Free The Hidden World by Graham Masterton

“Edwina!”
    â€˜I switched on my light and all around the room the pattern on the wallpaper was faces – still diamond shapes, but faces too – and the faces were singing to me. I sat up in bed and I could feel a wind blowing through my hair. It felt so cool, and it was strong enough to ruffle the pages of the magazine beside my bed.
    â€˜I climbed out of bed and I walked toward the wall on the opposite side of my bedroom. The singing didn’t stop, and when I was close to the diamond shapes I could see the little purple squares that looked like eyes and the red circles that looked like mouths, and the eyes were looking at me and the mouths were moving.
    â€˜Then the space between the diamonds became a kind of crooked arm, and the arm reached out of the wallpaper and took my hand. It drew me gently toward the wall, closer and closer, and then before I knew it I had passed right through the wallpaper and into the world that lay beyond it.’
    â€˜You really walked into the wall?’ asked Jessica. She didn’t know if Mrs Crawford was making it all up, but even if she was, she still wanted to know what had happened.
    â€˜I really walked into the wall,’ said Mrs Crawford, crossing her heart with her finger.
    â€˜What did it feel like?’
    â€˜It felt like … I don’t know. It felt like walking through very soft tissue paper, that’s all. I found myself standing in an empty room, and it was so bright in there that I could hardly see. The walls were the same color as the wallpaper in my own bedroom, except that here, on the other side of the wallpaper, the diamond shapes actually floated in the air, all around me. The singing went on and on, and for some reason it made me feel very happy.’
    â€˜You don’t think you were dreaming?’
    â€˜Oh, no. This wasn’t like a dream at all. I could still feel the wind and I could still hear the woman calling, “Edwina!” The diamond shapes flew all round my head like clouds of butterflies, and they guided me across the room toward the door.
    â€˜I opened the door. Outside there was a flat white desert that looked as if it stretched for miles and miles. I could see diamond-shaped mountains on the horizon, and bushes with diamond-shaped leaves. I went through the door, and I started to walk, and all the time the diamond patterns kept fluttering all around me.
    â€˜The singing died away, and after that the desert was completely silent. I felt as if I was walking for hours and hours, although I couldn’t have been. After a while I saw a small figure walking toward me. It was a woman, wearing a dark rusty-colored cloak. She came up to me and laid her hands on my shoulders. Her cloak had a big floppy hood, so that most of her face was hidden, but I could see that she was smiling, in a sad sort of way.
    â€˜She said, “I’ve been waiting for you, Edwina. I’ve been waiting for somebody for so many years. I want you to tell Mrs Pennington that I’m still here.” I asked her who she was, but all she did was take a small sapphire ring off her finger and give it to me. “She’ll know,” she said. But then she said, “You should hurry away now, it can be very dangerous here.” She turned and pointed toward the horizon. I could just see dozens of black shapes, running toward us. They looked like a pack of wolves.
    â€˜The woman took hold of my hand and led me back to the door. We seemed to get there in no time at all. It was so strange: the door stood in the desert with nothing around it at all, just a door. But when she opened it, we stepped back into the empty room. The old lady said, “God bless,” and she kissed her fingertips and touched me on the forehead, I’ll never forget that. Then I went back through the wallpaper and there I was, standing in my bedroom again. It was seven o’clock in the morning and it was just beginning to grow