Out of the Mist Read Online Free PDF

grandmother’s arms
and body. Above Gran’s head and around her sides was a gilded
frame, which was set on an armchair.
    Confused, Evelyn said, “Take off the paper
so she can walk!”
    Like a person coming out of a dream and not
sure what was real, Margaret carefully pulled the wrapping paper
from her grandmother’s body. She soon saw the whole frame, and
quickly looked in back to see that there was nothing there, just
the flat stretched canvas in the armchair.
    “ It’s Gran, in a picture,”
Margaret told her little cousin.
    “ Is she here, or is she in
the box?” Evelyn could not grasp what she was seeing. The picture
showed Gran-gran sitting in a chair like one of the carved wood
chairs downstairs. She was wearing a lovely flowered dress, and a
necklace of green jade. She was holding something in her hands—an
album—and in the album on the left-hand page was an oval picture of
a smiling two-year-old with curls around her baby face. Written
above it was, “My darling granddaughter, Margaret.”
    “ That’s me when I was
little!” Margaret told her cousin.
    On the right-hand page was another oval
picture of a baby with fat cheeks and bright eyes, and above it was
written, “My darling granddaughter, Evelyn.”
    “ That’s you, when you were
a baby,” Margaret said.
    Gran-Gran in the picture was smiling
tenderly at the photos.
    “ Why, she likes us!” said
Margaret.
    Evelyn reached out with a careful finger and
touched Gran-gran’s hand. The hand was plump and not claw-like at
all. “She’s pretty,” Evelyn said.
    Margaret wanted to kiss Gran’s cheek. But
she knew it was silly to kiss a painted picture. Instead, she
kissed her own fingers, and touched them to Gran’s cheek. Why had
she thought Gran might reach out and grab her? Of course, she loved
Gran and Gran loved her. They stood looking at the picture for a
minute, then turned away. Margaret shut the door behind her, and
they went downstairs.
    Mrs. Hemphill regarded them carefully when
they entered the kitchen. “And what have you two been up to?”
    Margaret felt very calm. “Oh, nothing.”
    “ Why don’t you girls go
out in the garden and play?” Mrs. Hemphill suggested. “It’s not
good to be too quiet and shut up inside when you are
young.”
    In the back yard, Margaret
and Evelyn sat on each side of a wooden swing-seat and made it sway
back and forth. The image of Gran with a twisted face, and a
skeletal hand, crying, “ Get
out! ” had faded away. Gran-gran was a lady
in a flowered dress sitting upright, with abundant white hair in a
chignon, looking lovingly at pictures of her
granddaughters.
     
    ~~~***~~~
     

 
    Who’s the Old
Hag?
    Russell Barton
     
    The attempt to move fails.
You’re paralysed. Breathing , an effort,
is controlled by another. A woman’s voice, old, crackled, whispers.
The words are clear. “Now you are hot and sweaty, your heart will
stop, breath shall leave you. Death and darkness must surely
follow. Let me be your companion, your guide in the hereafter.”
    Breathing stops. Is suffocation
to be your fate? Eyelids, after a supreme effort, open halfway. A
grey pockmarked hag’s face hovers above, her eyes staring
maliciously into yours. You recognise a nightmare and desperately
try, in your mind, to rock back and forth hoping to generate motion
and wakefulness. You emit a stifled gasp. At last you sense a reach
into consciousness. Cold air and physical awareness waft over your
mind and body.
    The hag’s face shrinks away but
her sinewy hands grasp at your shoulders .
Your scream reverberates throughout the hotel.
    Her face retreats further
towards the darkness, your eyes open wide. The wraith, gliding
towards a dark corner, dissolves into an ominous shadowy form.
Awakening and speedily sitting up, you clumsily try to activate the
bedside lamp but fail.
    It takes a few seconds before
hotel guests, alarmed by the scream, arrive outside your room. They
bang on the door.
    “Who is in there? Are