Chapter 3 - The Shadow by the Wardrobe
Sarah did not hesitate. Driven by pure, primal instinct, she lunged through the darkness toward the sound of the crib, sweeping her arms out to protect her sons. Her right shin cracked painfully against the low wooden frame of Toby's trundle frame, but she barely felt the bruise blooming. She scooped Toby up in one arm and draped her torso across the open top of the crib, her other hand instantly checking Brendan’s back. The baby was warm. He was breathing.
""Toby, hold onto my neck!"" she commanded, her voice vibrating with adrenaline.
The six-year-old wrapped his scrawny arms around her throat, burying his face into her hair. His weight was substantial, pulling Sarah off balance as she tried to reach down blindly for Brendan. But the nursery was no longer completely dark. The hallway light spilled through the ajar door in a narrow, pale trapezoid that cut across the floorboards.
Standing in the deepest shadow between the antique mahogany wardrobe and the nursery window was an outline. It was not a featureless shadow; it had bulk, height, and the stooped, brittle posture of an elderly woman wrapped in an oversized wool cardigan. The air around the wardrobe was visibly distorted, shimmering slightly like heat rising from asphalt, yet the temperature against Sarah’s bare ankles was freezing, cold enough to turn her breath into faint clouds of mist.
Sarah stood frozen, her hand resting flat over Brendan's back. ""Who is in here?"" she choked out, knowing full well the impossibility of the question.
The shape did not answer. Instead, the head tilted at a sharp, unnatural angle, almost resting against its own shoulder. A sound emanated from the darkness—the rhythmic, dry clicking of dentures slipping against gums. It was a nervous habit Evelyn had maintained for the last ten years of her life whenever she was displeased with someone’s housekeeping or Sarah’s choices.
""Get out,"" Sarah whispered, her maternal instinct overpowering the cold dread paralyzing her muscles. ""Get out of my house!""
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With sudden, violent speed, the door behind her slammed shut, cutting off the trapezoid of light from the hallway. Total darkness swallowed them whole. Toby let out a muffled sob against her shoulder, his arms tightening around her neck so hard it threatened to cut off her airway. From the center of the dark room, right above the crib, Sarah heard the soft, intimate rustle of silk fabric, followed by the unmistakable sound of an old woman singing a fractured nursery rhyme in a voice thick with phlegm and dust.
Sarah blindly shoved her shoulder forward, smashing into the nursery door and clawing desperately at the brass handle. It refused to budge; the lock was turned from the inside, jammed impossibly tight. Behind her, the soft singing abruptly stopped, replaced by the piercing, terrified scream of baby Brendan waking up.
