What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1960) by Henry Farrell

Author:Henry Farrell
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Mysteries & Thrillers, Horror, Classic
ISBN: 9781455546756
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 1991-01-01T11:00:00+00:00

12

Bands of sunlight fanned out wanly from either edge of the heavy drapes, and Blanche knew by their short reach that it was still morning.

In her fright she had lost track of time there in the darkness and now she had no idea how many days had passed since she had been locked in the room, how long it had been since that first awful moment when she had regained consciousness and found herself trussed up on the bed. After the first day when she realized Jane had started drinking and that she might be held captive indefinitely, she had begun to hover, it seemed, in some teeming, panic-filled middle distance, in some desperate walled-in place where time and space and light would never penetrate. She had felt almost disembodied, curiously cut loose even from her own animal senses. Now that she was free again, it was all so strange, so mixed up.

Her head lolled on the pillow, and again her eyes closed. Then, suddenly, her lips parted as if to cry out, and in her mind there was a terrible vision, a vision of someone standing in an open doorway.… But almost instantly it was gone again, forgotten. She sighed and drew her hand down across the pillow. She was too tired to think about anything, too weak, and she’d had quite enough of nightmares for a long, long time.

Aware, then, that she had moved her hand, she opened her eyes again with a quick thrill of pleasure. She had forgotten that her hands were free and that she could move them. She moved her hand again, savoring the feel of it sliding across the fabric of the pillow. Turning her head so that she could look at her hand, she flexed her fingers and smiled at the accomplishment. Dry twigs, she thought, twigs within which life still stubbornly stirred.

Hope, she supposed, was the thing which had sustained her in that first awful day of imprisonment. And hope was the thing she had lost when she had let herself drift off into the limbo of unknowingness. Now, like the life ebbing back into her stiffened fingers, hope had begun to return to her. And then she had a memory of Jane sitting there in the lamplight, her face so close—so sad and lost. Her gaze moved beyond her hand and caught a glimpse of the glass on the table and the bit of water that remained in it.

Remembering that she had spilled some of the water before, she reached out to the glass with both hands and wrapped them carefully around it. At the same time she tried to lift herself up slightly so that she could drink more safely and comfortably, but the effort was too great for her, and after only a moment she was forced to relinquish her hold on the glass. Her breath coming harshly from this exertion, she fell back and closed her eyes. At the same moment, however, she heard the sound of approaching footsteps, and she looked up in bright alarm.

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