Sentence:  She fell asleep leaning on her hand , hearing the house <WSD>creaking</WSD> as though it were a living a private life of its own these two hundred years , hearing the birds rustling in their cages and the occasional whirring of wings as one of them landed on the table and walked across the newspaper to perch in the crook of her arm . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  make a high-pitched, screeching noise