Sweet Dreams by William W. Johnstone Page B

bath and gone to bed. However, both of her parents had inquired about her health. They were a little concerned about this unusual behavior on her part.
    â€œI’m fine,” she told them. “Just a little tired, that’s all. It’s been a really . . . interesting day.”
    Too much sun, the mother and father concluded.
    But sleep would not come to Heather. Her mind was too busy, too full of the horrible scenes she had witnessed. She tossed in her canopied bed and tried to will sleep to come, but the arms of Morpheus would not embrace her.
    A noise just outside her open window brought her upright in bed, her heart pounding, fear making her mouth cotton-dry.
    She waited silently, but the noise was not repeated.
    Finally, she lay down, her eyes wide open. The button eyes of the teddy bears and the glass eyes of the dolls sitting in neat rows on shelves across the room, seemed to glare at her, a different kind of light in their dead eyes.
    Or were they dead?
    Heather stared at the neat rows.
    The dolls and teddy bears stared back.
    One blinked its eyes. Then another.
    Heather closed her eyes. “No way,” she whispered into the darkness of the room. “I’m dreaming.”
    As she opened her eyes, a toy soldier was standing up, pointing a toy rifle at her. Heather ducked just as the rifleman fired. She screamed. But no footsteps sounded on the hall outside the bedroom door.
    She smelled gunsmoke. She looked at her pillow. Faintly revealed by the pale glow of the night light was a tiny black hole in the white pillowcase.
    Heather heard a clicking sound. She looked at the toy soldier. He was pulling back the hammer on his musket. Heather jerked up the pillow and threw it at the toy. The pillow struck the soldier, knocking it backward, then covering it with its soft bulk.
    The dolls and teddy bears continued to blink and stare at her.
    The noise came again from outside her bedroom window. Something was definitely moving out there. She didn’t know what to do.
    She thought about slipping under the covers and pretending this was all just a bad dream. But she knew it wasn’t.
    She considered getting under the bed. Then the story Marc had told her about something under there waiting to grab you came to her mind.
    Marc, why did you tell me that?
    Then the night light went out, plunging the room into darkness, the only illumination coming from the street lamp on the corner. Wild panic struck Heather and she screamed as loudly as she could.
    But her parents did not come to the door. The house was as silent as death.
    Don’t think about that! Heather’s mind screamed silently.
    â€œYeah, really!” Heather muttered.
    She jumped out of bed and ran to the door. But it was locked. Locked! How could that be? There wasn’t any lock on her bedroom door . . . but it was locked.
    She ran back to the bed and jumped into the middle of it. She looked around as laughter filled the bedroom. Her clown doll was laughing and dancing and spinning around.
    â€œStop it!” Heather screamed.
    The wild, frenzied laughter grew louder. The clown doll spun around and around.
    The face of the mask came to her in the darkness of the room. She could see the cruel mouth, the twisted nose, the wild insane eyes.
    Something brushed against the side of the house. Heather looked at the open window. The street lamp suddenly went dark. Heather experienced almost a mindless numbing fear.
    A silhouette fell across the bed. A deformed shadow vaguely manlike. Heather froze in the center of the bed, her heart pounding with fear. Her eyes swung to a strange glow materializing in the yard. The light was round and oddly jagged around the edges. The man moved away from her window and Heather watched him walk toward the light. She slipped from her bed and crouched by the open window, wondering what in the world was going on and if she were really asleep and dreaming all this?
    But she knew she was wide awake.
    The man stood