The Pillow Friend by Lisa Tuttle Read Free Book Online Page B

She'd had so many headaches over the past few months, so many days when she was not to be disturbed, lying in her darkened bedroom, unhappy and as unreachable as if she were in another country. Although she'd been in a good mood all day, not enough time had passed for her family to relax and take her presence for granted again.
    Agnes went into the master bedroom and closed the door quietly behind her. In the dark, she held her breath as she eased open the closet door and then took the big step over the threshold, from carpet onto bare wood and into the unmistakably charged atmosphere, cool and quiet and filled with the grown-up smells of cotton and silk and wool and leather, lavender, shoe polish, aftershave and her mother's perfume. In that rich air she entered an exalted state, an intense excitement that was also profoundly peaceful. Surrounded by her parents' clothing, their personal possessions, she felt a secret access to their lives; unseen by them she could draw near, becoming closer to them than was normally possible. If she ever dared to take one of her mother's precious old dresses from its protective wrap and put it on she would know the things her mother knew, would almost be her mother. That was why her mother forbade her to touch them, and that was why, someday, she would have to disobey. She reached out and felt for the light cord, grasped it, pulled, and the light came on with a satisfying snick and golden glow.
    Brightly wrapped presents glittered at her from the shelves above her head, but even more interesting were the various shapes, not square but rounded or bulging, more than half-hidden by brown or white paper bags, or rough cocoons of tissue paper. She sighed with pleasure but made no effort to reach or touch them. She preferred the anticipation to knowledge. It was more fun to glimpse the mystery and tantalize herself with guessing than to know for certain what she would find on Christmas Day.
    She sat down and, as calmly as if this had been her own closet, these her own things, and hers the whole night to browse through them, picked up a shoe box and opened it. Ah, the red ones. She smiled as she stroked the smooth leather, then took them out and put them on the floor. She surveyed them, head cocked and forefinger laid along her cheek. “Well, I don't know. I like the color, but don't you have any with higher heels? What's in this box?”
    These were black patent leather. She lifted them out and set them beside the red ones. “Hmmm, yes, they are higher, but I don't know. . . . What else do you have?”
    She glanced around, hoping for a pair she hadn't tried before, shoes her mother had bought for some special occasion five or six years ago and kept unworn. There was one box half-hidden by others, pushed to the back. It looked promising, but when she took the lid off she was disappointed to see an old pair of brown moccasins—not her mother's usual style, although they looked well-worn. Then she noticed there was something else besides the shoes in the box, something wrapped in white silk. As soon as she picked it up, she knew.
    It took some time to unwrap him, for beneath the white silk scarf he had been swathed tightly, obsessively, in strips of crisscrossing black silk. When she finally had him uncovered Myles seemed smaller than she remembered, his colors faded, older, less special. It was hard to believe how important this dull, dead thing had seemed to her during the past summer.
    And yet he must be magic, he must be special: why else would her mother have stolen and hidden him away like this?
    Something slithered across her bare legs and she yelped and flinched and clutched the doll close to her chest. It was only the strips of black silk which had bound him, sliding off her lap. But how could they move by themselves? Were they magic? They might have been meant to deprive him of his life, and they might have succeeded.
    “Oh, Myles!” A wave of anguish, of love and regret, washed through