The Turn of the Key

Creak . . . creak . . . creak . . . it came again, unbearable in its regularity. Then a pause, and then again, creak . . . creak . . . creak . . .

“I can hear you!” I shouted at last, unable to sit there listening in silence and fear any longer. I put my mouth to the keyhole, my voice shaking with a mix of angry terror. “I can hear you! What the fuck are you doing up there, you sicko? How dare you? I’m calling the police so you’d better get the fuck out of there!”

But the steps didn’t even falter. My voice died away as if I had shouted into an empty void. Creak . . . creak . . . creak . . . And then, just as before, a little pause, and they resumed without the slightest loss of rhythm. Creak . . . creak . . . creak . . . And I knew in truth that of course I wouldn’t call the police. What the fuck could I say? “Oh, please, Constable, there’s a creaking sound coming from my attic”? There was no police station closer than Inverness, and they would hardly be taking routine calls in the middle of the night. My only option was 999—and even in my shaking state of fear, I had a pretty good idea what the operator would say if a hysterical woman rang the emergency number in the middle of the night claiming spooky sounds were coming from her attic.

If only Jack were here, if only someone were here, apart from three little girls I was paid to protect, not scare even further.

Oh God. Suddenly I could not bear it any longer, and I understood what dark terrors had driven those four previous nannies out of their post and away. To lie here, night after night, listening, waiting, staring into the darkness at that locked door, that open keyhole gaping into blackness . . .

There was nothing I could do. I could go and sleep in the living room, but if the noises started down there as well, I thought I might lose it completely, and there was something almost worse about the idea of those sounds continuing up in the attic while I, ignorant, slept down below. At least if I was here, watching, listening, whatever was up there could not . . .

I swallowed in the darkness, my throat dry. My palms were sweating, and I could not finish the thought.

I would not sleep again tonight, I knew that now.

Instead, I wrapped myself in the duvet, shivering hard, turned on the light, and sat, with my phone still in my hand, listening to the steady, rhythmic sound of the feet pacing above me. And I thought of Dr. Grant, the old man who had lived here before, the man Sandra and Bill had done their very best to get rid of, painting and scouring and remodeling until there was barely a trace of him left, except for that horrible poison garden, behind its locked gate.

And except, perhaps, whatever paced that attic in the night.

I heard the words again, in Maddie’s cold little matter-of-fact voice, as if she were beside me, whispering in my ear. After a while he stopped sleeping. He just used to pace backwards and forwards all night long. Then he went mad. People do go mad, you know, if you stop them from sleeping for long enough . . .

Was I going mad? Was that what this was?

Jesus. This was ridiculous. People didn’t go mad from two nights’ lack of sleep. I was being completely melodramatic.

And yet, as the footsteps passed above me again, slow and relentless, I felt a kind of panic rise up inside me, possessing me, and I could not stop my eyes turning towards the locked door, imagining it opening, the slow tread, tread of old feet on the stairs inside, and then that cadaverous, hollow face coming towards me in the darkness, the bony arm outstretched.

Elspeth . . .

It was a sound not coming from above, but in my own mind—a death rattle cry of a grief-stricken father for his lost child. Elspeth . . .

But the door did not open. No one came. And yet still above me, hour after hour, those steps continued. Creak . . . creak . . . creak . . . the ceaseless pacing of someone unable to rest.

I could not bring myself to turn out the light. Not this time. Not with those ceaseless, restless footsteps above me.

Instead, I lay there, on my side, facing the locked door, my phone in my hand, watching, waiting, until the floor beneath the window opposite my bed began to lighten with the coming of dawn, and at last I got up, stiff-limbed and nauseous with tiredness, and made my way down to the warmth of the kitchen to make myself the strongest cup of coffee I could bear to drink, and try to face the day.



Downstairs was empty and echoing, eerily quiet without the snuffling, huffing presence of the dogs. I was surprised to find that a part of me missed the distraction of their questing noses and constant begging for treats.

As I made my way across the hall to the kitchen, I found I was picking up a treasure trail of the girls’ possessions—a scatter of crayons on the hall rug, a My Little Pony abandoned beneath the breakfast bar, and then—oddly—a single purple flower, wilting, in the middle of the kitchen floor. I bent down, puzzled, wondering where it had come from. It was just a single bloom, and it looked as if it had fallen from a bouquet or dropped from a house plant, but there were no flowers in this room. Had one of the girls picked it? But if so, when?

It seemed a shame to let it die, so I filled a coffee mug with water and stuck the stem into it, and then put it on the kitchen table. Perhaps it would revive.

I was quietly nursing my second cup of coffee and watching the sun rise above the hills to the east of the house when the voice came, seemingly from nowhere.

“Rowan . . .”

It was a reedy quaver, barely audible, and yet somehow loud enough to echo around the silent kitchen, and it made me jump so that scalding coffee slopped over my wrist and the sleeve of my dressing gown.