Cracks Read Online Free PDF

door. I run out behind her but she’s already in a car that’s puttering down the hill.
    I’m shaking all over. My brain’s hard drive is full. I can’t take any more weirdness. I haven’t got room. I look around the kitchen. Shock spikes in my belly again
because I know something is different but I can’t put my finger on it.
    And then I realise.
    Des’s chair isn’t here. It’s an old battered armchair where he likes to sit in the morning and drink his tea. There are none of his sweatshirt tops lying around either and no
copy of yesterday’s Sun where he normally leaves it next to the kettle.
    There’s nothing of his in the kitchen whatsoever.
    And I’ll tell you what else is missing. I can’t see any of Pigface’s stuff lying around. I scan the room again. The picture on the wall above the telephone – the one of
Des and Mum on their wedding day – has gone. Instead, there’s a painting of a vase of flowers. It’s a different size to the wedding picture and I move it to one side and can see
the right-sized mark on the wall, telling me this one has always been in that spot.
    I run into Mum’s bedroom. It looks normal but when I throw open the wardrobes, they’re empty. Are they all leaving home? Is that it? Weren’t they even going to tell me? My eyes
sting. Well, stuff the lot of them. I’d rather live here on my own.
    But then I hear something. A woman’s crying somewhere in the house. There’s something else . . . a police car siren outside. And it’s getting closer. The sounds stop, abruptly,
and all I can hear is my own heartbeat. Where have they gone? I try to picture family friends or someone I can ask. But it’s like trying to watch a broken television. Panic’s rising
inside me and I’m drowning. I try to clutch at any memory. Last year, last week? But I can’t remember anything that happened before the last couple of days. Not Christmas or birthdays
or anything.
    Nothing before I saw that crack in the ceiling of the boys’ bogs.
    I look down at my hands, needing reassurance that I’m at least real. The strange pin-pricks of light are there again. I shove my hands hard into my pockets, shaking all over.
    ‘Not real, not real, not real,’ I whisper. I have to get out of this house right now. School. I’ll go to school, just like normal. Schools don’t disappear even when you
want them to.
    I run out of the house and head down the hill.
    ‘It’s all right, see?’ I murmur to myself. ‘I’m fine. Just fine.’
    But the cracks aren’t done with me yet.

 

    I ’m halfway down the hill when there’s a rumbling under my feet and the road starts to judder and shake. The ground creaks and groans
and then the hillside splits open like it’s being pulled apart by giant hands. Brown earth churns up and I fall back onto my bum, whimpering a bit as a huge crack races like fire down the
hill. It spreads across the outside of the brewery and the tall chimneys fold over slowly and crumple before the whole building collapses into a giant hole in the ground. The roaring and tearing
fill my head like the scream of something being murdered but then there’s silence. No birds, no cars. Silence, apart from my heavy breathing and that pounding heartbeat again that feels like
it’s outside me and all around.
    The school goes next, folding with an enormous roar. The old red bricks release a massive cloud of dust. I don’t mind admitting that I’m crying now, thinking about all the people who
must be inside by now like Amil and Miss Lovett and even Peters and Jennings who might be pains in the arse but never deserved to die, not crushed beneath a pile of bricks. I start running faster
towards the school. I might be skinny but I’m strong and fast from training. Maybe I can dig some people out with my hands before the emergency services get here . . .
    . . . and then I stop. Surely there should be fire engines on their way to the two disasters? People screaming from the