Gwendy's Magic Feather

19

GWENDY PULLS THE BLANKET over her chest and gives the box one last look before turning off the bedside lamp. Earlier in the evening, after brushing her teeth and washing her face, she placed the button box on the dresser next to her jewelry tray and hairbrushes. Now, she’s wondering if she should move it closer. Just to be safe.

She reaches out to turn on the light again—but freezes when she hears the creak of a door opening on hinges that need oiling. She immediately recognizes the sound. It’s her closet door.

Unable to move, she watches in terror as a dark figure emerges from inside the walk-in closet. She tries to bark out a warning—Stop, I have a gun! I’m calling 911!; anything that might buy her a little more time—but realizes that she’s holding her breath. Suddenly remembering the button box on the dresser, she yanks off the thick blanket and scrambles across the bed.

But the intruder is too fast.

He lunges at her, strong arms grabbing her around the waist and wrestling her back onto the bed. She screams and flails at her attacker, clawing at his eyes, ripping off the ski mask he’s wearing.

Gwendy sees his face in the glow of the television and gasps.

The intruder is Frankie Stone—somehow alive again and looking exactly as he did almost twenty years earlier on the night he killed her boyfriend—baggy camo pants, dark glasses, and a tight tee-shirt, wearing that stupid grin of his, greasy brown hair staining his shoulders, shotgun pattern of acne scattered across his cheeks.

He flips her over and pins Gwendy against the mattress, and she can smell the stale, alcohol-tainted foulness of his breath as he hisses, “Give me the box, you dumb bitch. Give it to me right now or I’ll eat you alive”—and then his jaws yawn open impossibly wide and the world goes dark as Frankie Stone closes his mouth and engulfs her.