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entered, the noise from undead increased. The hissing groan of air, the snapping of teeth, the ripping of flesh and cloth on the jagged fragments of broken glass in the window frame, it seemed to fill the silent house.
    Reaching through the window a forest of arms grabbed at empty air as I frantically scanned the floor. I tried to keep the torch pointing downwards, but a shadowy sea of hands kept playing against the walls as undead arms grasped through the broken window. They shoved, They tore, They pushed, and the noise grew until... you remember that expression, “loud enough to wake the dead”? Never was that more appropriate than when, with a splintering crack, the window frame broke.
    I saw the keys, grabbed them, and ran from the room. I pulled the door closed, locked it and slumped with relief back onto the chair. Thirty minutes passed. This time I kept count. The noise didn't subside, but nor did it get any closer. I told myself They weren't getting in. I tried to believe it.
    I stood up and walked a short way along the dark corridor towards where I thought the main doors were. I slowed, then I stopped. I physically couldn't go any further. I tried to force myself to take another step. I told myself it was stupid, foolish, childish even. That I was compelled by nothing more than a metaphorical desire to pull the blankets up to hide from the monster under the bed. Still I couldn't take another step. I turned, went back down the corridor and piled the furniture back up outside the door.
    I know it won't do any good, or the rational part of me knows that, but that's a very small part these days. Afterwards, looking at my barricade of once-priceless antiques, I felt better, and perhaps that is all that matters.
     
    The main doors were more than secure, they were nailed shut. It would take at least a day's work to open them again. I found the old kitchen door, the one Sanders and Cannock must have used to get in and out of the house. The door was bolted, with a fridge dragged in front of it, but from the scuff marks on the floor I could tell that it had been frequently moved back and forth.
    When you revisit places you knew as a child, they're meant to seem smaller. Not so with the Manor. It the dim light of the torch it seemed to have grown. No matter which way I turned, which passageway I took, I never seemed to end up where I wanted. I tried to be systematic, tried to check each room in turn but really didn't do anything more than wander the halls with a disconsolate lethargy.
    Tiring, and genuinely worried I might get lost and end up wandering the building all night, I retreated back upstairs. I moved a few benches to block off the top of the staircase, and moved some cabinets into the corridor on either side of the bedroom door. On top of this flimsy barricade I placed a pair of antique vases. My hope was that if the undead did get into the house, and upstairs, then I would be woken by the sound of breaking china. Only then did I go back into the bedroom.
    Kim was still unconscious. Passed out or sleeping, I couldn't tell which. I stood watching her just long enough to reassure myself that she was still breathing. Then I closed the door and pulled a chest of drawers in front of it. I looked over at her again. The noise hadn't woken her.
     
    I have found another survivor. More than that, I found three and whatever fantasies I had about this moment, they couldn't have been further away from the reality.
    In the end, I didn't kill a man. I tried to, and I think that amounts to the same thing. I feel as though I should be examining my conscience, asking myself “how I feel”. I don't feel anything, at least not about his death. I didn't know him, and from all I can infer, my world is a safer place without him in it. That isn't an answer, though, it's just finding an explanation for my lack of emotional response. Sanders and Cannock tried to kill me and now they are dead. That really is all that needs to be