows to let in some light and fresh air. Sunbeams streamed across the worn floorboards, catching dust motes in midair. The place still felt off to me, but I told myself I was being ridiculous. It was just a house. My house.
Time to start treating it like one.
I dropped my bag on the kitchen counter and pulled out a notepad, flipping to a fresh page. I'd only planned on staying here a few days, maybe a week, while I got it ready to move all my-admittedly few-belongings here.
Judging by the state of the place, I might need a month just to clear out the junk and make it liveable.
Fix List:
Remove old furniture
Clean chimney
Rewire everything??
Get someone to look at the roof
Pest control (crows??)
Figure out how to open cellar hatch
The last one was underlined twice.
It was still there. The faint outline of a hatchway set into the floor with a bookcase on top of it because of my silly fears.
I shoved the bookcase out of the way and cleared away the dusty rug, then crouched beside the hatch. I gave the iron ring an experimental tug, before gritting my teeth and bracing myself, putting all my strength into pulling it open.
Nothing happened. It didn't budge an inch.
I ran my fingers around the edge, feeling the grove. There was a cold touch of air on my fingertips and when I crouched low, the metallic scent from the other night was stronger.
Something was down there.
Probably just a crawl space filled with pipes and old spiderwebs, but I'd seen far too many posts online about people buying houses and finding hidden rooms to not have my imagination filling my head with lost treasures and riches galore.
It wasn't like my great aunt ever spent any money or did anything.
She must have had a stash somewhere.
But if it was beneath the floorboards, I couldn't get to it right then. Whether it was swollen with age or damp or just had a hidden lock. I couldn't open it. But I resolved to return with some tools and see what was down there.
In daytime, of course.
I spent the next hour exploring the house, going room by room, opening old drawers, shifting crumbling furniture and sneezing my way through cobwebs. I found stacks of yellowed newspapers from the seventies, boxes of broken crockery, and a collection of ceramic owls that stared at me with unsettling intensity. But the real find came when I pushed open the door to what must have been my great aunts' study.
This room was smaller than the rest, tucked away at the back of the house, and colder too. Shelves lined the walls, many of them bowed with age under the weight of books and papers.
A writing desk sat beneath the window, its surface littered with notebooks, loose pages, and a silver letter opener shaped like an ancient sword.
I settled into the cracked leather armchair and began to read.
The first journal was filled with neat, looping handwriting. It took me an embarrassingly long time to adjust to the old-fashioned writing as I puzzled out the words. Too many years typing and reading digitally. No one used cursive anymore.
Once started though, I couldn't stop.
"The hound and the leech clashed again last night. I was called to the circle. The ground still remembers his name, but it won't speak it aloud. He hungers, but the wards held."
The next page mentioned something about balancing "the three points" which, apparently, was something to do with moonlight, salt and ash. I didn't understand half of it, but the tone was serious.
Urgent.
Another entry caught my attention:
"He came with the fog. A glamour on his tongue, charm in his eyes. I held the line. He won't cross again-not tonight."
I sat back and stared at those words. Glamour? Fog? "The leech"? It sounded like fantasy. Like my aunt had been writing bad poetry or stories.
Or had just been delusional.
But then again, the way the air felt in this room, the stillness, the cold… I wasn't so sure.
I found a thin notebook beneath the others, filled with diagrams and symbols I didn't recognise. Circles intersecting with other circles, annotated with little notes in Latin and old English. Beside them were names – Lucian. Mirelle. Thorne.
That one I recognised.
I flipped back to the journal and skimmed until I saw it again.
"Thorne knows better. He swore he would not return here, not while the bindings remain. If he crosses into Keswick again, he'll awaken more than a memory."
Jonathan Thorne, from the pub. It could have been just a coincidence, but how many people had the last name Thorne?
A quick check of my phone and I came up with more than seventy thousand entries with that name. So, maybe more common than I thought.
I flipped back through the pages and grunted softly. The first entry was dated.
"01st June 1965"
Not the guy I met last night then.
For some reason that made me a little happier. Whoever the Thorne was in the book, he was obviously clashing with my great-aunt, and from the tone of her writings, she neither trusted nor liked him.
She had always been a good judge of character, and I was sure that anyone she was fighting with was not a nice person. Which meant I was pleased that it wasn't the guy I met last night, though I couldn't specify why.
I set the pad aside and read through some of the letters. There were dozens of them, some addressed to someone named Isobel. Others just began My dearest sister. Most of them rambled, with talk of herbs and rituals, keeping watch, holding lines.
One said:
"It stirs again. Beneath the stone, under root and water. If she does not come, I don't know who will stop it next time."
I read that line over and over, until it stopped making sense.
If she does not come.
The letter was dated only a few years past and thinking back I could recall receiving a letter from my great-aunt. I was in Uni at the time and stressing about finishing my first year while juggling a job, a social life and a boyfriend.
I'd not had the time to respond, let alone visit like she'd requested and in time, I'd forgotten about it.
Was this letter about me? Was I her? Or just someone unlucky enough to inherit the mess she left behind.
I was left with more questions than answers and I set the letters aside, feeling troubled. I couldn't help wishing that I had at least reached out to her, back then, even if I couldn't get up to visit her. At least then she would have known I cared.
My thoughts as heavy as my heart, I left the study behind and climbed the stairs to the bedroom. I pulled open the wardrobe and looked through the clothes hanging there. The scent of mothballs was strong, and the clothes were decades old.
She had been something of a pack rat, it seemed, refusing to throw away anything if there was any chance it could still be used.
I ran my fingers through the thick material of a dress. It was a green so dark as to be almost black, with faint burgundy thread work forming strange patterns along the hem.
She had worn it, once, many years ago when Mum had brought me out to the lake one summer. I could remember her still, standing there in the clearing, wearing the dress and singing. Her voice had been clear, and bright, and the birds in the trees had seemed to sing along with her to six-year-old me.
The sunlight had formed beams through the forest canopy, bathing her in golden light. She'd looked like she was glowing.
I'd curled up on the grass, listening to her sing, feeling warm and safe, and very loved there at her feet. I must have fallen asleep because when I awoke, it was late afternoon and I was back in the house, lying beneath a blanket on the couch.
It was a treasured memory.
I brushed at my eyes and sniffed.
I really wished I had come to see her when she'd asked me to.
Rising from the bed, I crossed to the mirror and checked my face. The concealer was still in place, though my hair was dishevelled. I neatened up the ponytail and pulled some cobweb from my collar, tutting at it.
Movement in the mirrored glass had me spinning on my heel, heart hammering my chest.
But there was no one there.
I glanced back over my shoulder and shivered.
A dark shadow hovered by the door, just for a moment, before it vanished like mist before the sun.
That was enough for one day.
Before leaving, I stepped outside again. The wind had picked up. Leaves rustled through the long grass, and somewhere behind the cottage, something clattered in the shed.
I decided not to go look.
The garden was a tangle of weeds and memories. I could tell it had once been beautiful, even if I couldn't quite remember it as I'd spent more time at the lake or in the forest than the garden. There were still rose bushes near the gate, wild and sprawling, and stone markers half-buried in the earth.
A bench lay collapsed near the tree line. The place was overgrown, but not dead. Just… waiting.
I turned back toward the house, letting my eyes wander up to the windows. My bedroom was just above the study. I squinted, remembering something I hadn't thought about since waking.
When I'd slept in the room, I'd heard tapping at the window.
I'd brushed it off, thinking it was just branches in the wind.
But now, standing there in the garden, staring up at the cottage…
There were no trees near that window.
Nothing close enough to reach.
Nothing that could have tapped.