We stood still, looking up at the house. It had been deserted for years, and looked the same as it had been when the owner went missing. Rain poured from the sky, grey clouds framing the crumbling, rotting horror of a home. Roof tiles fell from the chimney, bricks toppled from the window sill, where the glass creaked open every now and then, with a ghost hand slamming them shut. The door was rusted and old, open, showing us the darkness inside.

My two friends were wimps. I was not, but the thought of going in there alone was enough to make me shake with fear. However, I walked, shivering, up to the door and into the blackness, forcing my friends to follow. I was too cold to be sympathetic.

I had my best friend with me, Olivia - or Lea or Livy - Smith, and my oldest friend, Elizabella - or Lizzie or Bella - Riley. They were a pain at times, but they were the best.

We stepped quietly down the dark corridor. There were pictures on the walls. Paintings of strange people in old-fashioned outfits, framed in gold and covered in dust, like seemingly everything else around us. I looked at them carefully as I walked, and almost stood on something. Something which was also old-fashioned and strange.

A doll. She was the prettiest doll, with pretty blonde curls and eyes the colour of bluebells. That is what I named her. Bluebell. Lizzie and Livy thought that I was being creepy and weird, which was precisely my point. If they could be around me and be my friend when I was like that, why couldn't they put up with this house until the rain passed on?

Though they wouldn't let me keep the pretty doll, I put her safely on the little table in the hall, smoothing down her dress. There was something unnerving, but I couldn't tell what. Then I realised, looking down at the horrid stuff coating that table in a thick grey blanket, that she had no dust on her.

Saving my friends from any worries, and saving myself from their petty little screams, I kept quiet about my new finding and carried on, with Lea and Bella close behind. There was a door not far from where we were, at the other end of the hallway. I opened it and found an old library, covered in the same familiar dust.

There was this one book sat alone on a table. It was called The Harwick House of Horror. It was open on page 56, the last page, a very short tale to tell. The words written on that paper didn't seem to be real words. They were in some sort of language I had never heard of or seen before, a strange one with symbols and pictures that seemed familiar, in a way. This too was lacking the dust that made me OK with it, as if it had been opened fairly recently. Olivia wasn't even the slightest bit interested, however, since she thought that books were a bore.

Suddenly, we heard footsteps. They were loud and fast, unlike any other footsteps I had ever heard. I was fine, knowing that it was raining and that some other people could have come in here for shelter, but the sound made my friends run. Olivia didn't even stop to consider my welfare, but Elizabella held back a moment to make sure that I was following. "Hannah, come on!" She shouted.

We ran together, through a different door than Lea had gone out of, seeing as it was closer to me. There had been three to that room: the one we escaped from, the one Lea had, and the one we had come in from where the strange creature was coming from. It led us to the back door, and we ran round to the front, expecting to see our friend.

But Livy wasn't there.

I left Bella behind a moment, because I knew that she would want to stay in the safe outdoors, while I ran back into the house by the main door. Just as I got to the steps leading up to it, I heard a blood-curdling scream. Olivia.

I ran as fast as I could through the hallway, past the doll on the table and right up to the library door. I couldn't hear a single sound now. I pushed open the door, and it squeaked, a pathetic copycat to my friend's earlier cries. I was going to go straight past the table in the middle of the room where the book lay, but there was something different about it. The symbols didn't quite seem the same. Won over by sheer curiosity, I went over to take a look. It was the same book, The Harwick House of Horror, with the same peculiar lack of dust on its last page. On page 57. 57?

That moment, I heard one more scream, one I knew. Lizzie? A gust of wind filled the room, whirling me around making me feel dizzy as books and pages spun around my head. When the storm ended, I looked back at the book. It was on 58.

The next few moments went by in a blur. My last moments. Only a few things can I remember. Footsteps. Dolls' eyes. Bluebell. Pain. Strong winds. Page 59.