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The Witching Hour

Sophie couldn't sleep

A brilliant ap in the curtains It was shining right on to her pillow

The other children in the dormitory had been asleep for hours

Sophie closed her eyes and lay quite still She tried very hard to doze off

It was no good The h the room on to her face

The house was absolutely silent No voices came up from downstairs There were no footsteps on the floor above either

Thebehind the curtain ide open, but nobody alking on the pavement outside No cars went by on the street Not the tiniest sound could be heard anywhere Sophie had never known such a silence

Perhaps, she told herself, this hat they called the witching hour

The witching hour, somebody had once whispered to her, was a special rown-up was in a deep deep sleep, and all the dark things ca and had the world to themselves

The hter than ever on Sophie's pillow She decided to get out of bed and close the gap in the curtains

You got punished if you were caught out of bed after lights-out Even if you said you had to go to the lavatory, that was not accepted as an excuse and they punished you just the same But there was no one about now, Sophie was sure of that

She reached out for her glasses that lay on the chair beside her bed They had steel ri withoutthem She put them on, then she slipped out of bed and tip-toed over to the

When she reached the curtains, Sophie hesitated She longed to duck underneath them and lean out of theto see what the world looked like now that the witching hour was at hand

She listened again Everywhere it was deathly still

The longing to look out beca she couldn't resist it Quickly, she ducked under the curtains and leaned out of the

In the silvery e street she kneell seemed completely different The houses looked bent and crooked, like houses in a fairy tale Everything was pale and ghostly and milky-white

Across the road, she could see Mrs Rance's shop, where you bought buttons and wool and bits of elastic It didn't look real There was so dim and misty about that too

Sophie allowed her eye to travel further and further down the street

Suddenly she froze There was so up the street on the opposite side

It was so black

So tall and black

So very tall and very black and very thin

Who?

It wasn't a human It couldn't be It was four times as tall as the tallest huher than the upstairs s of the houses Sophie opened her mouth to scream, but no sound caht

This was the witching hour all right

The tall black figure was co very close to the houses across the street, hiding in the shadowy places where there was no ht

On and on it ca in spurts It would stop, then it would ain