DISCLAIMER: I own nothing.
A/N: Something a bit different for Halloween.
True Love Never Dies
by Joodiff
There are four intruders tonight. Three earnest young men, the oldest of whom can't be more than nineteen, and a slim, entirely black-clad girl of about seventeen or eighteen who trails behind them with a haughty air of morose, cynical lethargy. From her position by the back door, Grace can see all of them quite clearly as they pick their way by torchlight through the hall and into the dusty, vandalised kitchen, pausing now and again to look around or, in the case of one of the lads, to consult the little electronic gadget he's carrying. It's bitterly cold outside, one of those stark autumn nights that bites hard into old bones, and though it's a little warmer in the house, something makes her shiver. Anticipation, perhaps. Certainly not fear. Keeping to the darkest of the shadows, she watches as the little group stops to examine some of the crude graffiti left by previous unwanted, uninvited guests.
"This is stupid, Callum," the girl announces, her voice high and thin, as soothing to the ear as long nails screeching down a chalkboard. "Why can't we just go down to the King's Head? There's live music tonight, and Kayla said they're doing half-price cocktails."
Half-price cocktails! Oh, the simple joys of youth. Despite everything, Grace can't help smiling to herself. It's a grim, empty sort of smile, though. One that's almost as wrecked and derelict as the house itself.
"Ryan's gonna put this on YouTube," Callum, the shortest and slightest of the males announces, as if it explains everything. His tone, like his expression, is solemn and patient, suggesting that he's used to explaining the most obvious of things over and over again. He adjusts his bright red baseball cap – far too big for the size of his head – and adds in a sepulchral whisper, "My dad's mate says that when it's near Halloween, at midnight you can hear the old dear screaming her head off…"
Grace's mouth hardens into a thin, tight line of disapproval. She glares narrow-eyed at the youngster, but he's oblivious to it. It doesn't surprise her.
"Bollocks," the girl retorts. In the torchlight her features are pale and sharp, and her light grey eyes, heavily accentuated by thick black make-up, seem to have a sparky ferocity about them that suggests that despite her youth she's no-one's fool. Accordingly, Grace decides that she rather likes her.
"It's true, Amy," the tallest lad protests. He's lanky and pimply, and in dire need of a shave to clear the uneven, patchy growth of immature whiskers from his chin and top lip. In fact, Grace thinks, in general he looks as if he could do with a good scrub in a hot bath. And some clean, decent clothes from a proper high street shop rather than from a cut-price army surplus store. "It was on the telly," he continues, tone earnest. "An American film crew came over last year and spent the night here. They were crapping themselves by the morning."
"Jeez," the girl – Amy – drawls, "you're so bloody lame, Scott. All those stupid paranormal programmes are complete bullshit, everyone knows that."
Oh yes, Grace definitely likes her… but she's beginning to find the group as a whole tiresome. Don't they have far better things to do with their Friday nights than to break into abandoned old houses quietly awaiting demolition? Studying, for one, if they are, as she suspects, students from the local polytechnic-turned-university. She speaks for the first time, her voice clear and steady, "Boyd."
"Did you guys just hear something?" a startled-looking Scott demands, glancing around. "Ryan?"
The oldest of the lads, stocky, floppy-haired, and firmly bundled up in a long, bulky coat, shakes his head, his attention all on the mysterious gadget clutched in his hand. "Nope."
"I'm sure I heard a noise. Like, a moan, or something. You know."
A moan, indeed! Scowling, Grace raps out again, "Boyd."
He appears quite suddenly at her shoulder, seeming to simply form from the very darkest of the shadows, his tall, broad-shouldered frame familiar and imposing. His reply is irritable. "What? I heard you the first bloody time."
"She killed her old man," Callum announces portentously, his attention all on Amy. "That's what my dad's mate Steve says. Stabbed him straight through the heart in the middle of a row – "
Not bothering to disguise her annoyance, Grace snorts. "Oh, I wish."
" – and then topped herself."
"As if," she mutters. She glowers at her newly-arrived companion. "Where on earth do they get this rubbish?"
"His dad's mate Steve?" Boyd suggests. "Who probably heard it from a bloke down the pub, who got it from a cabbie, who knows it's true, because… You get the picture."
"Get rid of them," Grace instructs with an imperious wave of her hand.
"You get rid of them," is the prompt reply. "Do I look like a bloody poltergeist?"
"I don't know. What does a poltergeist look like?"
"Why is it always kids?" Boyd complains, stepping in front of lanky, pimply Scott and staring down at him with distaste. "Why is it never a good old-fashioned exorcist? I'd willingly pay for an exorcist."
"Whoa," Scott bleats, a sudden harsh note of anxiety piercing his voice. "The temperature round me just dropped like ten whole degrees or something. Ryan?"
The young man with the gadget takes a step towards his acne-scarred friend, gaze fixed on whatever information is being displayed on the tiny screen before him. "Wow… it's gone down to five degrees… and it's still dropping…"
"Oh, this is such bollocks," Amy announces, loud and vehement. "C'mon, let's just get out of here and go and have a few drinks."
"I like her," Boyd remarks.
Grace rolls her eyes. "You would."
"I'm telling you," Ryan says to his comrades, holding out his electronic device. "Look, see?"
"Fucking hell," Callum mutters, adjusting his baseball cap again as he peers at the display. "He's right. It's gone down to four degrees right by Scotty…"
"You're such a bunch of pricks," Amy tells them in a bored, languid tone. She's evidently completely unimpressed by the phenomenon. From somewhere she produces a cigarette and a big metal petrol lighter bedecked with a grinning brass skull. Lighting the former with the latter, she inhales deeply before adding, "So… what? Some mad old biddy stabbed her husband to death then killed herself? Yeah, right. This is Islington, guys, not Maine, or wherever the hell it is that writer guy's completely-fucking-obsessed with."
"We weren't married," Boyd points out, very close to Amy's ear. She frowns and shivers slightly, but otherwise doesn't react. He looks towards Grace. "Why do they always seem to think we were married?"
"Because old people don't live in sin," she tells him. "It's completely incomprehensible if you're under twenty-five."
"And she didn't stab me," he informs Amy, who's starting to look uneasy, "she pushed me down the damn stairs."
"Oh, I did not," Grace complains. "It was an accident. Your own clumsy fault."
"At least, that's what the Coroner said, eh?" Boyd starts to circle the room, prowling the shadows like some large, unearthly predator. When he passes Scott again the youngster gives a sudden yelp and looks around in confusion, his strained expression showing signs of real panic.
"What's wrong with you?" Amy demands.
"There's something in here," Scott squeaks, his voice at least half an octave higher than it should be. "Omifuckinggod, there's something in here!"
Amy shakes her head. Her voice is laced with cool contempt as she says, "You're such a girl, Scotty."
"These readings are going crazy," Ryan cuts in, eyes wide. "I've never seen anything like it. Here, Callum, have a look."
The shortest lad peers at the device then frowns and asks, "What does it mean?"
"Guess," Boyd says, walking between them and causing another bewildered flurry of activity.
"Maybe we should have a séance," Amy says, suddenly sounding enthused. "Hey, maybe this place really is haunted? How cool would that be?"
Boyd moves back to the girl's side, inclines his head down towards her ear. "Boo."
"You're so childish," Grace complains, folding her arms as she watches his antics. She's glad that Amy doesn't react. "Sometimes I think the worst thing about being dead is being dead with you."
"Shouldn't have pushed me down the stairs and then keeled over with a bloody heart attack, then, should you?" he says.
Grace glares across the room at him. "Sometimes I wish I had pushed you down the stairs. And then moved to the South of France to see out my declining years in comfort."
Boyd shakes his head. "You don't mean that."
"Don't I?" she inquires, irked by his confidence.
He grins at her, still every bit as sly and engaging as he ever was in life. "Face it, Grace, you loved me far too much to live without me."
She snorts again. "You go on believing that if it makes you happy, Boyd."
"Guys," Amy whispers, "am I the only one who can hear a sort of… low muttering noise?"
Callum sweeps the room with the beam of his torch. It slices through Boyd with an odd, eerie shimmer, but none of the youngsters seems to notice. It's Scott, his voice still too high-pitched, who yelps out, "There's too much weird shit going on – let's get the hell out of here."
Amy leans towards him, and her tone is confident and conspiratorial as she says, "Did you ever see that horror film where – "
"Don't," Scott interrupts. "Guys, come on, let's just get out of this fucking spooky place."
"Scared of the little old lady?" Amy teases him, her palpable delight savage in its intensity. "Maybe she'll pop up from the floor with her big carving knife and – "
"Pack it in," Ryan growls at them, looking up from his little screen. "There's got to be a rational explanation for the fluctuations in temperature. Maybe – "
Indignant, Grace ignores his theorising and looks towards Boyd. "'Little old lady'?"
"I shouldn't take it too personally, Grace," he drawls, ignoring all physical obstacles in his path as he returns to her side.
"How do you suggest I take it?" Glowering, she moves herself, sweeping past Scott, causing another horrified squeak of surprise, to advance on Amy. "Now you listen to me, young lady…"
"She can't hear you," Boyd reminds her, hands in pockets. "Not properly. We established that a long, long time ago."
"Maybe not," Grace counters petulantly, "but she'll certainly feel this…"
Amy's scream, as Grace glides straight through her, is loud and penetrating. A visceral, terrified noise, it starts a chain-reaction of spontaneous panic amongst the youngsters, who make a simultaneous bolt for the hall that leads back to the boarded-up front door where they gained entry to the house.
"Well, that certainly worked," is Boyd's mild response to the loud, chaotic stampede.
-oOo-
It's a nowhere place. That's the best and only way Grace can describe it. A place without form where existence, or maybe simply sentience, is its own reward. A place where time, if it exists there at all, has no meaning. A day can pass slower than a century, a decade faster than a split second. A free-flowing place of thought and emotion. A spirit place where all the corporeal things of the life left behind are nothing more than paper-thin memories.
Something keeps inexorably pulling them both back from it to this place, though. This empty, dusty house with its peeling paintwork, broken windows and distant echoes of an all-too-brief spell of happiness.
"It's raining," Grace announces, peering out at the tangled, overgrown wilderness that was once a small, tidy back garden. The autumn leaves are starting to gather in deep drifts on the long-neglected patio with its spindly, rusted metal table and slowly-collapsing twin chairs.
"It's October," Boyd reminds her, appearing at her side. He looks exactly the way he did in the very last days of their life together – until he leans forward a fraction to see for himself, and then, as a stray shaft of the weak afternoon sunlight falls across him, he seems to fade a little, as if now he only belongs to an old, slightly-blurred photograph. "It always rains in October."
It ended here for both of them. The familiar life they used to know. For him, and then for her, both on the same unremarkable chilly night, with Halloween just a few days away. It's almost – almost – funny in its own ridiculous, tragic way. Sometimes Grace wonders what will happen when the developers finally move in and raze the house to the ground; where they will go when there's nothing left that they remember to cling onto. Maybe she already knows. The nowhere place. To live… no, to exist as nothing and no-one beyond everything that ever made any sense in the place they left behind.
"You've got that look on your face," Boyd remarks.
She raises her eyebrows at him. "Oh?"
"The one," he elucidates, "that tells me you're thinking far too much."
"Why do we come back?" she inquires, not sure if she wants an answer or not.
He shrugs. "Because we can?"
"I don't believe in ghosts," Grace says.
"Neither do I." A long pause. "Fucked-up, isn't it?"
The bewildering sense of loss is losing its intensity, day by day. Is becoming just a meaningless emptiness. She still clings to it, though. Attempting levity, she says, "You're still annoyed because you can't leave here to go and haunt poor Spence, aren't you?"
"Mm." Boyd tilts his head, a mannerism so well-remembered that it pulls at the heart she no longer has. "So? What are you thinking far too much about?"
The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. Life! Death! Prizes! Come on down and win an all-expenses-paid one-way trip to the afterlife!
"Think they'll be back?" she asks. "Those kids from last night?"
"Was it only last night?" He shrugs again. "I doubt it, Grace. After all, you – " He breaks off at the unexpected sound of sudden noise at the front of the house. "What the…?"
They move together, an odd shimmer of translucence in which gently drifting dust motes sparkle briefly and then disappear.
There are two women in the hall. The younger – tall and elegant in her sober business clothing – is batting irritably at cobwebs as she says, "It's a terribly sad story, but the endless legal wrangling afterwards… You wouldn't believe just how complicated solicitors can make things when they're being paid by the hour."
The other woman is gazing around with a rapt, almost dreamy expression. Older than her companion by at least two decades, she's dressed in the kind of long, flowing clothes that are supposed to disguise the impressive corpulence of her short, broad frame, but don't. Eccentric-looking, but in a studied, almost self-parodying way. She declares, "I sense a deep unhappiness here."
"Oh, for fuck's sake." Boyd's tone is so full of disgust that Grace can't help smirking. "That's all we bloody need. Some half-baked hippie with an unhealthy interest in spiritualism poking around the place."
"Um…" the elegant-looking woman says, and busies herself with consulting a sheaf of paperwork. "The house has three bedrooms, as you know, with scope for – "
"She died first." A pause for dramatic effect. Eyes closed, the older woman raises her fingertips to her temples. "My spirit guide – "
"That's it," Boyd declares. "I've already heard enough. I'm not wasting my time listening to this bollocks."
"Why not?" Grace inquires, not in the least bothered by his grumbling irascibility. "Have you something else that urgently needs doing?"
They have time. All eternity, in fact. His answering glare is chilly. "Oh, that's right, kick a man when he's down, Grace."
" – and they found her in the bathroom," the rotund woman finishes with an air of satisfied solemnity.
"Actually, Miss Havisham – "
Boyd scoffs. "Oh, come on. Seriously?"
"Shut up, Boyd," Grace snaps, but he's right. If it's truly the woman's real name, it's definitely an unfortunate one.
" – she was found on the landing."
A disparaging noise precedes, "Yes, dear, that might be the official version of events, but my spirit guide is never wrong, I assure you."
"Well," the younger woman counters with dogged determination, "I can only comment on the information we were given by the solicitors. And what the Coroner said, of course."
"Hm," Miss Havisham sniffs, clearly dismissive, and refusing to be thwarted. She looks around again, beady-eyed, as if hungry for every detail she can glean from the shadowy hallway. "He was going for help when the aneurysm ruptured."
"Bollocks," Boyd barks, moving towards the two women. "'He' was on his way to bloody bed, you crazy – "
"Boyd."
"Well," he grumbles, coming to a bad-tempered halt a couple of feet from Miss Havisham. "Oh, come on, Grace. Surely you don't want to listen to this – "
"Pardon?" the young woman says, shuffling papers and glancing in confusion at her companion. Receiving a blank stare in return, she says, "Sorry, I thought I heard you say something?"
Miss Havisham shakes her head. "Not a word, dear. I was focusing on the house's aura. It's really quite fascinating. There's so much power here; so much spirit energy."
Boyd shakes his head. "Oh, God."
"You're the one who wanted an exorcist," Grace points out, moving along the hall to join him. Attention wandering, she says, "I wonder where she got that handbag? Looks like something you used to be able to buy cheap on Portobello Road back in the 'sixties."
"Grace, trust me, the words 'cheap' and 'Portobello Road' don't belong in the same sentence."
"Not nowadays, anyway."
"And she's not a bloody exorcist, is she?" Boyd continues. "She's either a charlatan or a raving lunatic. Possibly both."
The woman holding the papers shivers and looks around, a frown creasing her forehead. "There must be a draught somewhere. Our maintenance people are supposed to check the house every week, but sometimes windows get broken and they don't fix them quite as quickly as they should."
"It does seem to be getting a bit chilly in here," Miss Havisham agrees, pulling her multi-coloured shawl a little tighter around herself. "And the house has been empty for… how long?"
"Three years," is the prompt reply. "Since the decease of the owners. There was a lot of legal wrangling, as I said. We had a very keen possible purchaser about six months ago, but in the end he couldn't secure a mortgage."
"Well, Julia," Miss Havisham says, "as I told your colleague, I do have the necessary funds available. If we can agree a sensible price."
A cool, professional smile. "I'm sure that won't be a problem."
"Wait," Boyd growls, his expression somewhere between indignation and disbelief, "she's interested in buying the place?"
"Seems so," Grace agrees.
"Over my dead body."
"Erm…"
He glares. "Figure of speech, Grace. You know what I bloody mean."
Grace shrugs. "Better get rid of her, then, hadn't you?"
"Oh, I intend to." Drawing himself up to his full height, Boyd adds, "Watch this."
Ten minutes later, the house is still and silent again. Empty. Outside, the dead leaves from the big London plane tree propping up the crumbling front garden wall continue to fall gently onto the now-vacant driveway.
-oOo-
"So, you're moving back to London from Manchester, I understand, Doctor Lockhart?" Lewis McDonald of Walters and Simmonds Estate Agents says, as he follows her into the long, narrow hallway. He is young, unctuous, and far too eager to please. Also, tall and skinny, and rather unprepossessing in his cheap grey suit. Eve doesn't like him enough to feel sorry for him and his sweaty desperation.
Pausing to examine the dusty antique mirror – smeared but somehow unbroken – that still hangs not far from the foot of the dilapidated stairs, she says, "That's right. I'm prepared to rent somewhere if I have to, but Miss Fanshawe indicated that you're looking for a quick sale…" She lets the words trail, waits for him to seize on them.
He does. "That's correct. The current owners – a trust fund – are very keen to move the property on."
"Why am I not surprised?" Eve murmurs to herself.
"Eh?" McDonald says. When she doesn't reply, he continues, "You're aware of the… recent history? Of the house?"
She is. For a moment a familiar hollow sadness tugs at her, but she ignores it to say, "Tell me."
He doesn't look happy, the young man. Fidgeting, he says, "Well, um, sad to say that the previous occupants… That is, well…"
"Spit it out," she tells him, noting the slight sheen of nervous sweat forming once again on his forehead.
"It's silly really," he responds, "but the house has… a bit of a reputation. Locally, I mean. Ridiculous, as I say, but once these ludicrous rumours start…"
Only partly to put him out of his misery, Eve says, "You're trying to tell me that the previous occupants died here in the house, aren't you?"
"Yes." He looks around, as if to check that they really are as alone as it appears.
She nods. "Well, that much I already know. And the rest?"
He tugs at his tie, loosening the large knot a fraction. "Local people say… well, they say that it's haunted. The house. I mean, it's all complete nonsense, of course, but some buyers can be a bit… superstitious… about such things. So we like to make sure that… Well, that people interested in the house are… aware."
"The dead," Eve says, with a touch of amused, self-indulgent irony, "don't scare me."
"Oh. Okay." Nonplussed. He seems to rally somewhat. "The house was owned by a retired police officer and his partner. They lived here together for about two years, I believe. He had a bad fall on the stairs late at night, but according to the Coroner the actual cause of death was a brain aneurysm."
"A ruptured brain aneurysm," Eve corrects, knowing she's being pedantic. "Yes, I know. And Gr… his partner… suffered a cardiac arrest on the same night. They weren't found for two days."
"Tragic," McDonald says, his attempt at sounding sincere and respectful not altogether successful. "Unfortunately, that sort of thing does tend to put potential buyers off…"
She nods. "I can imagine."
He glances around, quick and nervous, asks, "Would you like me to show you the rest of the house, or…?"
"I'm sure I can find my way around," Eve says, to spare herself rather than him.
"All right," he agrees with considerable alacrity. "Take your time. I'll be just outside in the car if you need anything."
Waiting until he's retreated out into the dull autumn afternoon, Eve picks her way towards the kitchen at the rear of the house. The last – the only – time she visited, the house was warm and bright. Clean and orderly, too. Neat and tidy. Mostly. Except for the smallest bedroom, the one that had somehow become Grace's study. There, cheerful chaos had reigned. It breaks Eve's heart a little to see the dilapidated, vandalised state of the kitchen. Broken glass on the floor, windows half-boarded. Broken bits and pieces of crockery and furniture here and there that no-one ever bothered to salvage.
"Well?" she says aloud to the silent room. "You're both desperate to tell me this is far too morbid 'even for me', aren't you?"
There's no answer, of course. She didn't expect one.
Eve had known, somehow, that amid the furore surrounding the aftermath of Nicholson's death and the CCU team's last very case together that Boyd and Grace would finally find each other. Would reach out to each other in a way they'd never been able to do in all the long years they'd worked together. The details remain obscure, and that's okay – she's never needed to know the wheres and hows and whys – the only important thing being that somehow they'd found the accord they should always have had. No big public announcement, of course. No explanations. Just suddenly… together. No-one, including Eve, had dared to ask either of them any of the burning questions.
She can picture them now, in this very kitchen. Him, no longer just a big, intimidating bear of a man, and her, happier and more settled than Eve had ever seen her. Quiet words and unconscious, intimate smiles. An imperfectly perfect couple with nothing left to hide from each other, or from anyone else.
True love never dies. A sentimental phrase Eve's grandmother had been very fond of. She'd never comprehended its hidden depths, not really, not as a scientist, as a student of the dead. Until…
Grace might have lived if she'd been able to find the strength to crawl from the landing where she'd collapsed to the bedroom and the telephone. Might still be alive now, if…
Alive, but alone.
Love never dies.
Eve thinks she understands. Why bother struggling against the odds to call for help when everything you love is already gone?
Moving back to the hall, she pauses at the foot of the stairs. Bare boards under her booted feet. Not the smooth, polished kind, but the snaggly, utilitarian boards left behind after a carpet is removed. Thick with dust now, too. She's glad; the dust and the shadows hide any possible evidence of stubborn bloodstains. No-one really knows if the ruptured brain aneurysm was the cause or the effect of Boyd's fall. Doesn't matter, anyway. The end result was the same.
The bare wooden stairs creak in protest as Eve ascends them. Edwardian, the house. Solidly-built. Not too difficult to restore. Maybe.
The landing is a little bigger than she remembers. Not huge, by any means, but big enough to accommodate a bookcase or a small desk. Someone has spray-painted a crude five-pointed star on the floor. The same bold paint on the wall between the doors to the two front bedrooms declares 'Satin Rules'. Illiteracy at its finest.
Grace chose to die. Eve's sure of it. Can't explain why.
The smallest bedroom stinks of damp and decay. Graffiti covers every wall, some of it obscene, some of it simply the familiar squiggly 'tags' present somewhere in every modern city and town. Heart-breaking. The spare room is almost as bad, and there is evidence of a half-hearted attempt at arson in one corner, the floorboards charred, the wallpaper burned away.
Then the master bedroom. Their room. It's the only one Eve steps into.
It hasn't suffered as much as the others. Not quite. Here, beneath the dust, the boards had once been polished. Allergies. His, not hers, surprisingly enough. Short-tempered and streaming with hay fever every single spring as pollen levels in the city rose to intolerable levels.
Hands deep in the pockets of her soft leather coat, Eve takes another firm step into the empty room and looks around, her gaze slow and considered. There's nothing left. Not a single identifiable trace of either of them. Save the once polished floor beneath the dust and detritus.
Into the melancholy silence, she says, "I've seen a nice apartment in Muswell Hill. Big, modern. Doesn't need a thing doing to it."
It must be a trick of the light, but for a split-second Eve is sure she sees a flicker of movement right on the peripheral edge of her vision. Instinct makes her turn, but there's nothing to see. Not even a scurrying rat.
Hannibal.
Happy days, despite the heavy workload and the incessant petty squabbling. Long gone now.
"Spence is mildly disgusted with me," she continues in a conversational tone. "He thinks even vaguely thinking of buying this place is… disrespectful. He thinks it should go to a developer to be torn down."
Disrespectful. Warring relatives and greedy, grasping beneficiaries. Circling vultures in black funeral clothes. His funeral, her funeral. Separate. An unvisited granite gravestone in a busy London cemetery; a small brass plaque under a spindly sapling in the well-tended grounds of a Lancashire crematorium. Divided in death by people who didn't understand or didn't care. Or both.
True love never dies.
Eve most definitely doesn't believe in ghosts. The idea is an anathema to one of her profession. The fleeting movement she thought she saw was just the dappled shadows on the wall cast by the half-naked branches of the tall plane tree outside. The faint whispering she thought she could almost hear just the old house settling as the chilly afternoon bleeds away. The odd cold spot by the bedroom doorway nothing more than a strange quirk of the building's design.
But she can't explain the sudden warm sense of peace that descends around her, filling the room.
Imagination. Must be.
This is not the place for her. Is it?
No. This house belonged… belongs… to someone else. To two someone elses, in fact.
But…
No. McDonald will have to find another potential buyer. Won't he?
From her right-hand coat pocket, Eve produces the small, now rather crumpled dark bloom – Rosa 'Black Baccara' – that she self-consciously secreted there just seconds before meeting him outside the house. Somewhat wilted as it is, she steps forward and places it carefully on the fly-specked windowsill as she mutters a reluctant and embarrassed, "'True love never dies'."
There's an infuriating lump in her throat as she leaves the room. As she reaches the top of the stairs, she's sure she hears behind her something that sounds a lot like a quiet murmur of her name.
It can only be the autumn breeze sighing into the house through the broken panes of glass. Nothing else.
- the end -