Dangerous Objects Under The Bed.

A stair creaked; someone’s foot must have caused it. My breath stopped in my chest.

I lay silent, not moving a muscle. If I didn’t make a sound, the intruder would not know I lay in my bed, petrified.

Time passed; no one came. I breathed out and fell asleep.

A knock on the door came at the time of night when no one should be knocking on the door. I crept into the hall, peered through the spy hole, and gasped.

A man wearing a balaclava stared back at me. Sinister in the darkness. I rushed to shut the kitchen window, then called my neighbour. “There’s someone out there!”

“Don’t worry, Dave will go out and take a look.”

“Tell him to be careful.”

“He’s gone out whistling.” She laughed.

The man in the balaclava had gone. An optical illusion, perhaps?

I came home, opened the front door, and heard a loud thud upstairs. With no one home, a thud became suspicious. I told the same neighbour whose husband had looked for the man in the balaclava, and she entered, marching up the stairs without an ounce of fear. No one is there. It must have been the wind. Inside?

In the summertime, the painter and decorator arrived one morning, unusually quiet. He went straight to work…