Psycho Thrill--Tell-Tale Twins by Robert C. Marley

Author:Robert C. Marley [Marley, Robert C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-3-7325-4760-9
Publisher: Bastei Entertainment
Published: 2015-09-17T00:00:00+00:00

7

That night, Poe lay awake for hours nursing gloomy thoughts. He had just fallen asleep when he was awakened by a scratching at the door. It was the middle of the night. Poe rubbed his eyes and looked sleepily toward the cabin door. Moonlight shone weakly through the porthole.

Krrzzschht! Krrzzschht!

It sounded as if a dog were scratching at the cabin door.

Poe threw back his covers and sat up. Poised on the edge of the bed, he strained to hear in the darkness. “Taylor?”

Nothing.

Perhaps it was a dream and the scraping had been nothing more than the ship’s rolling on the unquiet sea and the constant pounding of the piston engines, all tangled together in his subconscious mind. He was about to lie down again when he heard the scratching again. Louder now.

Krrzzschht!

It sounded like fingernails (or the sharp claws of a dead cat with a broken spine) scraping over the wooden cabin door. And he could hear a child’s soft laughter.

Now he was wide-awake.

Krrzzschht!

This was no dream. He heard it quite clearly. For a moment there was silence. Then the soft, bell-like laughter of a child returned, followed by small, dainty steps that seemed to disappear down the corridor.

Again, silence. Not more than half a minute later, something heavy suddenly hit the door and shook it. Then the knob turned; Poe’s keys in the lock fell jingling to the floor and the door swung open.

Poe was overcome with fear. He stared at the now-open cabin door. Gradually, a child’s white face became visible in the dark shadows beyond the door. The child was deathly pale, with black eyes. Smiling and giggling, she came into the cabin. Her white shroud was blowing in the draft from the open door; black hair clung to her head like seaweed.

Oh God, it is the girl who was brought on board in the coffin, he thought in horror. She was not dead! She was buried alive …

“You should not exisssst!” said the girl, in a voice that seemed to roll like thunder from the depths of her small body. “You don’t belongggg here! It isn’t right! You should not exisssst!”

The child was incredibly fast. In a flash she was at Poe, threw him back on the bed, and jumped on him. She seemed to have superhuman strength. Like a nightmare, she perched on his chest, clasped his wrists, and pressed them down alongside his head on the bed. In the girl’s left eye he could clearly see a thin, black worm writhing.

The girl let out a giggle.

The beeper! It lay on the bedside table. With one hand, Poe tried to get the child off him while he fumbled with his other hand for the small apparatus. If he failed to reach it, all was lost. He had already touched it with his fingertips, but this only pushed the beeper further away. For an endless moment it teetered on the edge of the little table, then toppled, and fell to the floor.

Like a black, shiny tongue, the worm suddenly shot from the mouth of the girl, whose face had twisted into a malicious grin.

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