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Short Fat Stubby Finger Stories presents:

Episode 40

The light of the torch disappeared immediately.   For six whole seconds the entire room was enshrouded in silence … and the fear of the unknown to the unwelcome visitors.   This time it was the turn of the unwelcome visitor to feel the sweat on their neck and forehead.   Whoever was in the room with Rosetta’s unconscious body dared not make a noise … dared not move an inch.   They had no idea who was knocking on the door.   Nor did they know how many there were in the corridor.

Then the door slowly, cautiously, began to open inwards in the opposite direction to the partly opened bedroom door on the other side of the room causing an eerie glow in one end of the room as the incoming light slowly melded with soft, dull, light from the bed lamps … inch by unnerving inch.   Within half an unbelievably long. frustrating, terrifying second – one third of the room soon began to become flooded in brilliant light – the other two thirds still in total darkness.

Suddenly the silhouette of a solitary figure appeared in the doorway.    Whoever it was, to the unwelcome visitor it was but a dark shadow that entered the room, and once they closed the door behind them they became as much an invisible presence in the room as was the unwelcome visitor.   But the unwelcome visitor had no time for cordial greetings or explaining their presence in the room.   Their reason for being here was justified as far as they were concerned, but perhaps it would not seem that way to whoever it was that had just entered the room … and something had to be done about the situation immediately.

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“I’m here, Rosetta.   Are you in the bedroom?”    Joseph called out in a loud whisper as he gingerly made his way through the darkness to where he assumed the bedroom to be.   But the dull light was casting its extremely limited illumination to the opposite side of the room from where his feet were travelling, which was why, in the distorted semi-darkness of the room, he never saw Rosetta’s body lying on the floor only inches away from his feet.   And as a result he was not prepared for the fall that followed, otherwise he may well have been able to place his arms in a position that would have saved his head from the collision that eventuated.   The impact of his head as it crashed into the small table sent the vase and its contents hurtling across the room, smashing against the wall, spraying the water across the carpet … and leaving the flowers to survive in a crumpled heap on the floor.   The noise was so loud that nobody in the room would have heard the window as it was opened, nor would they have heard the sound of somebody scampering down to the ground below on the grapple hooked rope ladder attached to the wall beneath the window sill.

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The noise created by Joseph’s collision with the table, however, did catch the attention of the live-in maid, who, after finishing the last of her duties, was heading to her own room at the end of the hall to retire for the night.

Instinct told her that the raucous sound that had startled her was more than just an overzealous argument between guests, or the result of a drunk tripping over their own feet.  She quickly made her way back to the room and banged on the door.   Getting no response she took the risk of being considered to be an intruder and used her house key to enter the room.  As soon as she turned on the light she assessed the situation, forced herself to not scream, or throw up, and raced downstairs and barged into the office of a startled William Jones and his guest.

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