Inside, the cottage is a wooden throat. The lantern makes the hallway honest. The knocks do not wait for you to be ready.

Three. Pause. Three. The wind hits the west wall and the kitchen shutter answers like a drummer who only knows one song. You put your palm on the glass. The pane buzzes. When the gust eases, the knocks ease. That is not a ghost with manners. That is weather using a hinge.

The chimney moan is lower, a hollow oooo that makes the hairs on your arms try to leave. Air over a bottle does that. Air over a flue does it louder. You remember pareidolia, though you do not say the word out loud because it sounds like a spell: your brain hearing a voice in a moan because voices are what brains practice all day.

A scratch in the wall is smaller and busier. Not three knocks. A skitter. Mice do not believe in hauntings. They believe in crumbs.

The crawl-space hatch in the pantry has a hook that is not quite hooked. The attic ladder has a string that tickles your wrist.

Aunt Mara’s phone blips one bar, then none. Stay in. Sandbags slow. You are in. You are also a researcher with a noisy house.