_My mum always said that the kitchen was the heart of the home. If that was true, our house had a heart but no soul. _

_ Everything about that house was off. Dead. Broken. In the sense that nothing worked. The electric would go off when mum was ironing. Or the hot water would go off when Millie was taking a bath, running cold just as she was about to wash her hair. It was as if it knew. _

_But the house came alive at night. _

_Every night I would lie in my cold room, of course the heating didn’t work. Wide awake, heart beating wildly, scratchy covers pulled up to my neck. And then I would hear it. It always started with a creak. The creak of a floorboard so soft it was almost a whisper. Then another creak, this one a breath. Another creak, closer to my bedroom now - more of a groan, ‘I can’t believe you’re still here’ it would complain_

_And then a fourth creak, the big one. Right outside my door. Except it wasn’t a creak it was a bang, a shout, an order: RUN!_