The Guesthouse. Abbie Frost

      There was something else down there now, something moving. It was too big to be an animal. She watched as a figure emerged from the fog – a man walking slowly along the rise at the back of the house. She couldn’t make out his features, but it didn’t look like Liam, Mo, or Sandeep. Shrouded in dark, heavy clothes, it reminded her of the figure from her dream. Her heart thudded in her chest.

      The man stopped for a moment. He was totally still, but he would see her if he turned towards the house. Hannah’s hand shook as she stretched out for the lamp and switched it off, shrouding herself in darkness. But she couldn’t step away, couldn’t stop staring at the shape of his shoulders. The horribly familiar way that he moved. He was strolling along the ridge again, so smoothly he seemed to slide, just as the figure in her dream had done.

      Her eyes followed him on up the hill until the mist swallowed him and he was gone. As if he’d never been there.

      She pulled the curtains shut and collapsed onto the chair. Was she finally losing it? Was it all in her head? It must be. But it was nothing to worry about. She needed a drink, that was all. This was the first day without one in a long time. The man was probably just a hiker. But whoever he was, she had to go out and find him, to talk to him, because she needed to know for sure.

      Needed to know that he was real.

      Walking back to the door, avoiding the broken floorboards, she realized something else had been bothering her all this time. And now she knew what it was: that smell from her dream last night, it was in here too.

      The room spun and suddenly all she could smell was that cloying stink. She needed to get out, needed fresh air.

      She waited, listening for anyone outside in the corridor, because she didn’t want them to find her here.

      When she turned the handle, it wobbled but the door didn’t move. She tried again, this time putting her weight behind it.

      The latch. The fucking latch. Why had she let it close behind her?

      She wrenched at the door handle, twisted and turned it, pushed and pulled. Come on, come on. Rattled and shook it. Move.

      At last the handle began to shift and she pushed down harder, shifted her weight backwards. And the handle came off in her hand.