Ravens Deep (one) by Jane Jordan Read Free Book Online

control over the situation. I edged closer.
                  Taking a deep breath, I moved very fast and kicked the door as hard as I could. It
    slammed back against the wall with deafening bang and something shot out of the pantry!  I screamed and pressed myself to the wall, wishing I could disappear into it.  The candlestick was gripped tighter in my shaking hands and I forced my eyes to focus on what had come out.  There before me was a mouse, huddled in the corner under the cabinet.
                  It took a moment to register that my imagined axe murderer was nothing more than a field mouse and I moved forward so I could see entirely into the pantry.  It really was empty.  I felt the colour creep back into my skin and I began to breathe properly again. A mixture of shock and relief overcame me, followed by a delayed reaction in which I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, as the adrenaline left my body.  My legs felt strangely weak and I sat down at the table to regain my composure.  It was obvious that there was bound to be the odd mouse or two in a house this old.
                  It was only a mouse! You idiot, a murderer would have just killed you while you slept.
                  I was annoyed that instead of behaving rationally, I had allowed my imagination to take control and scared myself half to death with all my thoughts of imagined breathing and unnatural noises .
                  The pantry of all places, why would anyone go in there?
                  I had been reading too many Victorian novels.  In real life there was not an asylum down the road, and no escaped murderers waiting to kill beautiful women in the middle of the night. This was just an old house, it was remote, but the odds of anyone waiting around to kill the latest occupant now seemed absurd.
                  The mouse had recovered from the fright I had given him, and was now scurrying
    around the floor, in search of food no doubt.              On the whole I didn’t mind mice, but I knew where there was one, others would follow, and sharing a house with a whole colony made me shudder. I resolved to buy some mousetraps and deal with them in the daylight. As my apprehension disappeared, I turned on every light and walked around the rest of the house, although I kept the candlestick close, just in case.  I laughed at myself for thinking someone was in here with me, I had locked every door and window earlier, nothing could be here.
    I went back downstairs and feeling much calmer, I made myself a cup of tea and sat at the kitchen table to drink it.  It would be impossible to sleep anyway, and my thoughts came back to that pantry door.  It hardly seemed logical that it would have been so easily opened and I went to examine it.  After opening and closing it, I concluded that it really was a heavy door and not easily pushed open, just as I had suspected.
                  Surely a mouse couldn’t have opened it.
                  “I probably left it open,” I muttered to myself in resignation. After all, I had been tired, that must be the explanation. I tried hard to convince myself of that fact, but somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered actually closing that pantry door.

 
     
     
     
    Chapter Four – Darius
     
                  I took my tea and opened the front door, it was nearly four o’clock.  A single bird song resonated shrilly though the silent air and a moment later another joined in, the dawn chorus had begun.
                  The weather had been warm for the last few weeks, and even at this early hour it felt comfortable to be outside.  I made my way to the little stone bench and sat sipping my tea, gazing towards the sea which was as yet invisible.  The strange swirling mists that hung over the moors obscured my distant vision, and gave the landscape a surreal