Free Dark Terrors 3 by David Sutton Stephen Jones Page A

outline of male genitalia. And there was Emma, naked, arms raised to the sky, dancing herself to a frenzy beneath a full, pale moon. Now she and Emma were walking arm in arm through a park, Emma chatting girlishly, no longer shy or withdrawn. ‘Of course, it takes so long and there are always errors,’ she was saying, ‘but it doesn’t matter, the result is always the same.’
     
    ‘I don’t understand you,’ Cynthia said.
     
    ‘Of course you don’t, you’re so fucking normal! Frigid bitch!’ And Emma was laughing at her.
     
    Cynthia woke up, panting. She felt that a noise must have awoken her but could hear nothing. There was a movement in the corner of the room, in the shadows, where Cynthia’s plump, decorative armchair stood; the chair behind which she had stowed Emma’s paintings. Cynthia blinked. Was someone sitting there? A movement, a shift of moonlight. Someone rose, snake-like, from the chair and came towards the bed. It was Emma Tizard herself! The witch Emma, the secret Emma, and possibly a vengeful Emma. Cynthia could make no sound. She couldn’t see Emma’s face, but the hair was unmistakable, not bound, not plaited, but loose and glorious in the half-light. The figure moved to the dressing table and picked up the photograph of Cynthia’s son, Richard. Cynthia saw the pale flesh, the long fingers, the perfect unvarnished nails. Emma looked at the photograph and chuckled. She turned to Cynthia. ‘What a white little worm. Bet he’s a lousy fuck,’ she said.
     
    Cynthia Peeling could not scream, but her muffled, petrified squeaks woke her husband. He turned on the bedside light. ‘Cyn, what’s the matter love?’ He shook her. ‘Wake up! Cyn!’ She opened her eyes puffing and gasping, as if she’d been drowning. The bottom sheet had come untucked and had wrapped itself around her hot legs.
     
    ‘She!’ Cynthia gasped, unable to say the name. ‘The dead girl from next door. My God, Rod, she was here!’
     
    Rodney put a comforting hand on his wife’s shoulder. ‘Come on, love, bad dream, that’s all.’ He made soothing noises and arranged the pillows under her head. ‘Get back to sleep. You’ll soon forget.’
     
    Cynthia felt her breathing slow down. She closed her eyes. No one could ever have called her an imaginative person. She did not believe in ghosts and thought witchcraft was an excuse for bizarre sexual practices, but if her husband had known what was going through her head at that moment, he would have thought her a stranger.
     
    * * * *
     
    Next morning, once Rodney had gone to work, Cynthia had to go into the lounge and draw the curtains on the window that overlooked Wren’s Nest. She thought with dread of the rolled-up paintings behind her chair in the bedroom, and the little book in her dressing-table drawer. However, by lunch-time, she’d managed to pull herself together and examine rationally the way she was feeling. She drank a glass of milk and made herself a salad sandwich. It’s over now, she thought, We will never know what happened to Emma Tizard or find out any of her secrets, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t want to know.
     
    Having comforted herself, she went to wash her glass, plate and knife at the sink. Leaves had begun to fall from the apple trees in the garden. The season was changing and the sun looked low in the sky. Cynthia put the radio on to listen to the afternoon play and went to open the curtains in the lounge. No more of this! she thought, briskly pulling the drapes apart.
     
    There was a light burning in Wren’s Nest. Cynthia’s first thought was that the estate agents were showing someone around the place, but that was impossible because she had the only keys. Almost automatically, she slung a jacket over her shoulders and ran out of the house, over the lawn towards Wren’s Nest, before she realized what she was doing. She felt sure that someone was in Wren’s Nest to whom Emma had already given a key. Cynthia was aware