Out of the Mist Read Online Free PDF Page A

with a long beard,
a frown, and deep-set eyes. He wore a tall black hat with a wide
brim. Evelyn stood in front of it. “He’s a witch!” she
said.
    “ You mean a wizard,”
Margaret corrected. “He’s Grandpa, and he died years and years ago,
before I was born.”
    From the edge of the drawn window shade, a
thin spear of sunlight fell on the old man’s eyes, making them
glitter, as if he were staring at them. Evelyn grabbed Margaret’s
arm. “He heard us. He’s mad at us!” she whispered.
    All the room doors were
shut. Margaret opened one. It was the bathroom. The light was dim,
but she still made out an old wooden-enclosed bathtub, long and
square. It reminded her of her grandmother’s coffin. Water dripped
from a faucet, plop, plop,
plop . Over the basin, Margaret and Evelyn
looked at their own faces, peering out of the cracked mirror from a
world of shadows.
    The girls tiptoed out into the hall, but in
spite of trying to be quiet, their footsteps made the floor squeak
and they hurried to the next room. The door swung open slowly. In
the dimness there was absolutely nothing. A bare wood floor, no
furniture, the windows with the shades pulled down. Some dust on
the floor, with marks of footsteps in the dust. From the windows
came a low whine as if something were trying to get in.
    In the hall again, they heard Mrs. Hemphill
downstairs, humming, the clash of dishes as she put them in the
sink, then her footsteps back and forth. Downstairs seemed a
different world, filled with ordinary life. Upstairs was half-dark
and mostly empty.
    “ Let’s go down,” Evelyn
whispered.
    Margaret was afraid, but when she felt fear,
she was compelled to face it. She could not turn her back on what
made her afraid.
    “ Come on,” she said. “We
haven’t seen the other rooms.”
    The next door opened into a study or office.
There was a desk and bookshelves along the wall, and a 12-month
calendar hung near the desk. The calendar had symbols on it, made
out of stars, a different picture for each month: a raging bull, a
horned goat, a crab, a scorpion like a lobster with a long tail. On
the windowsill was a row of potted geraniums, all dried up, with
brown leaves. Their long stems lay like arms reaching out, and
there was a strong, pungent, decayed plant smell.
    “ I don’t like this room,”
whispered Evelyn.
    The last door was
Gran-gran’s. Margaret approached it slowly. She did not want to go
in but her fear forced her to put her hand on the door-knob. What
if her grandmother was still inside? What if she was in bed,
sitting up? Gran-gran would cry, “ Get
away, get out! ” What if the coffin,
carried out of the house earlier, had been empty, and her
grandmother was in her room, waiting to catch her and scold her for
breaking her favourite cup? What if she reached out and grabbed her
with her claw-like hand to shake her.…
    Margaret opened the door, Evelyn just behind
her. At first they could see nothing. The room was dim with the
shades pulled down and heavy curtains pulled across the
windows.
    Evelyn pushed in against her, more because
she didn’t want to be left alone than because she wanted to go
in.
    Their grandmother sat in a
chair, a narrow beam of light on her face. She looked right at
them. Margaret froze, paralysed. She could not move, scream, or
even breathe. She felt Evelyn’s body behind her begin to shake.
Their grandmother’s face was not pale and grey as she had been when
lying in bed. Her cheeks were firmer, and were a pale pink colour.
Her white hair was thick, and piled in a chignon on top of her
head.
    Margaret breathed, “Gran?” In her amazement,
she forgot to be afraid. She stepped into the room, Evelyn beside
her.
    Evelyn began, “You’re not in the box! They
didn’t take you away!”
    Their grandmother didn’t move, or seem to
hear them.
    They ran to Gran-gran. The
air from the open bedroom door shifted the curtains, letting in
more sunlight. Brown wrapping paper covered her