On the Third Night: They are coming…

indomitable.

Chapter 1

The house had stood empty for years. A pretty enough Cotswold stone double fronted cottage set in a spacious garden and overlooking the sea to the rear, to see a photograph of the property would have made the most practical house hunter feel tempted by its charms; but when that same person stood outside on the lane that passed the front gate something would invariably send a shiver up their spine and they would think again. There was something wrong with the house, something hard to pin down but impossible to ignore. On occasions, a tenant would commit themselves before seeing the house, usually due to finding themselves in an unexpected bind and with nowhere else to go, and then the fun would really begin. No one stayed long, with the record over the last 30 years standing at eight days and this was more than a decade ago. Since then, the house had lurked on Hobbs Lane all alone and whatever might have dwelt there had largely not been disturbed by a living soul.

The letting agent had used to send a reluctant cleaner once a month, a local woman who needed the money, but she was always sure to get her work completed and to be well on her way back up the lane long before it started to get dark. The house gave anyone who entered it feelings of discomfort and, if they were honest, dread in the daylight but anyone unwise enough to be there after dark? Well, it was a brave person who dared that and a foolish one who tried it more than once. Even with the number of homeless people on the rise in the small seaside town and any vacant property usually being beset by the imminent threat of squatters, still no one was desperate enough to make this house their home. Not even on the coldest and wettest of winter nights. No birds nested in the branches of the solitary tree that barely clung to life in the front garden and even the wild animals that frequented the hedgerows lining the sides of the lane gave the house a wide berth. They instinctively knew when somewhere felt like it just wasn’t right and they stayed away.

No one local would have considered moving them and their family into the house, but Lucy Shayler was not local and didn’t know any better, at least not yet. As the removal van pulled up to the front gate and her husband Ross parked their family people carrier a few feet behind it, her first thought was how pretty the house looked. It wasn’t until she got out of the car and had placed her hand on the top of the wooden gate that she got her first sense that perhaps the rent was cheap for a good reason. She froze at the threshold to the garden, her hand still on the painted wooden bar that topped the gate and she tried to put her finger on what the problem was. Her skin was crawling, as if wanting to detach itself from the rest of her and make its own way back to the warm front passenger seat of the car.

Lucy? came Ross’ voice as he walked up behind her, you going in? She turned and snapped alert again, as if returning from a dream she had not been aware she had been having, and she could see on his angular, eminently sensible face that he felt nothing. Now that she thought about it, and now that she could see his frown starting to deepen slightly, she couldn’t really say she felt anything strange herself either and she found herself wondering why she wasn’t just going in to start looking round their new home. She shook her head ever so slightly and smiled at her husband, to stop him frowning at her like that more than anything, and then she opened the gate and they all started to make their way into the tidy front garden. The family dog, a rowdy terrier that was a mismatch of a border-terrier and god only knew what else had bounded out of the back of the car where he had been sitting with the children. Harvey the dog immediately relieved himself up the front nearside tyre of the removals van and then trotted back to walk alongside Lucy.

Lucy felt a small hand grip onto hers and she glanced down to see her youngest, Chloe, smiling up at her in the way that only a four year old could manage. She gave her daughter’s hand a squeeze and then she looked back up to see Ross putting his key in the front door and open up the house. Lucy felt a cold breeze sweep out of the house and wash over her, and she wondered if perhaps a window had been left open at the rear of the home allowing the sea breeze from the back of the house to run through. Only it didn’t seem like a sea breeze, she couldn’t smell the salt water. She could smell something, but it wasn’t the sea.

Her thirteen year old son, Riley, made his way fearlessly into the house after his father with the older of his two sisters tagging along behind him. Sally was never far behind her big brother, constantly telling anyone who would listen, that she was only three years younger than him and could do anything he could do. She rarely allowed him out of her sight, unlike the youngest of the girls who stuck close to her mum most of the time.

Lucy stepped through the door with Chloe still holding her hand and the darkness of the interior of the house washed over her like a wave. The day outside was cold but bright and so it came as a surprise how hard it was to see once she was just inside the door. There were no windows letting light into the hall and the internal doors that led to the downstairs rooms were all closed and made of dark wood. Just for a second she felt a moment of panic and could think of nothing she wanted to do more than to drag herself and her tiny daughter back out of the house and into the front garden, back down the path, into their car and far away.

The moment passed as quickly as it came and she was herself again. Chloe was dragging her forward. She could see Riley and Sally follow her husband through the large reception lobby and then disappear into a door to the left. She left the front door open behind her, they still had to get things from out of their car and the two removals men in the van waiting for them to give them the ok to get started would also need it open and hurried after them.

When she turned into the kitchen she immediately impressed by the size, so much bigger than their old kitchen back in Camberwell, and the light coming in from the rear window. A pool of light was hitting the tile floor and it looked for all the world like a spotlight that might grace a West End stage to herald the arrival of a soloist or actor about to deliver a stunning soliloquy. She walked to the window, as the men in her family were already passing out of the back door and into the garden. She looked out of the window and saw the sea and she felt a wonder that pushed all the negative feelings she had been experiencing to the back of her mind; there to lurk and await a more vulnerable moment.

The rear garden was large and surrounded by a small painted wooden fence, just as the front garden had been, and beyond it she could see a stretch of flat grassland and then the low cliff that bordered the coast. She fancied she could hear the gentle waves lapping at her feet as she watched the distant swells grow and then expend their energy once more.

Chloe couldn’t see and was trying to climb up onto the work surface to the side of the sink. Lucy lifted her and held her close, turning sideways so that they could both see what was out there. Chloe cooed excitedly, and Lucy found herself wondering whether her youngest had ever seen the sea before. On TV, perhaps, but in real life? She did not think so. It didn’t matter, she decided, as she could see it now and would have plenty of time to get used to living near. She put Chloe down again and they both walked out of the back door to see what the boys were up to and it was only then Lucy noticed that someone was missing. Glancing down at her feet, where she expected to see Harvey the dog trotting along next to her and gazing up lovingly as he did so, she saw only the cracked floor. Of Harvey the faithful family hound, there was no sign and that was not at all normal. She usually spent most of her time tripping over the damned animal but now she could walk freely without him getting in her way and that bothered her.

She called for her husband to come and take Chloe and then she stepped back into the house and started to look for Harvey. Back through the kitchen, the pool of light on the floor now looking far less attractive as she passed it, and into the hallway once more and still, she could not see the dog. Something inside her started to feel uneasy, where could he have gone? The front door was still open and through it she could see the two burly removal men making their way down the path carrying the floral sofa that she hated but which she couldn’t afford to replace. She passed out of the house and into the front garden, stepping to the side to avoid the men coming the other way and she walked to the gate. There, finally, was Harvey.

The small dog was sat by the car, close to the door from which he had left the vehicle and he wagged his short tail excitedly at seeing his mistress. She reached down and stroked his head behind his ears and the animal lapped at her with his tongue. Lucy walked back away from the car and called Harvey to follow her then stopped halfway down the path to the house and looked around. She saw that the dog was not following her, although he had come away from the car and was just inside the garden now. She called his name and slapped her palm against her leg twice and the dog moved as if to come to her but then shrank back just as quickly as he had moved forward. She called him again and the dog whimpered pathetically, clearly not wanting to come to her. No, she thought, it isn’t that he doesn’t want to come to me. It’s the house he doesn’t like. To test this sudden moment of clarity she walked back away from the house and out onto the lane that ran past and the dog immediately bounded after her.

She walked a little down the lane and Harvey walked alongside her, just as