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him. He wanted to clear
his throat just to make a sound, just to prove to himself that he
could still hear and that noise was still possible in this enclosed
little micro-universe of his. But he was too frightened to make a
noise, in case it aroused unwelcome attention. He could hear
nothing and yet he was certain there was something; something
silent out there in the room. Whilst he had been lying in terror,
his eyes had been slowly adapting to the darkness. He was torn
between, on the one hand, pulling the blankets over his head and
trying to get back to sleep and on the other, looking around the
room and making sure that everything was as it should be. Bravery
won out in the end and without moving a muscle he peered out across
the room and tried to make sense of the vague shadowy shapes he
could see. The room would have been scary at the best of times at
this time of night, but now… well, his heart was pounding inside
his chest so hard that he was convinced it was about to burst.
    After a couple
of minutes of intense scrutiny of the shadowy nether-world within
which he lay, he felt reasonably certain that everything was as it
should be and this calmed him, just a little. He dared to make a
very small sound in his throat and the reassurance of the familiar
noise settled him further. He had been lying on one side for so
long that he was feeling quite cramped and uncomfortable so he
flipped over onto his front and turning his head the other way, he
immediately felt his scalp crawl and his body go clammy with cold
sweat, but for several seconds he lay in almost total paralysis
whilst his wide staring eyes gazed in horror upon the image of two
bodies lying stretched out on the floor with another, half-seen
figure crouching over them. Suddenly, with a piercing yell, Ben
launched himself backwards away from the figures so violently that
he capsized the camp-bed and in his blind panic he couldn’t
coordinate his movements and ended up thrashing about in his
blankets helplessly, and with each passing second his dread built
as he imagined the crouching figure rising and moving towards him
and…. Finally he freed himself and with a cry of terror he made
straight for the door without a backward glance, whilst just behind
him, so he imagined, unseen and claw-like hands reached out towards
him grotesquely and silently.
    He ran, still
screaming, from the room and made straight for his parents bedroom.
At least such was his intention, but he came to a confused halt
where the stairs should be, for there were no stairs and underfoot
was nothing but rubble and broken glass. By now Ben was crying for
help at the top of his voice and running pell-mell, crashing
through shards of glass, through the door that hung from one hinge
and out into the garden. He ran down the lawn away from the house
and crouched in the bushes at the end of the garden sobbing in fear
and without any clue as to what he should do.
    The apple tree
was a towering and sinister presence looming close by and seemingly
growing larger and more frightening each time he looked at it, and
all the time the image of what he had seen so recently was
emblazoned on his mind. There had been two bodies lying side by
side on the floor with the unmistakeable figure of Mrs Smith
crouching over them. It had been dark, but he was nevertheless
quite certain of what he had seen.
    Ben crouched,
shivering, at the end of the garden for an indeterminate length of
time. He was exhausted, frightened and terribly lonely and he
wasn’t entirely sure that this wasn’t all just a terrible dream.
But, if it was, he had no idea when it would end, or how he should
end it. He had never been in a situation before, where his parents
couldn’t help him and he missed them terribly. He had an emptiness
inside him that longed for the succour of his mothers smiling face
and reassuring words.
    In due course
the suns’ first feeble tendrils cast upwards from the horizon and
the inky night sky was slowly