The Small Hand, By Susan Hill

Susan Hill's previous ghost story, The Man in the Picture, opened with the classic preamble of a narrator settling his listener down by a roaring fire, the wind lashing at the window pane, as he began his tale of terrors. This time, The Small Hand begins with another familiar starting-point: a wrong turning made by a driver on a dusky road, a stumbling-upon an abandoned house and a sudden encounter with a beguiling yet menacing child spectre.