Page 103 of The Stranger in Room Six
‘The time is 12.43 a.m.’
Such a clever invention!
Mabel tries to get back to sleep but it’s no good. Something feels wrong. She can sense it. Perhaps it’s just the wind.
Then she jumps. What’s that sliding noise? It’s as if a drawer is opening somewhere, a rustling sound.
‘Who’s there?’ she whispers.
Silence. Is she having one of her bad dreams again? Mabel pinches herself. No. That hurts, and pinches don’t hurt in dreams, do they?
There’s a creak and a shuffle.
Mabel sits bolt upright. That sounds like a floorboard. Mabel knows the creaks of these floors well. Hadn’t she herself crept from room to room back in the days when she’d listened in on Clarissa?
‘Who’s there?’ she repeats, this time with a catch in her voice.
Nothing.
It must be her imagination, she tells herself, or perhaps the temperature. Floorboards make noises when it’stoo hot or too cold and this place can get so stuffy even at night. Old people need to be warm, and the heating is always on high.
There’s another creak.
Mabel feels her pulse racing, her heart banging out of her chest. Then she remembers what Frannie taught her in case the Germans invaded. ‘Don’t look or sound scared.’
‘Reveal yourself,’ she demands. ‘Or I’ll take a pistol to you.’
She doesn’t have a pistol, of course, but the words capture a bravado that Mabel doesn’t feel.
Is that someone breathing? Mabel’s fingers fumble for the emergency alarm cord. Where is it? And why can’t she find the wall light switch? Then to her relief, her hand closes round the spiky hairbrush that she keeps by her bed so she can do the fifty strokes that Mama taught her all those years ago before the bombs came.
Then with all her might she throws it out into the darkness. There’s the sound of it hitting something, followed by a grunt.
‘Don’t you fucking do that to me,’ growls a voice.
Mabel can feel someone’s breath on her face.
‘Who are you?’ she asks, trying to keep her voice steady. Something Frannie once said comes into her head again. ‘Stand up to evil.’
But what if you were evil yourself? Has Mabel’s comeuppance finally arrived?
‘You don’t need to know my name,’ replies the voice. ‘I’m not going to harm you, provided you give me what I want. Where are you keeping the list?’
That bloody list again.
‘I don’t know about any list,’ she says.
‘I don’t believe you.’
The breath is right above her now.
Frantically, Mabel fumbles in the dark for the emergency cord again. Where is the damn thing?
‘If you don’t give it to me right now, I’ll –’
Thank God! She’s finally found it. The alarm is ringing, siren-like, along the corridor.
‘Fuck you, Mabel Marchmont,’ snarls the voice. ‘I’ll be back. You’ll see.’
