Read Online The chuckling fingers by Mabel Seeley - Free Book Online
Authors: Mabel Seeley
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thinking it was Jacqueline in the room?
I could quickly find out if she had been.
Without further thought, slipperless, hugging my arms across my chest against the cold, I hurried down the hall where no lines of light showed now. Jacqueline’s door was ajar as mine had been, but moonlight lay clear on the floor there. In the intense hush under the wilderness sounds two near sounds of breathing were clearly audible—Toby’s silken and slight, the inhalations quick and distinct, the exhalations slower, quieter. At my left Jacqueline’s breathing was almost like a faint sigh. Soundlessly I moved to bend above her.
She lay on her side, cheek down to the pillow, one arm flung up around her dark tumbled hair, as if she’d cried herself to sleep. I caught the scent of spice.
I whispered, “Jacqui.”
Surely she was asleep; she couldn’t counterfeit that relaxed flow of breath.
As soundlessly as I’d come I went back to the bright rectangle that flung out into the blackness of the hall from my room. I called myself, going back, all the kinds of idiot there are. Once I had thought for them, I realized the maple planks were ice under my feet, and my skin was so contracted by cold it had difficulty holding my bones.
I shut my door tight, wishing it had a key, and then in surprise seeing it did have one. I turned it. Now if I went on hearing and feeling things I’d be able to give myself the lie. Then, with my fingers on the light switch, I halted.
Moonlight in Jacqueline’s room, none in mine … I could see why. The pink-and-blue chintz curtains over the windows here were pulled snugly close.
Myra hadn’t pulled those curtains after she tucked me in—the certainty was in my mind at one leap. Who had? Could she have thought the moonlight would make me wakeful and come back? What other reason could there be for closing them?
The room looked otherwise untouched. Certainly no one was in it now. My dresses hung in the shallow closet. The dresser drawers were closed—I’d have surely heard a drawer opening. Along the foot of the bed lay my pink robe… .
My teeth settled together, all ready to chatter. In one motion I turned the light switch and dived through the quick dark for the bed. From there I reached to pull the nearest of the curtains back so a little moonlight would come in. Myra, I thought, must have come back to pull those curtains—perhaps long before I waked. Then the movement had stayed in my mind and finally roused me.
Only—what had made me think it was Jacqueline in the room? Relaxing into my pillow, I shut my eyes, wakening my ears, my nose, trying to recapture that intangible message which approached, then eluded me. Almost as if—yes, almost as if there were still in the room some faint echo of spice.
What of that? Jacqueline had helped me unpack; reasonable the scent might linger. She might have slept here, even, previously. On that I sent myself to sleep.
So it wasn’t until I woke again to the clear bright light of day —realizing sleepily that, with all the alarums and excursions of the night, I’d slept late and that I must hurry, because today I was taking Jacqueline away, and she didn’t even know yet— that I reached rather blindly for my robe at the foot of the bed, and as it came toward me knew even before I looked at it that something was wrong. Then I sat stupidly staring.
The thing was in ribbons. Slashed. All that lovely salmon-pink woolly fabric cut as if with a razor—again and again, so that when I held it up the cut bands eddied out like pennants.
* * *
I threw on clothes, in my mind the most stumbling, incoherent thoughts I’d ever had in my life. Wanton, useless destruction. Yesterday that boat, today my robe. And the person who’d done it had been in my room as I slept, ripping and slashing.
That dark moving figure I’d seen near the Fingers—suppose that wasn’t Bill? Suppose No, that must have been Bill.
The robe lay where I’d dropped it on the
I could quickly find out if she had been.
Without further thought, slipperless, hugging my arms across my chest against the cold, I hurried down the hall where no lines of light showed now. Jacqueline’s door was ajar as mine had been, but moonlight lay clear on the floor there. In the intense hush under the wilderness sounds two near sounds of breathing were clearly audible—Toby’s silken and slight, the inhalations quick and distinct, the exhalations slower, quieter. At my left Jacqueline’s breathing was almost like a faint sigh. Soundlessly I moved to bend above her.
She lay on her side, cheek down to the pillow, one arm flung up around her dark tumbled hair, as if she’d cried herself to sleep. I caught the scent of spice.
I whispered, “Jacqui.”
Surely she was asleep; she couldn’t counterfeit that relaxed flow of breath.
As soundlessly as I’d come I went back to the bright rectangle that flung out into the blackness of the hall from my room. I called myself, going back, all the kinds of idiot there are. Once I had thought for them, I realized the maple planks were ice under my feet, and my skin was so contracted by cold it had difficulty holding my bones.
I shut my door tight, wishing it had a key, and then in surprise seeing it did have one. I turned it. Now if I went on hearing and feeling things I’d be able to give myself the lie. Then, with my fingers on the light switch, I halted.
Moonlight in Jacqueline’s room, none in mine … I could see why. The pink-and-blue chintz curtains over the windows here were pulled snugly close.
Myra hadn’t pulled those curtains after she tucked me in—the certainty was in my mind at one leap. Who had? Could she have thought the moonlight would make me wakeful and come back? What other reason could there be for closing them?
The room looked otherwise untouched. Certainly no one was in it now. My dresses hung in the shallow closet. The dresser drawers were closed—I’d have surely heard a drawer opening. Along the foot of the bed lay my pink robe… .
My teeth settled together, all ready to chatter. In one motion I turned the light switch and dived through the quick dark for the bed. From there I reached to pull the nearest of the curtains back so a little moonlight would come in. Myra, I thought, must have come back to pull those curtains—perhaps long before I waked. Then the movement had stayed in my mind and finally roused me.
Only—what had made me think it was Jacqueline in the room? Relaxing into my pillow, I shut my eyes, wakening my ears, my nose, trying to recapture that intangible message which approached, then eluded me. Almost as if—yes, almost as if there were still in the room some faint echo of spice.
What of that? Jacqueline had helped me unpack; reasonable the scent might linger. She might have slept here, even, previously. On that I sent myself to sleep.
So it wasn’t until I woke again to the clear bright light of day —realizing sleepily that, with all the alarums and excursions of the night, I’d slept late and that I must hurry, because today I was taking Jacqueline away, and she didn’t even know yet— that I reached rather blindly for my robe at the foot of the bed, and as it came toward me knew even before I looked at it that something was wrong. Then I sat stupidly staring.
The thing was in ribbons. Slashed. All that lovely salmon-pink woolly fabric cut as if with a razor—again and again, so that when I held it up the cut bands eddied out like pennants.
* * *
I threw on clothes, in my mind the most stumbling, incoherent thoughts I’d ever had in my life. Wanton, useless destruction. Yesterday that boat, today my robe. And the person who’d done it had been in my room as I slept, ripping and slashing.
That dark moving figure I’d seen near the Fingers—suppose that wasn’t Bill? Suppose No, that must have been Bill.
The robe lay where I’d dropped it on the
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