Short Fiction

By Daphne du Maurier.

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Terror

Bridget woke up with a start.

Somewhere something had fallen; perhaps a slate from the roof, or maybe it was only a door banging on the floor above. She did not know this, of course; at six years old it is difficult to reason about strange noises, or about anything that happens in the middle of the night. Half-past nine was the same as midnight to Bridget.

For a few minutes she lay awake wondering what it was that had woken her. She no longer felt tired or sleepy, her mind was alert, and every nerve was on edge. Then she opened her eyes and looked around her. At first everything seemed black, pitch black, but as she became accustomed to the darkness the furniture in the bedroom gradually began to take shape.

A queer, ghastly shape.

This was not the same room as the one in which she had undressed. She saw that Nanny had not come up yet, because the bed was empty.

But, what is empty? The pillow must have slipped a little, for something bulky lay in the corner by the turned-down sheet. A piece of blanket had become untucked at the side; it was rolled slightly, and stretched across the centre of the bed. Yet it was not like an ordinary piece of blanket, this rolled object, it was an arm—a cold, white arm—with no body near it, with no person to whom it belonged.

A loose arm hanging from nowhere …

Bridget shrank back in her bed and turned her eyes away, but this time they fell on the wardrobe at the end of the room. It looked huge and sinister, far taller than in the daytime; it seemed to stretch as high as the ceiling.

And there was a dark, inky black corner just by the side of it.

She tried to think of what was kept in that corner, but she could not remember; surely it had never been there before?

Then something creaked.

Sweat broke out on Bridget’s forehead, her heart thumped under her little white nightgown; her body burned, but her feet were icy cold!

There … another creak. … Again.

Her eyes were now glued to the wardrobe, whence the sound had come.

Slowly—very slowly—the door opened. The gap grew larger and larger, creaking with every inch; soon it would swing right open.

And what would be inside, waiting, waiting?

She dared not move now, because the slightest sound would tell them that she was there; if she kept quite still with her eyes closed perhaps they would go away and forget all about her.

She lay silent, without a movement, and then, in spite of herself, the dread impulse came over her to look; her head turned, and her eyes were drawn, as if magnetised, towards the wardrobe.

The door was wide open.

And inside—inside where Nanny’s clothes hung in the daytime, her coat, her mackintosh, her grey costume—were three shadowy figures, silent and mysterious.