THE LANDLADY by Jay Jay.

Audrey.

Audrey soon settled into her new bedroom, arranging her furniture several times until she was satisfied. Zane had been helping her, but made no secret that he thought Audrey was being too high maintainance and fussy. He took off the moment she said the room was good.

After Zane left, Audrey wondered if the light from the window was falling on her dressing table too much, but it was made of solid wood and too heavy for her to move easily by herself. "Have to do," she muttered.

This was a large room, painted in a soft yellow. Not her favourite colour, but something about this room felt friendly, if not a bit sad. Audrey was sure the house was haunted, indeed was the only one in the group that had wanted to keep looking, but she had to admit that the price, location and standard of the house made it too good to turn down.

If it was haunted, well, she seemed to pick up on spiritual stuff but had never felt scared or in danger from any of it. She would be careful.

Audrey had hated her name when she was a child, especially since one of her junior teachers had insisted on calling her 'Drey', and it had stuck all the way to senior school. Since then, she had found out her name meant noble strength, which seemed cool. There was also a musical-horror movie where a giant, blood-sucking plant was called Audrey 2, maybe not so flattering, but Audrey decided to embrace it. She therefore kept a collection of carniverous plants in her room. Now she carefully arranged the pots and tanks of sun-dews, pitcher plants and venus fly-traps until they looked happy.

She also liked to surround herself with pictures and ornaments of mythical animals, crystals, dream-catchers, books, fairy-lights. She unpacked her boxes, enjoyed putting them around the room.

Audrey happened to own four of the eight cats that had moved in with them. One of the cats curled up on the bed, yawning sleepily. That looked like a great idea.

She collapsed onto the bed, dozed for a while. It was a warm day, cicadas sang softly outside the window, nice. Cat purred happily. Audrey snored gently.

A misty shape, human, was standing in the room, watching her.

"Hi," she said, sleepily, thinking she was dreaming.

The shape backed away, as if frightened.

"Don't go," Audrey said softly, but the shape blended into the wall and was gone.

Strange. But Audrey felt very sleepy, so probably a waking dream. That shape had felt, well, female, shy, frightened.

A name came to her, Amber. Yellow, like the room. Not her colour, Audrey preferred blues and purples, but she did like this room more than the others. Amber wanted to be a friend. Amber needed a friend. Could Amber be Audrey's friend?

Where on earth were these ideas coming from?

"Yes," Audrey said out loud. "You and I, we can be friends."

And somewhere, in Audrey's mind, she could see a soft, young woman's face smile shyly.

                                                                                 ***

Later, after Audrey had set up her computer and organised her gear for university, she decided to do some research on the house they were living in. It was not hard to find stories about the murders that had happened here twenty years previously.

There was speculation that it was an animal attack, rather than a murderer, but no circus or zoo was located near-by, no dog-pack had been reported.

A murderer using dogs as weapons, another possibility, but why?

There was a well known, but small-time drug dealer living at the house, but he had no-one that seemed to be angry at him.