“Hey! Is everyone ready for bed..?”

You can hear her grating American accent from your room down the hall and it only serves to frustrate you further. You didn’t want her anymore than you wanted a parasitic worm to crawl under your skin and eat you alive.

she wouldn’t bother you (or so you assumed), you were far too old to be ‘tucked in’ or whatever it was she was doing with your sister flora and brother miles.

So far you had managed to stay out of her way, she had only been there for a couple of days so that most likely wouldn’t continue quite as peacefully as you hoped it to. She was a rather meek woman, very loving if not slightly awkward and so far she had not raised her voice. She was the opposite of strict and certainly not scary in any way. She was obviously desperate to be liked.

it wasn’t really her that bothered you, it was the whispers and groans of the walls that surrounded your room, the footsteps that almost definitely followed you around, and the rare moments where you could hear them shouting...

If someone had asked you two years ago if you believed in ghosts, your answer would have been no, but now… now you could never be sure.

throughout all of it Jamie (the gardener) was your peace, she showed you how to care for the flowers and for a few hours in the day it would make everything grow quiet. She was like a big sister to you.

look at that, your mind had already started drifting when there was a sharp knock against the floor, snapping you out of it only for you to hear nothing else.