Free Figures of Fear: An anthology by Graham Masterton Page A

her the sky was heavy and grey, and the garden smelled as if it had just stopped raining.
    At the far end of the veranda a wind chime was jingling. Jing-a-ling-jing-ching. She found the sound of it irritating rather than soothing, and she wondered why it was jingling at all, since there wasn’t any wind.
    Then she thought: The wind chimes sound just like the sleigh bells in my other dream. But how can I remember another dream, when I’m dreaming this one?
    She opened her eyes. Her bedroom wasn’t completely dark, because she had deliberately left the curtains three inches apart. She could see her teddy bear’s eyes glistening in the gloom, and on the wall behind his chair, a shadow was flickering, a shadow that looked like a witch nodding her head. Dawn knew that it was only the shadow from the plane tree which stood in the garden at the front of her block of flats, but all the same she couldn’t keep her eyes off it, in case it moved, and the witch suddenly came tapping at her window.

    Jingle-jingle-ching went the wind chimes. Only they weren’t wind chimes out of her dream, nor sleigh bells from the black-painted sleigh. They were coat hangers, jingling inside her wardrobe.
    Oh God, oh God, please don’t let it be him. Please don’t let it be the black-faced man inside my wardrobe. Please God, don’t let him get out.
    Dawn stretched across the bed for her mobile phone, but as she did so the whole wardrobe creaked, and she could hear something heavy shifting inside it.
    Oh God, please don’t let it be him.
    She groped around for her phone – where was it? But the wardrobe creaked again, much louder this time, almost a groan, and the groan was followed by a shuffling sound. She was so startled that when she found her phone she accidentally tipped it over the edge of her nightstand. She heard it drop on to the carpet but when she looked over the edge of the bed she couldn’t see where it had gone.
    The door’s locked. He can’t get out. Please don’t let him get out.
    She threw back the covers and climbed out of bed and went down on her hands and knees. Her phone wasn’t anywhere in sight so she guessed that it must have bounced underneath the bed. She reached into the narrow gap between the bed and the carpet, pushing her arm in as far as she could, and after sweeping her hand from side to side three or four times, she touched it with her fingertips.
    She tried to flick her phone back toward her, but it was a fraction of an inch too far away, and she succeeded only in pushing it even farther out of reach. The bed was much too heavy for her to lift, so all she could do was force her arm in deeper, even though the rough hessian lining scraped against her skin.
    She was still straining to reach her phone when she heard the key slowly turning in the wardrobe door. Click, click, click – pause – kerchick.

    She turned her head around and looked back up at the wardrobe. It was impossible. You couldn’t unlock the door from the inside. Yet as she lay there, on her side, with her left arm pinned underneath the bed, she saw that the wardrobe door was slowly opening.
    ‘ Go away! ’ she screamed. ‘ Don’t come out of there! Leave me alone! Don’t come out of there! Don’t! Don’t come out of there! ’
    She dragged her arm out from underneath the bed, grazing her forearm all the way from her elbow to her wrist. Then she threw herself on to the bed, rolled over it, and went for the bedroom door. She tried to turn the key but it jammed, like it often did, because it was old and worn and always needed coaxing. What had she been thinking about when she locked it? She should have realized that she might need to escape.
    She glanced frantically over her shoulder, and as she did so the black-faced man stepped out of the wardrobe and turned toward her. He not only looked burnt, he was actually wreathed in acrid-smelling smoke, which lazily curled its way across her bedroom. His white eyes were staring at her and his