Haunted by Dorah L. Williams Read Free Book Online Page A

thought I now understood why that had been.
    When Matt came down for breakfast we shared our idea with him. We fully expected him to happily agree to the new arrangement.
    â€œI don’t want to leave my room,” he said, to our amazement.
    â€œMatt, remember how scared you were last night? Don’t you think it would be better if we just put you in another room, and then you wouldn’t have to worry about the attic door or anything else like that any more?” his father asked him.
    â€œI like my room the best. I want to stay there,” Matt pleaded.
    We were puzzled by his reluctance.
    â€œHoney, you can’t sleep in Daddy and Mommy’s room every night, and it seems like sometimes you’re scared in your bedroom. Wouldn’t you feel better sleeping in another one from now on? We can decorate it any way you like,” I coaxed.
    He shook his head again. He told us he never wanted to move and insisted he would not be afraid in his bedroom any more.
    â€œOkay,” Ted sighed. “You can stay there for now. But we don’t want to be awakened every night. If you keep getting scared in there, we’ll have to make other sleeping arrangements.”
    Matt seemed immensely relieved and ate his breakfast contentedly while Piper sat by his side.
    That night I was awakened yet again by our son’s cries. I rushed into Matt’s room and found him trembling under the covers. The temperature in his bedroom was freezing. I walked over to the radiator and touched its icy side and realized I would need to call a repair man. The heat from the furnace was obviously not reaching his room, although the rest of the house was quite warm.
    â€œWhat is it?” I asked him softly.
    â€œSomeone’s walking down the attic stairs,” he whispered. We sat together and listened but heard nothing. “It’s stopped now. But I heard footsteps walking down the stairs and stopping at the door,” he told me.
    I opened the door that led to the attic and turned on the light. Matt felt calmer upon seeing that no one was there. As I had done the previous night, I closed the attic door and ensured it was properly latched. Then I pulled his heavy wooden toy box in front of it. I showed Matt that it would be impossible for the door to be opened then as his toy box was blocking the way, and that seemed to remove all of his fear.
    â€œAre you okay now?” I asked, reluctant to leave him alone. He nodded sleepily and turned over. “Do you want to camp out in our room tonight?” I suggested.
    â€œNo, it’s okay now,” he said bravely, as I put an extra quilt over him to keep him warm.
    I went back to our room but found it difficult to rest. I kept straining my ears, listening for footsteps. I did not doubt what Matt had told me. We had all heard running footsteps on the main staircase, and I would be frightened, as Matt had been, if I heard them approaching my bedroom door late at night.
    During the days, the kids were happy, the dog was content, and our life seemed to be ideal. At night, however, the house seemed to take on an eerie quality, and I was finding it more and more difficult to sleep. I had never suffered from insomnia before, but I lay awake for hours, wanting to rest, but listening for sounds instead.
    Matt must have been tired as well because his sleep was often interrupted. Besides the recurrence of the footsteps on the stairway coming down from the attic, he also insisted that he had heard them in the hallway outside his room and on the stairs leading up from the foyer.
    One night, after he had called out and I went in to check on him, he told me he had seen something round floating near the ceiling with a long, thin tail hanging down all the way to the floor. He was unable to describe it properly. He said he had not seen anything like it before, and it had been a different shape from that of a person, but that was all he could tell me about it. He did not