Slap! Another book read, another mystery solved.
"Good?" she muttered, not looking up from her whodunnit.
"Yes, I'll sleep soundly, now," I answered, leaning to turn off my nightlight.
She mumbled 'g'night' and I must have been asleep before hitting the horizontal. It seemed like only seconds later she was shaking me awake.
"There's somebody in our house!" she hissed. I was just about to tell her it was her imagination when something shattered downstairs.
I sloughed off the cobwebs of sleep and thrust on my slippers. I yelped, immediately thinking I'd been bitten, withdrawing both feet sharpish. The slippers, I noticed, were covered in shards of frost, sat like a pair of tiny islands amidst mist rolling across the bedroom floor.
I edged my feet into them, preferring to brace against their cold than tread barefoot through this undefined billowing mist.
"Stay here," I said, hopefully sounding braver than I felt.
I could see quite clearly despite no lights being on. This freezing fog was iridescent, frost twinkling like fairy lights in its depths.
Peeping over the bannister, I saw what had made the noise: the cold had seemingly shattered the mirror at the bottom of the stairs.
"Are you OK, Steve?" Jemima called.
"Yes," I answered, distracted, mesmerised. It was then I heard my name as if being called over a great distance. More peculiarly, it sounded like Jemima's voice. That couldn't be, surely?
When I turned back towards the bedroom, all I could see was fog. I must have fumbled about for hours, but eventually found my way back to the bedroom door.
I burst in, exclaiming, "You'll never guess what…"
I stopped dead. It was Jemima, but how she'd aged!
"Steve?" she croaked, "Is that really you? Where have you been?"
I only wish I knew.
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