Welcome to case closed. You're listening to The Shadow House by Anna Downs, narrated by Natasha Beaumont and the author. Let's pick up where we left off last week.

Renee, Chapter 29. The Images Came thick and fast, a precipice, a cliff's edge and a sheer drop, a cave, a tiny

pothole under tons of rock.

Eight, April stood over Renne with a plate of cheese and crackers.

Ren, please, you have to keep your strength up.

Panic was a blindfold, a dirty bandage, a heart in a box buried deep in the ground.

Renee!

Three days.

Gabriel had been missing for three days and no one could find him.

There were no clues, no note, no explanation, no fingerprints, no broken glass, no signs of

forced entry. Just a cold breeze and an empty

room. He'd vanished into thin wintery air. On the couch, Renee twitched, startled by movement outside the window. A flash of grey. She waited but saw nothing else.

Renee! Obediently, Renee!

Obediently, Renee reached out and took a cracker from the plate.

She held it in her palm, then placed it in her mouth and chewed. It was dry and bland. Outside the sky was full of clouds,

each one the colour of nothing. Inside, the same absence pervaded the house.

All sound was muffled, all light was flat.

Renee's home smelled not as it should have done

of coffee and cooking and furniture polish, but of stagnant air and

unwashed skin. The whole world had lost its flavor. Something moved again outside, that flash of gray on the veranda.

Renee turned in her seat. There was someone out there.

But then people were everywhere. For hours, police officers had wandered in and out of the house,

...