Free The Grey Girl by Eleanor Hawken

back down the dark corridor and into the dimly lit entrance hall. As I walked towards the stairs a square of white on the bottom step, next to the suit of armour, caught my eye.
    My notepad.
    The breath was knocked out of me as though someone had punched me in the gut.
    The notepad had certainly not been there when I’d walked down the stairs only minutes before. And Aunt Meredith wouldn’t have put it there for the guests to see as they walked up and down the stairs.
    Horror tickled my insides, like small insects scuttling through my veins. Someone must have known I was looking for it. They had put it there after I’d walked down the stairs. I picked up my notepad with shaking hands and clutched it to my chest. I turned around, expecting to see someone watching me in the shadows. But there was no one.
    I turned sharply at the sound of murmured voices coming from the library. Without thinking, I charged towards the library door with my notepad in my hands. I pushed the heavy door back and stepped into the dimly lit room. A man and woman sat together on the old chesterfield couch. They pulled apart from one another as soon as I came into the room, as if I’d caught them doing something they shouldn’t have been. ‘Did you move my notepad?’ I blurted out.
    The couple, both as old as my parents, looked at me as though I had just clawed my way out of an asylum. I repeated myself, louder this time, ‘Did you move my notepad?’
    â€˜We didn’t touch your notepad,’ said the man, bemused.
    â€˜Did you see anyone out in the hall a minute ago?’ I asked, suddenly realising just how crazy I sounded. ‘Did you hear anything?’
    The woman shook her head and looked up at the man as he said very firmly, ‘No.’
    I stood there, staring at them in silence for a few long moments before I turned and left them to whatever they had been doing before I interrupted.
    I quickly ran up the stairs, moonlight still pouring through the skylight above. As I stepped out onto the second-floor landing, ready to head into my room, another square of white caught my eye. This time it was above me, on the third floor – the un-renovated attic floor where no one stayed. It looked like a swish of white material, but it was gone as quickly as I’d seen it. Determined to prove to myself that I was imagining things, I forced my legs up the next flight of rickety stairs. Soon I was standing on the third-floor landing.
    It was dark, and the corridors were narrower up there, not as open and grand as they were on the floors below. It struck me that in over a week at Dudley Hall I’d never been up to the third floor. I had no idea what was up there. At the top of the stairs a corridor led off to my left, and to my right was a closed door. I assumed that behind the door was another corridor, similar or identical to the one on my left. Slowly, with my back to the closed door, I began to walk down the dark corridor to the left of the stairs. Where there should have been a door like the one behind me were rusted hinges and a splintered doorframe. The right-hand side of the corridor was lined with small glass windows, which strobed with the lightning from outside. There were three doors along the left-hand side of the corridor – all closed. I found myself walking towards the door at the far end, and it was as I was walking that I began to hear the sound of crying. Not loud, grief-fuelled wails. It was a small sound, a muffled sob. The same sound I’d heard the night before, the sound that Katie had told me was the wind. But it didn’t sound like the wind. It sounded like a child, a girl.
    The noise was coming from behind me. From the landing at the top of the stairs.
    I looked back and to my horror saw that the closed door on the other side of the building was no longer closed. It stood open, inviting me to walk through. The sound of the crying grew louder, and I realised that it