toads alive after all. This hideous thought tormented her. It was awful to think of toads—or anything—being boiled alive. She had never slept alone before. Suddenly she was frightened. How the window rattled. It sounded terribly as if somebody—or something—were trying to get in. She thought of Ilse’s ghost—a ghost you couldn’t see but could hear and feel was something especially spooky in the way of ghosts—she thought of the stone dogs that went “Wo—or—oo—oo” at midnight. A dog did begin to howl somewhere. Emily felt a cold perspiration on her brow. What had Caroline meant about the rest of them sleeping well in their graves? The floor creaked. Wasn’t there somebody—or something—tiptoeing round outside the door? Didn’t something move in the corner? There were mysterious sounds in the long hall.
“I won’t be scared,” said Emily. “I won’t think of those things, and tomorrow I’ll write down all about how I feel now.”
And then—she did hear something—right behind the wall at the head of her bed. There was no mistake about it. It was not imagination. She heard distinctly strange uncanny rustles—as if stiff silk dresses were rubbing against each other—as if fluttering wings fanned the air—and there were soft, low, muffled sounds like tiny children’s cries or moans. They lasted—they kept on. Now and then they would die away—then start up again.
Emily cowered under the bedclothes, cold with real terror. Before, her fright had been only on the surface—she had known there was nothing to fear, even while she feared. Something in her braced her to endure. But this was no mistake—no imagination. The rustles and flutterings and cries and moans were all too real. Wyther Grange suddenly became a dreadful, uncanny place. Ilse was right—it was haunted. And she was all alone here, with miles of rooms and halls between her
