She tried. She lay on the narrow bed in the upstairs room she had chosen—the one with the lavender-scented linens and the heavy damask curtains that blocked out even the faintest suggestion of streetlight—and willed her body to stillness. But the house refused to let her rest. Every timber seemed to breathe. Creaks rose like sighs from the floorboards, soft pops from the settling beams overhead, the occasional groan as though the walls themselves were stretching after long immobility.
