He looked round. But Effie was not there. He could hear her footsteps in the room overhead. She had gone, then, before he had stopped playing, shutting the door without a sound. It must have been his imagination.
He played a few bars, then paused, listening. The sighing had begun again; it was close behind him.
He swung round sharply. There was nobody there. But the door, which had been shut a minute ago, stood wide open. A cold wind blew in, cutting through the hot, stagnant air. He got up and shut the door. The cold wind wrapped him in a belt, a swirl; he stood still in it for a moment, stiff with fear. When he crossed the room to the piano it was as if he moved breast high in deep, cold water.
Somewhere in the secret place of his mind a word struggled to form itself, to be born.
“Mother.”
It came to him with a sense of appalling, supernatural horror. Horror that was there with him in the room like a presence.
“Mother.”
The word had lost its meaning. It stood for nothing but that horror.
He tried to play again, but his fingers, slippery with sweat, dropped from the keyboard.
Something compelled him to turn round and look towards his mother’s chair.