Legacy Of Terror

watching her through two inches of solid oak!
    She leaped back, too terrified even to cry out. She might as well have been a mute, for her lips moved and her throat worked without producing a sound.
    The blade withdrew.
    And came back.
    It worked up and down the tiny slit where the door met the jam, clicking audibly against the mechanism of the lock. She realized, then, that the killer had not seen her, but was merely trying to spring the lock with the blade.
    She leaned closer to the door now and said, in a small voice which sounded utterly unlike her, “Who is it?”
    The blade continued to work.
    “Who is it?” This time, she hissed the request louder.
    The blade stopped.
    It withdrew.
    Silence…
    “Are you still there.”
    More silence.
    She waited what seemed like hours, though only ten minutes passed according to the bedside clock. Even with her ear pressed to the door, she could not hear anything in the corridor beyond.
    Had he left?
    Should she open the door and see?
    As if in warning, the thunder's greatest rage returned, smashing the stillness of the air. In its booming voice, she seemed to hear it cautioning her against unlocking the door.
    She retreated to the bed and sat on the edge of the rumpled sheets, leaning against the old-fashioned footboard. Aware that the danger might not yet have passed, she fixed her gaze on the oaken door.
    Long minutes passed, and her mind rambled over dozens of memories, as if seeking escape from this ugly moment. She recalled her first look at the Matherly house from the road and the first premonitions of unpleasantness which had possessed her. She remembered, earlier than that, graduation from the University Hospital and the eagerness with which she had packed to leave the dormitory for this job and a new future. And before that: the orphange, the changing nurses and house mothers, the children she had rarely gotten along with. Before that: the social workers bringing word of the accident, trying to break the news of her parents' deaths with the least amount of nasty detail…
    Abruptly, she looked up, aware that she had drifted into sleep, slumped against the footboard in an uncomfortable position.
    At the door, the intruder was working the knife in the jam again, intent on springing the lock.
    She required all her strength to rise up and go to the door and lean against it while he worked, trying to hear some other telltale sound. All she could hear was his heavy breathing which only frightened her more. He sounded like some sort of crazed animal.
    “Go away,” she said.
    The knife stopped moving but remained thrust through the crack.
    “Go away.”
    He said nothing.
    “I never did anything to you,” she said.
    For a moment, she felt as if she would go mad herself, driven into insanity by the simplest of things:
    -the silence, deep and foreboding;
    -the persistent wind, howling at the windows, pressing on the glass and driving the rain like fingers on the panes;
    -the sound of her heart, pounding so fiercely and so loudly that it must surely burst;
    -the gleaming blade of the knife, still most of the time but now and then jiggling as his hand twitched…
    Minutes passed as if they were cast of lead and given a minim of life, crawling minutes that eventually brought a withdrawal of the knife blade from the door. And then, thank God, the passing minutes also brought the sound of his footsteps as he retreated down the hall. He walked quietly and was soon gone.
    She almost laughed, but managed to choke the urge down. She was afraid that, if she once gave in to laughter, she would be unable to stop. She was on the edge of hysteria.
    She went back to the bed and crawled onto it and began to lift the sheets to wrap around her. But she saw that was no good. She dare not fall asleep again this night, lest the killer have another change of heart and come back after her. “I never did anything to you,” she said to him. And he had been satisfied with that, apparently. But he might not remain satisfied for very long.
    Her hands were sweating. She wiped them on her pajamas.
    Her mouth was as dry as sand, but she was afraid even a glass of water would make her ill.
    Twenty minutes later, she found herself standing in the middle of the room, swaying back and forth, staring at nothing, thinking of nothing. For a third of an hour, she had lost track of the world, slipped into a self-protective shell.
    That was dangerous.
    She shook herself, figuratively and literally, and she angrily berated