Three knocks in quick succession, the sound of impatient knuckles on wood.
The knocking dragged Gertrude from the sleep that had almost claimed her, from the images whirling at its borderland. Images of happy, carefree days long ago and far away, under a blue, Latin-American sky. Images of when she was younger. Images of the time with him.
Her hand gripped the bedsheets. The beating of her heart pounded in her throat.
Who could that be, knocking at my door in the middle of the night?
The only illumination in her bedroom came from a thin line of yellow stretching across the ceiling—light from one of the streetlamps outside. It entered, unbidden, through a gap in the old shutters.
She listened into the darkness.
The tick-tock of the clock in the sitting room counted the seconds, unforgiving as time itself.
The impatient whirr of a revving engine in the night outside tapered as its driver headed out of town.
The faucet in the kitchen dripped as it always did.
Did I dream the knocking?
Her hands relaxed their grip on the linen.
Another three knocks, slightly louder this time.
No, it wasn't a dream.
She huffed. Someone was about to be given a piece of her mind—a piece with barbs on it.
Trying to ignore the ache in her hips, she untangled herself from the intimate clutch of the bedsheets and rose. When she set her feet on the carpet, a familiar pain in her left knee added to her discomfort.
Growing old sucks!
Not her usual choice of words—that was something her thoughtless nephew would say.
The nephew, at least, still had a marriage to hold on to and a fine spouse to watch his steps—while her own reckless, unwatched feet took her to the hallway. It was dark there, darker than a black cat in a sack, but she knew every nook and corner of the place by heart. Her fingers traced the coarse fabric of her winter coat hanging against the wall as she approached her apartment door.
Her bare feet registered the change of texture when she reached the rough rug that was placed before it. A gift from her late husband, decades ago. A hand-woven runner—not that it had done any running lately, or ever.
The spyhole was a vicious pinprick of light in the blackness before her, light from the dim lamps of the staircase outside. Holding her breath, she peeked through it.
Ah, that one.
She shook her head. What would this person want from her in the middle of the night? She hesitated and considered returning to the warmth and simplicity of her bed. But curiosity had taken hold of her, and there was only one way to satisfy it.
Curiosity made her reach for the door—curiosity and the urge to punch the unbidden guest's nose with a couple of harsh words.
The handle felt cold as she pushed it down. Light spilled through the cracks opening along the doorframe. As she was about to pull it open, the door was urged towards her, shoving her away—with a violence that took her by surprise.
YOU ARE READING
The Egg at Dumstreet
Mystery / Thriller[Completed] A U.S. expatriate is cast into a rainy, foggy corner of Europe. He went there on the pretense to work on his research, but he actually wanted to put as many miles as possible between himself and his ex. The university he works for has fo...
