The book I read was written in Dutch (I’m from Belgium), but it may well be a translation of an English title. It must have been a book intended for a young public. I was about 10 to 13 years old when I borrowed it at the library, it must have been the late eighties or early nineties.
To the best of my memory…The story is about a person (man, woman? I don’t remember) who stays in some house (why and where? Don’t remember…) and is told to not open the door, maybe on a specific night (Christmas Eve?). Of course, he/she does open the door, or forgets to lock it. From that point on, the poor main character is haunted every night by a loud noise in the house, kind of a screaming, keeping him/her awake. I don’t know who or what caused that awful noise, but there is no communication possible with this thing/person. It’s driving the main character almost to a nervous breakdown, mainly due to sleep deprivation. I think the nightly haunting is supposed to keep going on for a certain period of time, maybe a year: the main character knows it will come to an end at a given moment and he/she will have to endure it one way or another. One night, the noise seems a little less hard, as if the person/thing who caused it, has come to some sort of pity with our main character.
Hopefully you’ll discover something, I would be very grateful! The story sounds a bit stupid for an adult, but it really impressed me as a child, and now that I’m having a son of my own, it would be cool if he could read it some day (there’s still time, he’s only 2 years old :-)).
This sounds a little like Who’s That Knocking on Christmas Eve by Jan Brett, although the publishing date, 2002, is too recent.