re: Need to Kill Time: What's a story that you've heard that still gives you chills

quote:

---

THE DREAM

Lucy Morgan was an artist. She had spent a week painting in a small country town and decided that the next day she would move on. She would go to a village called Kingston.

But that night Lucy Morgan had a strange dream. She dreamed that she was walking up a dark, carved staircase and entered a bedroom. It was an ordinary room except for two things. The carpet was made up of large squares that looked like trapdoors. And each of the windows was fastened shut with big nails that stuck up out of the wood.

In her dream Lucy Morgan went to sleep in that bedroom. During the night a woman with a pale face and black eyes and long black hair came into the room. She leaned over the bed and whispered, "This is an evil place. Flee while you can." When the woman touched her arm to hurry her along, Lucy Morgan awakened from her dream with a shriek. She lay awake the rest of the night trembling.

In the morning she told her landlady that she had decided not to go to Kingston after all. "I can't tell you why," she said, "but I just can't bring myself to go there."

"Then why don't you go to Dorset?" the landlady asked. "It's a pretty town, and it isn't too far."

So Lucy Morgan went to Dorset. Someone told her she could find a room in a house at the top of the hill. It was a pleasant-looking house, and the landlady there, a plump, motherly woman, was nice as could be. "Let's look at the room," she said. "I think you will like it."

They walked up a dark, carved staircase, like the one in Lucy's dream. "In these old houses the staircases are all the same," Lucy thought. But when the landlady opened the door to the bedroom, it was the room in her dream, with the same carpet that looked like trapdoors and the same windows fastened with big nails. "This is just a coincidence," Lucy told herself.

"How do you like it?" the landlady asked.
"I'm not sure," Lucy said.
"Well, take your time," the landlady said. "I'll bring up some tea while you think about it."

Lucy sat on the bed staring at the trapdoors and the big nails. Soon there was a knock on the door. "It's the landlady with tea," she thought.

But it wasn't the landlady. It was the woman with pale face and the black eyes and long black hair. Lucy Morgan grabbed her things and fled.

---