She started cautiously just a few steps, but at least they had begun to move. The other three, in close formation, followed. At the foot of the stairs they stopped; listened. There was not a sound. The daylight filtering in through a stained-glass window at the first landing cast eerie shadows and even made the girls’ faces take on a sickish pale color.
Dorothy put her hand on the worn old stair rail and slid it up ahead of her as though to pull herself after it. A deep indentation checked the sliding hand and acted like a brake.
Then Terry, growing a little braver, deliberately went up a few steps, and in this fashion, by starting and stopping every second or two, and listening, cautiously they reached the first landing.
There they halted. But only for a second, for something drew them on; some power they could not resist urged them up almost against all reason, until they were on the second floor of the weird old house.
There the hall ran the length of the house. All furnishing was gone from the hall except an old dusty chest that stood in a dark, dingy corner.
Rooms were on either side of the passage, but the doors were all closed except one. Somehow Dorothy felt this was The Room. But to look in would be another matter. What was in there? Nothing at all or——?
They must find out. The old adage, “safety in numbers,” came back to Dorothy. She motioned to the other frightened girls. They crept forward on tiptoe.
Now in line with the opened doorway, Dorothy forced herself to look in. She saw a large square room with shuttered windows through which the morning light barely seeped in splintered blades. There was the bed.
The bed! That dreadful possibility!
How could she look? No longer brave, she shut her eyes. Her buzzing head seemed not to belong to her. But the next moment, of its own accord, it turned again to that dreadful resting place. A deep sigh, a gasp, from one of the girls behind Dorothy startled her further, and she could delay no longer. She opened her eyes.