Free Paper Tigers by Damien Angelica Walters Page B

right. Locked. She tried the next door on her left. The knob gave a high-pitched squeak, but the door didn’t open. She watched the top of the stairs with her jaw clenched tight as she waited for the echo to fade.
    Once it did, she walked to the next door. When her hand hovered over the doorknob, the sound of tiny pattering feet trailed down the hall, first heading toward her, then away. A child’s footsteps, light and teasing. A soft giggle, muffled. Pinching the inside of her cheek between her teeth, Alison took two more steps, pushing away a long tendril of dusty web.
    A door slammed. One loud bang then a creaking shudder of wood. In the distance, not close. She clamped both hands over her mouth to hold in a shriek, spun around, and her foot caught on the rug. As her upper body pitched to the right, her knees bent and canted to the left. The skin on her hip and back pulled. With a moan, she swayed, one hand questing for the wall. She didn’t find it in time to stop her descent, only to slow it down into a semi-controlled tumble. She landed hard on her hands and knees, her left hand resting on a hard patch of carpet, the fibers matted and dark with a stain.
    She scrambled to her feet. Lumbered down the hallway, back toward the stairs. A sob caught in her throat. She had nowhere to run, nowhere to go. Maybe the front door had opened. Maybe she’d find the way out. She hobbled down the steps, her mouth dry, and paused at the second floor landing. Peered around the corner.
    Another long hallway, twice as wide as the one she’d left; another thick layer of dust on the floor. Doors lined each side of the hall, all of them closed. She turned back to the staircase. Gripping the railing tight enough to make her fingers ache, she descended.
    A low rhythmic squeal slid through the air. She gripped the railingtight and kept moving, each step slow and careful. Violet chaos twisted inside her mind, a feverish babble of nonsense. Her brow glistened with a thin sheen of sweat, despite the chill.
    The foyer appeared exactly the same. There was another squeak, the raspy squeal of old metal. The door leading into the turret stood open, but it had been locked. She’d tried it. On tiptoe, she headed for the open door, her mouth dry, pulse skittering.
    Maybe it’s a trap.
    She shoved the voice away. The entire house held her trapped. What difference did one room make? Five feet from the door, a cold chill skimmed her arm then vanished. She recoiled. Footprints appeared on the floor, tiny footprints, not her own, heading through the doorway.
    The circular room was larger than she expected. The tiny footprints curved past the doorway, over to the back wall, and disappeared inches shy of the baseboard molding. And standing in-between the side windows, a grandfather clock with carved, elegant wood in a deep, burnished shade of mahogany, with not a speck of dust anywhere. A long oval of glass revealed a brass pendulum below the ornate face. Black scrollwork hands stood frozen at a minute after twelve. The pendulum hung motionless. A spindle-thin second hand with a tip shaped like the sharp end of an iron gate sat atop the hand marking the hour.
    A tiny tick sounded from inside the cabinet, and the pendulum swung in a slow arc from right to left. A sonorous chime rang out; she cried out and jerked back.
    The pendulum swung back and forth. The second hand ticked counter-clockwise, its pointed tip skimming across the Roman numerals. “No,” she said. The clock chimed again. She held her hands over her ears. The second hand continued to move, giving time back instead of stealing it away.
    She extended her hand. Her fingertips grazed the glass. Heatflared through her palm, a deep heat, but that wasn’t right because her fingers were dead and numb and she couldn’t
    no air
    breathe. Grey mist swirled in place of air, creeping down into her throat. Heat pressed from the inside. The grey took her in, pulling her