31 Grove, Terrace Point.

Detective Jones glanced up at the shattered window, cutting out the buzz of conversation around him. In his mind, he cast back the clues he had been given.

The businessman, Arthur Knight, had received a package in the morning as he went through his mail. He set it aside and worked until 10:30, before once again looking at his mail pile.

As Knight had opened the package, according to his workmate, a ticking set off, before promptly blowing the office, and Arthur, into oblivion.

Jones shook his head. There was nothing to go by. Nothing to give him a lead. That package… The detective slapped his forehead. Why hadn’t he thought of that before?

Jones started to walk briskly in the other direction. Finally, he had a lead.

*

“Oh yes, I know where it came from. Strange old place. Wouldn’t have thought it was inhabited, but, you never know.”

Detective Jones allowed himself a satisfied smile. Finally, the case was coming together.

The mailman had been a stroke of genius, he thought. He would have been just about the only person who would know where it came from.

“What do you mean?” he asked now. The mailman shifted uncomfortably.

“Well, it’s just that some people think that the house is haunted.” The detective snorted at this.

“Haunted? In what way?” he allowed a note of disbelief to enter into his tone. It wasn’t lost on the mailman.

“You go and see for yourself what is like. I’m telling you, it isn’t right.” A flash of asperity flew across his face. Jones smiled at the mailman.

“Maybe I will go and see it.” At that, he walked away, with his back to the exasperated mailman. He heard him talking, and managed to catch some of his mumbling tones.

“Fool. Nobody leaves 31 Grove without changing.” Jones felt the hairs on his neck rising up to static points, but he quickly laugh it off. “How can a house be haunted?

*

Detective Jones shuddered at the black building looming up at him, daring him to enter. His thoughts wandered back to the mailman earlier in the day. He remembered his flippant tone as he had talked, casually cast aside the notion that the house was haunted. Now, he wasn’t so sure.

A crack of lightning crackled across the sky, imprinting itself onto the detective’s retina. He staggered forward blindly, impeded by the white light on his eyes.

In Jones blindness, he felt resistance as he put his hand on something, then with a shock of horror, realised that it was a door, then felt it give under him. He screamed as he fell, fell, fell, into… nothing.

Dimly, as he was falling, he heard a voice all around him.

“No way out.”