Castle on the Edge by Douglas Strang Page B

metal.
    Mary frantically yelled out, “Oh please, come in before it crashes.”
    “Let’s get off this now before the whole thing collapses, Dudley.”
    “I’m right behind you, Doctor.”
    Mister Dudley and I jumped back inside. It seemed like five minutes before the reverberation of the shaking and scraping diminished into silence.
    I took hold of my composure and said, “That was a close one, eh, Dudley?”
    “You’re telling me, Doctor Ramsey.”
    “Oh, Alex, I didn’t know it was so unstable. You see, that time when I opened the door, I only looked out there; I didn’t actually step on it. I’m so sorry. That goes for you too, Mister Dudley; If I had only known how…”
    “It’s not your fault, Mary, you weren’t aware of its condition; how could you be?” I said reassuringly.
    Then Mister Dudley added, “Never you mind, Miss Holden; the important thing is we’re all okay.”
    Then a thought occurred to me. Before I opened the door, the connecting latch bar was in place; which meant the door was locked from the inside. I had to slide it open, which meant whoever was in this room making the thump and drag sound, couldn’t have exited out onto the balcony because there would have been no way to slide it back in place from the outside, unless there was an accomplice in the room. However, nobody was in here when we broke in, not to mention the fact, we certainly would have felt the shaking of the feeble floorboards and heard the clanging and scraping of the rickety rail, if someone were moving around out there on the balcony. Even if our Houdini could have done it without making a sound, how would he have gotten off the balcony since there was nothing within reach, between it and a hard concrete landing three stories below?
    Nevertheless, someone was in this room prior to our entry, we all heard the noise.
    Then Mary said, “There’s nothing more we can do here. I think we should go back to the recreation room with the others and stay together in there.”
    “You’re right, Mary,” I agreed. “Let’s go.”
    The consuming blackness with its deafening silence, somehow seemed even more pronounced as Mary, Mister Dudley and I left Mister Strutmire’s room. We were making our way to the stairwell at the end of the hall and about half way there, Mary whispered to me, “Wait.”
    “What is it, Mary?”
    “There’s something here, Alex, something’s here, on this floor, watching us. I can feel a presence.”
    Then Dudley said, “Oh, look, look down there, right by the stairwell, can you see them, Doctor Ramsey? I don’t even need my torch on them. But look. Eyes, two cold black eyeballs, with their whites, glowing in the dark. Devil’s eyes, they are.”
    Then Mister Dudley dropped the flashlight and made the sign of the cross. He started to shake ferociously, so I picked up the light and shone it at the stairwell, there was nothing there.
    Mary looked at me intensely and said in a soft hypnotic tone, “We’re being swallowed up, Alex, slowly but surely, swallowed up…in the darkness.”
    I felt as though the floor were dropping under my feet. This can’t be really happening. It’s all a bad dream, I thought to myself. “Mary, tell me it’s all a dream.”
    “It’s not a dream, Alex; it’s a nightmare, a collective nightmare.”
    “We had better get back to the rec. room, Mary. Come on.” “Dudley…Dudley? Dudley? Where’s Mister Dudley?”
    “I don’t know, Alex. He must have wondered off while we were talking.”
    “That’s absurd; he’s got to be around here. Dudley? Dudley? Dudley? “ “For God’s sake, man, where are you?” I continued to frantically call for Mister Dudley, but it was all in vain. The python of darkness had apparently swallowed him up too. Then I started to feel my own consciousness draining out of my body, like water being pulled down a hole to the bowels of the earth. I was at a point where I could hardly move. It was an effort to take a step. Then I