Page 40 of A Good Heart is Hard to Find
9
Somersaulting Backwards
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Booked in: woman-power horror from author Cass Leigh. Don’t we all sometimes want to do just what the heroine did to her unfaithful lover inNocturnally Yours?It’s just apity she had to die before she took her revenge!
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I stood in thick, tangible, muffling darkness, but far away at the end of the corridor a half-open door spilled a beckoning buttery pool of light on to the stone flags.
Half-open: or half-shut?
But sanctuary whichever it was, and my only hope of escape, though even as I started to run towards it I knew what would happen:every step forward instead sent me tumbling backwards like an acrobat into the waiting darkness.
Neat, slow and triangular, the somersaults always finished with an agile twist landing me face to face with the other door. The dark door. The door I reallydidn’twant to open.
This time was no different, and I stood helpless as myshaking hand was drawn inexorably to the handle, the bones lit frominside the skin like an X-ray.
Some dark, rancid fluid began to gather and ooze from the keyhole, dripping with echoing loudness on to the stone flags before reaching a viscous tentacle towards my bare feet …
‘Cassandra!’ shrilled a voice. ‘Cassandra!’
The octopus tentacle of filth jerked galvanically then started to retract – and suddenly I was free, cartwheeling away, round and dizzyinglyround, until I finally fell into a gasping heap and opened my eyes to the safe, warm, golden light.
A light bearing a striking resemblance to my bedside light: a happy glass sun with a smiley face.
Another face hovered over me, equally fair but far from sunny, and so incongruous that I knew I must still be asleep.
‘Jane?’ I muttered. ‘Were you in the cupboard? Scary!’
But sort of a relieftoo, because Jane’s a monster I can deal with. Turning over, I let my heavy eyelids close, the worst past, the demons all let out.
A skeletal hand banded with gold shook my shoulder.
‘Ouch!’ I screwed my eyes tighter shut. ‘Go away, Jane. You can’t frighten me, now I know it’s only you in the cupboard.’
‘Will you wake up, Cassandra?’ Jane snapped, and with a click the room was illuminated bythe bright ceiling light.
‘Jane?’
My sister hovered over me, her fair Madonna face distorted by a weasel snarl of exasperation unfamiliar to her many admirers, including probably her husband. I recognized it, though.
‘What on earth are you doing here?’ I sat up, feeling disorientated. ‘And how did you get in?’
‘If youwillleave the spare key in such an obvious hiding place,’ she said scathingly.‘I did ring, but obviously you were asleep. You seemed to be having a bad dream.’
‘I was somersaulting backwards.’
‘Still? I thought you’d have grown out of all that by now. Lots of children get put in cupboards for being naughty and they don’t grow up warped. Get over it.’
‘I thoughtyouwere the awful thing in the cupboard.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Maybe you really are, and this is still part of thebad dream?’ I suggested hopefully, closing and opening my eyes. But no, unfortunately she was still there, Fair, but set for Squally Weather. ‘Whatareyou doing here?’
