The Dead Gentleman by Matthew Cody Read Free Book Online

light.”
    Jez kept her weight on the door, but whatever it was that she’d trapped was pushing back, and it was surprisingly strong. Her arms were shaking with the effort and her mouth had gone dry. Her tongue tasted of metal, of adrenaline.
    “Eww! I’m crushing, I’m breaking,” said the thing in the door. “Get the shade! Pull the shade and we’ll have her!”
    There was a scurrying then, as something ran on short legs around the outer edge of her room. It was keeping to the shadows, avoiding the light of the window, hopping over her laundry basket and scampering over her desk. A cup of pens went spilling over the edge and onto the floor, rolling across the hardwood floor like the rattling of bones.
    The little creature was almost to the open window shade. One tug on the dangling cord would smother the outside light behind thick vinyl, leaving Jez in nearly total darkness.
    Jez gave the closet door one last, strong kick—eliciting a satisfying squeal from whatever was trapped inside—and made a lunge for the desk lamp. Her knee banged against something hard as she skidded and slid on the spilled pens littering the ground. On her hands and knees now, she crawled across the floor. The way suddenly went dark as she heard the rip-cord sound of the window shade drawing shut, and then Jez was moving through blackness, feeling her way to where she prayed her desk was.
    The little creatures began to giggle as she heard the thump of plump bodies landing on the floor, accompanied by the pounding of little feet and the smacking of lips and chomping of teeth.
    Her hand found the desk leg just as something cold found her ankle. She kicked it off and pulled herself up, frantically feeling for the lamp switch.
    She heard the snap of tiny jaws as her sock was pulled halfwayoff her foot. Several clawed fingers pulled her pant leg up, exposing her skinny calf.
    She found the switch.
    There was a click, then a brilliant flash that left spots in her eyes. When they cleared, she was alone in her room. The shade was drawn, the closet door ajar and pens and pencils scattered along the floor. One sock had been stretched and twisted and now hung limply from her toes. Her left pant leg was hiked up to near her knee. But she was alone.
    She pulled herself to standing and grabbed the nearest heavy object—a soccer sportsmanship trophy that she didn’t deserve—and examined the innocent-seeming closet. She nudged the door aside with her foot while holding at the ready the marble base of her only trophy. She couldn’t stop shaking.
    Clothes and shoes. Solid walls and shelves. Nothing out of the ordinary, no more whispered voices. It was a closet, the same as it had been this morning and every other time she’d opened it.
    Maybe Jez was really losing her mind. Perhaps all this was just a continuation of the same delusion that had begun in the basement. First she was seeing ghost boys, and now she was battling monsters in the dark. But Jez knew herself better than that. She was not flighty, not prone to fantasies or daydreams.
Someone
had been in that basement today.
Something
had come out of that closet just now.
    She opened the bedroom door and peeked down the hall. Her father’s light was still on; she could see it beneath his bedroom door, but she could hear his snores even from here. He’d probably fallen asleep reading again.
    She gently closed her door and took a look around the room, surveying the damage. A few broken pencils, her desk chair wasoverturned, but not much else. She wouldn’t be turning off her light tonight, that was for sure, but nevertheless there was something that needed doing right away. The window shade was hung between two unused curtain rods and was easily removed. As Jez rolled the vinyl shade up she looked approvingly at her newly bare, unobstructed window. The light of a thousand New York street lamps and neon signs shone down upon her bed, and it would never go dark again.
    She stowed the rolled-up