Emily of New Moon

by L. M. Montgomery

Emily followed Caroline through the back hall, through the kitchen, through the front hall, up the stairs, down a long hall, through a long side hall. Where on earth was she being taken? Finally they reached a large room. Caroline set down the lamp, and asked Emily if she had a nightgown.

“Of course I have. Do you suppose Aunt Elizabeth would have let me come without one?”

Emily was quite indignant.

“Nancy says you can sleep as long as you like in the morning,” said Caroline. “Good-night. Nancy and I sleep in the old wing, of course, and the rest of us sleep well in our graves.”

With this cryptic remark Caroline trotted out and shut the door.

Emily sat down on an embroidered ottoman and looked about her. The window curtains were of faded pink brocade and the walls were hung with pink paper decorated with diamonds of rose chains. It made a very pretty fairy paper, as Emily found by cocking her eyes at it. There was a green carpet on the floor, so lavishly splashed with big pink roses that Emily was almost afraid to walk on it. She decided that the room was a very splendid one.

“But I have to sleep here alone, so I must say my prayers very carefully,” she reflected.

She undressed rather hastily, blew out the light and got into bed. She covered herself up to her chin and lay there, staring at the high, white ceiling. She had grown so used to Aunt Elizabeth’s curtained bed that she felt curiously unsheltered in this low, modern one. But at least the window was wide open—evidently Aunt Nancy did not share Aunt Elizabeth’s horror of night air. Through it Emily could see summer fields lying in the magic of a rising yellow moon. But the room was big and ghostly. She felt horribly far away from everybody. She was lonesome—homesick. She thought of Old Kelly and his toad ointment. Perhaps he did boil the toads alive after all. This hideous thought tormented her. It was awful to think of toads—or anything—being boiled alive. She had never slept alone before. Suddenly she was frightened. How the window rattled. It sounded terribly as if somebody—or something—were trying to get in. She thought of Ilse’s ghost—a ghost you couldn’t see but could hear and feel was something especially spooky in the way of ghosts—she thought of the stone dogs that went “Wo—or—oo—oo” at midnight. A dog did begin to howl somewhere. Emily felt a cold perspiration on her brow. What had Caroline meant about the rest of them sleeping well in their graves? The floor creaked. Wasn’t there somebody—or something—tiptoeing round outside the door? Didn’t something move in the corner? There were mysterious sounds in the long hall.

“I won’t be scared,” said Emily. “I won’t think of those things, and tomorrow I’ll write down all about how I feel now.”

And then—she did hear something—right behind the wall at the head of her bed. There was no mistake about it. It was not imagination. She heard distinctly strange uncanny rustles—as if stiff silk dresses were rubbing against each other—as if fluttering wings fanned the air—and there were soft, low, muffled sounds like tiny children’s cries or moans. They lasted—they kept on. Now and then they would die away—then start up again.