by Brian Lumley
I waved a fluttery hand, croaked something unintelligible, tried to warn her. But my tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth and the words wouldn’t come. “Gurk!” was the only thing I managed to get out. And that too late for already she’d popped the thing into her mouth. Jeremy’s eye—but not his glass eye!
Oh, and what a horror and a madness and an asylum then as she bit into it! Her throat full of chocolate, face turning blue, eyes bulging as she clawed at the bedclothes going “Ak—ak—ak!” And me trying to massage her throat, and the damned pot leg kicking its way across the floor towards me, and that bloody nightmare glass eye wobbling there for all the world as if its owner were laughing!
Then…Angela clawed at me one last time and tore my shirt right down the front as she toppled off the bed. Her eyes were standing out like organ stops and her face was purple, and her dragging nails opened up the shallow skin of my chest in five long red bleeding lines, but I scarcely noticed. For Jeremy’s leg was still crashing about on the floor and his eye was still laughing.
I started laughing, too, as I kicked the leg into the wardrobe and locked it, and chased the eye across the floor and under Angela’s dressing-table. I laughed and I laughed—laughed until I cried—and perhaps wouldn’t have sobered yet, except…
What was that?
That bumping, out there on the landing!
And it—he—Jeremy, is still out there, bumping about even now. He’s jammed the windows again so that I can’t get out, but I’ve barricaded the door so that he can’t get in; and now we’re both stuck. I’ve a slight advantage, though, for I can see, while he’s quite blind! I mean, I know he’s blind for his glass eye is in here with me and his real eye is in Angela! And his leg will come right through the panelling of the wardrobe eventually I suppose but when it does I’ll jump on it and pound the thing to pieces.
And he’s out there blind as a bat hopping around on the landing, going gurgle, gurgle, gurgle and stinking like all Hell! Well sod you Jeremy Johnson Cleave for I’m not coming out. I’m just going to stay here always. I won’t come out for you or for the maid when she comes in the morning or for the cook or the police or anybody.
I’ll just stay here with my pillows and my blankets and my thumb where it’s nice and safe and warm. Here under the bed.
Do you hear me, Jeremy?
Do you hear me?
I’m—not—coming—out!
