Instinct kicked in.

  If you've ever seen even one terrible horror series on Netflix, you're probably expecting me to go lumbering room to room now, shouting something like, 'Who's there?' or, 'Is everything okay?'

  Go on, admit it. You're hearing moody string music and anticipating some crappy jump scare when, I don't know, a blooming owl flies into my head or something.

  So, yeah. That didn't happen.

  Quietly, I switched off my phone's light and dropped it in my pocket, taking out the kitchen knife I'd brought from home and reversing the blade so that it lay parallel to the inside of my forearm. I'd ummed and ahhed about bringing this on my journey - the last thing I needed was to be shook down by the police as I made my way across London - but remembering I was in possession of the right shade of skin to make 'stop and search' a problem for other people, I'd gone for it.

  Then I shut my eyes and took some long, deep breaths.

  It might seem counterproductive, but shutting your eyes actually helps with your night vision. It gives your photoreceptors a break from any lingering light, allowing them to adjust more quickly to the dark. Basically, it's like telling them to take a quick power nap: "Okay, team, shut down and reboot so we can handle this dimly lit environment and whoever is playing silly buggers upstairs without stumbling over the coffee table." Reset complete, I opened my eyes wide.

  The world is never as dark as you think. There’s a life lesson in that there, I thought.

  What had seemed utterly pitch-black after being bathed in Keith's headlights and then having Steve Job's finest work beaming away in my hand turned out to be actually pretty navigable in the grand scheme of things. Thus, moving with far more grace and care than you'd suspect someone of my size and hairiness to possess, I began to glide around the ground floor of the cottage.

  Every room was a dark tableau of life paused, artefacts of my aunt’s existence scattered and forgotten on every surface. Books lined the shelves, most of their spines thoroughly cracked, and their titles obscured by dust. Strange devices, remnants of M’s variety of peculiar academic interests, lay abandoned on tables and in corners.

  No further screams pierced the air, but my spidey senses were at full-on tingle. The noise had come from upstairs, but there was no way I was moving away from the possible escape route of the front door before I’d made damned sure the downstairs was clear of potential nasties.

  I briefly paused in the last room on the left, which I knew used to be my mother’s when she was a kid. Stepping in, I softly ran my hand over a collection of old vinyl records and reel-to-reel tapes. Without knowing why, I felt a sense of . . . something settle in my stomach as my fingers touched the dusty covers. There was so much history here . . .

  But then a further sound broke the silence—a faint whisper, barely audible but unmistakably there. I froze, straining to hear the words. Then the whisper grew louder, and a disjointed murmur leaked out of the walls. Heart pounding, I moved to place my free hand against the wallpaper, with the disorientation of some seriously profound deja vu stealing over me.

  I'd experienced this weird sensation in Halfway Hold before.

  But, before I could think too much about that, the sound came again, but this time, it started from above. Following the noise led me back to the staircase, and I knew the soft chittering was coming from up there. Bats? Was that something that actually happened to people in the countryside? I remembered all those broken windows . . .

  And what about the scream? What was that all about?

  Steeling myself, I climbed the stairs, each step a creak of protest, which did little to calm my nerves. I was suddenly much less appreciative of my aunt's complete lack of woodwork upkeep.

  As quietly as I could manage, I reached the top step, crouching down and transferring the knife from hand to hand. There were few things in life I hated more than a knife fight. But as one of them would be being dead, I guessed such things were relative.

  I poked my head around the bannister, but the upstairs was even darker than the space below. If there was anyone waiting up there, I certainly couldn't see them. Which I had to assume meant they couldn’t see me. The noise, though, had become more intense. I couldn't make out the words, but it was definitely some sort of whispered speech.

  And then there was another high-pitched scream and my heart rate went through the roof.

  What was going on!

  My shaking was getting out of control. It wasn't just the freezing cold – my word, I could actually see my breath! How had it just got this icy? - but the surge of adrenaline was far too intense to handle. I needed to smooth that off before I moved. I filled my lungs with several deep, silent breaths, the extra oxygen flooding to muscles that I feared were about to get very busy.

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  Then, nerves a touch settled, I moved low in a crab-like motion, following the sound to an open door at the end of the hall.

  A door behind which, I knew, lay Aunt M's study.

  I pressed myself against the wall beside it and glanced back at the stairs—no one seemed to be following me up. I was as confident as I could be that the rest of the cottage was empty, and despite all that had happened recently, I was willing to bet the whole ball game on that assessment being correct. Whoever was making the whispering, chittering - punctuated with bizarre screams - was in Aunt M's study. And they were alone in the cottage.

  Crouched down, I pushed the door open further, feeling another gust of freezing air wash out.

  Two choices. Firstly, I could carefully peer inside and try to get the lay of the land. I'd usually do this via some sort of snazzy fibre-optic device or, failing that, even something simple like a little hand-held mirror would do in a pinch. Lacking both, though, on this occasion, I'd be poking my head around the corner of the door frame, which would give whoever was in there every opportunity to shoot me in the face.

  I’ve seen it happen, and the results ain’t pretty. I’m going to need all my available charms now I’m newly single, and the bullet-hole fetish scene isn’t for me. So, I thought Choice A was pretty suboptimal, all things considered.

  Choice B was to go a bit more primaeval and trust a little to luck. Primaeval being my middle name, and feeling that Lady Luck owed me a bit after going missing this year, I figured there was no point overthinking these things . . .

  I slammed the door open all the way, the noise of it crashing against the wall insanely loud in the cottage's stillness. But not quite as loud as me stomping into the room, giving it my best 'ARMED POLICE! PUT YOUR WEAPONS DOWN!"

  It's been mentioned I have the tendency to be a touch intimidating when I want to be. More than once, just a casual roll of my shoulders has defused any number of alcohol-related flare-ups. Even drunk, most people can decide there are better, more fun, ways to end up in A&E.

  It had been my subtly threatening demeanour on the floor of a club which, young as I had been, had first grabbed Griff's attention after all. Or, as he had put it, "You look like an utter mentalist! Like you’re one missed dose of diazepam away from leading on the national news. Fancy an apprenticeship?"

  I guess what I'm trying to say is that when I want to, I know how to make a bit of an entrance. Which made the fact that my aunt's study was completely empty utterly anti-climactic.

  And it wasn't like there were many places to hide. Holding up my phone's torchlight once again, I could see that the little room was a tiny, cluttered space filled with old furniture, boxes, and a myriad of dust-covered objects. It didn't look like anyone had been in here for a very long time. Much longer, actually, than I thought Aunt M had been dead for.

  Had she stopped coming in here for some reason?

  Nevertheless, despite the space being completely empty, the whispering hadn't stopped. It was now a constant background hum, like a distant conversation between friends just out of sight.

  And then I saw it.

  Something that certainly hadn’t been here the last time I’d used this place as a refuge from Meddings’ family drama. An old gramophone stood in the centre of the room, its horn gleaming in the dim light. I approached it, my breath billowing from me in great clouds like I was some sort of epic chain-smoking dragon.

  Aunt M would have wanted me to see this if it had been here last time I was here. She knew I lived for stuff like this. I presumed it must have been something she had picked up reasonably recently.

  Well, no. It was years since I'd last been here. This could well have been here for nine or ten years. A touch of guilt hit me right where I lived at that thought. Which was when I saw there was a record on the gramophone and a set of headphones lying next to it. And then I noticed my aunt’s crabbed handwriting on the label of the black disk: “For Elijah.” As soon as I'd read that, the whispering immediately ceased, replaced by the low buzz of the record beginning to spin.

  Well, that was bizarre. It was like someone had just placed the needle and started the record up.

  I looked around the room, but no. All was still empty. Frowning, I reached forward and put on the headphones, hearing the recording crackling away: my aunt’s voice echoing in my ears, clear and haunting.

  “If you are hearing this, it means I have failed and everything I have worked to prevent will be coming to pass. They are not to be trusted, Elijah, you hear me? They are not. They will be seeking to push through and the Guardian must bar their way. I’m sorry, Elijah. I should have been careful. But they cannot be allowed to come through! You must put yourself in their path. You must prevent the merging from coming to pass!”

  A shiver ran down my spine, and I removed the headphones with a jerk. I stared at the gramophone, unsure how I was supposed to react to that warning from beyond the grave. I didn’t need Aunt M to tell me Halfway Hold was a dark place, a place where horror and reality blurred. But, somehow, I didn’t think she meant it in a prosaic, 'oh-my-poor-childhood-sucked-let’s-revisit-the-pain' kind of way.

  And then I heard the floorboard creak behind me.

  The woman stood there didn’t say a word. She just raised her gun and let off two shots. One after the other. And both into my chest. Very tidy work, I thought dispassionately. Like she’d done this before and possibly given a seminar on it.

  I recognised the gun. Not in a huh, that looks familiar way. No, more in a standard-issue to three different intelligence agencies and two that aren’t supposed to exist style. Compact, low recoil, ceramic components. It was designed to be forgotten in scanners and remembered in autopsies. Apparently, Katja from the train hadn’t come to play.

  My phone slipped from my hand as I fell. The knife I was holding also followed it to the floor. This felt rude, somehow. Like I should have at least tried to keep hold of one of them. Falling backwards - catastrophic chest wounds have that sort of effect - I collided with the gramophone.

  Which, weirdly, cracked open. Not like in a broken machine way. More like it was a piece of fruit that had been fermenting too long. All the air in the attic lurched sideways and time seemed to hiccup and it suddenly felt like I was falling through something that wasn't strictly space but might have shared a few of its hobbies.

  As I tumbled, my killer leaned in after me. Not to help. Probably to make sure she’d finished the job. Like a toddler really grinding her heal down on an especially ugly bug.

  And then everything, including me, went entirely black.