My hand is shaking when I try to lift the mug of warm milk to my mouth to take a sip.

David stopped me from leaving the house when I ran away from him and the imaginary crows. At least, he would have if the rain and wind slamming into me when I finally managed to open the front door didn't make it virtually impossible for me to leave.

I saw the big branch lying on the patio, the one that stalked me earlier. He didn't lie about that. Seeing that twisted branch torn from one of the trees being abused by the wind and feeling the cold rain stinging against my skin, and fighting against the wind buffeting me without mercy are the things that brought me to my senses.

Where was I going to go? To my car? And then what?

The bridge is flooded; there's no way out of here. Unless David lied about that, would he lie? To what end? Is he trying to drive me insane? Once again, what for? If he wanted to harm me, he could've done it a hundred times already unless he's a sadistic monster that loves toying with his victims.

I glance at him where he's sitting at the kitchen island, and there is simply nothing threatening about him at all. He is quietly drinking his coffee, his eyes hooded and his hands steady. He doesn't look like a sadistic monster. He looks like a truly beautiful, kind man. In fact, looking at him is causing my fear to ebb away bit by bit. My heart is now picking up its pace for completely different reasons.

I really like him; I don't want him to be evil...

When I forced the door shut, preventing the wind from breaking the lamp already lying flat on the entrance table after its previous invasion, David wrapped his arms around me and held me until my panic subsided and I could breathe again. He finally brought me to the kitchen, folded the blanket he'd draped over me earlier when I fell asleep around my shoulders, guided me to a seat and made me some warm milk. 

Could he really be that kind if he is the one responsible for all the scary things happening to me?

Is it even possible for him to cause me to sleepwalk and dream vivid dreams and paint wild paintings? He wasn't even here until today. Or was he? Is he even here now?

"I'm losing my mind," I sigh, trying again to sip the warm milk.

"No, you're not," David says with a certainty that forces me to look at him again. How can he be so sure?

"How can you say that?" I ask, shaking my head. "I nearly brained you with a poker, thinking you're a blooming crow!" I exclaim, and he just shrugs and grins at me. Perhaps he is the one who is insane.

"I'm fine, Belle. You hit like a girl."

"I'll do it a bit harder next time, then," I grumble, knowing that he is just trying to make me feel less guilty about attempting to kill him. I'm finally able to take a couple of successful sips from the mug, feeling the milk's warmth spreading through my cold body. "This is nice, thanks," I try to smile at David. My heart and mind are still torn between trusting and fearing him, but the sweetened, warm milk is going a long way towards making me friendlier.

"I think it's only fair that I tell you that my grandmother and my father had similar experiences in this house, and neither of them had lost their mind."

Blinking in surprise, I gape at David. What is he talking about now?

"Nobody has tried to claim me as their child yet," I tell him, not sure whether the news he just gave me is reassuring or disturbing.

"My father was only five years old when they left this place," he clarifies, but that tells me nothing, except that there once lived a terrified five-year-old boy in this house. The idea is making me extremely sad and is not having a positive effect on my fear.

"Did... did they leave because they thought he was in danger?"

David thoughtfully dunks and munches on a biscuit while I wait for him to get his words together.

"No," he finally says. "He was never hurt, and nobody was even sure that he didn't just dream about the woman." He eats another biscuit, gazing at my face as if he is trying to gauge my level of distress before he continues.

"My grandfather took his family and moved out because my grandmother wouldn't leave the sunroom," he states, still looking intently at my face. Is he watching for signs that I'm going to freak out again? Or is he checking to make sure that I'm all here and not about to beat him up with the biscuit I just took from the tin?

"She obsessively painted day and night. Good paintings. Kind of violent and vibrant. Very different from the watercolours she usually did."

Violent, vibrant paintings?! Of what? I'm about to ask him, but David levels his eyes on me as if he wants to make sure that I'm giving him my full attention and understanding his words.

 "She loved this house, Belle. She didn't fear it. She didn't want to leave. She was very angry when my grandfather forced her to leave with him and my father."

I do feel a little bit better knowing that his grandmother didn't fear the house but loved it. Do I love it, or do I fear it? I'm not entirely sure what the answer is to that question. Both, probably. I fear all the strange things that have been happening. I fear the disappearing room and the wakeful dreams leading me down to the beach.

I fear the feeling of not knowing what I'm going to do next or where I'm going to wake up, and yet... A part of me, a huge part, feels tied to this house, this farm; as if I belong here and have been searching for this place my entire life. That is ludicrous! I'd never heard of the place until Craig found it and booked it for me. I hated it on sight... or did I?

Is it possible to simultaneously love and hate a place... at first sight?

"I thought nobody lived here for a few generations," I observe, wanting to switch my focus away from myself. I did not know that his grandparents lived here for a while until he mentioned his father's fear of the woman who wanted to take him away with her.

"My grandfather's grandparents locked up the house and left shortly after my grandfather was born, but he'd always felt drawn to this place. He was a young, recently married man when he inherited the farm, and they tried to make a home here and bring the place back to life. It went fine for a while, but then my grandmother started her obsessive painting habits shortly after my father was born. At first, my grandfather just thought that she was really inspired, but it got worse as the years went by. 

"When my father's nightmares started, he knew that they couldn't stay, and by then, he was worried about my grandmother's mental state. He says it felt like she was slipping away from him, disappearing somewhere where he could not follow. Still, he loves this place. Always has and always will. When we were making plans for maintenance, and I discovered that I'm short some keys, he told me that my father hated the closet in the hallway. He was terrified of it, and eventually, my grandfather locked it and threw away the key. He was going to brick it up but never got around to it, and then they moved."

I watch David over the rim of the steaming mug, and there seems to be more to his story, but for some reason, he is not willing to say more. What is he hiding from me?

"So, the place stood empty from just after your grandfather's birth until he moved here with his wife and then again since your father was a child?" I ask, trying to make sense of the logistics.

"Yes. Grandpa rents it out to writers and artists, and there was a farmer for a few years. When he started to make a good profit, he bought a small farm of his own closer to town."

"And he didn't live in this house?"

"No."

"Do you know why?"

"No."

Awesome! Very reassuring. 

I think we should try to make it to the groundskeeper's house and stay there instead.

"So, your grandmother obsessively painted to such an extent that your grandfather feared for her mental health," I tell him, sounding like a prosecutor making a case for the state. "And your father had nightmares and thought some woman was trying to steal him, but you still want to live here?"

David lifts his mug to take a sip and realises that it's empty. Disappointed, he rises to make himself another cup. I think the guy loves coffee even more than I do.

"Yes," he says, spooning coffee into his mug. "I know it doesn't make sense, but, just like my grandfather, I feel drawn to this house. My grandmother loved it here. Nothing bad ever happened to her. She just sleepwalked and painted day and night."

Oh, wow! Is that all?!

"My father mentioned the missing room," David seemed to hesitate before he told me. "But until it happened to you, I thought it was just a nightmare he had."

"He saw the room?!" I don't know how I'm supposed to feel about this news. Is it good or bad?

"I'm not sure," David is giving me a rather sad look and then picks up the kettle to add some of the still-hot water to his mug. "Unfortunately, he doesn't remember much about the time when he'd been living here. I asked him about it when my grandfather started bringing me with him when he did his rounds. He just hates the place, and he doesn't know why, and he's also not really willing to talk about it."

"Awesome..."

The wind is noisy again after its brief calm period when we were looking for the music box, or perhaps, it never did die down; I just couldn't hear it for a while. It is now whooping gleefully around the house as if it is delighting itself in the chaos it is sowing in its wake. I cannot see anything outside anymore; it's as though the house got swallowed into a noisy black hole.

I watch David return to his seat. He is a lot nicer to look at than the blackness outside the windows. His hair is covering the small cut I gave him at his hairline. He didn't want me to fuss over it. He just grabbed a band-aid from the medicine cabinet in the downstairs bathroom and stuck it over the wound.

He swears that it is nothing, that it doesn't even hurt, but I felt the sensation of my blows connecting right through the poker into my shoulders. I did not just tap him gently. I'm really worried about what other injuries I've caused. 

"I lived here for a couple of months, five years ago," David says after a long silence during which he seemed to be wrestling with a decision and when I turn surprised eyes on him, he looks uncertain about whether he should continue his story or not.

"Why did you leave?" I prompt, not wanting him to stop with his story dangling in the air like that.

"My wife said the house hated her and wanted her gone," he mutters. "Except, she didn't say 'the house'... she said 'they'..."

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