Welcome back to my 13 Spooky Stories series! What did you think of the last one? Ridiculous, right? Don’t worry - this one’s shorter. It contains violence and the death of a child, so swerve it if you’re not up for that.
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Lily was standing at the kitchen window, looking out into the garden at things that weren’t there.
Her dad’s prized rose bush - both of them long dead. The pots where her mum had grown mint and rosemary and basil for the kitchen, empty and abandoned for months now. And the biggest absence of all: the gap where the swing used to be. Lily remembered the day her dad had dug it up, leaving four gouges in the lawn where its legs had stood. Was the grass still a different shade of green in those four spots? Over the years she’d stopped noticing. She stood on her tiptoes and craned, but she couldn’t see from here.
She became aware of movement behind her and turned to see Patrick standing in the doorway.
“Hi.”
“Hi,” he said, and then, almost apologetically, “She’s here.”
The estate agent was named Fiona, and Lily found her a relief. She didn’t know quite what she’d been expecting, but she’d had a vague dread that the woman she had to walk through her childhood home might be jarringly upbeat. But as Lily gave her the tour - “this is the extension my dad built…this was my bedroom for forty years…we had the rails put in the bathroom after Mum’s fall” - Fiona maintained a respectful, quiet efficiency that put Lily in mind of the care assistants at her mother’s very expensive home.
"It was like she'd been specially trained," said Lily, later that evening, as Emma filled her wine glass. "Like there's a course they do at estate agent school on helping people sell their childhood homes to pay for their parents' dementia care."
"Estate agent school?" Emma raised an eyebrow.
"Well, whatever. This is all new to me."
"I know. It must be weird, moving for the first time. Still excited to be living with Patrick, though?"
"I suppose. He's fairly well trained, puts the seat down and all that. I don't have any qualms about that, really, it's just...saying goodbye to that house. And the street. All of it."
Emma nodded. She'd had to say goodbye to her own house on Lily's street years before: as children they'd grown up together as next-door neighbours, but Emma's family had moved when she was a teenager. The two of them had reconnected years later, over Facebook, and it was as though no time had gone by, except that instead of playing together with their Barbies and ponies, they talked about their jobs and partners and aging parents.
"Speaking of the street, I ran into Nora from over the road,” said Emma.
“Nosy Nora? What did she want?”
“Just asked me if it was true you're finally moving," said Emma, "and she said she was always surprised your parents didn't move out of there years ago. When, you know."
"When Jenny died."
"Yeah."
Lily swallowed the rest of her wine and poured herself another glass. She'd often wondered that herself. Even after her father had dug up the swing, it had been months - maybe even years - before she could go into the garden without reliving that horrible day. Her little sister, the baby of the family, adored by everyone. Too young to have been playing on the swing by herself, she’d been trying to imitate the way Lily and Emma played - tangling up the chain of the swing so it would spin them around - but the chain had got caught around her neck and she’d strangled herself. She'd only been left alone for a matter of minutes, but Lily had always blamed herself. She knew her parents had, too.
"Do you feel like you're leaving them behind?" said Patrick.
It was the next morning, and Lily was drinking coffee at her laptop in Patrick's kitchen. In their kitchen, she corrected herself: she needed to start thinking of this as their house that they lived in together, not Patrick's house where she was just a guest.
"Who?"
"Your parents. Jenny. I know it's not like you're going to forget them, wherever you live. But Jenny died in that house, so did your dad, and it's where you have all your memories of your mum before the dementia - it's understandable if you feel weird about leaving."
Lily shrugged. "Either way, it's got to be done, hasn't it? I'm fine, honestly. Just wondering why the house isn't on the estate agents' website yet, though - Fiona said it'd be up by the end of yesterday. Do you think it's too soon to call her?" She was already dialling.
"Hi, Silverton’s. This is, uh...Fiona's phone." The choked-sounding voice that answered wasn't Fiona's.
"Oh...hi, it's, um...it's Lily Rowley here. Fiona is selling my house on Foster Avenue...is everything all right?"
"Not really." The voice seemed, actually, to be close to tears. "I'm one of Fiona's colleagues and we...we just found out she died last night."
“It was a house fire,” said Fiona's sniffling colleague, later that week, as Lily once again gave a tour of her empty former home. "She lived on her own, and apparently she'd left a candle burning..."
"Oh my god. How awful."
"I just hope she didn't suffer."
They were standing by a window, and Lily found her eyes drawn once again to the garden, to the empty space where the swing had been...stop it. Don't think about it. She pulled herself together with a shudder.
"I'm so sorry about Fiona," she said. "I know this must be such a difficult time for you, so if it would make more sense for me to use another agency for now..."
"No, no, it's fine. Honestly.” The colleague put on a brave smile. “Fiona said you need to sell this place to fund your mum's care? We get a lot of that round here. So you probably want to find a buyer soon as, don't you?"
"Sooner the better," Lily admitted. They walked back through the house to the open front door.
"Don't worry," said Fiona's colleague. "It'll get snapped up, no problem - it's a lovely property, and in such good condition - " She was cut off in mid-sentence as she stepped out through the front door and onto the drive, where she was felled instantly by something falling from above.
"Losing one estate agent in an accident is unlucky, but losing two looks like carelessness," said Emma.
“I know. Maybe it's Jenny's ghost taking revenge." Lily had intended this as a bad-taste joke, but the look on Emma's face suggested it wasn't funny. "Sorry."
They were standing in the kitchen of the empty house - Emma had dropped round to bring wine and moral support - while another estate agent looked around upstairs. She was from another agency - Silvertons, perhaps understandably, had refused to send another.
"She'd just said what good condition the house was in," said Lily, not the first time. "And it is! We've had people up there checking that roof. Nothing loose up there at all. It must have been just that one chunk of tile...the poor girl." She shuddered. "You can't blame Silvertons, really. The woman on the phone said they all think the place is - ” She lowered her voice to a whisper as the third estate agent joined them in the kitchen “- haunted."
"All looks good up there," said the third estate agent. "I just need to - " She was cut off by the sound of the doorbell.
"One second," said Lily, going to answer it. "Who on earth..." She rolled her eyes as she recognised the silhouette in the glass of the front door, and pulled it open with an impatient rattle. "Hi, Nora."
"Lily," said the street’s nosiest neighbour, in an uncharacteristically quiet voice. “I’m sorry to bother you, but there’s something I think you should see…” She held up her phone, and suggested with a jerk of her head that they should move further from the door.
“Oh - Nora, this isn’t really a good time - ”
“Please.” There was such a strange urgency in the older woman’s voice. Lily nodded, pulled the door closed behind her. “What is it?”
“Those people you had round to look at the roof for your insurers…they came round to mine and asked me to have a look at my CCTV footage for the day the accident happened. And I haven’t shown it to them yet, but…” She turned her phone to face Lily.
The house behind them was clearly visible on the small screen. The date in the corner showed last week: the day the second estate agent had been killed. At first all was still: but then -
“There,” said Nora. “Do you see?”
A dark-clad figure appeared on screen and slipped into the house through the open front door; a moment later there it was again, at one of the upstairs windows. It hauled itself out of the window, scuttled across to the flat roof of the garage, lay down and then -
“Oh no,” breathed Lily, as on the screen the tiny figure of Fiona’s colleague stepped out through the front door and - “Oh God!” - for the second time, Lily watched her die.
“I went back a couple of days,” said Nora, thumbing her phone screen, “and…here’s the day you had that first estate agent here.”
Fiona. Leaving the house with Lily and Patrick; waving goodbye as they got into Patrick’s car and she got into her own; the two cars separately driving away; and then -
“It might be nothing,” said Nora, “but doesn’t it look like this car follows her?” She tapped the screen where, surely enough, another car pulled away moments after Fiona’s, and headed down the street after her.
“Maybe,” said Lily, “but - wait. Isn’t that…” She stared at the screen in disbelief.
“I know,” said Nora. “And then look. Here’s this afternoon.”
Lily watched as, on the screen, her own car pulled up outside the house, and she got out and went inside. A few minutes later, the third estate agent’s car pulled up, and she got out, rang the doorbell and went in too. And then a few minutes after that, another dark-clad figure - the same one? - appeared on screen. It appeared to look around. Then it went up to the third estate agent’s car, lifted the bonnet and did - something.
“I wouldn’t let that young woman drive away in that car, if I were you,” said Nora. “She might find the brakes don’t work.”
“No,” said Lily, still staring at the screen, where the black-clad figure was straightening up, replacing the bonnet and walking to the front door. There was a bottle of wine in her hand.
Suddenly there came a scream from inside the house.
“I’ll call the police,” said Nora, over her shoulder, as she ran back to her own house. “Don’t go in!”
But Lily had to go in.
“Please don’t hurt me,” came a voice from the kitchen; and as Lily walked in she saw Emma, one arm wrapped around the third estate agent, holding a knife to her throat.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Lily!” Emma’s eyes were bright and manic. “Tell me you won’t sell the house. Tell me you won’t move in with Patrick and I’ll let her go.”
“I - OK, Jesus, I won’t - just please don’t do anything stupid.”
Emma dropped her arm immediately and the third estate agent staggered for the door, sobbing.
“Run - but don’t get in your car!” Lily shouted as the woman passed her.
And then they were alone. And Emma was still holding the knife.
“What the hell, Em?” said Lily again.
“I’ve only just got you back,” said Emma, softly. “I can’t let you move in with Patrick. I’ll lose you again. You’re my best friend. My only friend. And I’ve never let anything come between us - not Jenny, not anyone.”
“Jenny?” Lily repeated, slowly. Instinctively she looked past Emma, out into the garden again, at the place where her sister had died, strangled on her swing. And it was only as the first sirens began to wail outside that Lily realised she had taken her eyes off the knife…