Late Check-Out: The SittingThe candle reached its last mark as Mrs Marsh had said it would, and by then there was nothing left to sit for.

The sitters' book

The séance room after the sitting: the red-shaded lamp still lit over an open letter and an open book on the round table, the chairs standing empty around it, and through a doorway a dim hall hung with photographs. Nobody there.

You found Kit's last letter, and his father read it at the table where he had been calling him.

The candle reached its last mark, and Mrs Marsh blew it out herself, and nobody asked her to light another.

Sir Arthur writes in the sitters' book before he goes, as he does at every sitting he attends. He writes that he has witnessed a materialisation of rare clarity at Sallowmere, and that the spirit answered for the boy with a single word. He writes the word in capitals, and initials it. He does not write down what you told him about Kingsley, which was the truth: that the only one this house is keeping is a girl at a fire. He nods as if he had expected it, and believes in everything else regardless.

Edmund sees you to the hall. He does not ask what you are. At the foot of the stair he puts the cap back on the newel post, gently, as if somebody might be sleeping inside it, and he says that they always come back to this house, sooner or later.

Then the red lamp in the library goes out by itself, and in the dark the knocking starts again from the kitchen wall. Sixteen. Eight. Fifteen.

The lights come on. Your friends are round the library table, still holding hands, and the one beside you is asking why your hand has gone so cold. On the hall table the host's note is where it was, and beside it, where there was nothing before, an old ledger in a glass case, open at a page of names and dates in faded ink. The top entry is in capitals.

Your phone buzzes:

You remembered where you put the key. She is pleased. P.

Part 3, No Light May Show, is another night in this house. Remember what you told him.

Edmund will never hold another sitting. He tells Sir Arthur so in the hall, and Sir Arthur, whose own son died three days before Kit, takes his hand and says nothing for a long time.

Title earned: The visitor at the sitting.

The sitters' book

Got out? Say so.