Free The Haunting of Gillespie House by Darcy Coates

feeling it all stemmed from the locked room on the second floor. I stood up to put my cup in the sink and nearly dropped it as a door slammed above my head.
    “Damnit!” I snapped reflexively, pressing my free hand to my heart. No wonder Mrs Gillespie needed marriage counselling if her husband refused to fix that abominable door.
    I put down my cup and adjusted the blanket around my shoulders. It was late—or rather, early—and I was letting my imagination run away on me. I probably just needed a few hours’ sleep, and maybe a couple of painkillers for my aching ribs and throbbing head, and I would be fine.
    The floorboards above my head groaned. I hesitated, listening to them, trying to remind myself that it was just the house breathing…
    Except it wasn’t. They weren’t random creaks; they were footsteps in the hallway above me.
    It was a good thing I’d put down my mug; otherwise, I would have dropped it. Panic flared through me while my brain tried to reason against it. There can’t be anyone there. You would have heard them come in.
    The footsteps kept moving, starting to the left and travelling directly over my head.
    There’s no one there. The house breathes; that’s all.
    They’d changed direction and were heading down the hallway, towards the back of the house.
    You’re safe. You’re safe. You’re safe. I ran for the stairwell, clutching the blanket in one hand and the candlestick in the other. The stairs tended to creak, so I kept my feet light and stayed to the edge of the steps, minimising the noise the best I could.
    The landing was empty and dark. I glanced up the stairs behind me, the one that went to the third floor of the building, but there was no noise coming from there, so I faced the hallway in front of me and began advancing down it.
    The doors were all still open from when I’d searched them the night before. I glanced into each room as I passed but saw no sign of an intruder. I eventually reached my own room and looked inside. It was exactly the way I’d left it. My pile of novels, which I’d barely made a dent in, still sat on the table. My cupboard door was open from when I’d gotten my dressing gown, and the bed looked bare without the blanket that I was currently clutching around my shoulders.
    Then the scratching started again. I held still, listening hard, and realised it was coming from the wall behind my bed. I moved close and pressed my ear against the cool wallpaper.
    The more I listened, the less I was convinced that rats were the cause.
    I pulled back and jogged into the hallway again, my heart thundering in my ears, trying to drown out the dreadful scratching sound. The noise was coming from the room next to mine—the room with the locked door. The room that belonged to Jonathan Gillespie.
    Even though I knew what the result would be, I couldn’t stop myself from trying to turn the handle. Still locked.
    Why?
    I ran down the stairs, hardly thinking about what I was doing, and dropped the candlestick in the hallway before pelting out the door and into the rain. It was achingly cold and soaked through the blanket before I’d even rounded the corner. Visibility was poor, and I couldn’t hear much over the roar of the drops assaulting the house and the muddy, slushy ground, but I kept marching down the side of the house until I stood below the bay window. I pulled out my phone, grateful that it was waterproof, and turned on the flashlight function. The room was a long way above me, but the phone’s light was just enough to let me make out the window.
    The curtains fluttered in the breeze for a second before falling still. Dread pooled in my chest like molten lead as the implication hit me. There is no breeze… not in the hallway, not outside . The rain was heavy, but the wind had settled, letting the drops fall directly down. I watched the window with a dry mouth. Is someone living in there?
    Impossible. I’d been in the house for three days. Even if someone had food