The Man in the Curtain (Part IV)
The previous installment can be found here:
Sarah gagged as the space between her stomach and throat shortened. Every cell in her body screamed, “Run!”, but she remained frozen, transfixed by the pale, blind-eyed thing that was once a little girl now striding steadily towards her. Each step brought a drip, drip, drip from her dead rabbit as its twisted body spat blood onto the tiled floor.
As Annie — or this thing that was once Annie — stepped under the light of the foyer, Sarah caught a flash of movement in the moonlit square behind her. The curtains had danced, impossibly, as if caught by a wind that could not have been there. The window was closed.
Sarah opened her mouth, but the voice that came out was barely a shadow of her own, hushed and strained. “Annie? Annie wake up.”
The girlthing said nothing. It stared with blank eyes and held up the rabbit, then let it slip from her hands to splat on the tile in a wet spray. A wicked smile split Annie’s face in two.
“Your turn,” she said, the words tumbling like polished stones from her grinning mouth.
Sarah shrieked. She was running, she realized suddenly, but though her mind screeched, “Flee!”, the legs which carried her were pounding their way across the floor towards the waifish little thing smiling under the glare of the chandelier.
She caught Annie’s shoulders in a panicked grasp, shaking her violently. “Wake up! Wake up, Annie! Annie!” Her screams took on a primal quality, emanating from deep within her. Annie thrashed violently in her grasp, her smile never dropping. A cold, bloodstained hand curled around Sarah’s forearm. She froze.
Annie inclined her head, looking up at her with a face terrific and alien. “It’s your turn,” the girlthing said. “You have to play. He wants you to play.”
The curtain moved again behind her, unmistakable now. Framed in its folds, Sarah saw the shape of a man, tall and broad. It was only a moment, but it was there.
“We have to go,” she said, swollen tongue slurring the words as she rushed to get them out. “Annie, we have to get you out of here. Wake up!” Sarah’s hand slapped across the girl’s face. “Wake up!”
“I’ve given you something of mine.” A pale hand motioned to the dead rabbit, but the dead eyes remained fix on Sarah’s. “It’s your turn. Give me something of yours.”
That was enough. Sarah wasn’t sure what she was going to do — what she even could do — but she knew they had to leave. She huddled Annie’s frail little frame beneath her arm and scuttled across the tiles as fast as she could move. They cleared the foyer, entered the kitchen. Without releasing the girl, Sarah groped at the cutting board on the counter, where she had left a large, black-handled knife earlier, used to cut some extravagant, fragrant cheese that would only be in the home of a family as rich as the Andersons. She gripped the knife tight, praying she would not need to use it, that all of this was just some strange nightwalk delirium of a little girl. That she hadn’t seen that figure in the hallway, wreathed in moonlight and velvet drapery.
The lights clicked off with a severe suddenty.
Sarah’s knee barked painfully against something hard. She felt her feet go out from under her and then the hard, unforgiving tile knocked the breath from her lungs. Her grip on Annie was lost but the knife was still clutched deeply in her palm.
From out of the newfallen darkness, she heard the piercing giggles of a young girl.
“Time to play, time to play,” the thing that was Annie chattered in a perverse singsong.
Sarah groaned and pushed herself onto her knees. The room around her was dim, but not completely dark. The moon was near full and the windows in the living room were large. Still, she could not find Annie within this menagerie of shadow.
An invisible gust stirred the curtains which hung loosely about the windows. Impossible, again. They were closed. She knew they were, but the curtains moved all the same. She saw the manshape again, enveloped by the drapery which gave it form. It loomed and then was gone.
“Time to play,” Annie sang. “Time to play.”
And now Sarah saw her. Annie rose up before the window, backlit by the pale light of the moon. She rose higher. She was levitating, Sarah saw but did not believe.
None of this made sense. It wasn’t possible. She had just wanted some extra cash. It was only two more nights.
“Time to play,” the floating girlthing spoke unto her in a voice that was no longer Annie’s. “I have given you something of mine, now you give me something of yours.”
“Annie…,” Sarah pleaded. Her voice was weak. “Annie, I don’t understand. Please. Please, just wake up.”
“It is your turn,” the thing spoke without emotion.
Sarah was sobbing. Her knee throbbed. She looked at the girl, who she was charged with watching, protecting, suspended in moonlight. “I — I don’t know what you want,” Sarah choked out. “I don’t understand.”
“I gave you something of mine,” answered the girlthing. “Now you must give me something of yours.”
“I don’t have anything to give you!”
“Don’t you?” it asked and then split its smile further across its pallid face, invisible hooks tugging up on either side. “She gave you her pet. Don’t you have something here you can give to me?”
“No…,” Sarah said, suddenly following. The shape of the shadowman danced in the curtains beside Annie’s hanging body. “No. No, no I can’t. That’s not the same.”
“You said you would play.” Annie’s lips formed the words, but she was not speaking. “You can either give me what I want, or I can take it.”
There came a horrid scream, like ice across glass, as Annie’s back arched and her limbs splayed. Sarah covered her ears against the cries, gnashing her teeth as they pierced through regardless.
“Will you play?” the voice of the man in the curtain asked. Annie’s screams underscored his questioning.
“Yes!” screeched Sarah. “Yes! I’ll play!” She could think of nothing other than ending the little girl’s cries.
The room fell silent.
“Good. Come, then. It’s your turn.”
She didn’t know how she found her feet, but she did. Each step was heavier than the last. The girlthing watched her approach. The shadowman came and went with each unexplained gust that stirred the curtains.
The knife was heavy in her hand. The girlthing lowered itself. She saw Annie’s face now, young and pale and innocent.
“It’s your turn,” said a voice, but it didn’t come from the girl.
Sarah raised the knife. Tears made the moonlight shatter across her vision in a million directions.
She swung her hand, dimly aware of the way the blade caught the reflection of a man with no face as it descended. Its tip pushed through something solid…
The pain struck like lightning. She curled around it, her hand trembling on the knife’s handle as she drove it deeper into her own gut.
Sarah sunk to her knees. That impossible wind picked up all around her, swirling her hair about her face.
As she sank into darkness, she saw Annie’s face swim in front of her. Her eyes — her eyes — were blue and wide.
“Your turn, Annie,” a stranger’s voice, possibly her own but so very far away, said.
Before blackness enveloped her completely, Sarah heard Annie shouting. The wind collapsed inward. Glass shattered.
Nothing.
Dark.
No pain. No light.
No.
There was light. A pinprick.
It grew.
It was bright, now, coming at her. She could almost feel its warmth. It was widening and now she could hear the —
“Sarah? Oh my God, Sarah? Sarah!”
A familiar face filled her vision. It was her mother, she realized. That wasn’t right. The last thing she had seen was . . . what was it? Something odd.
Where was she now?
She was in a bed. Her family was there. There was a TV in the corner. Bright light streamed in through an open window.
It was a hospital room. She was breathing.
She was breathing and it was bright. That’s all that mattered to her now.
There were hugs and tears and laughter. They didn’t tell her everything, but she heard enough to spark the memory. She had survived an attack. She couldn’t feel much below her chest, but they said she would recover.
The girl had been okay, too. She was with her parents, who had apparently written some large check and paid for all of Sarah’s hospital bills.
She would care more about that later. Now, she was tired. She didn’t want to remember everything now. She didn’t want to talk. She just wanted to rest.
They left her to sleep as the sun gave way to stars.
Sarah sighed, relieved. She sunk into her bed and slowly closed her eyes.
Through a closed window, the night sky hung. In her room, warm and alone, Sarah drifted off as the curtains danced in an unseen wind.