Figures of Fear: An anthology Read Free

the floor to slide inside it.
    He was sure that when the house was very quiet, and there was no traffic in the street outside, he could hear the dressing gown breathing , in and out, with just the faintest hint of harshness in its lungs. It was infinitely patient. It wasn’t going to drop down from its hook immediately and go for him. It was going to wait until he was so paralysed with terror that he was incapable of defending himself, or of crying out for help.
    He had tried to hide the dressing gown by stuffing it into his wardrobe, but that had been even more frightening. He could still hear it breathing but he had no longer been able to see it, so that he had never known when it might ease open the wardrobe door and then rush across the bedroom and clamber up on to his bed.
    Next he had tried hanging the dressing gown behind the curtains, but that had been worse still, because he was sure that he could hear the curtain rings scraping back along the brass curtain pole. Once and once only he had tried cramming it under the bed. When he had done that, however, he had been able to lie there for less than ten minutes, because he had been straining to hear the dressing gown dragging itself out from underneath him, so that it could come rearing up beside him and drag his blankets off.
    His school blazer was almost as frightening. When it was dark, it sat hunched on his chair, headless but malevolent, like the stories that early Spanish explorers had brought back from South America of natives with no heads but their faces on their chests. David had seen pictures of them in his school books, and even though he knew they were only stories, like Sticky Men were only stories, he also knew that things were very different in the dark.

    In the dark, stories come to life, just like puppets, and dressing gowns.
    He didn’t hear the clock in the hallway downstairs chime eleven. He was asleep by then. His father came into his room and straightened his bedcover and affectionately scruffed up his hair. ‘Sleep well, trouble.’ He left his door open a little, but he switched off the landing light, so that his room was plunged into darkness.
    Another hour went by. The clock chimed twelve, very slowly, as if it needed winding. David slept and dreamed that he was walking through a wood, and that something white was following him, keeping pace with him, but darting behind the trees whenever he turned around to see what it was.
    He stopped, and waited for the white thing to come out into the open, but it remained hidden, even though he knew it was still there. He breathed deeply, stirred, and said, out loud, ‘Who are you?’
    Another hour passed, and then, without warning, his dressing gown dropped off the back of his bedroom door.
    He didn’t hear it. He had stopped dreaming that he was walking through the wood, and now he was deeply unconscious. His door was already ajar, but now it opened a little more, and a hunched brown shape dragged its way out of his bedroom.
    A few moments later, there was a soft click, as the door to his parents’ bedroom was opened.
    Five minutes passed. Ten. David was rising slowly out of his very deep sleep, as if he were gradually floating to the surface of a lake. He was almost awake when something suddenly jumped on top of him, something that clattered. He screamed and sprang upright, both arms flailing. The clattery thing fell to the floor. Moaning with fear, he fumbled around in the darkness until he found his bedside lamp, and switched it on.
    Lying on the rug next to his bed was Sticky Man, staring up at him with those round, unblinking eyes.

    Trembling, David pushed back the covers and crawled down to the end of the bed, so that he wouldn’t have to step on to the rug next to Sticky Man. What if it sprang at him again, and clung to his ankle?
    As he reached the end of the bed, and was about to climb off it, he saw that his dressing gown had gone. The hook on the back of his bedroom door had nothing