Aberrations Read Online Free

nothing behind her but the undisturbed darkness of the hall.
    She listened for a moment to the creakings and moanings of the old house, and to the muffled sounds of sea and wind from outside. No human sound in all of that, yet the feeling persisted that if she listened hard enough, she would catch a voice….
    She could make out another dim light from the other end of the hall, behind the stairs, and she walked toward it. Her shoes clacked loudly on the bare wooden floor of the back hall.
    It was a nightlight that had attracted her attention, and near it she saw that a door stood ajar. She reached out and pushed it farther open. She heard May’s voice, and she stepped into the room.
    “I can’t feel my legs at all,” May said. “No pain in them, no feeling at all. But they still work for me, somehow. I was afraid that once the feeling went they’d be useless to me. But it’s not like that at all. But you knew that; you told me it would be like this.” She coughed, and there was the sound in the dark room of a bed creaking. “Come here, there’s room.”
    “Aunt May?”
    Silence—Ellen could not even hear her aunt breathing. Finally May said, “Ellen? Is that you?”
    “Yes, of course. Who did you think it was?”
    “What? Oh, I expect I was dreaming.” The bed creaked again.
    “What was that you were saying about your legs?”
    More creaking sounds. “Hmmm? What’s that, dear?” The voice of a sleeper struggling to stay awake.
    “Never mind,” Ellen said. “I didn’t realize you’d gone to bed. I’ll talk to you in the morning. Good night.”
    “Good night, dear.”
    Ellen backed out of the dark, stifling bedroom, feeling confused.
    Aunt May must have been talking in her sleep. Or perhaps, sick and confused, she was hallucinating. But it made no sense to think—as Ellen, despite herself, was thinking—that Aunt May had been awake and had mistaken Ellen for someone else, someone she expected a visit from, someone else in the house.
    The sound of footsteps on the stairs, not far above her head, sent Ellen running forward. But the stairs were dark and empty, and straining her eyes toward the top, Ellen could see nothing. The sound must have been just another product of this dying house, she thought.
    Frowning, unsatisfied with her own explanation, Ellen went back into the kitchen. She found the pantry well stocked with canned goods and made herself some soup. It was while she was eating it that she heard the footsteps again—this time seemingly from the room above her head.
    Ellen stared up at the ceiling. If someone was really walking around up there, he was making no attempt to be cautious. But she couldn’t believe that the sound was anything but footsteps: someone was upstairs.
    Ellen set her spoon down, feeling cold. The weighty creaking continued.
    Suddenly the sounds overhead stopped. The silence was unnerving, giving Ellen a vision of a man crouched down, his head pressed against the floor as he listened for some response from her.
    Ellen stood up, rewarding her listener with the sound of a chair scraping across the floor. She went to the cabinet on the wall beside the telephone—and there, on a shelf with the phone book, Band-Aids, and light bulbs was a flashlight, just as in her father’s house.
    The flashlight worked, and the steady beam of light cheered her. Remembering the darkness of her room, Ellen also took a light bulb before closing the cabinet and starting upstairs.
    Opening each door as she came to it, Ellen found a series of unfurnished rooms, bathrooms, and closets. She heard no more footsteps and found no sign of anyone or anything that could have made them. Gradually the tension drained out of her, and she returned to her own room after taking some sheets from the linen closet.
    After installing the light bulb and finding that it worked, Ellen closed the door and turned to make up the bed. Something on the pillow drew her attention: examining it more closely, she saw that