She Walks in Darkness Read Online Free PDF Page B

last thing I remember....
    Sounds woke me; I sat up sharply. Moonlight filled both rooms now, strong enough to show everything but color. Richard was breathing regularly, normally, beside me. My hand groped for him, and for a second the feel of him reassured me.
    Then they came again—the sounds at the door!
    The great, carved slab of wood was stirring, ever so slightly, in its ancient place. Its hinges creaked.
    Somebody was trying to get in!
    Not knocking—at a knock I would have jumped up, joyfully sure that Mattia Rossi had come at last. This quiet tugging at the door was stealthy, sinister. It kept on, soft, patient, determined. Whoever was out there in the hall did not want to be heard, but he wanted to get in. Badly.
    I lay rigid, telling myself, It must be Mattia Rossi. He doesn’t knock because he’s afraid of waking us. He’s seen the wreck; he knows we’ve had a bad time. He just wants to be sure we’re all right.
    I tried to call out, but I was afraid.
    At last they stopped, those quietly horrible little noises. I heard receding footsteps, soft, yet very clear on the stone flagging.
    Silence flowed back, engulfed us like gently lapping water. I rose and ran for the bathroom; it was dark in there, so I tried to turn on the light.
    It would not turn on.
    Neither would the lights in the bedroom, nor in the anteroom. The trunk—the fugitive—that must have been when I first thought of them. Or had their images been tugging softly at the door of my mind all along, just as that unseen but very real hand had just tugged at the wooden door?
    But electricity couldn’t be depended on in an isolated place like this. And there were matches in one of our suitcases. I found them, and lit the lantern I had bought in Volterra. Warm light sprang up, banishing the eerie moon-paleness, and I felt like an idiot. Of course it had been Mattia Rossi at the door. What if he had acted a little queerly: He might have had a few drinks with friends in town. I had missed the chance to get help, and now I would have to go after it. Down these dark halls, by myself. Well, it served me right.
    I set my teeth and opened the door. The darkness outside seemed ready to spring at me, like a live thing, and I jerked back, then set my teeth a little harder. No more foolishness, Barbara. You’re not a little girl now, to be afraid of the dark.
    I stepped out into it, holding the lantern high. My light had shrunk suddenly, seemed pitifully inadequate against all that blackness.
    There was a door on my left, between me and the stairs. If it should open—
    A dozen times I saw that door move. Yet when I came abreast of it, my body scraping the opposite wall, it was still shut; it had never stirred. Now was its time, though. If it suddenly should open, if somebody should spring out—
    I was past it. Nothing had happened. But it still could open softly, stealthily behind me....
    I went down the beautiful stairway, through the great hall, hesitated, then turned right. I had not seen this part of the house at all. Would this once have been called a drawing room? No, this next one was even finer, with white marble nymphs upholding the fireplace, the whole thing exquisite enough to be a flower.
    Room after lovely room, all of them silent. Doors, and more doors, sometimes on both sides of me—and all of them like hands that at any moment might shoot out from the walls to seize me. I was a chicken, and they were all hawks, waiting to pounce—
    I went right, then left. I found a room that must be the dining room, and then the huge, dreary old kitchen that Mrs. Harris had called antiquated. Doors again, more doors. I opened one and jumped back, shuddering at the Stygian darkness below. The cellars! I shut that door fast. I opened another, saw more stairs, small, shabby but leading upward. My heart leapt. This must be the way to the servants’ quarters!
    But it was not Mattia Rossi I met at the head of those stairs.
    The man was kneeling in the darkness