Read Online Life and Death of the Wicked Lady Skelton by Rowland Hughes - Free Book Online Page A

by calling them her ‘wake-up dreams’, for it certainly seemed to her that she had been wide awake at the time.
    The first night she had been woken, she thought, by the sound of music. A queer, tinkling music, brittle as pieces of glass – something like dear Mama’s pianoforte, and yet again most unlike. The music was insistent, dulcet and alluring, but the startled, listening child did not like it. She liked it so little that after a few moments she cried out, ‘Alice! Alice!’
    A grunt from Alice’s bed was blessedly reassuring, but when Alice asked, ‘What’s the matter?’ and dismissed Isabella’s, ‘I hear music’ with a good-natured, ‘Silly! Go to sleep,’ Isabella had to admit the justice of the rebuke, for the music had ceased – swallowed up in the profound nocturnal silence of the big house.
    The next night Isabella was not aware that she had fallen asleep, though of course she must have dozed off as Mama and Nanny said so. She had only been in bed some ten minutes, it seemed to her, when her attention was caught by a swishing sound, as of a silken skirt, coming from the direction of the turret staircase at the end of the passage. This might have been Mama (there were no lady visitors staying at that time in the house), but the footsteps moved in a stealthy way that brought no comforting sense of recognition to the scared child. Her skin tingled with fear as she heard a rustling or scrabbling noise outside her door. There was no sound of the door opening, but the room had grown noticeably colder. All of a sudden she felt an icy pressure on her forehead. The sensation lasted for only a few seconds, passing as swiftly as it had come. Isabella lay stiff with terror, then she broke into loud screams. Before long, she was being hugged to Nanny’s capacious bosom, was sobbing out her incoherent alarm.
    The next night the two girls were given a night-light. As things turned out it might have been more agreeable for Isabella if the room had been in total darkness, for when she woke up with a violent start, feeling chilled in spite of her warm coverings, she was able to perceive by the little lamp’s dim but steady light, that a figure stood at the foot of her bed. It was not Mama, nor Papa, nor Alice, nor Nanny, nor any of the maids, but utterly unlike them or anyone else that Isabella had seen in her short life.
    â€˜Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,
    Bless the bed that I lie on.’
    Something told Isabella unmistakably that this dreadful, unknown visitor was not one of the kind apostles, nor the guardian angel who, Nanny assured her, watched over good little girls’ slumbers.
    Isabella yelped like a terrified puppy and dived under the bedclothes. Again Alice woke to find the room in its normal condition, though this time she had to get out of bed to soothe her frightened little sister.
    But if Lady Skelton and Alice, following her mother’s lead, were kindly complacent about ‘Silly little Goosie’s dreams’, they were to experience a rude awakening.
    The following night, whatever invisible influence was disturbing that part of the house was extraordinarily active. It was Isabella this time who slept through the most violent of the manifestations, though fitfully, her sleep shot through with nightmare images and sounds. When she woke up suddenly she saw by the glow of the night-light that Alice’s bed was empty, the bedclothes tossed back, her bedroom slippers still by the bed, the door of the room open.
    Impelled by an unreasoning terror, Isabella scrambled out of bed and fled down the passage towards her mother’s room. Here she came upon Mama – a shawl thrown over her nightgown, her long hair in two plaits, a candle in one hand, the other thrown round the clinging Alice. Both her mother’s and sister’s faces were sharpened with an expression of fear that made them look quite unlike themselves.
    Alice