Free The Woman in Black by Martyn Waites

said.

Harry
    The cold wind sent ripples through the water on either side of the Nine Lives Causeway. It built up into white peaks, lapped and landed at the sides of the road, fizzling away to nothing. Retracting, ready to encroach once more.
    Harry’s hands shook as he gripped hard on the wheel of his Jeep. He stared resolutely ahead as he drove, not allowing himself to be distracted by what was happening on either side of the vehicle. He hated the water. The sound of it built in his imagination. It was loud, almost deafening, a noise too great for the size of waves, amplified in his head until the rhythm of the waves became the rhythm of his breathing, his pulse. Roiling and crashing. Breath coming in increasingly ragged gasps, he couldn’t cross the causeway quickly enough.
    Then he heard something else on the wind, over and above the deafening sounds of the water. Faint and subtle, but unmistakable. A scream. Then another. A cry for help. Then nothing, the water claiming the voice, dragging it down.
    Drowning it.
    Harry stopped the Jeep and removed his shaking hands from the wheel. He tried to block out the sounds of the water, the echoing, fading screams that he still heard inside his head. He screwed his eyes tight shut, grimaced and, feeling the familiar impotence of rage and fear building within him once more, hit the steering wheel hard. Again and again, until, exhausted, he sat still, breathing heavily, trying to regain some kind of calm.
    He rubbed his eyes, looked round. Listened. The drowning screams had disappeared. Harry wondered if he had actually heard them, or if they were just the screams he carried with him, inside his head.
    He started the Jeep up once more, and drove for dry land as fast as he could.
    Behind him, snow started to fall.

The Face Beneath the Floorboards
    Eve shut the front door, turning the key firmly in the lock. Outside was cold, snow falling. Inside wasn’t much warmer.
    She was thinking of Harry’s visit. She liked him. He was a charming, handsome young man. But she believed there was more to him than that. He seemed to carry something around with him, some melancholic air, some pain. He hid it well, and it wasn’t visible to all. Only those who recognised something similar in themselves, Eve thought. A kindred spirit. And he seemed interested in her, too.
    Smiling, she made her way down the hallway but came to an abrupt halt as a floorboard creaked beneath her foot. She placed her weight on it again.The board bent out of shape. It was black and rotten with a large hole in the centre. Dangerous, she thought, a job for Jim Rhodes when he came back. Or Harry. She smiled once more at the thought of him.
    She knelt down to examine it. Then fell backwards in shock.
    A pair of eyes. Shining with dark malevolence in a white face. Staring up at her through the floorboards.
    Her heart racing, she knelt forward and looked through the hole.
    There was no one there.
    Eve stood up, looked round. There was no one else about. She headed to the kitchen and opened the door. And there was Jean sitting at the table, rubbing her ankles. She looked up as Eve entered.
    ‘Kettle’s just boiled,’ she said, nodding to the cup of tea before her.
    Eve stared at her. ‘Were you just in the cellar?’
    ‘A few minutes ago,’ said Jean, finishing her ankle massage and sipping her tea. ‘Not very pleasant, is it? Stinks to high heaven.’
    Eve glanced at the door, then at Jean and the cup of tea in front of her, steam rising from it. Could it have been Jean she had seen through thefloorboards? Could she have made it back up in the time it took Eve to get from the hallway to the kitchen? And put the kettle on?
    ‘Have some tea,’ said Jean.
    Eve snapped out of her trance. ‘Tea. Yes. Tea.’
    Is something happening to me?
thought Eve.
Am I going mad? Last night and now this?
She took a cup down from the cupboard, poured herself some tea from the pot.
    A hallucination
, she thought.
That’s what it