But his mum wastoo tired to argue. “It’s only for one night Ben, now stop makingsuch a fuss. We’re all going to have to make sacrifices until weget settled in.” That was the end of the matter as far as she wasconcerned.
Later thatevening the parents sat up talking, for although they were tired,they were not yet quite ready for bed either.
Mrs Marigoldsuddenly exclaimed, “You know darling, I had a little chat with thewoman down at the village shop today when I went to pick up thebread and milk and she told me a fascinating story about thishouse. She said that about 20 years ago there was a fire and thehouse almost completely burnt down. It was quite tragic at the timebecause apparently the daughter of the owners was shortly to bemarried and it was only a few days before the wedding that the firebroke out. The young woman was alone in the house at the time andthe fire brigade were desperately trying to tackle the fire whenthe young woman’s fiancé arrived at the house. The blaze was toointense for anyone to enter the house but, when he realised thatshe was still inside, he screamed her name and dashed inside beforeanybody could stop him. It was several hours before the fire wasfinally put out and anybody could enter the house, but when theydid, they found two bodies charred beyond recognition, lying sideby side on the floor.”
Mr Marigoldsexpression had grown ever more horrified as the tale went on. “Wellthat’s a bit of a grisly tale to be going to sleep on,” he said“anyway, it’s probably not true. You know what they’re like invillages like this, stories get passed around and distorted andembellished with each re-telling.”
“Maybe.” saidhis wife, “maybe, but I wouldn’t say anything to the children aboutit, I wouldn’t want to frighten them, and in any case, I haven’tfinished yet. It seems that the house was eventually rebuilt andthe young girl’s parents moved back in and lived in it for a numberof years and it seemed that they had got their lives back togetherwhen suddenly, out of the blue, one night the woman took anoverdose of sleeping pills and killed herself. When her husbanddiscovered what she had done he was so distraught that he hangedhimself, poor chap.”
“Ok, ok,” laughed Mr Marigold, “you’d better stop now before yougive us both nightmares. Let’s go upstairs and try to get somesleep.”
As he lay onhis camp bed in the gloomy darkness of the front room, Ben couldjust make out the sound of his parents voices droning away in thekitchen. It was comforting to know that they were near by, but hestill felt scared. He had to spend an entire night in this, franklyterrifying room. He tried to rationalise his fear by persuadinghimself that he had only to shout out and his parents would comerunning to him. It helped, a little bit.
Ben had no ideawhat time it was. He must have fallen asleep and then awoken. Helay absolutely still and projected all his senses out around himinto the darkness. He strained as hard as he could but there was nolonger any sound of voices, so his parents must be in bed by now.At this realisation he felt his skin begin to crawl and he laystock still, petrified and clammy with sweat. He decided that itmust be the dead of night, maybe 3am, because the total absence ofnoise was so profound. It was like an unbearable weight of silencepushing down on him and slowly smothering him. He wanted to clearhis throat just to make a sound, just to prove to himself that hecould still hear and that noise was still possible in this enclosedlittle micro-universe of his. But he was too frightened to make anoise, in case it aroused unwelcome attention. He could hearnothing and yet he was certain there was something; somethingsilent out there in the room. Whilst he had been lying in terror,his eyes had been slowly adapting to the darkness. He was tornbetween, on the one hand, pulling the blankets over his head andtrying to get back to sleep and on the other, looking around theroom and making sure that everything was as it should be. Braverywon out in the end and without moving a muscle he peered out acrossthe room and tried to make sense of the vague shadowy shapes hecould see. The room would have been scary at the best of times atthis time of night, but now… well, his heart was pounding insidehis chest so hard that he was convinced it was about to burst.
After a coupleof minutes of intense scrutiny of the shadowy nether-world withinwhich he lay, he felt reasonably certain that everything was as itshould be and this calmed him, just a little. He dared to make avery small sound in his throat and the reassurance of the familiarnoise settled him further. He had been lying on one side for solong that he was feeling quite cramped and uncomfortable so heflipped over onto his front and turning his head the other way, heimmediately felt his scalp crawl and his body go clammy with coldsweat, but for several seconds he lay in almost total paralysiswhilst his wide staring eyes gazed in horror upon the image of twobodies lying stretched out on the floor with another, half-seenfigure crouching over them. Suddenly, with a piercing yell, Benlaunched himself backwards away from the figures so violently thathe capsized the camp-bed and in his blind panic he couldn’tcoordinate his movements and ended up thrashing about in hisblankets helplessly, and with each passing second his dread builtas he imagined the crouching figure rising and moving towards himand…. Finally he freed himself and with a cry of terror he madestraight for the door without a backward glance, whilst just behindhim, so he imagined, unseen and claw-like hands reached out towardshim
