A Cabinet of Creepy Stories

At 2:16 in the morning, Alice woke because something behind her was breathing.

For several seconds, she lay still and listened.

The sound came through the wall at the head of the bed, close enough that she could hear the slight catch at the end of each breath. It was slow, shallow, and careful, as though whoever was making it did not want to be heard.

Simon lay beside her with his back turned, one hand tucked beneath his pillow. His breathing was deeper and uneven in the way it always was when he slept. Alice knew its rhythm. She had fallen asleep to it for years.

This was not Simon.

She stared into the dark until the room began to separate into familiar shapes. The wardrobe stood beyond Simon’s side of the bed, its brass handles catching a faint thread of light from the street. A shirt hung from one of them. Near the floor, the open mouth of a half-unpacked box showed a few pale folds of clothing.

Nothing moved.

The breathing stopped.

The silence that followed seemed to gather around her.

“One,” it said.

The voice came from directly behind Alice’s head.

It was low and dry, with no clear age or sex. She did not hear the word travel across the room. It seemed to pass through the plaster and into the headboard, leaving a faint vibration against the base of her skull.

Her body tightened beneath the blanket.

She wanted to turn around, although there was nothing behind her except the wall. The urge was so strong that she had to press her cheek deeper into the pillow to keep still.

Several seconds passed.

Another breath entered the wall, farther to her right.

“Two.”

This time it spoke from directly behind Simon.

Alice turned her head toward him. His eyes remained closed, but something in his face had changed. His jaw was tight, and the hand beneath his pillow was curled into a fist.

She reached for his shoulder.

Before her fingers touched him, something began to move behind the plaster.

The sound was faint at first, little more than a roughness beneath the paint. Then it deepened into a slow scrape that passed behind Simon’s head and continued toward the corner beside the wardrobe.

Alice drew her hand back.

Whatever was moving did not travel smoothly. It seemed to pull itself forward, stop, then drag the rest of its weight after it. With each movement, a soft pressure trembled through the headboard.

A hard pulse beat against the inside of her throat. She reached toward the bedside lamp, desperate for the clean certainty of light, but Simon’s hand closed around her wrist before she found the switch. His eyes were open. He was not looking at her. He was staring at the wardrobe.

“Don’t,” he whispered.

Alice felt his pulse through his fingers. It was racing. He did not release her wrist or look away from the wardrobe. The small tremors in his hand told her he had heard it too.

For several seconds, nothing happened. Then the shirt hanging from the wardrobe lifted at the hem. It remained suspended, as though pinched between two fingers. When it fell, the wardrobe door eased open behind it. A dry whisper crossed the carpet, each patch of fibres flattening in sequence toward the bed.

It was coming toward the bed.

Alice tried to draw her knees closer, but Simon’s hand tightened in warning. She forced herself to remain still as the sound reached the foot of the mattress.

The springs gave beneath a slow, gathering pressure. At first, the bed dipped only slightly between their feet. Then the hollow deepened. The blanket pulled tight across Alice’s ankles, drawing the fabric toward a shape she could not see.

Cold spread over her toes. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from making a sound. The pressure shifted to Simon’s side.

One section of the mattress sank near his feet, followed by another near his knees. The movement continued upward in measured stages, each impression forming before the last one lifted, as though something were climbing over him on its hands and knees.

Simon’s body stiffened beneath the blanket. The mattress lowered beside his hips. His breath escaped in a thin, unsteady stream through his nose.

Alice watched the fabric flatten over his stomach. Something rested there. The weight increased until his body sank deeper into the bed, the springs compressing beneath him with a soft metallic complaint. Simon’s fingers dug into Alice’s wrist, but he did not turn his head or close his eyes.

The next hollow appeared over his chest.

The blanket tightened across his ribs. His chest tried to rise beneath it, failed, then rose again in a shallow movement that made no sound.

Alice lifted one hand from the sheet, but it stopped above Simon’s chest. There was nothing to seize, only the tightening blanket and the empty air pressing him deeper into the mattress.

She could only watch.

An impression formed beside Simon’s shoulder, narrow and deep, followed by another near his head. The pillow compressed as if something had placed its weight beside his face.

A damp breath moved across his cheek.

Simon closed his eyes.

The skin below his ear pressed inward, dented by something Alice could not see. The pressure travelled slowly along his jaw until his lips parted.

Another breath came, deeper this time.

It hovered above his open mouth.

Alice felt Simon’s pulse change beneath her fingers. The frantic rhythm slowed, each beat arriving farther apart than the one before.

The mattress sank on either side of his head.

Whatever had climbed onto him was leaning closer.

Simon’s chest rose suddenly beneath the blanket, filling far beyond the depth of an ordinary breath. His back arched against the bed, and his mouth opened wider as air entered him in one long, trembling pull.

The breath entering him had the same slow, shallow catch as the one Alice had heard inside the wall. Only now it was coming from Simon.

The pressure vanished.

Every hollow in the mattress released at once. The springs lifted, the blanket loosened, and the pillow returned to its shape. Simon’s hand slipped from Alice’s wrist and fell between them.

The room became completely still. Alice stared at him, waiting for his chest to move again. For several seconds, it did not.

Then Simon inhaled. There was a slight catch at the end of the breath.

His fingers moved against the sheet, one after another, curling and straightening as though he were testing them. His shoulder shifted. Slowly, with the smoothness of something being pulled beneath the covers, he rolled toward her.

His eyes opened before his face had fully turned.

The pupils were small and fixed despite the darkness. The brown around them had faded to a pale, cloudy gray, and one eye found Alice a moment before the other.

Then Simon smiled.

It began at the corners of his mouth, uncertain at first, as though the expression had been remembered but never practiced. His cheeks lifted. Fine lines gathered around his eyes in a perfect imitation of warmth.

The smile kept widening.

His face tightened around it, the skin pulling higher over his cheekbones as his lips drew farther back from his teeth. It continued after any human smile would have stopped, exposing every tooth from one side of his mouth to the other.

“Three” he said.