By the third night, she could identify them: the drip in the kitchen, the radiator’s tick, the stair that always creaked. Naming them dulled their teeth. This, she told herself, was all it was—old bones settling. Once she mapped the noises, the house would stop feeling like a stranger.
Gradually, it did. A week passed without panic. The wind became background sound, and the boiler a reassuring heartbeat. Lucy still woke sometimes, but now she turned over and went back to sleep, telling herself she was learning the language of the house, with each creak being a syllable she could translate.