Soft, suppressed sighs, as if they meant sadness, or pain. He was sure he could hear somebody sighing, or breathing. His parents were sleeping right down at the other end of the corridor, and that meant safety was two doors and thirty feet away, across a gloomy landing where an old grandfather clock ticked, and where even in daytime there was a curious sense of solitude and suffocating stillness. " Daddy," he said, but the word came out so quietly that nobody could have heard him. His pulse raced silently and endlessly, a steeplechase of boyish terror that ran up every artery and down every vein. He strained his eyes and his ears in the darkness, looking and listening for the slightest movement, the slightest squeak of floorboards. He froze, not daring to breathe, his eight-year-old fingers clutching the candy-striped sheet right up to his nose. He woke up during the night and he was sure there was someone in his room.
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