She had never been really comfortable with staying at her aunt’s house.
She remembered visiting with her parents. She had always found the place positively creepy. They had never been received with any genuine welcome on their visits. As a child she had overheard her parents talking about the gossip that the old woman was dabbling in the black arts. None of this was comprehended fully at the time, but it was enough to justify her dislike of the place, located, as it was, way past civilisation in a valley surrounded by woodlands. It was as though the old cottage didn’t want to be found. It had no electricity, just gas lamps, giving off a greenish, yellow glow that hardly lit the pokey little rooms.
Her aunt seemed to have made a point of collecting strange figurines. These she had placed all around the place; in every room. They all had the unnerving quality of being somehow out of place, especially the ones that sat around in the bathroom. For her, the most disturbing one was the small, shiny bird that sat on the narrow window ledge with its large, penetrating eyes, and of course, she had never been able to rid herself of the sound. A sound that so often brought her out of a night’s sleep with a jolt.
It was the memory of the time, that last time. Her very last visit. The final incident that had lingered into her young adulthood, and the reason she’d never go back. It was the morning she was leaving. It being a long drive ahead of her, she rose early. She was brushing her teeth when it happened; that sound!
The low, grating noise, as the little porcelain owl slowly turned its head and winked at her…
