The attic smells like dust, apples, and old rain. The missing shutter hook is obvious once you look: a square of paler wood, a screw-hole empty as a missing tooth. When the wind shoves, the shutter slams a three-beat that fooled you from downstairs.

The flue is a dark throat. When the gale threads it, it sings. You cup your hands at the opening and feel air moving, cool and fast. A bottle, a flute, a chimney: same trick, different sizes.

In a cardboard box labeled Mara — weather beside the weird, you find ghost reports in her handwriting. Each one has a time, a wind direction, and a note like owl week or low pressure or Nettle loose again. She has been testing stories for years without throwing the stories away.

You are a person holding evidence and also a person whose arms have goosebumps, because knowing the cause does not switch off the dark.

You can carry this downstairs and stack it with the knocks you already heard—the kitchen shutter, the wind, whatever the house is still doing.

You can decide the house mystery is finished, write it in the margin, and let the storm have the rest of the night.