Heaven Eyes Read Online Free PDF

said. “It is! It’s going to be all right.” Tears poured from his eyes. “Erin!” he yelled in terror. “Erin!” We plunged onward. We seemed to catch the main current and it drew us relentlessly away from the lights, away from the voices, toward the mist, toward the night. The moon appeared, a white ball that brightened as the sky around it deepened into black. Stars glittered, first a handful, then a skyful. We passed the city’s dark outskirts, the dilapidated quays: more ruined warehouses, broken wharves, massive billboards showing how this place would be once the demolishing, building and developing started. Huge gaps of blackness where there was nothing. The river stank of oil and something rotten. There was the scent of salt and seaweed. We passed the stream called the Ouseburn and hit more eddies where the currents of the stream and river mixed. Then the mist, thin at first, still allowingthe moon and stars through to us. But it thickened, deepened. Soon there was nothing but us, the raft, the churning water and the mist. Our voices boomed and echoed back to us. We stared at each other, held each other, in terror that one of us might be lost to the others, in terror that we’d all be lost, in terror that this journey was nothing but a journey into death. We muttered bits of prayers, we called out for help, we forgot about the paddles and we drifted, rocked, lurched and spun. And then we slowed and the raft jerked, shuddered, and we stopped. Just water gently slopping, the gentle creaking of the doors beneath us. Just the gasping of our breath. And silence all around.



M UD . B LACK, STICKY, OILY, STINKING MUD. It was January who dared to lean out of the raft first. He dipped his hand into what should have been water. He touched mud, black mud. It oozed and dribbled from his fingers. The raft settled, and mud slithered across its surface, onto our clothes. It seeped through to our skin. It seeped through the tiny gaps between the doors. I took my flashlight out, switched it on, saw the doors disappearing as they sank, saw the gilt words and the red curse obscured, saw the mud rise, saw that we were being slowly sucked down into the sodden earth. “Hell’s teeth,” we hissed. “Hell’s teeth.” We crawled to each other, clutched each other. Our feet, our heels, our knees were caught in mud.
    “The Black Middens,” said January.
    “What?”
    “The Black Middens. We’re grounded on the bloody Black Middens.”
    I shined the flashlight into his eyes.
    “Got to get out,” he said. “It’ll suck us in.”
    We leaned out, tried to shove ourselves free. The raft just sank deeper.
    “Hell’s teeth,” I hissed.
    I shined the flashlight into the mist. Water behind us, black mud in front, impenetrable mist.
    “There’ll be dry land further in,” said January.
    We reached across the mud, searching for this dry land. Just mud. Wet black lethal mud. We goggled at each other. We gasped and sobbed in fright.
    “Somebody’ll have to go, Erin. Somebody’ll have to take the rope and get to the dry land.”
    We stared into each other’s eyes.
    “Me,” said Mouse.
    I didn’t turn.
    “You can’t even swim,” I whispered.
    “You’re lighter than me,” said January.
    “I know I am.”
    I put the flashlight between my teeth. I took the end of the rope. I slid across the edge of the raft. I stretched my arms and legs wide. I crawled. I kept moving. I slithered forward. I felt how at any moment I could stop and be taken down into the Black Middens. I whispered for my mum. There was no answer. Mouse andJanuary spoke my name from behind. I couldn’t speak. I grunted, whimpered, groaned. I slithered forward. There was no dry land, no dry land. My head filled with the mist and darkness. I cried. At one point I just stopped moving. I told myself that this was what I had come out on the raft for. I was following my mum downriver. She waited for me deep in the Black Middens. I began to let myself be taken