Gray Blind 4

With one socked foot, Rachael pressed against the glass door tentatively, listening hard. Her eye was scanning the glass of the door, or the room beyond, perhaps; her eye kept being drawn to the misty gray form of the silver backed hairbrush--if that was truly what it was. Her imagination transformed it momently into other shapes--the rustling body of an infested, dead rat, a severed, dark hand; she willed herself into expecting a brush, but it kept shifting in her mind's eye.

After some effort, the magnetic seal released the door and it swung open a few inches.

She was holding her breath. It was strange to feel her heartbeat gallop as her lungs fell still. She tried to see around the edge of the door by willpower alone, to the object she fancied lay on the fleecy white rug. She thought she could hear maggots in their mid-gut commute.

She gave the door one more prod, which should have been enough to reveal that spot on the rug.

But something blocked the door--something that had not been there before.