Free Moonlight by Felicity Heaton Page A

her when she was a child and it
still frightened her now.
    Pushing
the door open, she burst into the entrance hall and struggled to
keep hold of the door in the wind. She pushed hard against it,
fighting the weather and eventually managing to get it closed and
locked. Silence greeted her. The violence of the storm drifted into
the background.
    She
flicked the switches near the door and the lights slowly eased into
life in the exact way she remembered. Everything about this house
made her feel the age of it. Her aunt had told her that it affected
people and made them slow down too. She hoped it would relax her.
She needed these two weeks of alone time to get her life into order
and her head together. Since her parents’ death, she’d been a
mess.
    The air
in the house was chilly and drained her of what little body heat
she had left. Her wet clothes turned cold and goose bumps prickled
across her skin. The dark wooden interior of the house mixed with
the grey stone did nothing to brighten her mood. It was an interior
that matched the haunting exterior and the storm perfectly. In
weather like tonight, it made the house look like something from an
old Hammer House of Horror movie. She expected Dracula to come
drifting down the wide mahogany staircase in front of
her.
    A
moment’s wait said she wasn’t going to be that lucky.
    A man
would definitely take her mind off things for a while. There wasn’t
a chance of finding one out here in the wild British countryside
though. She was miles from the nearest village and had never really
ventured out of the boundary of the garden in all the times she’d
been here as a child. The last time she’d been here was several
years ago now. She walked up the stairs, following her memories to
the room she’d used then. It was the only time she’d been here as
an adult.
    She
stopped at the top of the stairs. The lights here were dim,
offering no respite from the eeriness. They weren’t strong enough.
She wished her aunt would invest in bulbs that were a little
brighter. It wasn’t creepy when there were other people in the
house. Now she was alone though and she couldn’t stop her mind from
conjuring up horrifying things.
    Her heart
leapt into her throat when a squeaking scraping sound filled her
ears. A shiver bolted down her spine. It sounded as though someone
was running fingernails down a blackboard. It grew louder as she
neared a turn in the corridor. The sound of something knocking on
glass joined it, making her heart race to its limit. Her breaths
became pants and she slowly crept down the hall, fearing what she’d
see when she turned the corner. There was a crash and wind rushed
past her, rattling the paintings on the dark wooden walls. She
jumped out into the corridor at the turn, ready for
anything.
    The
window slammed against the wall again, the wind battering it and
the tree outside it swaying wildly. Rain hammered down on the
windowsill and floor. She ran to the end of the hall and pushed the
window shut, shoving the black wrought iron latch into place so
hard that it jammed. At least it wouldn’t blow open again. The thin
end branches of the tree outside rattled and scraped against the
glass.
    Taking a
deep breath, she released it slowly and tried to calm down again.
If the weather continued like this, she wasn’t going to be able to
relax at all. It had her more on the edge than ever. Every door she
passed, she expected someone to jump out of it. Every sound she
heard became the noise of an intruder, some dark demon come to kill
her.
    She wiped
her hand over her face, clearing the water away, and sighed. Her
skin was freezing. She forced a happy smile.
    “ I’ll get some dry clothes on and light a fire downstairs and
the storm will blow over before long.” The sound of her voice was
soothing, alleviating the empty silence of the house and the
terrifying sounds of the storm.
    Thunder
chased across the clouds again.
    She sang
to herself and opened the door to her