Night Corridor Read Online Free PDF Page B

day.
     
    Once, returning from the washroom, she saw her suitcase outside the door and brought it inside and unpacked it, hanging her few items of clothing on the wire hangers. She put away her blouses, stockings and underclothes, in a dresser drawer.
     
    For long periods of time, she sat on the sofa and tried to orient herself to her new life. Sometimes she wandered to the long window—a window without bars—and looked out through the part in the lace curtains, at people walking along the sidewalk. At the cars passing by. She had a flash of herself looking out of the window at Bayshore, at these houses, these people, of which she was now a part.
     
    With the room still bright with daylight, she was able to hold her demons at bay and all things seemed possible. The doubt and fear did not begin to steal over her until the sun went down and shadows crept across the brown tiled floor. But fear can only hold you in its grip for so long, as it had held Caroline, and after awhile the tentacles loosened and Caroline rose from the sofa and opened it to its full double-bed size and made it up, taking down the extra warm blanket from the closet shelf. Changing into her long, white nightgown, she climbed between the cool sheets.
     
    As tired as she was, in both mind and body, she lay wide-eyed in a bed that felt like a raft in a huge ocean, the sheets drawn up to her chin. As she stared at the ceiling her eye traced the stain that the longer she looked at it, the more it took on the shape of a menacing dog. Mercifully, as darkness deepened outside her window, its edges blurred becoming one with the rest of ceiling.
     
    She wasn't in complete darkness, however, owing to the light from the utility pole out on the street, which sent its pale light into her room. She had imagined it would be a great relief not to have to share a room with Ella Gaudet, but right now she would have gladly welcomed the sound of Ella's snores emanating from her narrow bed across the room. Even her occasional ravings in the night would have offered comfort.
     
    She hadn't really minded that Ella didn't talk, and that she spent much of her days knitting with her invisible needles, content within herself, needing nothing more from the world. She had not thought she would miss Ella, but here alone in this big, shadowy room, she learned she was quite wrong about that.
     
    Here there were no screams in the night, no wailing or mad bursts of laughter traveling down corridors, finding her. But she had known their source and understood that these were lost people whose minds had simply turned on them. Here, the smallest sound above her head, or on the stairs outside her door, seemed amplified, threatening. Every creak and moan of the building settling. Every car that passed by down on the street seemed so loud, and when it began to rain their tires made a hissing sound on the pavement, as if a million snakes had been let loose.
     
    The rain tapping at the window was almost pleasant at first, but now it took on a frenzied rattling sound as though someone was wanting in.
     
    Slipping out of bed, she padded across the cool floor and checked that the window was still locked, even while knowing she was thinking nonsense thoughts. It was locked. Anyway, who could climb up here? The branches on the naked tree outside her window did not look strong enough to hold one of the landlady's cats.
     
    She checked the door. Locked. Now she was rummaging in her purse to be sure her keys were still there, where she had put them. That she hadn't dreamed this whole day. A part of her was still listening for someone walking the hallway, jangling a ring of keys, like a taunt.
     
    The quiet was something to get used to. Strangely enough, the jangling of those keys might have made her feel safer. Taken care of.
     
    But only children should need to be taken care of, she chastened herself. Or the infirm. I am neither. I am a woman. A healthy woman with a future ahead of me, she