The incessant whispering coming from the closet was driving her insane. Aine couldn’t believe she had become entangled in this predicament. Despite her fanciful name, the Celtic word for radiance, she was the most prosaic person imaginable. She never even winced when people pronounced her name ‘ayne’, rhyming with pain, instead of its correct pronunciation, on-yah. It was an old-fashioned name, but then she was an old-fashioned girl. She didn’t twerk. She didn’t tweet. She didn’t even keep up with the Kardashians.

The whispering died to a low, unintelligible mutter. The shallow eddy of sound mirrored the sighing huff of the wind as it settled around the eaves, a grumpy grandmother gathering her skirts before taking a careful seat in her rocking chair.

In some ways, hearing that indistinct murmur was even more unsettling than when you could hear actual words. Its low, buzzing hum was sly and dangerous. Your ears would strain to pick out words, knowledge infinitely preferable to uncertainty.

She wished she could block out the sound, but knew that she couldn’t. Even when she covered her ears with the pillow, she could still hear it. She was very afraid that it had become part of her soul. She lay in the bed, the comforting lamplight drenching walls that were the exact pale buttery shade of the soft beams.

It would be over tomorrow, one way or another.

It started innocently enough. Aine agreed to house-sit for someone she barely knew. The idea was originally Rebecca’s and not without merit. She and Rebecca had been friends for a couple of years, beginning with a shared composition course in freshman year. This bond had only strengthened during the last difficult six months. So much anguish over so trite a topic, she reflected. She hated that the defection of her boyfriend, Brennan, had so much power over her.

When Bren told Aine that he wanted them to start seeing other people, she felt something bright and hopeful inside her die. The fact that his apartment was literally two doors down from hers seemed like a cruel, cosmic punchline. A visible shudder rippled across her slight frame as she imagined her erstwhile soulmate leading some perky blond cheerleader into his apartment, his hand on the small of her back, his strong body bent over her.

The first couple of days after Bren’s defection passed in a fog until she ended up sitting in front of a window at Starbucks, pouring her heart out to Becca, vividly recreating their last awkward conversation, her stomach cramping with dull pain, her dry throat working to remember the mechanics of swallowing. She told her friend how Brennan’s mouth had shaped the final, fateful words as she stood there silent and sweating, powerless to make him stop.

When she confided how awkward it would be running into him all the time, Rebecca leaned forward and changed the course of Aine’s dull existence. She told Aine that her cousin owned one of the city’s newly renovated inns. The cousin and her husband had poured an obscene amount of money into renovating the old Victorian and converting it to a bed-and-breakfast.

After a wildly successful year of inn management, they were tired and burned out. They had decided to escape to the Florida coast for a while. This plan had only one missing component, a house-sitter. The B&B sat a mere stone’s throw away from more urban areas and the homeowners didn’t want to tempt vandals by leaving the house unoccupied.

It seemed like a perfect solution. Aine was a Virgo and Virgos have an inherent need to stay strong when everything around them is falling apart. So she agreed to house-sit for her friend’s cousin, then found herself flooded with instant regret for no apparent reason.

On the day she went to see the innkeepers, she’d gotten another unpleasant start. The entrance was as polished and perfect as might be expected of an inn that catered to the wealthy and discriminating. Glossy wood floors led down a long hallway to an equally gleaming kitchen. Cased openings painted in silky white trim peeked in to lovingly restored parlors and dining rooms. A staircase, plain and unadorned, rose to a shadowy second-floor alcove.

Farther down the hallway, she entered the large common room and felt her heart give a jagged, skipping thump. It was a breathtaking room. A piano sat in a large bay, twin fireplaces guarding either side. Huge majestic mirrors reflected her own pale face in duplicate and the mint colored curtain panels fluttered in the rising breeze like a skittish schoolgirl worrying her braids.

Aine had dreamed of being in this room just a couple of nights before. The familiarity was so strong, she wondered if she was back in her dream. She remembered being trapped in this grand old house, unable to find her way out. She knew that something bad was coming and she woke gasping, fingers clawing the air, strains of some haunting waltz echoing in her head.

When Becca’s cousin gave her a tour of the house, she showed Aine all the available bedrooms and graciously let her choose where she wanted to stay for the week. Both of the first floor bedrooms were out. The largest and most opulent had blue walls and blue curtains and made Aine feel like she was in an aquarium. The smaller, more modest bedroom at the back was done in a faux farmhouse style that Aine found smug and obnoxious.

There were three bedrooms on the second floor. One was done in an art deco style that was almost as irritating as the fake bedroom-on-the-prairie. One room had walls that were a nauseating shade of olive. The color must be very fashionable, the only conceivable reason that anyone would willingly look at that horrid shade.

The last bedroom was the one Aine chose. It had a large queen bed whose stark white counterpane looked like a snowfield glistening against the creamy, pale yellow walls. The antique sconces on either side of the door looked original to the house’s heyday, as did the claw-foot tub and pedestal sink in the bathroom. It even had a working fireplace.

The cousin and her husband left, locking up their third floor apartment. Aine set the alarm, following the printed instructions she’d been given. She wasn’t frightened of the cavernous rooms, the creaking floors or the sigh of the wind as it moaned around the house. She made herself a salad for dinner, then began working on her Art History project.

The trouble started as soon as she went to bed. She fell into a light doze, her body moving restlessly as she tried to become accustomed to the unfamiliar space. When the whispering started, she almost had a heart attack. “Let me out. Let me in. Scritch, scratch.”

She lay in the darkness, filled with black terror, her limbs numb from panic and incipient hysteria. “Let me out. Let me in. Scritch, scratch.” She forced her trembling fingers to reach for the bedside lamp. Warm amber light filled the room and the whispering continued, becoming more frantic, more insistent. “Let me out. Let me in. Let me out. Let me in.”

The words were delivered in a harsh, raspy whisper. The sound was unidentifiable as being distinctly masculine or feminine, and yet she felt instinctively that it was a woman’s voice. She sat against the solid wooden headboard, feeling her heart pound in her chest. The rational part of her brain told her to go open the closet door and ferret out the source of that horrible whispering. The instinctive part told her to grab her suitcase and flee screaming into the night.

She managed to swing her feet out from beneath the bedclothes, half expecting to feel sharp teeth against her bare, unprotected toes. She backed from the room, keeping the closet door in front of her, eyes glued to the closet doorknob in case it started to turn.

She fell into the dark hallway and allowed herself a tiny shriek as a shadow danced in front of her. She calmed as she realized the shadow was merely a tree branch swaying across the tall window, briefly blocking the moon’s crystalline light. She made it to the alcove at the top of the stairs where she flipped on the light switch. The hall’s newly-installed track lights came to obedient life and the whispering continued with feverish intensity. “Let me out. Let me in. Scritch, scratch.”

She stumbled down the stairway, thanking providence that she managed to reach the bottom uninjured. Here on the first floor the whispering was much fainter, but you could still make out the words. “Let me out. Let me in.”

She went to the large parlor. The cousin had termed it “the receiving room”. It was just inside the front door and the murmuring whisper was most indistinct when you stood inside its gloomy grandeur. Unfortunately, the decorative period settees weren’t very comfortable for sitting. The thought of trying to sleep on one was ridiculous. The blue bedroom contained a king size bed and two velvety wing chairs. She re-entered the back bedroom and discovered a pleasant-looking love-seat. She locked the door, checked the window locks and settled into the love-seat’s deep cushions, having fortified her defenses as much as possible.

Through the deep reaches of night, the whispering never stopped. Once it spoke in a language that was foreign to Aine’s ear. The guttural murmurings were uttered in a liquid monotone and their rhythmic chanting finally allowed Aine to drift into an uneasy dream, a dream of herself as a little girl, holding her mother’s hand and tossing one of her picture books into the trash.

The chanting ended in jagged, cackling laughs which made Aine wake from the cold mist of her dreams. The whispering started again in her own language. “Let me out. Let me in.” The words were clear and concise as they carried across the distance. She wanted to cry.

As dawn edged its lavender fingers across the sky, the whispering became more indistinct until the silence became absolute, filtering through the old rooms. Digging her nails into her palms, she forced herself to go back to the yellow bedroom. It sat mute, inoffensive, questioning her wild eyes and tangled hair with sly innocence. Catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror above the fireplace, she stared, slack-jawed. She looked as if she’d aged ten years overnight.

Grabbing her laptop and overnight bag, she decided to lock up the elegant Victorian and head back to her apartment where she could try to catch a couple hours sleep and pull herself together. She needed some time and distance to think about what was happening.

Amazingly, Aine had no trouble sleeping in her own bed and was able to grab roughly four hours of uninterrupted sleep. After showering and enjoying the life-giving properties of her Keurig, it was still only ten-thirty. She decided she would grab some French toast at The Arcade, Memphis’ oldest restaurant, a favorite with locals and tourists alike.

When she exited her apartment, she was not surprised to bump into her ex-boyfriend. Bad luck had been following her all week. The girl by his side was substantially younger and more petite than in Aine’s fanciful imaginings. She squatted down to give the grade-school moppet at his side her complete attention. “Who are you, pretty princess?”

The little girl peeked out from behind her windblown sable curls. “I’m Lissa. Brennan is my uncle.”

The little girl was charming. Aine sent her an unselfconscious smile. “Hi, Lissa. I’m Aine, Brennan’s neighbor.” She could no longer ignore the chocolaty laser beams of Brennan’s eyes boring into the top of her head. “Hey, Bren. How are you?”

“Great. I told Lissa’s mom I’d look after her for a couple days. Little Lissa is running her Uncle Brennan ragged. What about you? I haven’t seen you around lately.”

She favored him with a smile, cool and noncommittal. “No, I haven’t been. In fact, I’m in a hurry right now.” She turned and sauntered toward her car, feeling his eyes boring into her back with every step.

On the way to brunch, she called Rebecca to discuss the possibility of unquiet ghosts and poltergeists at the inn. She managed to downplay her interest as garden-variety curiosity. If the cousin had encountered any supernatural obstacles, she hadn’t felt the need to discuss them with Rebecca.

Ensconced at a booth in The Arcade, Aine opened her laptop. She started by looking at Yelp Reviews for the inn. All the reviews for the past year were overwhelmingly positive. Shrugging, she decided to do a little digging into the history of the house.

“Are you interested in the Gaines-Lockwood house? It’s a bed-and-breakfast now, but the owners would probably give you a tour.”

Aine looked over her laptop to the plump, friendly blonde at the next table. “I’m not a tourist. A friend of mine owns the house now. I just thought I’d look up the history.”

The blonde pursed her lips. “It’s pretty depressing reading. Young Molly Lockwood lived a tragic life.”

Aine considered this. “Tragic in what way?”

The blonde leaned toward her to keep her voice low. Maybe she belonged to the Tourism Board and was worried about the potential negative impact of her story. “It all started with that unpleasantness with her school friend. Molly went to boarding school with a girl from Louisiana. The girl came for a visit. There were arguments, whispered accusations of witchcraft. It ended with the friend’s father challenging Molly’s father to a duel. Both men died. Nasty business.”

She licked her lips as if she found the old gossip particularly delicious and not nasty at all. “Then Molly married. Both of her children died, one in infancy, the other as a young boy. Her husband was killed in a freak accident. It was almost as if she suffered from Scritch’s curse.”

Aine was startled. “What did you say? Scritch’s curse?”

The blonde laughed and sat back in her seat. “I said ‘a witch’s curse’.”

Aine felt the French toast curdling in her stomach. She stood. “Thanks for the ghost story. I’ve got to be heading out.”

Her head was whirling with the unpleasant history of the inn and the blonde’s last unsettling comment all during the short drive back to her apartment. There was a psychic who lived in her complex. She had seen the flyers the woman used to advertise her business. Aine stood outside her apartment wondering why she was even considering visiting a psychic, especially one who lived in such humble surroundings. She didn’t mean to be uncharitable but thought that someone who claimed to be tuned in to the mysteries of the universe should probably know enough to improve their circumstances.

Catty-corner to the complex was a dilapidated city park, abandoned now except for some homeless guy sitting on the curb and singing a drunken ditty. He got up and started walking toward her. His intent was probably no more sinister than a little panhandling but she tensed.

“Hey, you! Lady! You dropped this.”

She turned to see that she had indeed dropped the jacket slung over her arm to conceal her laptop. She fished in her jeans pocket for a couple of dollars. She supposed he would want a reward for his helpfulness.

As he drew close, the smell of urine, alcohol and several days sweat almost knocked her over. He looked at her with liquid dark eyes and spoke in tones that were crisp and sober. “You’ve forgotten all about Scritch the Witch, haven’t you?”

“I’m sorry. What did you say?”

He smiled and cackled, his dark eyes disappearing entirely in the folds of wrinkled flesh surrounding them. He began to walk away, swaying and singing softly to himself, drunken and homeless, a threat to no one.

She went inside and called her mother. “Mom, do you remember Scritch the Witch?”

Her mother laughed, the sound soft and concerned. “It’s a little hard to forget. I bought you a book about Scritch the Witch. At first, you loved it and read it all the time. It wasn’t a scary book. She was simply trying to gather the ingredients for some recipe. After a while though, you became very frightened of her. You were sure that she was scratching at your door, asking to be let in. You thought she wanted to eat your toes and steal your soul and other horrible things. We ended up having to throw that book away. What in the world made you think of that story?”

“I went to brunch at the Arcade today. A lady there said the word ‘scritch’ and suddenly I thought of that old picture book and Scritch the Witch.”

“Good gracious, sweetheart. You need to try and put that out of your mind. If you start thinking about that old story, you’ll have nightmares. I might have nightmares, myself.”

“It’s okay, Mom. I appreciate you telling me about it. I couldn’t quite remember what happened. I just remembered the name.” A knock sounded at her door. “Mom, can I call you back later? Someone’s at the door.”

“Sure, honey. We’ll have a nice long chat when you call back.”

Aine opened the door to her best friend. “Hey, Becca. What’re you doing here?”

Rebecca frowned, her mouth curving downward, her green eyes looking solemn and concerned. She pushed her windblown auburn hair from her face and said, “Is something weird going on at my cousin’s house? First, you call me asking about ghosts. Now you’re here, when you’re supposed to be house-sitting there. Plus, it sounds corny but I’ve got a bad feeling.” She clutched the silver harmony ball she wore around her neck. “I saw your car and decided to come ask.”

Aine walked to the small table in the kitchen and sat down. She looked at Rebecca without speaking, considering what to say. “Didn’t you take a class on witchcraft last year?”

Rebecca sat down, as well. “That’s a creepy lead-in question. Why do you ask?”

“Before you have me committed to a mental facility, hear me out. I don’t think your cousin’s inn is haunted. I believe that, somehow, a monster from my childhood has re-surfaced and wants something from me.”

Rebecca leaned forward. “Seriously? What do you think it wants?”

“I have no idea. It keeps whispering, ‘Let me out. Let me in.’”

Rebecca paled. “It wants to possess you.”

It was Aine’s turn to be rendered speechless. She digested this for a few moments. “What brings you to that conclusion?”

“Well, according to my class, that’s what witches and demons and evil spirits of all kinds try to do. They want to possess other people to extend their own life spans. They frighten children which marks those children as theirs. Then they return when those children become adults. The adults do something that opens the door and the evil entity possesses them.”

“Well, what can I do to protect myself? I have to go back to that house in a couple of hours.”

“Aine, you can’t go back to that place! I’m sure we could find someone else to help out and house sit. I don’t think you want to do anything that encourages the evil spirit.”

Aine was already shaking her head. “You don’t understand. I don’t even know if I can explain this with any clarity. For some weird reason, I’m convinced that this darkness won’t stay at the inn. It doesn’t really have anything to do with the inn. This is my monster and I have an ugly feeling that now it’s found me, it’ll follow me wherever I go.”

They sat across the table in the small, drab apartment, each lost in their own thoughts.

“Did you learn anything useful in your class? Anything that might help me protect myself?”

Rebecca brightened. “Actually, I did a paper on protections against black magic. I think I still have a copy of it on my tablet.”

She did have a copy of her old term paper and the formula for the protection ointment was simple. Aine had to make a paste of animal fat, verbena, mistletoe and witch hazel. There was more than enough time to collect the ingredients from one of the stores that catered to Wiccans and spiritualists.

She would make the potion and tomorrow morning at 3:00 am she would put it on the crown of her head to protect herself and keep the witch from entering her body. She would stand behind a line of salt, holding a witch ball or prism. When she opened the closet, the witch would come out. However, the wicked thing would not be able to enter Aine, wearing her potion of protection, standing behind her line of salt. Instead, it would be forced to enter the witch ball, trapped within the sphere until she could figure out a way to dispose of it.

As they left Merlin’s Castle, Rebecca tried one more time to talk Aine out of her plan. “Aine, I really think the best thing for you would be to find someone else to stay at the inn. Please, don’t do this. I’m begging you to forget this crazy plan. Do you realize that you’re attempting to trap a witch? It even sounds bonkers. Magic allows for a lot of flexibility, but it’s not anything for amateurs to mess around with. There could be any number of things we don’t understand about this spell.”

Aine gave her friend a hug. “That’s true but it doesn’t change one basic fact. This monster is here. It’s not going away. If I don’t get rid of this thing, now, it’s going to swallow me whole. Don’t ask me how I know that. I just do. This is the best way, Becca. I really believe that.”

After a quick stop at the apartment, she gathered her gym bag and laptop and headed back for the inn. She tried to eat some soup for dinner but, with twilight, the whispering from the closet upstairs resumed and she began to feel like every mouthful was going to come boiling back up.

She made the potion in one of the inn’s gleaming saucepans, then cleaned up after herself. If she died in the wee hours of the morning, she didn’t want to leave a mess.

The potion gave off a surprisingly pleasant smell as she rubbed it on the crown of her head. She took the container of salt and poured a thick line in front of the closet door. The deep purple witch ball sat on the nightstand beside her, catching and reflecting the lamplight in its violet depths. She felt power and certainty coursing through her.

The digital clock on the stand read 3:00. It was time. She held the witch ball in her left hand. The whispering words, “Let me out, let me in” rose until they were almost a shriek. She grasped the knob and opened the closet door.

By nine the following morning, Aine had downed an entire pot of coffee, but felt surprisingly clear-headed, surprisingly good. When the doorbell rang, she smiled and bounded from her chair.

She opened the door, already smiling, gentle color rising in her cheeks. She was expecting the face on the other side. Brennan smiled in return. “I’m glad you called, Aine. I made a mistake when I let you go. It’s all I’ve been able to think about. I’m glad you wanted me to come over and talk this out. I hope you’re willing to give me a second chance.” A chubby hand curled around his knee and a shy smile, surrounded by sable curls, peeked from behind her uncle. “I brought Lissa with me. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course, I don’t. We’re old friends.” She knelt to the little girl’s level, her eyes sparkling with good humor. She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Let me out. Let me in. Scritch, scratch.”

As the child’s face began to crumple, Aine directed a dazzling smile in the direction of her boyfriend.