Chapter One

      The advert says ‘Seeking Housekeeper’, which I guess sounds innocent enough. Even the other stuff underneath is only pretty weird, rather than very. It just asks for excellent tea-making skills, and no social huggers, and an enthusiasm for order, and to me all of those things sound reasonable. They don’t ring alarm bells in my head.

      But the house does.

      I sit for around ten minutes across the street from it, in my battered little Beetle with the red vinyl seats. Part of me really, really wanting to go in and save my own skin. But most of me too scared to do anything but stare in horror. Honestly, if you looked up Dickensian in the dictionary you would find this place. It looks as though someone called Mrs Migglethwump lives here, after her husband ran off with the maid on their wedding day.

      The front of it is the kind of grey you only get after natural disasters. Some apocalypse happened to this place and this place alone, and now it sits like a bad tooth in a mouth of pristine white ones. It even seems vaguely crooked, in a way that should be impossible. The other houses are ramrod-straight. There is no space for it to slant to the side – it just looks as though it does.

      Malevolence is probably making it happen. I think malevolence might be making a lot of things happen. All the windows are blank, black eyes, and each one seems to follow me wherever I go. I glance away for a second and can almost feel them, pressing into my body. Then I turn back and they pretend to be all innocent again. They never watched me reach for the newspaper on the seat beside me. They are just windows, busy minding their own business. There is nothing to worry about here.

      Apart from the garden that time forgot.

      Lord, the garden that time forgot. I get out of the car feeling strong and brave, almost proud of myself for getting so far in the face of this hideousness. And then I see the garden, and falter. My feet seem suddenly lined with lead. I think of what I will have to do to get across what is really only a small square at the front of the house, and have to wonder if this is all worth it. Those nettles alone look positively ravenous. Somewhere in amongst all the rubble and rambling weeds, I can see what looks like a bike.

      I put one foot in there and I’m going to be eaten alive. They will probably find me three years later, with seven-foot dandelions sprouting out of my eye sockets. One false move and the hidden portal down to hell might swallow me whole – and that isn’t even the worst of the problems here. No, that comes when I attempt to get into the garden anyway.

      And realise the gate is rusted shut.

      If I want to get in, I am going to have to climb over the thing. I am going to have to hike my skirt up and lift my leg like a dog doing a wee, and when I do my underwear will be on display. Every eye in that evil house will see the two holes near the sagging elastic and the faded image of Spiderman