Rustle in the Closet

"There is something in my closet," said Amelia. "It's going rustle, rustle, rustle."

Her dad stopped in the doorway with the bedtime book. "Is there?"

Amelia sat up with her blanket around her shoulders. She wanted one thing. She wanted to go to sleep, and she could not do it with a rustle in the room.

"Go and look," she said.

"You come too," said Dad.

They stood by the closet door. Rustle, rustle, rustle.

Amelia knocked. "Who's in there?"

The rustling stopped. Then it started again, a little faster.

"Maybe it wants me to go away," said Amelia. She said it in her biggest voice. "Go away, rustle!"

Rustle, rustle, rustle. It did not go away.

So Amelia tried something different. She did not say a word. She put her ear against the door and held her breath.

Rustle. A tiny scratch. Then a little squeak, like a shoe on a clean floor.

"That's not a big sound," whispered Amelia. "That's a small one."

She opened the door just a crack. Her bottom shelf held the basket of dress-up clothes. It was empty, and the shelf beside it was bare. But in the corner, on the floor, lay her old paper bag from the shoe store.

The bag was wobbling.

Amelia knelt down. She tipped the bag over, very gently.

Out walked a round grey hedgehog. It blinked at her. It had a bit of tissue paper stuck on one prickle.

"Oh!" said Amelia. "You were making a bed!"

Behind the hedgehog was a little nest of crumpled tissue, soft as a cloud. The hedgehog had just been fixing it.

"It's cold outside," said Dad softly. "I think he came in through the garden door."

Amelia fetched her warm sock and laid it in the nest. The hedgehog climbed on. He turned around once, twice, three times.

Then, rustle, rustle, rustle, he went quiet.

Amelia listened. Under the dark hush of her room, she could hear him breathing, slow and small.