The man in her bed sat up. “What the devil is that infernal noise?”
“Nothing,” she muttered. “Go back to sleep.” He was an invalid. He couldn’t help. She was shaking. With rage, she told herself. And sick, desperate fear.
She reached for the frying pan she kept under the mattress and began to slide out from beneath the covers. Iron fingers gripped her arm. “Nothing, my foot. Where are you going with that? What’s the trouble?”
“It’s nothing,” she insisted. “Just someone trying to frighten me and the children.” He might be an invalid, but oh, just having someone there with her was comforting.
“How do you know?”
“It’s not the first time this has happened,” she said tersely, watching where the sounds were coming from.
Another unearthly howl shattered the night, and the scratching at the window started again, a slow, teeth-shivering shriek. The glass panes creaked under the onslaught.
“Is it back, Maddy?” a small, quaking voice whispered from the stairs.
Oh, God, the children . . .
John and Jane were halfway down the stairs, pale as ghosts, their little faces pinched and terrified. Yet heartbreakingly resolute. Facing dragons—real ones this time. With shaking hands, John gripped the hunting knife his father had given him. Jane also shook like a leaf, but she grasped a rolling pin in businesslike fashion.
Behind them on the stairs, Susan squatted, her arms around Lucy, who was sobbing quietly. Henry stood with his arms protectively around his sisters. An eight-year-old, trying to be a man.
Rage drove out the worst of Maddy’s fear. Children should not be driven to this. “Don’t worry,” she said in as firm a voice as she could manage. “He can’t get in. He’s just a nasty man trying to frighten us.”
“What if he breaks the glass?” Jane whispered.
“Then I’ll hit him over the head with this frying pan,” Maddy said fiercely.
The first few times their tormentor had come in the night, she’d been too terrified to move. She’d huddled with the children, waiting for the creature to break in, braced for a fight.
This was the fourth nocturnal visit but he’d never broken in. She wasn’t quite as frightened.
The window darkened and a face peered in. The children screamed. It was horrifying. He—or it—was faceless. The shambling figure wore a robe and hood, like a monk, but where his face should be was . . . nothing. Blank, white emptiness. It moaned, like something out of the grave, shrouded white fingers clawing at the glass on either side of the facelessness.
“It’s a trick,” Maddy said furiously. “He’s trying to frighten us, wearing something like gauze or cheesecloth over his face and using a hidden lantern. John, you did the same thing once at Halloween, remember? He’s not a ghost, just a beastly creature who thinks he can frighten us. Well, HE DOESN’T FRIGHTEN ME!” she shouted at the window. It was a lie. She was shaking like a leaf.
“There’s a gun in my bag,” Mr. Rider snapped. “Fetch it!”
She gave him a startled look. “A gun?”
“While he thinks you’re alone and unprotected, with only rolling pins and frying pans to defend yourself, he won’t be stopped. But if he thinks you have a gun . . .”
She ran to fetch the pistol.
“Take the children and wait upstairs,” he told her.
“No, this is my problem.” She wasn’t going to run and hide and let a sick man—a stranger—defend her. This was her home.
“It might ricochet.”
“Oh, I see.” She hesitated as suddenly the possibility of killing a man loomed. “I don’t mind if you wound him, but I don’t want him killed.”
“Why not?”
“Because I want to find out why he’s doing this. And if you shatter the window, we will freeze.”
He shrugged. “Very well. Now get those children out of the way.”
She grabbed a blanket and gathered the children together. They crouched on the landing, huddled together under the blanket, watching breathlessly.
