The Piper by Danny Weston

was simply the awful dream that had spooked him and yet, he felt with a nagging certainty that whatever that music was, it was something bad. And he remembered the faraway look on Daisy’s face the first time she’d heard it. When she’d said how much she liked it …
    He groped around in the dark until he found the matches, and after a couple of unsuccessful attempts he managed to get the candle alight. He took up the holder, threw aside the covers and headed for the door, wincing at every creak of the floorboards beneath his bare feet. He unlatched the door and peeped out onto the top landing, which looked decidedly forbidding in the uncertain light of the guttering candle. He walked slowly towards the stairs, keeping the flat of one hand in front of the flame, terrified of it being blown out and finding himself standing in total darkness. Only now did it occur to him that it would have been wiser to put the box of matches into his pyjama pocket and he thought about going back for it, but the sense of foreboding in him deepened, so he started down the rickety stairs, placing one foot in front of the other as quietly as he could manage.
    He reached the first-floor landing and angled round to start along it. He stopped to listen for a moment. In one of the rooms on this floor, somebody was snoring, a low, rumbling sound that seemed to resonate on the air. Mr Sheldon, perhaps? Outside, that infernal music continued to play, repeating the same phrase over and over again, with a maddening intensity. Then he heard the other sound. The rattling of metal against metal, as though somebody was shaking a length of chain and now he was sure that it was coming from Miss Sally’s room. But he stopped at Daisy’s door. He lifted an arm to grasp the handle and turned it. The door creaked slowly open.
    The cold hit him instantly. He was aware of his breath clouding as it left his mouth. Why was it so cold in the room? The rest of the house didn’t feel like this.
    He stood in the doorway, looking around, horribly aware of the flame of the candle he was holding reflecting in scores of watching glass eyes. The dolls. Then he noticed that the huge bed in the centre of the room was empty and his heart skipped a beat; but almost instantly he relaxed when he saw Daisy kneeling up on the window ledge, staring intently out into the night. The window was open, the night air stirring her hair, but she seemed oblivious to it. Peter entered the room and closed the door behind him. He set down his candle on a table and turned back to Daisy. Now he saw to his surprise that so engrossed was she with whatever it was she was looking at, she seemed to be unaware that she was crushing a couple of Sally’s valuable dolls beneath her knees.
    ‘Daisy?’ whispered Peter. ‘What are you doing out of bed?’
    She didn’t seem to hear him. She kept her gaze fixed on whatever it was that had caught her attention. He took a step closer and spoke louder.
    ‘Daisy?’
    Now she turned to look at him and he felt his sense of unease deepen as he saw that she had a look of excited bliss on her face. She was smiling serenely at him.
    ‘Peter,’ she said, in that same dreamy tone he remembered from before. ‘Come and look. They’re here again.’
    ‘Who?’ he asked, but he knew even before he walked across to the window what he was going to see out there. And still he tried to reason with her. ‘At this time of night? You … you must be mistaken.’ He moved closer. ‘Daisy! Wake up!’
    She seemed to snap out of her dreamlike state, but she stayed where she was at the window, staring down at something he couldn’t yet see. ‘Come and look!’ she repeated triumphantly and pointed. Peter followed the line of her finger.
    He felt a cold chill shudder through him, because she was right, she’d been right all along, he could see them out in the mist-shrouded garden, three ragged figures, all girls. They were quite a way off and they appeared to be dancing,