Faye is a writer who has hired a country cottage for a month so she can finish her latest novel. The house is quite empty, just a few curios around, a small kitchen, bedroom, sitting room and a strange, huge orangery that for some reason sends chills down her spine every time she goes into it. She had intended to write there, but the atmosphere is so full of menace she cannot. Violence seems to hang in the air – and she doesn’t know why. Even the stones of the floor seem aggressively cold, sending ice into her feet even though her boots. Faye shudders, and heads back inside. No writing in the orangery for her! She settles down to watch some TV.
Damn it, the electrics are iffy in this place too. The TV’s on hold light is glowing, but it just won’t turn on. Next to the remotes is one of the few curios left in the house – an immaculate old camera, looking fresh out of the box from the 1950’s. Faye finds her hands drawn to it and takes it back to the table – where she finds a book that she’d not noticed before. A leather-bound photo album. With increasing dismay she leafs through and discovers polaroids – of a blonde girl in a satin slip, apparently being horribly murdered in the orangery. Surely it’s some sort of party prank by someone who hired the place last Hallowe’en?
Now every creak and sigh of the building settling as the sun goes down and the air cools seems like a ghost’s last breath. Faye almost resolves to get up and go, but tells herself she’s just being silly… but behind her, the corpse of the blonde girl is jerkily coming to life, moving in a staccato fashion as death loses its hold on tendons, joints, muscles. There is a compulsion here, a compulsion to complete the circle, to drag the raven-haired writer into hell to keep the wronged girl company in endless torment….
