The Ankle Snatcher

Her mother had tucked her in and left the door ajar. Usually the landing light was left on but now she was a “big girl”, she knew her mother would turn the light off before going down the stairs. She hated the light being turned off. She hated the dark. The dark was where The Lady lived.

Sarah was lying on her back with her face turned to the door, dreading the click that signalled the dark. She gripped the pink duvet cover in her hands and pulled it up to her chin so that she could cover her face if The Lady appeared. The Lady was scary. She had never seen The Lady but she knew what she looked like. And she knew what happened to the boys and girls that The Lady snatched.

The Lady was one of the Ankle Snatchers. She knew that. She knew that when you were “big” and you had to turn your own light off, the Ankle Snatcher would reach out and grab your ankle, pull you under the bed and eat you up if you didn’t get to your bed quick enough. But that didn’t mean that in the meantime, the Ankle Snatcher couldn’t come and look at you, size you up and see how big you were getting.

Sarah had never been afraid of monsters under the stairs or in the wardrobe. She knew they didn’t exist. The only ones that existed were the ones under the bed, the Ankle Snatchers, and her Ankle Snatcher was The Lady.

Sarah knew that, despite never having seen her, The Lady was quite small for an adult, smaller than her Gran. She had a long, thin face with a nose that hooked cruelly down to the thin, blood red lips that covered badly stained teeth. The Lady’s eyes were heavily hooded and a pale, watery blue, with large bags under them. The cheekbones stuck out, sharply tapering to a wickedly pointed chin and she had long, dirty grey hair that fell in greasy tangles to her thin, bony shoulders. Unlike Sarah’s Gran, The Lady was all sharp edges and long thin limbs. Except for her hands. The hands were different.

Sarah had seen The Lady’s hands but not on The Lady. She had been at the zoo and they had been in the bird garden when she saw them. The vultures were sitting on branches, bobbing their heads up and down, eyeing up Sarah and her parents. That was when she had seen The Lady’s hands. Sarah had never known how to describe The Lady’s hands before but now she knew that they looked just like the feet of a vulture but with four fingers and a thumb. The zoo assistant had pointed out the long talons on the vultures foot that the birds used for tearing meat and Sarah knew instantly that that was how The Lady grabbed you; she reached out and dug her long talons into your skin so that you couldn’t get away as she pulled you under the bed and into the underworld where she had a big pot ready and waiting.

Sarah’s squeezed her eyes shut as she heard the click of the landing light being turned off. She didn’t want to see The Lady. The Lady would stand there, taking deep wheezing breaths trying to get Sarah’s scent to see if she was ready to eat. She would smile and show those stained, tombstone teeth, eyeing her greedily all the time. And then she would laugh in the same way that Mutley from the cartoons laughed but there would be nothing funny about it. The Lady was evil and she had an evil laugh.

Sarah didn’t want to sleep with the light off. She knew The Lady was coming to check on her. She knew it, could feel it in her bones and she would go and turn the light on if she could reach it but she was scared of putting her feet on the floor, scared of having those long talons wrap themselves around her ankle and pull her under the bed. She was shaking slightly now and she knew she was close to tears. She could almost smell The Lady’s fetid breath and all she wanted was her mummy. Sarah screamed.