Campbell Wood Read Online Free Page A

town sometimes gives me the creeps." He smiled suddenly, showing his white teeth. "I may even go back to the Bronx."
     
    L ater, in bed, with Ellen sleeping soundly beside him, her dark hair spread out like a shadowy halo around her pillow, Mark lay with his arm behind his head, staring out at the sinking yellow half moon. There were no window curtains yet to block the pure moonlight, and the half orb was perched just above one of the huge oaks, outlining its top branches sharply.
    Mark's eyes began to close, and in that time between sleep and waking, the distinct outline of a figure appeared, crouched in the crook of thick branches near the trunk of the tree. He could see no face, but he knew the figure was staring in at him.
    He started awake, but when he looked out the window in full wakefulness the figure had disappeared.
    He rose silently from the bed and walked to the window. There was nothing but the empty tree and the rest of the neighborhood. He could just make out the house across the street through the tree branches, and the houses to either side of it. A short, broken snake of cars lined both sides of the roadway, painted an eerie sharp gray by the moonlight.
    He yawned and turned back to bed, rolling over away from the window and putting his pillow over his head.
    Outside, something moved again.

3
     
    I n the dark, Kaymie came awake holding her breath.
    Something or someone was in the closet. There was a low but insistent knocking sound, as if someone were rummaging through a box of wooden blocks.
    She suddenly remembered the story her friend Clara from the Bronx had told her. Clara's father had left about ten years before, and one night after her mother put her to bed and turned out the light she heard a noise in the closet next to her. The door opened. There was a man in there; he'd broken into the apartment in the afternoon and had been hiding all that time, waiting for them to go to bed. Clara said he had a wild look on his face and had started to come toward her bed, but then her mother came in and screamed and the man ran out. She said her mother was shaking for two hours after that.
    The sound came again. A creaking, splintering sound now, but not loud enough for it to be a man. One of the cats? No—she'd seen both of them be fore she went to bed and the closet door had been closed then.
    A mouse? Kaymie could handle a mouse; she'd seen one once at her cousin's house on Long Island. It had gotten stuck behind the refrigerator in a trap. It was so little she'd cried for it.
    The first sound came again, like rattling blocks. Kaymie thought of screaming to bring in Mom and Dad, but for some reason she didn't. She was twelve now, had her own room for the first time in her life, and she didn't want to look like a baby over some sounds in the closet. It was probably just one of the cats who'd somehow gotten in there. She wanted to face whatever it was alone.
    If there was somebody in there, she could always scream when she found out.
    A scratch sounded.
    Then a creak like bending floorboards.
    "Is anybody there?" Kaymie called out in a loud whisper.
    Silence.
    "Come out or I'll scream."
    Silence. Then a scratch.
    Creak.
    Slowly, she slid her legs out from under the comforter and over the side of the bed. Her furry yellow slippers were there. She wiggled her feet into them, all the time keeping her eyes on the closet. There was a Snoopy nightlight in a wall socket across the room, next to the closet; it threw a circle of light against the wall and gave a dim, dreamy luminosity to the rest of the room. She'd be able to see right away if the door to the closet began to slide open.
    She stood out of bed, frozen in position, her slippered feet on the smooth linoleum floor, her eyes riveted like a rabbit's to the closet door.
    Scratch.
    Slowly, very slowly, she made her way across the room. The door to her bedroom was to the right; it was open a crack and she could see a sliver of hallway outside.
    So easy to run