When I first heard about the house on the moor (which was a good while before I actually saw it), I had an idea. I had a mental picture of what the house looked like - a large, rambling, run down, moody building with ivy covering one side like a comfort blanket, surrounded by a rusty iron fence which was set in a low, cracked brick wall and large wrought-iron gates that creaked with non-existent movement in a non-existent wind.

There was an old, leafless tree by the side of the property that, over the decades, had assumed a suitably demonic pose; a predatory semi-crouch with clawed branches ready to grasp at any that might be foolish enough to trespass on its territory. A grey, perpetual autumn settled (or unsettled) over the house to complete its infernal disposition.

The image was clear and acute, but then worlds and people and dreams can be born, lived, and ended in a thought, or a breath. As it turned out, I could'nt have been more wrong about the house's appearance. When I finally laid eyes on the building, I was surprised at how mistaken I had been, only about the look of the place though, only the look. The air was exactly as I had imagined. The sun could have been out and I would have shivered.

Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't have gone anywhere near. It simply wasn't my job to trawl around the country investigating houses. I could do almost everything I needed from my office. A telephone and a computer were my only tools. I didn't even have a company car. All that was required was for me to trace the owners of a certain cottage in the middle of nowhere and try to persuade said owners to sell. I had done so many times before and was sure I'd do so many times again. Usually the property had an address though... Normally I had complete autonomy when it came to the final selling price - the companies I worked for had budgets with more Zeroes than I had fingers. Their projects were vast developments that simultaneously dragged big money into an area and pissed off the locals. They wanted it both ways, the residents. They would smile as estate agents valued their homes at a couple more grand than before the shopping precinct opened or the leisure complex (complete with multi-screen cinema) began to draw in crowds. Then they would scowl at the hordes of people invading their territory and at the noise and the mess and the increased traffic.

Never happy.

But that didn't concern me. I was the residents' friend. I was doing them a favour. Maybe they didn't really want to sell, but add a couple of grand on the estate agent's couple of grand and they began to agree. Add ten and they were practically naming their children after me. After all, I'd tell them, the Company never did me any favours, did it?

To be honest, that was more the truth than anything was. They didn't do me any favours, but they paid my wages.

So. They wanted to build somewhere, and a house, or a street (once or twice even an estate) happened to be in the way. How inconsiderate. But I was good at my job, and I got results. I'm a nice guy, essentially. Perhaps my job had me doing things that, if I thought about them, I might find disquieting, but I didn't think about it. I'm a nice guy, and I could, it was felt, be trusted. The Company liked that, so they used it.

This particular project was something of a new direction for them. I didn't know the details, but I rarely did. All I knew was that they needed to acquire some land on the edge of the North Yorkshire Moors and aerial photographs had revealed that someone had plonked a house right in the middle.

I had the maps. I had the reports saying there was a house there. I had a grid reference. The photos had taken a detour somewhere on their way to my office, but I was used to that kind of thing. I often wondered if I worked in the equivalent to Heathrow's luggage claim. Mail and reports meant for me would appear on desks along the corridor or on another floor. It was normal. I didn't even notice that much anymore. They'd turn up.

The first thing that struck me as odd was the lack of an address. There was a grid reference, but it wasn't the same as 31 Chatham Avenue or somesuch. It would just take a little digging that was all. A computer (and the Internet) is a wonderful thing, and with the right passwords you can find out pretty much anything you want to know short of what your next door neighbour had for breakfast (although you could hazard a guess). So I dug.

Three weeks later I'd still found nothing. The house seemed to have been on that land forever, yet nowhere could I find a record of anyone actually owning, or building it. I unearthed various references to it in texts, surveys and even in some folklore (apparently it was haunted!). Possession (perhaps an inappropriate word considering the place was meant to be inhabited by ghouls and ghosts and that sort of nonsense) may well have been passed down through innumerable generations, but there should have been somebody sitting at the top of that particular tree. There wasn't. The deeds seemed to be non-existent. They could be locked away in a safety deposit box at Barclays, or hidden in an old shoebox under a pile of faded black and white (or grey and cream) photographs for all I knew. No one was laying claim to the property and I was beginning to get annoyed, not least because the Company was getting annoyed. I only really had one option, and that was to visit the place.

The journey took four long hours. It should have been much quicker, my office wasn't that far away from the moors, but the house was set back against their edge. Not a problem, one would think. Unfortunately, the nearest road was two miles away, the nearest town was thirty miles away, there were no signposts saying 'This way to the Middle of Nowhere', and I had a crap sense of direction. The weather was bad - it admittedly wasn't Hurricane Annie, but it was a wee bit worse than Winnie the Pooh's Blustery Day! The wind was strong enough to make me wrestle more than once with the steering, and the windscreen wipers were woefully inadequate for the downpour. I had passed where I needed to leave the road three times before I stopped to get my bearings. The road was completely non-descript - a single clean track of tarmac without even a white line to break the monotony. I had been along it and back again feeling my search was more and more fruitless as I went. It occurred to me that perhaps the photos were wrong. I hadn't actually seen them myself, and had forgotten they weren't in my file. A small red dot on the map was all I had to go by. Maybe that was why I couldn't find the place. Maybe it wasn't really there and the photographs had really shown just an old fallen down ruin - a shack that had once housed a farmer and his wife, their two daughters and the obligatory dog. Perhaps it wasn't even a building - it could simply be a mass of dead trees or something similar. The Moors were not one of the most hospitable places I had visited. Still, I should at least attempt to find it, if for no other reason than to satisfy my own, somewhat idle, curiosity.

I stopped my car to take another, more concerted look at the map. The road wasn't wide enough for more than one car to drive along at a time (if two passed each other I was sure one would end up on the mud verge) so I simply stopped where I was. The tarmac didn't look as if it was exactly well travelled so I didn't see any reason to worry that another vehicle might come careening along. Besides, it was a practically straight road. Any cars wouldn't simply leap out of nowhere.

The map was one of those huge foldout affairs, the kind that never quite folded back the same way that they unravelled. I hated them, but they served their purpose. Originally I'd had a few scans of the area, but they were next to useless for finding somewhere that probably didn't even exist. I'd transferred the little red dot-marks-the-spot onto this monstrosity to be able to trace it from the nearest town. That wasn't as easy as I had first thought, though. Sure the main road was right there on the map, I'd traced it with the same red marker I'd used for the dot. The lack of any road or even rut in the mud to the house meant I had no real idea where to turn off. The terrain was too rough for my meagre Mondeo so I regrettably conceded that I was going to have to walk. This was where my major indecisiveness came in. I didn't fancy wandering around on the Moors for the rest of my days. I had seen the films - the moorland was inhabited by unwholesome beasts, eager to lunch on whichever part of your body their teeth bit first. It was either that or I'd end up with my foot getting caught in some pothole or other and be stuck fast. I had already checked my mobile phone and was unsurprised to find there was no signal. I could end up lost or dead and have no way to contact anyone either way.

OK, so I was being paranoid. I was looking out of my window and seeing nothing but nothing and I didn't fancy it. The downpour had abated, but the wind was still strong enough to bend what few trees I could see. I liked towns. They were cosy. I'm not even slightly agoraphobic, but I much preferred to be surrounded by houses and people than empty space with only a willow to keep me company. I had a dog. I took him for walks in the woods nearby. That was nice, and that was enough.

Well the quicker I did this the faster I'd be done. Or something.

I took one last look at the map; there was no way I could take it with me - if I tried to open it I'd probably have it snatched away by the wind. There were no real landmarks for me to have had any idea where I might be if I got lost, so I threw it in the back seat. I didn't bother to fold it; I didn't want to still be here tomorrow. Zipping up my woefully inadequate jacket, I stepped out of the car.

The first thing that I noticed was that it was bittingly cold. Well, actually that was the second. The first thing was that the gale had, in the absence of the map, decided to snatch my breath. It was whipped away as if the wind had reached in an invisible hand and wrenched it from my throat. It took me a moment to recover and by then I realised I was shivering. I cursed my insanity. Come back tomorrow, I told myself, the weather may be less uninviting. But then it probably wouldn't be. This was England, and England delighted in serving up great dollops of awful weather for her patriots. Besides, I was under pressure on this. I knew full well that I was not going to be getting back in my car until I'd found this house. I breathed into my hands and rubbed them together. It had no effect so I plunged them deep into my shallow pockets and set off. I knew the house was supposed to be about two miles from the road, so I figured if I walked straight out that distance, I could then turn right and walk a ways to try and find it. If that didn't work, I'd simply turn around and go the other way. If I still couldn't find it, I'd come back to the road and then try to find my car. I had a certain level of determination, but I wasn't totally averse to simply giving up.

The ground was firm, which was somewhat refreshing. It would have been just my luck, I thought, to find myself wading through mire. Granted the grass was just short of knee length, and wet (soaking my trouser bottoms in minutes), but walking was relatively easy. I was thankful for small mercies. I realised, as I went, that the most walking I did was either taking Tilly, my dog, for a walk, or going to the coffee machine at work. I had no real idea just how far two miles was, and I figured distances out here, where the only thing stopping you seeing forever was the horizon, would be hard to estimate accurately.

I was depressing myself, I knew. There was quite a lot to see if I actually bothered to look. Trees, the names of which I had never really bothered to learn, dotted the landscape. I knew what a willow and an oak looked like and that was it. Both of these resided outside the pub my parents frequented. I had spent many a Saturday afternoon waiting outside that particular hostelry (named The Oak Tree for obvious reasons) waiting for my mum to just nip in to get my dad, and only having the one drink while she waited. Once, I remembered, I had been standing under the tears of the weeping willow when there was a loud crack and the thick branch above me slowly snapped and fell on me. I have no idea why I simply stood and watched, but that's just what I did. Luckily I was standing out towards the end of the branch, which must have measure 12 inches across. I had been pulling at the leaves and the next thing I knew I was in them. I was still standing there, waist deep in tree, when my mum finally came out. She didn't believe me, but I didn't really mind. I wondered, at the time, if the 'weeping' willow had cried so much it had been broken by the weight of its tears.

I looked behind me to check my bearings against my car. I could still see it, a small white scar against the grey of the clouds. I was surprised at how far I'd managed to walk. Hell, maybe this wasn't going to be so bad after all. I turned back and continued on, scanning the countryside for any sign of a building. I could see the Moors now, rising up from the flats like a - well - like a load of hills. I realised I had lost my imagination around the same time I was accosted by the willow. The realisation made me sad - I'd never noticed it was gone, slipping away like the proverbial thief-in-the-night. Sure, I could make clichéd metaphors, but I didn't want that, not any more. I wanted to wake up the kid in me, assuming he hadn't sneaked away under the cover of my imagination. Why I was thinking like this, I couldn't fathom. I was a practical person and hadn't particularly suffered from its absence. I didn't know if it was due to the fact that, for the first time in forever, I was totally alone with my own thoughts. Perhaps it was because I wasn't used to open spaces or silence (ignoring the violent gale) and my mind had been working overtime on this blasted house. Either way, I needed to perk myself back up. I thought back to my youth and the trees I'd climbed (and fallen out of). It worked, to a certain extent. At least I could concentrate more on the job at hand instead of wallowing in inconsequentials.

After what seemed an age, and noticing I could no longer see my car, I stopped. I guessed this would be about far enough, and I should be able to see the house if I came within a good distance of it. I mentally flipped a coin to decide which way I should turn, and it came up Heads. So left it was. There was still no trace of a path of any sort and wading through wet grass, no matter how relatively short it might be, was tiring. The wind seemed to be hitting me from all directions while still being mainly right in my face, even though I'd changed my bearing. I couldn't see the road or my car, but to my right were the beginnings of the Moors.

They rose fairly sharply in a straight-ish line ahead and behind me, about a couple of hundred yards away. Mist clung to the slope giving a vague veiled look, as if they were slightly out of focus. It felt colder. I could see, further away, plateaux and hills rising to scary heights. I was so pleased my goal wasn't way up there.

As I walked, I realised the 'straight-ish' line was really nothing of the sort. The edge of the Moors dipped in and out like a coastline. Even with the roar of the gale I could sense a heavy silence from that direction, as if the storm couldn't quite touch it. This hush was emphasised by the stillness of the fog - it might have been a painting it was so calm. It was strange, I thought, the tricks your senses played in unusual circumstances.

I returned to my scrutiny of the Moor's 'coastline'. Various sized coves broke its edge creating small, and sometimes not so small, shelters from the elements. Branches and bushes had found their way into many, torn from their original abodes by the relentless wind. It was eerie and added to the desolate feeling. It seemed I had, at the most inopportune time, rediscovered my imagination. I was just walking across a blustery field. Granted I was in the middle of nowhere and alongside the North Yorkshire Moors, but it certainly wasn't anything creepy. As for the brushwood in the 'coves', it did not look like grasping hands - it was simply deadwood. The mist along the rise of the Moors was not a ghostly veil, hiding untold horrors, and the fearsome breeze was not a Banshee scream. I knew all of this. I knew all of this. My only problem was convincing myself of it.

I was getting tired of this. The house could be anywhere or nowhere. I knew I had intended walking in both directions, but I just couldn't be bothered. I'd tell my company that it was clear - the land was OK. A few grand to the local council would secure it and they could go ahead. The decision was made and I was about to return to my car when I saw the post. It was wooden and rotten and mostly moss covered, but its regular, artificial shape stopped me dead in my tracks.

A fence post.

I drew a long breath through clenched teeth and let it out through my nose. A little further along, the moor edge slipped back again. The post was lying, pointing in no particular direction, just before the gap. The house was very likely set back in this bay - a natural place to set up home, as it would provide ample refuge from storms and the like. I used the term 'natural' even though I couldn't imagine why someone would want to build here. I didn't understand why I was suddenly so anxious. All I had to do was knock on the door, speak to whoever lived there, and go home. If nobody was in residence then I'd probably have a look round, but then I'd leave. It was nothing major.

Still, apprehension wrapped its wiry arms about my chest and squeezed.

I moved forward.

I sensed rather than saw movement out of the corner of my eye and snapped my head round. I swore at myself when I saw it was simply the swirl of the mist as it rose up the hillside. Well, that ruined the image of a painting. Perhaps I should have thought it strange that only now had the mist decided to stir, but I didn't. I had continued walking while my attention was on the swirling fog and, when I turned back, I realised I was now at the gap, having stepped over the decaying fence post without noticing.

The house was before me, in all of its unnatural glory. I was, frankly, disappointed. What faced me now was a shack compared to the epic manor my newly found imagination had created in my mind. I certainly couldn't see Herman Munster answering this door! In fact, if the front door were opened, it would probably fall off its rusty old hinges! Yet still trepidation tapped me on the shoulder.

A dishevelled and scruffy looking attempt at a garden was surrounded by an equally bedraggled low wooden fence, the sort with four inch tapered posts rammed into the ground with thin wooden slats nailed against them. Most of the slats were broken and lay lazily in the long grass. Those that were still more or less in one piece seemed to hang onto the stakes precariously. The posts themselves were in much the same state of rot as the one I had carelessly stepped over. They were leaning unsteadily at all angles as if they simply couldn't be bothered, or didn't have the energy to stand upright. Some were missing, although I could only see the one at the cove entrance, giving the fence the look of some beggar's mouth - gaps in teeth that were almost lost themselves. A gate, fashioned in much the same way as the fence, allowed entrance into the grounds. It creaked quietly as I opened it. A green scum coated my fingers where they had been in contact with the gate and I hastily wiped them in my handkerchief.

The garden reminded me of my own hair when I had just woken up. The term 'dragged through a hedge backwards' came to mind. Coarse grass, the same length as the field I had just traipsed through but with a more sickly appearance, covered the area from the fence to the house. A narrow paved path ran to the front door in much the same condition as everything else - it was cracked and uneven. I paused half way along it to take a proper look at the building. House was too grand a word for this abode. Cottage would just about come close, though it was barely beyond a hovel. It had two floors, with a number of small windows, the glass of which was amazingly still intact (if dirty). The roof was thatch and had seen better centuries, let alone days. It seemed to have been rendered with a dash of pebbles sometime in the distant past and patchy remnants still stuck to the walls. The door looked about ready to collapse. It was scratched and peeled and cracked, scarred by time and the elements. I could see the rust of the hinges from where I stood. The handle was missing and I could see no evidence of a lock.

I could also see no evidence of habitation. I walked up to one of the front windows and peered inside. The window was reasonably large with no curtains or blinds to obscure my view inside. The day, though cloudy, was still fairly bright, yet despite this the interior of the room was gloomy and dark. I shielded my eyes as I looked in but it had no effect. The room was a mass of shadow, almost as if it was hiding from me. I shook my head and moved to the other side of the door. This window was slightly smaller than the first, which I thought odd - I always figured houses with a door in the centre should be made symmetrical, but I always had to put a cup down at right angles to the surface, so I couldn't really talk. Again, the contents of the room within were withheld from my view. I could vaguely make out shapes, and didn't think there was any furniture to speak of, but I really couldn't be sure.

I stepped away and walked around the side of the building. Only one small window adorned this wall, high up near the eves. Now that was where the killer would be hiding, twitching the nets. As with the other windows, there were no nets, but a shiver still raked down my spine. When I reached the back of the house I stopped. The mist from the Moors, thick and glutinous, rolled down right down to the back door, shrouding the entire rear of the building. I couldn't see the door or any windows and could hardly make out the structure itself. Mist shouldn't be like this, I thought. Mist is vaporous and insubstantial, not this viscous gloop. I didn't like it, but had a few choice words with myself to calm my nerves. It was a house! Nothing more! It was a bit of fog, nothing more! Get a GRIP!

I turned abruptly and walked, as confidently as I could, back to the front. I needed to do something positive here. I needed to get a hold of myself and do my job. The house didn't particularly look that scary. It was simply an old, haggard looking building and I needed to find out something about it. Anything.

I would have to go inside.

I looked at the front door. It was still cracked and peeling, but now it appeared to be sneering at me. "Come on," it was laughing. "Enter if you dare." Cue Vincent Price cackle. I laughed back at it. "I dare," I said out loud. The words sounded flat and completely unconvincing, but they served to bolster me just a touch. I practically marched up to the mocking door and purposefully pushed it open. It creaked, naturally. The obligatory sigh whispered past me as the musty air from within met the fresh air from outside. Amazingly, I didn't associate it with anything ghostly. I was quite proud of myself. I stepped inside and closed the door behind me (before it could mysteriously close by itself).

I was in a small hallway, with rickety stairs leading up to a short landing. It was gloomy, but at least the house seemed to have come out of hiding - I could see easily. The floor was bare, unvarnished boards and the walls were covered in a faded brown paper that was heavily water stained, the blemishes creating more of a pattern than had already existed. There was a closed door to my right, near the bottom of the stairs, which resembled the front door in condition, and another similar one at the far end of the hallway ahead of me. I knew there was a room to my left (the first one I'd peeked into), but no doorway allowed entry from here. There wasn't much of a dank smell, which I would have expected, but there was a faintly fusty odour. The whole hall, and this probably went for the rest of the house, gave the impression of being rusty, almost like the hinges of the front door. It had a corroded feel to it as if, at any time, it might simply collapse in on itself. I was reminded of the final scenes of Poltergeist, where the house imploded in a supernatural ball of light.

I stepped forward. I thought I'd try the rear of the house from the inside, figuring there'd be a kitchen back there. The first place I ever looked for anything important, even if I was sure I hadn't put it there, was the junk drawer in my kitchen. Eight times out of ten it would mysteriously find its way there. Perhaps any owner of this house had the same methods. It was somewhere to start anyway. It was clear, from the state of the hallway that no one lived here currently.

I was about halfway towards the door, my footsteps on the wood echoing lifelessly in the numb air, when I heard a loud crack. It sounded like a cross between a gunshot and something familiar that I couldn't quite place. I looked around but could see nothing. Then I looked down at the floor. A line, roughly oval and with me in the centre, had appeared in the wooden floorboards as they suddenly splintered apart. I realised why the sound had been familiar. It was exactly the same as I had heard so many years earlier standing beneath the weeping willow as the bough had broken and I'd found myself in the midst of its tears.

Before I could move to the stairway or back out to the front door, the flooring gave way beneath me and I fell into the darkness below.

I blinked.

For a moment, I didn't quite understand where I was. I should have been lying broken in the damp cellar of this rotting house, but I wasn't. I was standing on the edge of the hole. Perhaps I'd managed to jump at the last moment. Survival instincts and reflexes can be uncommonly powerful when needed and it wasn't, I supposed, beyond the realms of possibility that I had leaped out of harm's way and not realised it. I could think of no other explanation and it took a few long minutes for my heart to calm and my breathing to steady. I noticed that it had turned colder in the hallway and I could see my breath as I exhaled. I rubbed my hands together briskly even though I didn't really feel that cold. The floorboards were creaking quietly as I stood, slightly swaying, and I knew I needed to move away from the hole - I might not be so lucky if the same were to happen again. I hadn't realised I suffered from any form of vertigo, but I couldn't bring myself to look down into the opening. I didn't feel safe.

I slowly moved along the corridor toward the door at the end, keeping my back against the wall. Maybe I should have gone back out of the front door, but insanity had dragged me thus far, so I figured I'd stay along for the ride. A draught must have been coming up from the cellar because, as I neared the door, I noticed I could no longer see my exhalations. I reached the door and opened it. There was a slight rasp as the hinges protested after so many years of disuse, but I no longer had any misgivings about my exploration. I'd have thought I'd be hastily making my getaway before the rest of the building crashed down about my ears, but my narrow escape seemed to have steadied my nerves. I could have been wandering around my own home.

I'd been right in my guess. A small kitchen welcomed me after the concerns of the hallway. It was long and not very wide and had a low window next to the back door. There were no appliances, such as a cooker or refrigerator, simply a large sink and a plain wooden table with a couple of plain wooden chairs pushed neatly under. A faded picture hung limply on one wall, perhaps a flower or something similar (I could make out some sort of stem with what looked like a head but that was all - maybe petals but I couldn't be sure). The window looked, at first glance, to be whitewashed and obscured but a closer inspection showed that not to be the case. The fog that had prevented my investigating the back of the house (ok, so it was my own nerves, but I wasn't going to start splitting hairs) hugged the window. There was no gap or interruption in the mist; it seemed to touch the window over its entire surface. It still appeared as unnaturally thick as before, and moved not in the swirl I'd have expected but with more of a kind of shiver as if it was trying to keep still but was being agitated by something I couldn't see.

On the table was a rectangular wooden chopping board and a carving knife. I picked the knife up, testing its dull edge. It looked worn but as if it was blunt with time rather than use. I returned it to its place on the chopping board and looked around again.

The kitchen had three doors. One was the exit to the left of the window, which I contemplated trying next. There was the entrance to the hallway and a third on my right. I couldn't understand this. It meant the room on the left didn't actually have access into it, while the one on the right had two. I shook my head and decided to see what was so special about the right hand one that needed two ways in - or, I suddenly though, a way in and a way out... Of course a room with no doorway was even stranger, but I'd look into that later. I forgot about the window and its blanket of mist and entered the room.

It looked moderately large, but that was mostly due to the lack of furnishings. The floor was bare, lacking even the most threadbare of carpets. No pictures adorned the walls, or even wallpaper for that matter. The room was little more than a shell - empty and barren - but it had a pervading sensation of obscurity. It was like a shadow at the edge of my vision that I couldn't quite focus on. It certainly wasn't as dark as it had seemed from outside, but the impression of a lingering dusk hung on my eyes. I walked to the window and looked out. The wind had picked up again and a spattering of drizzle sprayed the glass. I could see the grass being whipped about and, uninviting as it looked, I had a sudden urge to be out there, walking back to my car and my home and my dog.

I turned back to the room. Its complete lack of décor gave it an eerie feeling, bleakness almost. I shivered and walked back to the kitchen, not wanting to chance the floor of the hallway again. As the first floor was out of bounds to me as well now, and the other room was sealed off for whatever reason, my only option appeared to be outside. The fog had not abated and still twitched curiously against the window. I might not be able to see where I was going, but I could feel my way round to the side of the house. If the land began to rise, I knew I'd have to turn around immediately and return to the house, or run a risk of ending up lost on the Moors. Echoes of The Hound Of The Baskervilles ran fleetingly through my mind and I paused with my hand on the door handle.

I shook my head and again had to laugh at myself. Apart from the near accident in the hallway, not a single thing had happened to me in this obviously deserted building. Perhaps outside was precisely where I needed to be. I pushed the handle down and pulled the door open.

A fetid stench of absolute decay assaulted me as tendrils of mist reached in like skeletal arms. I was very nearly sick and had to cover my nose and mouth with my hands to prevent me from retching. My eyes were streaming and I stared wildly as a feral growl, low and guttural, crawled out of the fog.

At first I could see nothing, then a dozen or more pairs of crimson eyes, like slashes in the mist, came rushing towards me. I fell back and kicked the door shut, then scrambled to my feet to make sure it was closed properly. I was knocked back as body after body hurled itself against the other side. I had no idea how such a dilapidated door could possibly hold such a force, but hold it did. I backed away slowly, my body shaking uncontrollably. My mind raced. What were they? I'd been walking out there for an age! I could have been attacked at any time! How could I get away from here without them coming after me? What were they???

I'd had the impression of some great lupine shape, but all that I could see in my mind were those brilliant red eyes saturating me with their stare. I was still backing away when, suddenly, I was surrounded by sound. It was so abrupt and... complete, I felt almost bathed in noise. Voices whispered my name. I heard cries and growls, soft singing and raucous laughter. It was all entwined in a constant stream that filled my head. I looked around me. And I screamed.

My body was half way through the wall. My left leg was already through, with my torso and head following. I staggered back, a terrible cascade of vibrant colour blinding me.

I fell to the floor and the clamour stopped. The reek from outside had failed to turn my stomach completely, but this latest episode finished the job. I'd had a simple breakfast, early this morning, of toast and black coffee. What was left of it was now pooling on the floor in front of me. It had been one simple clench of my stomach and the sensation was gone. I coughed twice and pushed myself weakly to my feet. I looked at the wall, noticing the house was once again silent. I shook my head.

It must have been an illusion of some kind.

Yeah, that was all. Trickery.

I went to the wall and, very tentatively, reached out to it. It felt solid - slightly rough with a dusty texture. I pushed at it and then slammed the palms of my hands against its hard surface. It wouldn't give, yet there must be some way through! I rubbed my hands over the entire wall, searching for some dip or hidden catch that might indicate a concealed exit. There was none. Becoming more frantic, I continued my search across the rest of the room, turning my attention to the bare floor and cracked ceiling when the walls proved fruitless.

There was nothing. The only way out seemed to be the window. Unfortunately, it didn't open and I had nothing to throw at it (except myself) to smash the glass. I was not quite at the stage where I could hurl myself through a window, but I knew I was getting close.

Besides, night was falling. I didn't realise I had been in here that long, but it was definitely growing dark outside. In the deepening dusk, I sat in the middle of the floor and hung my head in my hands.

What were those creatures outside? Wolves? Did wolves have eyes like that? Was there any way possibly that I could outrun them all the way to my car?

I didn't think so.

And how did I get in this room? It looked, and felt, like I walked through the wall! How was that possible? What was all that noise? All that colour?

My head spun. I felt like a whirlpool was inside my mind sucking me down. I looked over at the window staring at my reflection. Whatever had happened when I'd entered this room must have affected my sight because I looked slightly blurred in the glass. I rubbed my eyes and looked again. I still appeared to be out of focus. I looked at the rest of the room. It was clear and well defined - almost overly so, as if the corners were sharper and the surfaces were somehow more intense.

But my reflection was indistinct. Fuzzy.

A thought tried to creep into the back of my mind, but I pushed it away without letting it form completely. It was quite ludicrous. But it wouldn't settle. It was determined to be heard. I stared at the wall in front of me, separating this room and the hallway.

What if...?

I breathed deeply, telling myself that I was being immensely foolish, but I knew I was not. I stood up slowly and looked over to the wall I'd come through originally. There was no door. I could pretend that it was an illusion if I wanted. I knew it wasn't. I could lie to myself and say I'd been tricked somehow. I knew I hadn't.

I faced forward again and closed my eyes. I drew a deep breath once more. My nose whistled off-key as I let it out. Keeping my eyes shut tight, I lifted my arms into a typical 'zombie' pose and walked forward.

I hoped I would hit the wall. I wanted my hands to make contact on the bare plaster. If they had, I could possibly have made a break for it through the window, risking cuts and a mauling by those weird wolves to run back to my car. Tomorrow I would tell the Company that they could tear down this place and build their new development. If my hands touched the something solid, I'd even offer to drive the first bulldozer.

They didn't. I tried to tell myself I just hadn't reached it yet, but then I heard my name whispered. Before I knew it I was wrapped in sound again, a cacophony of noise that was simultaneously a jumble of sound and totally distinct strands. I opened my eyes to a vivid cascade of images that seemed to deafen me more than the noise itself. I staggered forward to the bottom step of the stairs and the assault ceased abruptly. I was leaning heavily on the banister, my breath heavy, when I saw the hole in the floor. I'd forgotten about that. I supposed I should look down into it, now my fears had been confirmed. I was shaking, though not as much as I would have thought I'd be. A section of flooring was still attached to the bottom of the stairs and I stepped carefully onto it. I looked down.

My body, broken and bleeding, lay on the splintered remains of the hallway floorboards. My arms and legs were bents at odd angles, looking like a child's action figure that had been tossed casually aside. My head was facing the wrong way. I laughed coarsely, thinking I finally had eyes in the back of my head. Three stakes, wooden shards from the flooring, pierced my torso at various places. Blood had soaked my shirt and was forming a puddle around me, outlining my figure like the chalk from a police film.

I waited for the horror to strike. I waited for the realisation that I was dead to reduce me to a quivering mess. It didn't. I waited for a dazzling white light to appear, a bright tunnel, perhaps, to stretch out to infinity. Neither materialised. Instead, I felt an odd detachment. I stared down at my ruined body, and felt completely indifferent, as if it really was a casually thrown children's toy.

It was light again when I next moved. Time, it seemed, had a somewhat different meaning to those dearly departed. Daylight streamed in around the loose frame of the front door, making the hallway seem almost welcoming. Yeah, I thought. Come in, make yourself at home. You don't mind plummeting to your death do you? Good, good. Let me take your coat. Whether this was said mentally or out loud I didn't know. Not that it mattered, really. I was dead. It was pretty much the same either way.

Saying that felt weird: "I'm dead." It was like saying "I'm Shaun." I imagined meeting someone at a party or somewhere similar. "Hi, I'm a ghost," I'd say. "Oh, hello," they'd reply. "I'm a doctor."

I diverted my attention from the corpse in the cellar to the hole itself. It was large and fairly regular, almost artificially so. For a moment I wondered if it had been deliberately cut, a deadly reprisal for any trespassers, but I saw how the exposed ends of the floorboards were splintered and split. They were rotten and simply couldn't take my weight. I smiled to myself, which was bizarre under the circumstances. I realised I was the other side of the pit from the door-less room, yet I had walked (eyes closed) straight across it to the stairs. Perhaps this ghost business had its uses. Well, I thought. I may as well have a little practise.

I glanced, automatically, at my watch. I laughed, then, to see that I actually still had one. Not only that, but it still worked! The second hand was sweeping round as usual and the date had moved on to tomorrow (or rather today). I thought that was ever so slightly amazing. I looked down at my left wrist to see what state my 'real' watch was in but a bloody sleeve covered it. I checked my watch again. I wasn't aware of watches having souls (or whatever my present form might be), but there it was. I pressed the illumination button and the dial sprang into luminescent blue 'life'. I shook my head in wonder.

Having a watch, real or otherwise, on my wrist did, sort of, indicate that an idea I had might be true. To try to prove it, I stepped backward. Looking down, I noticed that I couldn't see my feet. Midway along my shins, my legs stopped and a step began. I could hear vague echoes of voices, a drastically diminished version of the onslaught from the wall. I lifted my foot and placed it on the step, pushing myself up so both feet were on the stairs. I touched my hand to the wall and felt the slightly rough contours. I could run my finger along a faint crack. Taking a deep breath, I pushed. My hand sank into the plaster to the wrist, and somewhere inside my head I heard my name whispered over and over. I could feel nothing in my hand to show it was encased in brick. Without pulling it back, I lowered my arm to my side. It slid through the wall without resistance.

Stepping onto the floor, I sat at the edge of the hole, dangling my legs in the cellar. I could feel my heart thumping at I stood again and, without pausing, walked forwards. I could feel the floor beneath my feet. I could hear my shoes scraping on wood that wasn't there - that was now impaling my battered carcass under me. I looked down and fancied I could even see the floorboards in their original state but insubstantial, almost a ghost of a ghost. I walked back to the stairs. It was then I realised I'd been holding my breath and let it out explosively.

I could lift a carving knife and feel its weight. I could open a door or walk through it as if it wasn't there. Walls could be as insubstantial as air or as solid as, well, a wall. I could, effectively, float above a hole and feel like I was standing on a floor. Ol' Patrick Swayze shouldn't have tried so hard in 'Ghost'.

I was dead. A phantom. Spectre, wraith, shade, whatever. I found I didn't mind. It had been a painless death, for which I was grateful (and surprised - from the state I was in below, I'd have thought it should have been excruciating). I wasn't sure what I should do now. Was this it for me? Was I destined to wander the Earth as a spirit? Could I think of any more melodramatic clichés? Perhaps this was death. Maybe, if I returned home, I'd meet other ghosts, maybe even everyone who had ever lived! I lived alone (apart from Tilly - who'd look after him?) and had no family to speak of so I wasn't really going to be missed. I was getting bored with my job anyway, so that was no great loss.

Thinking of work reminded me why I had originally come here. I'd forgone any thoughts of finding evidence of ownership, but figured I may as well look around again. I hadn't been to the first floor yet. I wondered if there would be a bed in one of the rooms, doubting it if the rest of the house was anything to go by. I wasn't tired, but if there was, I wondered if I could actually sleep. I climbed the stairs.

At the top was a small square landing, more a longer top step than anything else. It was perhaps two foot square and simply formed a gap between the two rooms that occupied the top floor. Doors, typically worn and beaten, led to either side and I had a shiver of déjà vu as I mentally flipped a coin to choose a bedroom. Tails. I stepped right, not bothering to open the door. A chorus of voices rippled through me as my body and the wood mingled, and then I was through. Of course the floors and walls were bare, making the room almost identical to the two downstairs. A large window to the front allowed views of the fields I'd hiked through. I could just make out the road I'd left my car on far in the distance. A much smaller window was set in the sidewall - the "killer's window" I'd seen from the outside. The rear wall was plain. I returned to the landing and entered the next room. Again my body echoed with sound. This second room was a mirror image of the first. The windows to the front and side were identical, and once more the rear wall was windowless.

I looked out of the side window. I could see the curve of the inlet and the fog that embraced it so closely - the fog that was as still as if it were a solid mass, and hid so many horrors.

I gasped. The wolves! I'd forgotten about the wolves! How did I forget them? How could I leave here with them prowling around outside?

Oh, I thought, running my hand through my hair. I'm a ghost. Even if they could sense me in some innate animal fashion, or knew I was there, they couldn't exactly tear me limb from limb - I didn't have any now! I returned to the stairs, the voices seeming a touch more insistent as I passed through the door. I walked down the stairs and along the hallway, across the hole in the phantom floor as if it was still present and into the kitchen. I stood at the window and stared into the fog. It trembled and convulsed as if alive - I could almost hear it scraping across the glass as it moved.

Suddenly, hovering at roughly head height, was a pair of red eyes. They looked like someone had cut the mist and blood was seeping out in a slash of colour. I stepped back involuntarily then remembered that whatever was out there couldn't hurt me. I moved back and returned the gaze. My face was inches from the glass, my hands leaning on the edge of the sink. I was trying to see the body of the wolf, thinking it so strange that I could only see the eyes then, in true Cheshire Cat style, a maw opened beneath them. Teeth longer and sharper than any mere wolf's leered at me and a snarl reverberated through the glass, making it shake in its frame. Then the mouth was gone and, a second later, the eyes disappeared too. A shape moved in the fog and then it resumed its incessant churning. I was shaking. Even with the knowledge that the creature (it couldn't be a wolf, but I didn't know what it was) could do nothing to a ghost, I was unsettled. It had looked directly at me, and it had threatened me.

I was breathing heavily. My heart was pounding and I was trembling. It took an effort to settle my nerves.

This was no good, I scolded myself. I was dead! I couldn't die twice! They could threaten me and even try to attack me, but I wasn't really here! Their teeth would just bite through me. I had a mental image of a wolf-like beast uselessly snapping at my body while I looked on and laughed. I liked that picture. That would get them back for trying (and succeeding) to scare me! I walked to the back door and pulled it open, smiling.

The smile froze on my lips as what seemed like hundreds of shapes lunged at the open doorway - at me. I fell backwards and kicked the door shut. It bounced open again, hitting one of the creatures.

And I was face to terrible face with terror.

The eyes seemed torn into a skull that looked like it may once have been human, but now was contorted out of shape - stretched to give it a snout. The ears were sharp and flat against the head and a lank mass of hair clung along the centre. Double rows of sharp incisors snapped as the maw opened and closed hungrily and fetid breath grazed my cheeks. A solid neck, traced wildly with muscle and vein, merged into a powerful body that hung low to the ground on all fours. I glanced down at the feet and saw long fingers with equally long talons. They looked more like hands than an animal's paw! The beast was still outside, staring at me as if giving me time to consider my impending death, perhaps not realising, or caring, that I was already dead. I took my chance and leaped at the door, pushing it shut hard. Before it closed completely, the brute's paw jabbed out, slashing at my arm.

I screamed in agony as the nails sliced into my arm and the creature shrieked in mutual pain as its entire leg burst into flames. The door clicked shut and I lay clutching my savaged arm, sobbing. Outside, something dreadful howled and beat against the door. Somehow, as before, the door held.

I crawled away from the exit and leaned against the sidewall. Gritting my teeth, I drew my hand away from my wound... to find there was nothing there. My shirtsleeve wasn't ripped, my arm wasn't a shredded mess. I could feel where there should have been gashes raked across, the skin hanging and the bone exposed. If I closed my eyes I could almost see it. But I was a ghost! Ghosts weren't real - weren't tangible. How could I feel pain? How could that creature have seen me, let alone attacked me?

My arm burned white-hot fire. I moaned, feeling lost and pathetic. I didn't understand any of this. Nothing. I just couldn't understand!

I think I may have passed out. It was dark when I next opened my eyes. The pain in my arm had receded somewhat and was now a sharp ache, much like the retching feeling that hung in my stomach like... a bad curry. That was how I felt - as if I'd eaten something that really didn't agree with me. Not that I'd be eating anything anymore. I looked at my watch and was shocked to see that around a week had passed since my run in with whatever waited for me outside. It was well past midnight and the house was silent. I could hear no wind or creak of settling wood. I turned my head to the back door. All was quiet. Somehow, that wasn't very comforting. I suddenly felt very uneasy - vulnerable - sitting there in the dark. I had been unconscious, or whatever dead-equivalent state compared, for six days. The thought of that and the realisation that only a rotten wooden door stood between a horde of monsters and me, made me feel sick. I needed to move. I could think of nowhere safer than a room with no doors and crawled (not trusting my legs to hold me) through the wall to the room beyond.

The voices were virtually shouting my name as I passed through the wall. That, along with a myriad other sounds, created a cacophony that was just too much and I collapsed through it onto the floor on the other side. Again I may have, must have, passed out. It was light when I woke. I checked my watch. It was mid-morning and around three weeks had passed. Well, I thought, at least three weeks had passed. It could have been months for all I knew. My head ached, but my arm was more or less OK now, the throbbing was no little more than a dull twinge.

I needed to get out of here. I had an almost irresistible urge to run straight out of the house. I could open doors and lift knives, so maybe I could even go as far as being able to drive my car, if it was still parked on the road. Of course, a mad sprint across the fields was not such a good idea with dozens of jaws snapping at my heels, but staying here was not an option. I had to get out.

I pushed myself, with some effort, to my feet and looked out of the window. It was a bright day. The grass was long and flowing freely in a mild breeze. Wispy clouds skittered across an otherwise clear sky. I suddenly longed to feel the warmth of the sun on my face, but wasn't sure if I'd be able to enjoy even that small luxury. I had to stop myself walking to the front door - I hardly needed to take that route now - and stepped to the window. I paused, wondering if I was being idiotic. I was safe in here, for now at least.

That was what made up my mind. 'For now.' I didn't know how long the door would hold them back. It, like the rest of the house, wasn't strong. It was a wonder how it had withstood the battering for this long. I could wait where I was or leave now and be attacked either way. I may as well try my luck outside.

I hesitated again. One thing played on my mind. Why had the creature's leg caught fire after it had struck me? Was it some sort of immediate allergic reaction to me? I doubted that somehow. I didn't have any skin or blood anymore, unless it didn't particularly like 'ectoplasm', or whatever I might be made of now. Perhaps it had something to do with the cottage itself? But what? I shook my head. I didn't know and there was no way I could find out. I wasn't prepared to offer myself up as the main course to find out either. Staying where I was could only postpone the inevitable, I was sure.

The urge to flee blindly had faded, but I knew I had to leave. The window would provide no resistance. I could simply walk forwards and be out of here. I may even be lucky and not attract the attention of those beasts.

So I did.

I stepped forward and rested my hand on the glass. It felt cold. Maybe I would feel the sun's heat. I dropped my arm and walked... into the window! Not through it, into it! I tried again, and a third time. Nothing. It was like walking into a balloon - the glass would give slightly, bending outwards as I pushed, but something prevented me from passing through it. I struggled to keep calm. Perhaps there was something about glass that... No, that was ridiculous. Wood, glass, brick - I was a ghost. It was all the same, surely!

The front door. That would work!

I turned and ran towards the hallway. I could feel a sense of panic creeping at the back of my mind. I wanted to escape before it took hold and made me do something stupid. Escape. That was what I was trying to do. I suddenly felt a prisoner.

I was moving through the wall. Abruptly I stopped, or rather was stopped. I couldn't move. It was as if my body and the wall had become one - had merged as I stepped through. No, that was wrong. I wasn't part of the wall. My body hadn't solidified. I was being held. I could feel it, like a clamp around every part of me - I was a prisoner. But why? How?

And where were the voices?

As if on cue, they started. The raucous clamour that had accompanied each of my previous encounters was gone. It seemed the house had me now - I was a captive audience, and it didn't need to shout.

Whispers.

I could hear my name over and over, almost a chant. A song, somehow familiar, became entwined with my name, giving the mantra a melody. The hallway (my head, like the rest of me, was half in the room and half in the hall) began to fade to be replaced by a soft blue river that flowed across my eyes. I felt relaxed and strangely calm.

After a while the voice repeating my name became more insistent, emphasising the syllables. It grew louder, drowning out the song until it was almost shouting at me. The blue river became a violent torrent and I squeezed my eyes, futilely, shut. Even with them closed, the deluge continued. The din increased until I couldn't take anymore.

"WHAT?" I shouted.

The sound ceased. The river slowed, then stopped. I realised I was panting.

"What?" I asked quietly.

I heard my name.

"Yes," I said.

The song began again and the waters of the river parted to show the house with the Moors behind. The house in this image was in much better condition than it now looked. The fence was straight and complete and the front door looked almost new. The picture blurred slightly then focussed to show the nearby village. It seemed to be a live picture, as I could see cars and people moving about. The view changed again and I saw another town, not one I recognised. This, too, appeared to be live as people milled about their daily lives, oblivious to the dead person watching them. The town became indistinct and then settled on the house once more.

I frowned, not sure of what I was being shown.

"And?" I asked the air.

The river surged suddenly and the song became momentarily angry. Then it calmed and I got the sense of a deep breath being taken somewhere close by.

"Who are you?" I asked.

The water became the house.

I repeated my question. The image shifted and stilled. It was the house.

"You are the house?" I didn't understand. The house was talking to me? Had my recent demise sent me mad?

The melody quietened briefly, as if considering an answer. The figure of the house remained and I felt an indecisive confirmation, like whatever it was couldn't quite put into words, or pictures, what it was trying to say. I suddenly felt a pressing sense of impatience and the house itself shook - a rumble rising from its foundations.

As if someone was slowly turning up a volume control, the song, my name and untold other noises grew in number and degree as the river again became a deluge. Whatever was holding me and showing me these images and sounds had passed the point of trying to do it gradually. I suddenly felt like a baseball hit to a home run. My senses were overwhelmed as the house practically screamed at me.

At first I couldn't make any sense of what I was being shown. Images overlapped and blurred into each other at an astonishing rate, and the voices, music and other sounds merged into a solid block of noise. I could feel my body shaking in the house's vice-like grip. Then, I don't know whether the onslaught subsided to some extent, but I began to be able to pick out the odd scene and sound. Some were linked, but most were a jumbled mass until, gradually, they seemed to level out - to reach a plateau of some sort and I could finally understand them.

As my grasp resolved, the display returned to the beginning.

I was shown the house. I was shown its history. I was shown the true nature of the wolves and why I was now dead. I was shown the future.

The house was a force. That was the closest term I could relate to. It was more than alive and still not precisely living. It had consciousness but not thought. It didn't have true shape but, needing physical form, had 'become' the house. A building conformed to the current nature of Man. A building would be safe.

Previously, for an aeon, it had been a vast oak, twice the height of the house with sweeping branches half again the length of the fence. It had filled this cove in the coastline of the Moors. Before that, for longer than could be measured, it had been a huge block of stone, a massive obelisk that looked carelessly dropped by the same child that had tossed my corpse into the cellar. Its shape had changed with time, as Man had changed. The enormous mass of rock had become the oak when Man had fashioned the tool. It had become the cottage when Man had abandoned his respect of nature, favouring material possessions.

It did this because it needed to be... indefinite. It had to last a lifetime - not the lifetime of one person, but the lifetime of the world. It was a barrier, a boundary between what I had to call 'my' world, and another, much darker, world. This wasn't, from what I could discern, anything like a different dimension. I didn't have the lead role in some sort of science fiction film, however much I might wish I had. This other 'world' was more a different aspect or facet of mine. It was a shadowy domain of demons and terror.

The force that held me prevented the two from converging. That was why the demons, which I finally understood the crimson eyed wolves to be, beat against the back door. They were trying to break down the barrier - to gain access to that which was forbidden them. If they succeeded, well, I was shown that too.

The demons didn't care whether their victims were alive or dead, real or a ghost. It was simply prey.

They would tear a person apart if they were living, and then do the same to their spirit. My arm had been an insignificant example of this. I was, in part, protected in here. Outside, and without the protection of the house, I would no longer exist, ghost or otherwise - I could, it seemed, die twice. The demons didn't discriminate between people or animals - in fact, anything living was prey.

And it wasn't a hunger for them. They didn't attack, maim and kill absolutely, out of some instinctive desire for survival. The demon horde, thousands upon thousands of the lupine beasts, killed because they could. The living couldn't see them, and were torn asunder by an unseen monster. For the dead, it was much worse. The dead had no defence. The dead could see their attacker. The dead could die.

"Why me?" I asked. What could I do? I was a phantom now. Even if that wasn't the case, I was defenceless.

Then that, too, was revealed.

The house - the force that bound me - knew the reason I had come here. It had seen that I (or the Company I worked for) sought to develop this land, and that meant its destruction. There was no way it could allow that. It hadn't, I knew, killed me out of spite or retribution - it had done so because it needed me to know. The development had to be stopped and the only way it could warn me was for me to die.

It was absurd. It was so obviously absurd. I could laugh if I wasn't so totally horrified.

It thought I could help. It believed, if I knew, I could stop the work. It thought I could help.

It didn't understand that, as a ghost, I was near useless. I could feel its confusion. I tried to explain that the people who would come wouldn't be able to see or hear me. I could stop them no better than I could stand in the way of the demons.

The house began to shudder. A booming growl shook the walls and broke the spell I was under. The house released me and I fell back into the room. I looked about me and realised the vibrations were not coming from the walls. The ground itself was shaking. I ran to the window.

I banged against the glass. I shouted until I was hoarse. I waved my hands frantically.

It was useless.

The driver of the bulldozer was Tom. I knew him well. I'd been to his daughter's christening only three months previously. Her name was Kia and she was the spitting image of her mother, Tom's wife Diane.

I could see, wandering around with his mobile phone permanently attached to his ear as usual, the foreman. Chris was a nice guy, if a little absent-minded. He was single, but had twin sons, Chris Junior and Jack (or John, I couldn't quite remember). He saw them at the weekends.

I dropped my arms to my sides. I closed my mouth. I stood and stared silently as Tom drove the bulldozer at the fence, crushing it like paper.

He didn't slow as the house groaned its despair.

He didn't slow as, beyond the back door, thousands of demons, vaguely wolfish with crimson slashes for eyes and claws and faces that were almost human, bayed in guttural delight.

The howls and snarls increased in volume and ferocity as the bulldozer neared the house.

Chris had, for about the first time since I'd known him, put away his phone. His large team of workmen surrounded him. Various items of plant machinery and vehicles dotted the fields behind them. Half a dozen or so steel frameworks had already been erected, creating a spider-like village of metal.

Chris and his men looked on as Tom, who drank 2 pints of bitter every Friday night and simply loved fish and chips, drove his bulldozer into the front of the small, ramshackle, run down old house that no-one owned or really even cared about.

The demons, I realised, had fallen silent.

They were waiting.