Post by Sally P (limebirdsally) on Jan 18, 2012 19:21:43 GMT
This is the first chapter of my new YA paranormal novel, “My weird inheritance.” I would really appreciate all honest feedback, be it positive or negative.
Thank you!
Sally (limebirdsally)
-1-
“Ha,” I cried, jumping up as Rob’s knuckles skimmed the surface of Grandpa’s antique table. I would have spared him his pride but he’d been so patronising about how someone as, ‘child-sized’ as me would never be able to beat him in an arm wrestle that obviously I had to prove him wrong.
He immediately argued. “No way did that touch!”
“Dyls?” I said, turning to Rob’s twin brother, Dylan for adjudication.
He looked Rob’s outraged expression and laughed. “Nah, leave me out of this one.” He shoved a handful of crisps in his mouth and made a big show of shrugging and pointing at his face.
A few strands of unkempt hair fell into his navy-blue eyes and I practically had to sit on my hands to stop myself from leaning over and gently brushing them out the way. Dylan thought he was really cool for never brushing his dark, wavy hair and I had to admit that the number of girls who’d asked me and Mel to find out if he might like them in the past month alone suggested he wasn’t the only one.
…I just wished I hadn’t become one of them.
No, I’d promised myself I wouldn’t even think about it. I quickly turned to the fourth person in our unconventional ‘family’.
“Mel?”
She was curled up on the old leather armchair, completely absorbed in our English set book. She spoke without looking up. “What?”
“Did I: a) just beat Rob in an arm wrestle or; b) just beat Rob in an arm wrestle?”
“We are sixteen, you know,” she commented, sparing me a brief smile to show she was only being partially condescending before returning to her book. Typical Mel, she’d nearly finished it already.
“Why are you bothering with that? We only have to read up to chapter two.” Obviously I had no intention of even reading that far. “Hey, why don’t you come and beat Rob at arm wrestling too.”
“You didn’t beat me!”
“It’s a good book. Anyway Rob’s been humiliated enough today.”
“She did NOT beat me!”
Okay, to be fair he had been messing around and let me push his arm over so it nearly touched and all I had to do was give it that last tiny push to the table, but that was his funeral.
“Has anyone seen the grandparents recently?” said Dylan.
It was a blatant attempt to change the subject, but I guess Mel had a point about me and Rob getting a bit old for the constant bickering, so I accepted it and thought back. “Not since Sunday…no, Monday morning.”
Three days wasn’t unusual though. The grandparents were always going away without telling us. People were never able to get their heads around how our three grandparents co-owned this house and we all lived together even though we weren’t actually related, (well apart from Dylan and Rob of course).
When you added that all four of us had been born within a couple of weeks of each other; all our parents died in the same car crash when we were babies; and we’d each been raised by our one surviving grandparent I guess even I could see it was a bit strange. But it was what we’d grown up with so it was normal to us.
My stomach made a huge growling noise and I remembered I was starving. I’d been about to suggest finding something for dinner when Rob started trying to wind me up. Mitya usually cooked something for us when she was around, but I hadn’t seen her since the beginning of the week either.
Mitya lived with us too, although she wasn’t related to any of us. She worked for the grandparents but I couldn’t tell you what they did. We were still waiting for the day they realised we were actually old enough to be trusted with the truth now, but I wasn’t exactly holding my breath.
“Anyone want to cook?” I asked, not holding out much hope for a positive response.
“Chip shop?” suggested Dylan, our default option when we had to get our own food.
“Not me,” I said quickly. It was raining like anything outside. The front room to our high-ceilinged house might have seemed dark and drafty, but with the fire blazing in the hearth it always felt cosy to me, unlike the October storm going mental outside.
“Let’s just order pizza,” said Rob.
“Cool.” Mitya always left money for us in the desk drawer. I was checking when we heard a scream. I looked at the others in surprise. It sounded as if it had come from the library, but I hadn’t heard the grandparents come in.
“That was Grandma!” cried Dylan.
We took the stairs up to the first floor two at a time and ran down the hall to the library. Rob tugged on the door knob, but it was locked as usual.
“Grandma,” shouted Rob, banging on the door.
“What’s happened?” called Dylan.
“We know you’re there,” cried Rob, as another of Grandma Weir’s sobs penetrated through the heavy oak door.
“Go away,” shouted Grandpa from inside.
I rolled my eyes. Grandpa must have said those words to us at least a thousand times over the years. Mel’s Grandma – Grandma Morgan – gave us an occasional smile at least, but none of the grandparents were exactly what you’d call friendly.
“What’s going on? Is Grandma Weir hurt?” I called through the door.
“I said go away.”
I was past being scared when Grandpa shouted like that. “Get a screwdriver, we’ll take the hinges off,” I said to the others.
Mel immediately dismissed the idea. “Don’t be stupid, Effy, it’s not even possible from this side of the door.”
I gave her a dirty look. “Fine, we’ll bash it down then.”
“But it’s oak-,”
“-We’ll all charge at once,” I said, ignoring her.
Pushing me to one side, Mel knocked on the door. “Please could you let us in? We can hear that Grandma Weir’s hurt and we’d like to help if we can.”
Right, as if being polite was going to work!
“Shall I call an ambulance?” asked Mel.
“No…I’m…fine,” cried Grandma Weir, although I could hear how much pain she was in. She could hardly get the words out.
“What’s going on? Let us in,” cried Rob.
“No ambulances. Don’t call anyone,” shouted Grandpa.
He sounded furious, as if we were being out of order by even suggesting it. Well fine, if that’s how he wanted to play it. I shouted through the door, “I’ve got my mobile out. If you don’t open this door right now I’m going to call an ambulance…the police too.”
“Don’t you dare-,”
“-Don’t try me, Grandpa, I mean it.”
I heard Grandma Weir speak but it didn’t make much sense. “Perhaps it’s time we told them. I’m through with their stupid rules; the Ternary’s broken now anyway.”
What was a ternary?
“I’m dialling now, nine, nine…don’t make me dial the last number,” I said. I wasn’t actually dialling anything seeing as I’d left my mobile downstairs, but Grandpa didn’t have to know that.
He flung the door open and stood in the doorway looking insanely angry. “You will not dial that number. Give me your telephone.”
“I don’t have it. I wasn’t really going to call.”
Giving me a look of disdain, Grandpa stepped back to shut the door again, but Dylan quickly lunged forward and blocked it.
I couldn’t stop myself from crying out in shock. Grandma Weir was sitting on the floor by the desk clutching her arm. Blood was gushing out between her fingers so fast it looked as if she’d be drained dry any minute. It looked like…was that a bite mark?
There was blood on the side of the door where Grandpa had tried to push it shut. He saw me looking at it and tried to hide his hand behind his back, but I grabbed his wrist before he could pull it away.
“Grandpa!” I choked out the word. Two of his fingers had been completely bitten off, leaving a horrific jagged stump by his knuckles.
We really did need to call an ambulance.
“I’ll get my phone,” I managed to blurt out.
“No,” said Grandpa, wrenching his hand away and shooting me such a venomous look I didn’t dare grab it again.
“I’ll call,” whispered Mel, pulling out her phone with shaking hands.
“I said no,” roared Grandpa.
Mel gave him a desperate look, clearly torn between doing what she thought was right and not disobeying Grandpa, while the rest of us tried to push our way into the room to help Grandma Weir. But Grandpa had always been surprisingly strong and he managed to hold us out without even having to try. I couldn’t drag my eyes away from the blood flowing down Grandma Weir’s arm…and Grandpa’s missing fingers. This was crazy!
I tried to convince him one last time. “She needs to get to hospital. You too.”
“Mitya will deal with it,” said Grandpa, shoving the door in my face. I only just managed to squeeze my foot into the gap before he could completely close it.
“But she’s not even here.”
“She’ll be back soon.”
“How do you know? Where is she?”
“She’s on her way.”
Dylan stepped forward to help me and accidentally trod on my foot. I started to push him off but suddenly Mel’s voice echoed across the hall.
“Where’s my grandma?”
Grandpa tensed his jaw without answering.
I repeated the question, trying to keep the panic from my voice as if that would somehow make the answer okay, even though I already knew something terrible had happened.
Fury blazed through Grandpa’s eyes and he looked absolutely terrifying. But then he turned away. Even though he was clearly trying to hide it, when he spoke there was real emotion in his voice for the first time that I could remember in my entire life.
If anything that was more frightening than his anger.
“She’ll fight as long as she can but…soon she’ll be dead,” he said.
I looked at Grandpa in horror. That was crazy – the grandparents were the toughest people I knew. They were young too, only in their fifties, the same age as some kids in my class’ parents. But fighting?
“What do you mean? Where is she?” I cried, even though I could already tell that even now, the chances of anyone telling us what was going on were pretty much negligible.
“Fight what?” exclaimed Rob.
“We tried to stay with her. Now go away,” snapped Grandpa, turning and pushing the door so hard it knocked my foot out the way and slammed shut.
I immediately tugged on the door knob, but he’d already locked the door.
“Hey,” I cried, banging on the door. I turned to the others, shaking my head in disbelieve. “He can’t just tell us Grandma Morgan’s going to die and slam the door in our faces!”
Rob started to kick the door, but hearing something downstairs, I grabbed his arm. “Was that the front door?”
I turned, desperately hoping all this stuff about Grandma Morgan being about to die was rubbish and she’d come walking up the stairs, absolutely fine. But it was just Mitya with a man in his late thirties. He looked familiar but I couldn’t place him. I suppose he was good looking in a finely chiselled, tall-dark-and-handsome way – if you went for that kind of obvious look, but his features were hard, mean. It was difficult to imagine him smiling.
He was also rude. Mitya stopped and started to speak to us, but he barged right past her. I swear he looked me up and down as he shoved me out of the way, as if to say how insubstantial I was. I gave him a dirty look as he effortlessly opened the locked library door. I didn’t care if he was at least a foot taller than me – did he really want to take me on?
“Get them away from here,” he said to Mitya.
Seriously, who did he think he was?
At least the door was open now. I seized the opportunity to duck under his arm and run into the library. Dylan and Rob ran in after me, but Mel stopped in the doorway and turned back to Mitya.
“What’s going on? Where’s Grandma?”
I looked around the library in awe – I was actually standing in the forbidden library. It was the one room in the house that we were never allowed in. I had a moment of disappointment to discover it was just full of shelves stacked with books, basically what you’d expect from a library, as I ran towards Grandma Weir.
“Just you, Rowan?” said Grandpa, sounding panicked.
Okay, so that clearly wasn’t a good thing – I’d never heard Grandpa scared like that before.
“Ariella and Phil are on their way,” replied Rowan.
“But we need to renew the protection before…will you two get out of here.”
I’d knelt down next to Grandma Weir, but to my outrage Rowan actually lifted me and Dylan up in either hand and flung us into the hall as if we were just bags of rubbish. Rob took one look at his face and ran out after us.
Mel managed to catch Dylan’s arm and break his fall, but I tumbled face down towards the carpet. I only just managed to put my hands out in front of me in time to keep from smashing my face right onto the floor as I landed heavily on my knees.
How dare he!
“Hey,” I cried. But as I jumped up he walked back into the library and turned to face the door. He held up his hand and without him physically touching it, the door shot towards its frame, giving us barely a second to jump out of the way before it slammed in our faces.
“Woh, how did he do that?” exclaimed Dylan.
“It’s not safe here right now. I need you to come with me,” said Mitya.
“Why isn’t it safe?” I looked Mitya directly in her light brown eyes. As usual, her fair hair looked immaculate, haloing her perfectly clear, pale complexion, but I’d always known not to be deceived by her gentle appearance. Right now her eyes were as hard as anything.
“I’m not arguing about this. Come now,” said Mitya turning and walking down the hall to the stairs.
I stayed where I was. She could leave if she wanted, but I wasn’t going anywhere until someone explained what was going on.
“We should go with her,” said Rob.
“You can if you want.”
“Come on Effy, you saw Grandma,” said Dylan. “Maybe we should do what Mitya says.”
I folded my arms defiantly. “I told you, no.”
I shot Mel a warning look, waiting for her start trying to boss me around too, but for once she was quiet. Actually, she looked really pale, like she might faint any second. Well she had just been told her grandma was going to die.
Where was Grandma Morgan?
Mel stumbled and bumped against the wall. I ran forward and grabbed her under the arm to steady her.
“Are you okay?”
“I don’t feel very well. My head…my back, it feels as if there’s something tugging at it. I feel…weird.”
“Maybe you should sit down for a minute.” I started to guide her down to the floor, but suddenly the lights went out, leaving us in darkness.
“What was that,” cried Rob.
I screamed as someone grabbed my shoulder.
“It’s just me,” said Dylan. He quickly held up his phone to light the hall.
I breathed out deeply. I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting, but I was relieved to find it empty aside from us.
Rob pulled his phone out to make some more light. I grabbed at it, but he pulled it out of reach.
“What are you doing?”
“I need to borrow your phone so I can go and check the fuse box.”
Mitya shouted up from downstairs. “Come on, we need to leave.”
“We should go with Mitya,” said Rob.
“I’m not going…” but I broke off as a dull rumbling noise started to sound from the library. The whole house began to shudder.
“Get out,” cried Mitya.
She started to run up the stairs towards us, but we were already running down. Even I could see it wasn’t a bright idea to stick around in a possessed house.
Dylan abruptly stopped in front of me and I ran into him, shunting him down a couple of stairs. I flailed out in the dark and managed to grab his arm to stop him falling any further.
“What about Grandma? We should help her,” he said.
“They’ll stay to defend the house, but you need to leave. Come on,” said Mitya.
“But she’s hurt,” I said, feeling guilty about running off without even thinking about them.
“Come now,” shouted Mitya, the anger in her voice putting an end to any further argument.
“Defend the house from what?” I cried as I followed her downstairs.
I stopped in the hallway; my shoes were on top of the bookshelf in the front room where Rob had put them earlier because I couldn’t reach them [ha-ha] but Mitya caught hold of my arm and dragged me outside.
Even though the rain had eased off to a light drizzle, my socks were soaking wet within seconds as I ran through the puddles spattering the pavement. They dragged along the ground as we ran towards Mitya’s car. I knelt down and pulled them back up while she held out her key fob and unlocked the car.
As I straightened up I noticed the woman who lived a few doors down from us ambling through the square with her baby attached to her front in its carrier. We often saw her walking around with her little girl in its carrier or pushchair, always at top speed as if she was late for something and looking straight past us to avoid making any kind of eye contact – but that was just typical Londoner behaviour. She didn’t have an umbrella or a waterproof, which was crazy in this weather. In fact, she was singing and nodding her head dreamily as if she was completely oblivious to the world around her.
“Do you think she’s all right?” I said, nudging Dylan as he opened the car door.
As he turned to see what I was looking at a hand or a paw or something, shot out from inside the baby carrier, grabbed a squirrel running up a tree and pulled it back inside the carrier.
“What the…” began Dylan.
I screamed as two bits of broken squirrel were flung out of the baby carrier.
“Get in the car,” said Mitya urgently.
But I could only watch in horror as a dark furry creature with a head full of teeth sprang out of the baby carrier and started to crawl towards the house.
“That’s no baby,” whispered Dylan.
“It’s a jawler,” said Mitya. “…I didn’t tell you that, by the way.”
Its yellow eyes glinted in the dark. They seemed to look straight at me as if it was appraising me, but it was clearly more interested in our house. It clambered up the steps to the front door and started to climb up the outside wall towards the library.
“Grandma Weir,” I cried, taking a step towards it.
“Get in the car, now,” screamed Mitya, thrusting the key towards me as dozens more of the creatures emerged from the shadows around us.
***
Thank you!
Sally (limebirdsally)
-1-
“Ha,” I cried, jumping up as Rob’s knuckles skimmed the surface of Grandpa’s antique table. I would have spared him his pride but he’d been so patronising about how someone as, ‘child-sized’ as me would never be able to beat him in an arm wrestle that obviously I had to prove him wrong.
He immediately argued. “No way did that touch!”
“Dyls?” I said, turning to Rob’s twin brother, Dylan for adjudication.
He looked Rob’s outraged expression and laughed. “Nah, leave me out of this one.” He shoved a handful of crisps in his mouth and made a big show of shrugging and pointing at his face.
A few strands of unkempt hair fell into his navy-blue eyes and I practically had to sit on my hands to stop myself from leaning over and gently brushing them out the way. Dylan thought he was really cool for never brushing his dark, wavy hair and I had to admit that the number of girls who’d asked me and Mel to find out if he might like them in the past month alone suggested he wasn’t the only one.
…I just wished I hadn’t become one of them.
No, I’d promised myself I wouldn’t even think about it. I quickly turned to the fourth person in our unconventional ‘family’.
“Mel?”
She was curled up on the old leather armchair, completely absorbed in our English set book. She spoke without looking up. “What?”
“Did I: a) just beat Rob in an arm wrestle or; b) just beat Rob in an arm wrestle?”
“We are sixteen, you know,” she commented, sparing me a brief smile to show she was only being partially condescending before returning to her book. Typical Mel, she’d nearly finished it already.
“Why are you bothering with that? We only have to read up to chapter two.” Obviously I had no intention of even reading that far. “Hey, why don’t you come and beat Rob at arm wrestling too.”
“You didn’t beat me!”
“It’s a good book. Anyway Rob’s been humiliated enough today.”
“She did NOT beat me!”
Okay, to be fair he had been messing around and let me push his arm over so it nearly touched and all I had to do was give it that last tiny push to the table, but that was his funeral.
“Has anyone seen the grandparents recently?” said Dylan.
It was a blatant attempt to change the subject, but I guess Mel had a point about me and Rob getting a bit old for the constant bickering, so I accepted it and thought back. “Not since Sunday…no, Monday morning.”
Three days wasn’t unusual though. The grandparents were always going away without telling us. People were never able to get their heads around how our three grandparents co-owned this house and we all lived together even though we weren’t actually related, (well apart from Dylan and Rob of course).
When you added that all four of us had been born within a couple of weeks of each other; all our parents died in the same car crash when we were babies; and we’d each been raised by our one surviving grandparent I guess even I could see it was a bit strange. But it was what we’d grown up with so it was normal to us.
My stomach made a huge growling noise and I remembered I was starving. I’d been about to suggest finding something for dinner when Rob started trying to wind me up. Mitya usually cooked something for us when she was around, but I hadn’t seen her since the beginning of the week either.
Mitya lived with us too, although she wasn’t related to any of us. She worked for the grandparents but I couldn’t tell you what they did. We were still waiting for the day they realised we were actually old enough to be trusted with the truth now, but I wasn’t exactly holding my breath.
“Anyone want to cook?” I asked, not holding out much hope for a positive response.
“Chip shop?” suggested Dylan, our default option when we had to get our own food.
“Not me,” I said quickly. It was raining like anything outside. The front room to our high-ceilinged house might have seemed dark and drafty, but with the fire blazing in the hearth it always felt cosy to me, unlike the October storm going mental outside.
“Let’s just order pizza,” said Rob.
“Cool.” Mitya always left money for us in the desk drawer. I was checking when we heard a scream. I looked at the others in surprise. It sounded as if it had come from the library, but I hadn’t heard the grandparents come in.
“That was Grandma!” cried Dylan.
We took the stairs up to the first floor two at a time and ran down the hall to the library. Rob tugged on the door knob, but it was locked as usual.
“Grandma,” shouted Rob, banging on the door.
“What’s happened?” called Dylan.
“We know you’re there,” cried Rob, as another of Grandma Weir’s sobs penetrated through the heavy oak door.
“Go away,” shouted Grandpa from inside.
I rolled my eyes. Grandpa must have said those words to us at least a thousand times over the years. Mel’s Grandma – Grandma Morgan – gave us an occasional smile at least, but none of the grandparents were exactly what you’d call friendly.
“What’s going on? Is Grandma Weir hurt?” I called through the door.
“I said go away.”
I was past being scared when Grandpa shouted like that. “Get a screwdriver, we’ll take the hinges off,” I said to the others.
Mel immediately dismissed the idea. “Don’t be stupid, Effy, it’s not even possible from this side of the door.”
I gave her a dirty look. “Fine, we’ll bash it down then.”
“But it’s oak-,”
“-We’ll all charge at once,” I said, ignoring her.
Pushing me to one side, Mel knocked on the door. “Please could you let us in? We can hear that Grandma Weir’s hurt and we’d like to help if we can.”
Right, as if being polite was going to work!
“Shall I call an ambulance?” asked Mel.
“No…I’m…fine,” cried Grandma Weir, although I could hear how much pain she was in. She could hardly get the words out.
“What’s going on? Let us in,” cried Rob.
“No ambulances. Don’t call anyone,” shouted Grandpa.
He sounded furious, as if we were being out of order by even suggesting it. Well fine, if that’s how he wanted to play it. I shouted through the door, “I’ve got my mobile out. If you don’t open this door right now I’m going to call an ambulance…the police too.”
“Don’t you dare-,”
“-Don’t try me, Grandpa, I mean it.”
I heard Grandma Weir speak but it didn’t make much sense. “Perhaps it’s time we told them. I’m through with their stupid rules; the Ternary’s broken now anyway.”
What was a ternary?
“I’m dialling now, nine, nine…don’t make me dial the last number,” I said. I wasn’t actually dialling anything seeing as I’d left my mobile downstairs, but Grandpa didn’t have to know that.
He flung the door open and stood in the doorway looking insanely angry. “You will not dial that number. Give me your telephone.”
“I don’t have it. I wasn’t really going to call.”
Giving me a look of disdain, Grandpa stepped back to shut the door again, but Dylan quickly lunged forward and blocked it.
I couldn’t stop myself from crying out in shock. Grandma Weir was sitting on the floor by the desk clutching her arm. Blood was gushing out between her fingers so fast it looked as if she’d be drained dry any minute. It looked like…was that a bite mark?
There was blood on the side of the door where Grandpa had tried to push it shut. He saw me looking at it and tried to hide his hand behind his back, but I grabbed his wrist before he could pull it away.
“Grandpa!” I choked out the word. Two of his fingers had been completely bitten off, leaving a horrific jagged stump by his knuckles.
We really did need to call an ambulance.
“I’ll get my phone,” I managed to blurt out.
“No,” said Grandpa, wrenching his hand away and shooting me such a venomous look I didn’t dare grab it again.
“I’ll call,” whispered Mel, pulling out her phone with shaking hands.
“I said no,” roared Grandpa.
Mel gave him a desperate look, clearly torn between doing what she thought was right and not disobeying Grandpa, while the rest of us tried to push our way into the room to help Grandma Weir. But Grandpa had always been surprisingly strong and he managed to hold us out without even having to try. I couldn’t drag my eyes away from the blood flowing down Grandma Weir’s arm…and Grandpa’s missing fingers. This was crazy!
I tried to convince him one last time. “She needs to get to hospital. You too.”
“Mitya will deal with it,” said Grandpa, shoving the door in my face. I only just managed to squeeze my foot into the gap before he could completely close it.
“But she’s not even here.”
“She’ll be back soon.”
“How do you know? Where is she?”
“She’s on her way.”
Dylan stepped forward to help me and accidentally trod on my foot. I started to push him off but suddenly Mel’s voice echoed across the hall.
“Where’s my grandma?”
Grandpa tensed his jaw without answering.
I repeated the question, trying to keep the panic from my voice as if that would somehow make the answer okay, even though I already knew something terrible had happened.
Fury blazed through Grandpa’s eyes and he looked absolutely terrifying. But then he turned away. Even though he was clearly trying to hide it, when he spoke there was real emotion in his voice for the first time that I could remember in my entire life.
If anything that was more frightening than his anger.
“She’ll fight as long as she can but…soon she’ll be dead,” he said.
I looked at Grandpa in horror. That was crazy – the grandparents were the toughest people I knew. They were young too, only in their fifties, the same age as some kids in my class’ parents. But fighting?
“What do you mean? Where is she?” I cried, even though I could already tell that even now, the chances of anyone telling us what was going on were pretty much negligible.
“Fight what?” exclaimed Rob.
“We tried to stay with her. Now go away,” snapped Grandpa, turning and pushing the door so hard it knocked my foot out the way and slammed shut.
I immediately tugged on the door knob, but he’d already locked the door.
“Hey,” I cried, banging on the door. I turned to the others, shaking my head in disbelieve. “He can’t just tell us Grandma Morgan’s going to die and slam the door in our faces!”
Rob started to kick the door, but hearing something downstairs, I grabbed his arm. “Was that the front door?”
I turned, desperately hoping all this stuff about Grandma Morgan being about to die was rubbish and she’d come walking up the stairs, absolutely fine. But it was just Mitya with a man in his late thirties. He looked familiar but I couldn’t place him. I suppose he was good looking in a finely chiselled, tall-dark-and-handsome way – if you went for that kind of obvious look, but his features were hard, mean. It was difficult to imagine him smiling.
He was also rude. Mitya stopped and started to speak to us, but he barged right past her. I swear he looked me up and down as he shoved me out of the way, as if to say how insubstantial I was. I gave him a dirty look as he effortlessly opened the locked library door. I didn’t care if he was at least a foot taller than me – did he really want to take me on?
“Get them away from here,” he said to Mitya.
Seriously, who did he think he was?
At least the door was open now. I seized the opportunity to duck under his arm and run into the library. Dylan and Rob ran in after me, but Mel stopped in the doorway and turned back to Mitya.
“What’s going on? Where’s Grandma?”
I looked around the library in awe – I was actually standing in the forbidden library. It was the one room in the house that we were never allowed in. I had a moment of disappointment to discover it was just full of shelves stacked with books, basically what you’d expect from a library, as I ran towards Grandma Weir.
“Just you, Rowan?” said Grandpa, sounding panicked.
Okay, so that clearly wasn’t a good thing – I’d never heard Grandpa scared like that before.
“Ariella and Phil are on their way,” replied Rowan.
“But we need to renew the protection before…will you two get out of here.”
I’d knelt down next to Grandma Weir, but to my outrage Rowan actually lifted me and Dylan up in either hand and flung us into the hall as if we were just bags of rubbish. Rob took one look at his face and ran out after us.
Mel managed to catch Dylan’s arm and break his fall, but I tumbled face down towards the carpet. I only just managed to put my hands out in front of me in time to keep from smashing my face right onto the floor as I landed heavily on my knees.
How dare he!
“Hey,” I cried. But as I jumped up he walked back into the library and turned to face the door. He held up his hand and without him physically touching it, the door shot towards its frame, giving us barely a second to jump out of the way before it slammed in our faces.
“Woh, how did he do that?” exclaimed Dylan.
“It’s not safe here right now. I need you to come with me,” said Mitya.
“Why isn’t it safe?” I looked Mitya directly in her light brown eyes. As usual, her fair hair looked immaculate, haloing her perfectly clear, pale complexion, but I’d always known not to be deceived by her gentle appearance. Right now her eyes were as hard as anything.
“I’m not arguing about this. Come now,” said Mitya turning and walking down the hall to the stairs.
I stayed where I was. She could leave if she wanted, but I wasn’t going anywhere until someone explained what was going on.
“We should go with her,” said Rob.
“You can if you want.”
“Come on Effy, you saw Grandma,” said Dylan. “Maybe we should do what Mitya says.”
I folded my arms defiantly. “I told you, no.”
I shot Mel a warning look, waiting for her start trying to boss me around too, but for once she was quiet. Actually, she looked really pale, like she might faint any second. Well she had just been told her grandma was going to die.
Where was Grandma Morgan?
Mel stumbled and bumped against the wall. I ran forward and grabbed her under the arm to steady her.
“Are you okay?”
“I don’t feel very well. My head…my back, it feels as if there’s something tugging at it. I feel…weird.”
“Maybe you should sit down for a minute.” I started to guide her down to the floor, but suddenly the lights went out, leaving us in darkness.
“What was that,” cried Rob.
I screamed as someone grabbed my shoulder.
“It’s just me,” said Dylan. He quickly held up his phone to light the hall.
I breathed out deeply. I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting, but I was relieved to find it empty aside from us.
Rob pulled his phone out to make some more light. I grabbed at it, but he pulled it out of reach.
“What are you doing?”
“I need to borrow your phone so I can go and check the fuse box.”
Mitya shouted up from downstairs. “Come on, we need to leave.”
“We should go with Mitya,” said Rob.
“I’m not going…” but I broke off as a dull rumbling noise started to sound from the library. The whole house began to shudder.
“Get out,” cried Mitya.
She started to run up the stairs towards us, but we were already running down. Even I could see it wasn’t a bright idea to stick around in a possessed house.
Dylan abruptly stopped in front of me and I ran into him, shunting him down a couple of stairs. I flailed out in the dark and managed to grab his arm to stop him falling any further.
“What about Grandma? We should help her,” he said.
“They’ll stay to defend the house, but you need to leave. Come on,” said Mitya.
“But she’s hurt,” I said, feeling guilty about running off without even thinking about them.
“Come now,” shouted Mitya, the anger in her voice putting an end to any further argument.
“Defend the house from what?” I cried as I followed her downstairs.
I stopped in the hallway; my shoes were on top of the bookshelf in the front room where Rob had put them earlier because I couldn’t reach them [ha-ha] but Mitya caught hold of my arm and dragged me outside.
Even though the rain had eased off to a light drizzle, my socks were soaking wet within seconds as I ran through the puddles spattering the pavement. They dragged along the ground as we ran towards Mitya’s car. I knelt down and pulled them back up while she held out her key fob and unlocked the car.
As I straightened up I noticed the woman who lived a few doors down from us ambling through the square with her baby attached to her front in its carrier. We often saw her walking around with her little girl in its carrier or pushchair, always at top speed as if she was late for something and looking straight past us to avoid making any kind of eye contact – but that was just typical Londoner behaviour. She didn’t have an umbrella or a waterproof, which was crazy in this weather. In fact, she was singing and nodding her head dreamily as if she was completely oblivious to the world around her.
“Do you think she’s all right?” I said, nudging Dylan as he opened the car door.
As he turned to see what I was looking at a hand or a paw or something, shot out from inside the baby carrier, grabbed a squirrel running up a tree and pulled it back inside the carrier.
“What the…” began Dylan.
I screamed as two bits of broken squirrel were flung out of the baby carrier.
“Get in the car,” said Mitya urgently.
But I could only watch in horror as a dark furry creature with a head full of teeth sprang out of the baby carrier and started to crawl towards the house.
“That’s no baby,” whispered Dylan.
“It’s a jawler,” said Mitya. “…I didn’t tell you that, by the way.”
Its yellow eyes glinted in the dark. They seemed to look straight at me as if it was appraising me, but it was clearly more interested in our house. It clambered up the steps to the front door and started to climb up the outside wall towards the library.
“Grandma Weir,” I cried, taking a step towards it.
“Get in the car, now,” screamed Mitya, thrusting the key towards me as dozens more of the creatures emerged from the shadows around us.
***
