Free The Walker in Shadows by Barbara Michaels

awake."
    "Now, see here, Mark-"
    "Please, Mom. In detail."
    Pat sighed. "Oh, all right. I haven't got the strength to argue with you.
    "Kathy said she was lying on her side facing the window." Pat spoke slowly, trying to reproduce, if not the girl's exact words, the mood and the atmosphere. "She wakened with a start, the way you wake when some loud, unexpected noise jars you out of sleep. She said she could feel her heart beating. It was a frightening sensation. She lay still for a moment, wondering what had awakened her and why she felt so alarmed. She saw the curtains-filmy white dacron-moving in the night breeze, like ghostly figures. But she knew that wasn't what had frightened her."
    "Go on," Mark said urgently.
    "My scrambled eggs are getting cold," Pat said, taking a bite. "Besides, I'm trying to remember exactly… She was cold, horribly cold. The window was open only a few inches, but she felt icy air envelop her body, as if it slid under the blanket to get at her. With the cold came a mindless terror, and a conviction that something was in the room."
    "Something or someone?"
    "She said 'something, " Pat admitted. "She couldn't see clearly, but she imagined a kind of curdled shape in the shadows. She was afraid to call out. If a thief had sneaked into the room, an outcry might alarm him and cause him to attack her. She said she and her friends had discussed what they would do in such cases, and had decided the safest course was to pretend to be asleep. Thieves don't usually attack people unless they-"
    "Never mind the crime lecture," Mark interrupted. "We've discussed it ourselves; what defenseless citizen hasn't, these days? It wasn't a burglar that woke Kathy."
    "I don't know that and neither do you," Pat said. "She did decide to remain still-which wasn't a difficult decision, because she couldn't have moved if she had wanted to. Then… then the objects in the room began to move around."
    This was the part of the story that bothered her most. All the rest could be explained away. So could this, of course, as a product of dreaming; but…
    "Small objects at first," Pat went on reluctantly. "Papers on the desk lifted and scattered. That could have been the wind. But wind couldn't have shifted a pair of china figurines or pulled books from the shelves-or moved the lamp on the bedside table.It… it's a rather heavy lamp, with a bronze base. She had chosen one of that type be cause the dainty porcelain types fall over easily, and don't give enough light to read in bed."
    Mark paled visibly. Pat knew he was thinking of Kathy's lovely little face, with its fragile bones and delicate skin. The lamp had been lying on her pillow, where her head had rested. At best, it would have bruised and cut her.
    "It didn't hit her," she reassured him again. "She moved when it started to topple. She remembers running and screaming, nothing more; not even her father grabbing her."
    Mark started to speak; then he closed his mouth and cocked his head. Pat knew the look, and was on guard when he said craftily, "She's probably lying, to protect her father."
    "You don't believe that any more than I do. You're trying to distract me, and I only wish I knew what from. Homework? Did you finish that paper? Is that why you're up so early, hoping to get it done before class? If you think I'm going to type it for you, at this hour-"
    "The paper has been turned in," Mark said, in injured tones. "I have to get to school early, that's all. I told Jim I'd help him with his math before class."
    "You mean Jim told you you could copy his homework. Get going, then. I'm so tired I can hardly keep my eyes open. I'm going to bed."
    Mark insisted on helping her upstairs, as if she were a hundred years old. She sank into dreamless slumber the minute her head hit the pillow.

II
    It was late afternoon before she woke, and she probably would have slept longer if Albert had not settled down on her stomach. He did that when he decided it was time for his slothful