The little girl who had entered preschool as a class favourite, chattering and befriending everyone, walked into her first day of primary school so quietly that no one would have noticed her at all if it hadn't been for role-call. Over the next year she remained silent and solitary. Her teacher noted that she was a pleasure to teach, but that she did not interact with others, and did not contribute in class unless directly called upon. Trying to get her to be more outgoing, her parents arranged play-dates with her classmates. This did not go well, or last long.

It quickly became apparent to everyone that something was wrong with Sienna. Her classmates talked among themselves about her adverse reactions to their bedrooms, and more than one parent was startled to find her standing silently behind them while they had thought she was playing in the next room.

In an effort to try and integrate her, they decided to seek professional help. School councillors quickly referred her to child psychologists. After months of analysis and counselling sessions it was decided that she was simply a very intelligent little girl with an overactive imagination. The combination was causing anxiety and making it hard to relate to her peers. Medication was discussed but it was decided that that was to be a last resort, instead she was signed up for group activities and sports. Things that were out of her comfort zone and would force her to interact.

It didn't take long for Sienna to adapt. She watched the others and figured out which social cues she could comfortably replicate. As she started putting this in place the adults in her life congratulated themselves on 'fixing' her. She put her hand up in class and no longer sat alone during breaks, opting to sit with kids from her extra curricular's instead. The vivacious toddler they had known seemed to be reemerging.

The following six months followed the same pattern, with Sienna putting forward every sign of a well rounded child who was out-growing the imagined trauma. It was only when she was alone - especially in her room late at night - that she allowed the facade to drop and the terror would hold her immobile in a cocoon of fluffy pink blankets.

Her act had placated the worries of those around her, and she would undoubtedly have kept it up indefinitely if it weren't for what unfolded next. A tragedy that no-one could have foreseen.

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At the age of 7 Sienna, dressed in a black pinafore dress, with black ribbons tying back her braids, stood holding her mothers hand as they lowered her daddy's coffin. A freak accident had ripped him out of their lives. A wet day, a slick road, an unfortunate turn, the placement of a lamppost, and the position he was in when the airbag deployed. While she didn't understand the logistics, Sienna had garnered enough to know what had happened. She heard people talking, saying that it was tragic, that if he had been going a little slower, if he'd turned a little sharper... They all nodded and agreed with one another, talking around Sienna and her softly sobbing mother.

It was 2 weeks later that Sienna and her mother were shaken out of the fugue state they'd been in. The first creditors had decided they'd given them enough time. Seeing that she had no reliable income and that her husbands insurance would not go far, people seemed to appear out of nowhere with hands outstretched and pieces of paper demanding immediate payment. Not knowing how to handle this, Sienna's mother turned to someone for financial advice.

Within months Sienna's world had been completely overturned. Following advice from a friend of her husband, Sienna's mother sold the family home. The money from the sale paid off the mortgage and warded off creditors while they waited for the life insurance to come through. With the small sum left over - a majority of it having been used to repay the mortgage - Sienna and her mother moved to a rental property on the other side of town. The large 5 bedroom house was a dilapidated structure owned by the man who had advised her to sell. He had been considering the fate of the property he had purchased as a rental. At the time of sale he had not realised the true extent of work needed to make it habitable. A little work to get a few rooms sufficiently prepared and he offered it to Sienna's mother. Cheap rent if she was willing to do some work on it herself. With only days to go before she had to vacate, Sienna's mother jumped at the offer. That's how, at the age of 7, Sienna found herself in a new house, a new school, and with a strange family dynamic, as her grieving mother seemed like a stranger.

It was the former reserved Sienna that entered the new classroom. No-one was surprised by her regression. Her therapist was consulted for the first time in a year. The advice was to simply give her time and space to grieve before reintroducing extra-curriculars as they'd worked so well last time.

Sienna heard their conversations, knew they assumed her grief was the sole cause of the re-immersion of the fear filled child that stepped away from the world. She wasn't going to disillusion them. She'd already tried to tell her mother, but the stranger who seemed to have replaced her didn't want to hear it.

There was something in the house. Something very, very dangerous was hiding in the shadows.