It started at the bus stop, at the end of what had been an incredibly long day. As the lowest of the low, with just one foot on the publishing ladder, I got all the 'special' jobs. Meaning, the ones that no-one else wanted to do. And they often seemed to be the ones that involved getting home to your tiny and faintly cabbage-smelling studio 'flat' at obscure times of night. "You'll be all right, Jen, won't you," they'd say cheerfully as they headed off home to 2.4 children or dates in overpriced bars, with the implication that you should be grateful for every single one of the exciting opportunities that the job offered.

As it slid towards midnight, I hit send on the final email and locked up with a sigh of relief. I was ready for a break, a week off for rest and relaxation. Nothing planned, just chilling.

I saw the night bus coming and I ran across the road, a tightly timed dash through the traffic. The bus pulled up short with a screech of brakes, juddering to a halt halfway on the pavement, and so did the car coming in the opposite direction.

It was then that the whistling started; a low musical whistle in the dark that made my scalp prickle. I saw a man walking along the opposite pavement, lit by the sodium lights and muffled against the night. The whistling faded as he walked past, and it was only then I realised that I had been holding my breath.

I put my key in the door, grateful to be home at last, and I heard the whistling again. Low and quiet, carrying a tune that tickled the edges of familiarity, but that I just couldn't place. I leapt inside and slammed the door, wedging it shut with a sculpture left there by the previous tenant. The whistling stopped, and I threw myself down on the single bed that, piled up with cushions, doubled as a sofa by day. Half an hour later, I gave myself a stern talking to about how sound travels in an old house, especially one divided into as many microscopic flats as humanly possible. I finally slept, but with unsettled dreams that I couldn't remember in the morning, other than the tiny snatches of almost familiar tunes.

The next day I pottered around the flat or wandered along the river. I'd almost forgotten about the whistling until that night. As I started to drift away into that place between awake and asleep, I heard the whistling in the dark for a third time. I felt cold all over and hid under the covers.

Over the next few nights it came back every time I found myself alone in the dark, the tunes getting clearer and more distinct.

I was convinced I was losing my mind. I thought about seeing a doctor, but I knew all he would say was tinnitus or stress or mild depression, and had I thought about losing weight and exercising more. Instead I just longed for the long, light days of summer and left the radio on low. The next two nights the muted voices of Radio 4 and the World Service were there as I woke in the morning and fell asleep at night. But the whistling in the dark started to leach through, like damp through plaster after a storm. There was no-one I could tell, and I really wasn't sure how much more I could take.

For no conscious reason, on a walk around the quiet daytime streets I stepped inside a church. I'm not sure what I wanted, or even what I expected, but perhaps I was subconsciously looking for peace. As the darkness of the building enclosed me, I flinched. I was alone; it was dark. But there was no whistling, just a sense of peace. I must have spent hours there, perhaps even dozed in the silence, because when I stirred myself I was stiff from sitting, and the windows were dark. The main door was shut but I slipped out of a small, unlocked door at the foot of the tower. The whistling followed me home, but I felt calmer, and slept well for the first time in a week. I sent an 'I'm off sick' email into work to give myself an extra few days, and spent the next day in the gloom and silence of the church.

That evening I heard a younger and an older voice speaking quietly together in the pews in front of me. I slipped further into the darkness, not wanting to disturb the intense conversation, and a few words and sentences carried across to me.

"Father, I don't know what to do. I don't know how much more I can take. I see shadows in the corner of the flat. Sometimes I hear a radio playing quietly. It's as if they took her stuff but left her behind. The other day as I opened the front door to go in, it slammed and a sculpture, one I’d found in a cupboard, fell behind it, holding it shut. It was all I could do to open the door. Whistling helps – maybe it just keeps my spirits up. A bit of old-fashioned bravado."

He laughed, but it was strained.

"Would you like to pray, my son?" the priest said.

They bowed their heads and I felt sick, dizzy, and faint. The whistling started up again. I ran out of the church, and no-one stirred. No-one except the younger man.

That night, I sat on the floor in the darkest corner of the flat, my arms wrapped around my knees, and the darkness pressing. The radio on low. I heard whistling and quiet footsteps. And I knew that the haunting would continue.
​
For as long as I stayed there.

This is based on my story of the same name, published in 2007 in Read By Dawn Volume Two - I've adapted it to be read aloud.

Behind him, her door slams shut, cutting off all chances of return. He is in the street, on the street in fact. All his belongings are in her cupboards, on her shelves. His wallet and keys are in the jacket slung over her chair. He can’t go back, at least not tonight.

In the distance, he sees the vaguely familiar face of a neighbour. He raises his hand and sets off down the street, as if being the wrong side of a slammed door is the most natural thing in the world.
 
[tap tap tap tap]
 
The argument was devastating in its finality, and has left him alone in a place he came to only for her. The stupid, pointless fight had started over something and nothing, but as fights increasingly did over the dying days of their relationship, it descended into a battle about his distance and his guilt over something he still cannot remember.

He becomes more frantic, tasting her taunts in his mouth and spitting out the bitterness of the phrases. The few people treading the narrow pavements hear his mutterings and see his pale face and cross the road. He keeps walking.

He decides to hitch to where he has some friends. But it’s getting dark and he has become entangled in the back streets of her unfamiliar northern city. The Victorian redbrick terraces menace him with their hard eyes of glass and doors set in gaping toothless mouths. His heart and his footsteps beat harder and faster.
 
[tap tap tap tap]
 
His anger turns to fear and he lunges blindly round a corner, finding himself in an alley enclosed by dark, windowless buildings and ending in a brick wall, broken only by a door.

The door is painted a fading, blistered green. The surface around the handle is splintered, as if someone – something – tried to break it down, escape from the alley. The broken wood is discoloured and darkened by the passing of winters. Nothing has moved in this alley for many years.

He turns—this, obviously, is not a way out of the hated city. But... the entrance has disappeared. He is trapped in a box of red brick walls. He looks to the sky, now completely dark and howls in child-like fear. When he stops, he hears a choking wet sound. And a name, his name, one he no longer uses. He begins to remember.

And so does it. In the depths of the alleyway, in the dark, oily shadows of a storm drain, it stirs. It is awake. And can now see a way to escape.

Behind him, from the drain, he hears footsteps. A hard, clipping tap, the sound of a child's party shoe on stone flags.
 
[tap tap tap tap]
 
He spins around. There is no one there. In front of him, the door. Behind him, the footsteps. The footsteps get closer, bring with them the sound of water and mud. He sees something in the shadows. He half-remembers a reaching hand.

Panic-stricken, he runs toward the door and snatches at the handle – he will try anything to get away from the approaching footsteps.
 
[tap tap tap tap]
 
The door opens easily, on oiled hinges. As he steps quickly inside, it slams behind him. The second door to slam behind him this day. But this time he breathes a sigh of relief. The sound of the footsteps is blocked out.
He stands inside a beautiful living room, his shadow etched black on the carpet. The furniture glows the deep, rich brown of long cared-for wood. He knows this place, and it brings a sense of comfort, of reassurance, as if he has come home. The door, behind him, now has a glass pane in it, and through it he sees a path leading down through a garden to a lake. He walks to the door and places his hands flat on the glass, feeling the warmth of the sun against his chilled hands. Down by the lake, a pretty blonde girl in a white frock and shiny black party shoes laughs and sings. She is balancing on the old stone flags at the edge of the water.
 
[tap tap tap tap]
 
Seeing him, she turns to beckon him out.

He feels a chill watery wash of fear. As he goes to the door, words of warning on his lips, the sun winks out. The lake disappears, its surface rippled as if by a thrown pebble.

And he feels guilt from the forgotten aftermath of a child's mistake; guilt for what he didn’t do and guilt for the forgetting.
​
He turns and the room is now filled with piles of mouldering furniture where before has been warmth and beauty. The old door is there again in a blank wall, and the footsteps echo once more in his ears. This time they are almost at the door.
 
[tap tap tap tap]
 
As he runs through the house, he catches glimpses of rooms he remembers. A warm kitchen smelling of baking bread, a stinking bathroom, a beautiful dining room, a dark bedroom with a rotting child-size bed. And always, the wet tapping of the footsteps.
 
[tap tap tap tap]
 
Just as he sees the polished wood front door, he trips and falls, hitting his chin hard on the chilly black and white floor. As he scrabbles to find his feet a tendril of wet cold, a child-sized hand, wraps around his ankle and he smells the damp stench of stagnant water.

She drags him back and the chipped and cracked marble tiles scrape his belly. His bruised and bloody fingertips scratch at the floor. He catches hold of the edge of a broken tile. Stopping with a jolt that almost tears his spine apart, he wrenches his leg free, leaving skin and sock and shoe in her clutches. Leaving a bloody bare footprint on the stained marble, he falls out of the door into an unfamiliar, well-lit street. When he turns, he sees only an ordinary red brick terrace, not the house that was far away and a long time ago.

He waits a moment, and the footsteps begin with a a quiet tapping ringed with water that becomes louder.
 
[tap tap tap tap]
 
As he runs, the steps quieten. With a silvery scar winding around his leg up to the knee and a shuddering limp, he leaves the city, hitching lifts with the few drivers brave enough to take a one-shoed, wild-eyed and silent young man with dried blood on his chin. In the new city he listens for footsteps, and eventually he hears them, very distant and quiet.
 
[tap tap tap tap]
 
When they get too close, he moves again. And again. To another city, another town, another village, and the footsteps go away. For a while. For a very little while. But then they start again, quiet at first.
 
[tap tap tap tap]
 
Each time they find him a little more quickly, they are a little louder, bring a little more dampness with them and come a little closer.
 
[tap tap tap tap]
 
One day, because he stays somewhere a little too long, perhaps the footsteps will get a little too close...
 
[tap tap tap tap]

"Hello. Hello?"

Static. Then silence. Then a dialling tone. The calls had been happening for years. The phone company had checked the line again and again, but with no success. So, I just lived with them. Assumed that there was some kind of glitch. Mildly irritating, but not a big deal.

And then, after a while, the calls started to change. A voice – a very distant voice – that I could almost hear through the crackling. It sounded like a woman, saying something and ending with a sob. But each time, the line went dead.

The calls were on and off. Sometimes days, weeks or even months would go by without one, and then there would be several in a day. I still couldn't quite hear the voice, or what it said, however hard I listened.

The phone stayed in the hall, even when we decorated the house and rearranged all the furniture. When we got cordless phones, the base unit and the chargers stayed on the old-fashioned telephone table. And when we all got mobiles, it was almost the only call we got to the landline. I could have blocked the calls, I could have moved the phone, I could have changed my number, but I didn't. I wasn't sure why, but it just seemed important. When the calls didn’t come, they featured in my dreams. Never quite directly. Just a ringing phone, or a half-heard woman’s voice.

And then the phone rang again, late on a Tuesday night. This time the line was clearer. A familiar voice. She said “Mum”. And I realised I knew what she would say next.

"Mum. I can't go on. I can't do this anymore." She sounded desperate, and I dropped to the floor, clutching the phone. I tried to make her hear me and my shouted words of comfort. But she couldn't. She sobbed, and the line went dead.

I have lived in this house since I was a baby – my mother was only 15 when I was born, and my gran took us both in. My mother ran away about a year later. We spoke on the phone sometimes, and I saw her every now and then, but the occasions became fewer and further between.

Late one Tuesday night, when I was 15, my gran answered the phone. It was my mother. Gran didn’t know that I was close behind her, that I could hear every word. My mother said, “Mum. I can't go on. I can't do this anymore.” Gran called the police. They traced my mother, broke into her shabby flat and found her unconscious on the floor, next to a pile of sleeping pills and a bottle of cheap vodka.
​
I haven't heard the voice since. Not for many years. But I know now why I can never move away or change my number. Because one day the phone could ring again, and I might be able to make her hear my voice. I know that nothing will change. Nothing can change. But perhaps I can let her know that I'm okay.