The Haunting of Gillespie House by Darcy Coates Page A

wall.
    I didn’t like the idea of voices talking to the girl. Had she told her parents? Had Mrs Gillespie replied, just as she’d told me, that it was “only the house breathing”?
    As I struggled with the new knowledge and fought to put the puzzle pieces together, I barely noticed as my eyelids, weighted down by missed sleep, fell closed.

(THREE)

     
    “I’m going to do it.” Genevieve’s heavy eyes were wide as she crouched beside a bed. I stepped forward to get a better view and saw a sleepy figure stirring in the sheets.
    One of the other girls, slightly older than Genevieve but with the same thick black hair, propped herself up and rubbed at squinted eyes. “Wha…?”
    “I’m doing it tonight.” Genevieve’s voice was hoarse with excitement and fear. “What we talked about. Remember?”
    That got the other girl’s attention. She sat bolt upright, and her face turned pale. “But you… how?”
    The room, which I recognised it as the same corner room I slept in, had two beds. The one opposite—Genevieve’s, I guessed—was neatly made and hadn’t been slept in, even though Genevieve was wearing a long white nightdress.
    “I’ll follow him to his crypt,” she replied, speaking quickly. “He’s been going there every night for the past week and doesn’t come out for hours, remember? I think he’s trying to get the darkness to convert him. He’ll go there again tonight, I’m sure of it, and I’ll follow and lock him in.”
    The other girl looked terrified. “If he catches you, he’ll kill you.”
    “He’s killing us anyway,” Genevieve snapped back. “Just far more slowly.”
    The sisters were silent. I listened to the house as it creaked and breathed.
    “You don’t think Mother will let him out?” the older one asked at last.
    “She won’t be able to if I hide the key.”
    “Do you want me to come?” Even I could pick out the reluctance in her voice.
    “No, I’m doing it alone. I just… I wanted someone to know, in case I don’t come back.”
    “Yes.” The older girl stroked Genevieve’s face, brushing her hair out of it. “Good luck.”
    As Genevieve stood up and walked towards the door, I finally saw her face properly. I’d thought she wasn’t very pretty before, with her sallow skin, thick jaw, and heavy lids, but in that moment, I thought she was breathtaking. Her cheeks were tinged pink from excitement, and her eyes, though still heavy-lidded, burned with a blistering determination. No matter how meek she appeared in her father’s presence, she had an intensity inside of her that took my breath away.
     

     
    I jerked awake. Light hit my eyes, making me squint and blink while I tried to collect myself. I was still in Hanna’s room, I realised, surrounded by the missing girl’s toys, clothes, and decorations.
    “Jeeze,” I muttered, awkwardly clambering to my feet. I felt disoriented, as though I’d fallen through a portal into a different world.
    The rain was a steady drizzle, leaving trails on the window. I couldn’t tell how much time had passed or whether I’d fallen asleep completely or just dozed, but my neck was sore from where my head had lolled.
    I suddenly felt very uncomfortable in the room—ashamed, even. I stood, backed out of the door, and closed it behind myself, cringing at the sight of the splintered wood around the lock. That was two doors I’d broken in the Gillespie house, and one of them without good reason. I felt horrible.
    To the right was the window at the end of the hall that overlooked the gardens. I approached it, leaned on the sill, then gazed over the lawn at the shrubby bushes that hid Jonathan Gillespie’s graveyard. Was this where Genevieve had stood that night to watch her father make his way towards his mausoleum, waiting for her chance to lock him in?
    What was he even doing down there? I thought back to the day before, when something had shoved from the locked inside of the mausoleum, bowing the doors out and knocking