House of Bones by Graham Masterton

up to the porch, although John kept his eyes on the first-floor windows. They remained empty, like the eyes of somebody who has forgotten their reason for living.
    John reached out at arm’s length and pressed the doorbell. They could hear the bell ringing somewhere in the house. They waited for a while, and then John rang again, and again. Still no reply. Still no sign of life.
    â€œPerhaps you didn’t see what you thought you saw,” Lucy suggested.
    â€œIt was a face, I’m sure of it.”
    â€œWell, let’s go round to the back and have another try. I don’t think there’s anybody here.”
    They returned to the back garden and John pointed up to the window. “It was there. Only for a second.”
    Lucy moved her head from side to side. “There
is
something. But I think it’s just a reflection. There must be a dressing-table mirror in there, orsomething like that. Look, it’s oval-shaped. You could easily mistake it for a face.”
    â€œI’m sure the curtain moved, too.”
    â€œOh, come on. We’ve both got the jitters, that’s all.”
    John shaded his eyes and looked up at it again. Lucy could be right. And after all, there was no sign at all that anybody was living here.
    â€œThe key’s inside the conservatory door, still in the lock,” said Lucy. “I vote we break the glass.”
    â€œThat’s breaking and entering.”
    â€œNo, it’s not. It’s an estate agent’s security check. We just happened to be passing one of our company’s properties and thought we saw an intruder. We broke in to make sure that our property wasn’t being used by squatters.”
    John suddenly remembered that Liam had come up with a similar excuse for breaking into 93 Madeira Terrace, and he felt a shiver of foreboding, as if they were repeating the opening lines of a play that always ended in the same horrific way.
    Lucy dislodged a brick from the edge of the patio and handed it to him. Underneath, the brick was crawling with woodlice, and he had to knock it against the step to get them off.
    Oh God
, he thought.
What if I break the window and the white-faced man comes after me? What if we get into the house and he traps us inside? What if
—
    â€œ
Hurry up
!” hissed Lucy.
    Cautiously, John went up to the conservatory door. It was divided into six glass panels so at least he wouldn’t have to smash it all. “Go on,” Lucy urged him. “Go on before anybody sees us.”
    John hesitated for a few moments more. Then he swung back his arm and hit the window as hard as he could. It shattered with an ear-splitting crack that he was sure could be heard three miles away, and the glass fell to the conservatory floor like a carillon of sleigh-bells.
    They waited to see if anybody had heard them, but the suburban noises went on just as before: children screaming in a playground, lawnmowers, the rattle of a distant train. John reached inside and turned the key and the conservatory door opened with a shudder.
    They crossed the conservatory and tried the double doors that led to the sitting-room. “Locked again,” said John, rattling the door handles. Without a word, Lucy handed him the brick, and this time, he smashed the window with no hesitation at all.
    The sitting-room was furnished with a huge, shapeless three-piece suite covered with dust-sheets. There was a brown tiled fireplace with a coal-effect electric fire, a tall mahogany standard-lamp with a mock-parchment shade and a magazine rack still stuffed with yellowing copies of the
Radio Times
.
    One of the chairs must still have had some lumpy cushions on it, because it looked to John as if somebody was sitting in it, utterly motionless, concealed beneath the dust sheet. He watched it out of the corner of his eye as he walked across the room, in case he saw it move in and out to the rhythm of somebody’s breathing.
    He ventured into the