Hollow Earth Read Online Free PDF Page A

myself.
    But what if you can’t?
    I can climb faster than you anyway.
    In an instant, Em stopped resisting and climbed willingly on to the chair. No sooner had Sandie joined her than their would-be captors were at the door to the flat.
    ‘It’ll be much easier on everyone, Sandie, if you open this door,’ came a voice.
    ‘Use my hands as a step, Em,’ Sandie ordered.
    When Em’s foot was in place, Sandie hoisted her up and out through the skylight on to the roof.
    ‘Don’t move!’
    Em sat on the roof and stared in through the skylight as Sandie backed down on to the table again.
    A bloodcurdling scream exploded from the door. The noise was so full of pain and horror, Em screamed in response: ‘Oh God, Mum, they’ve got Matt!’
    But Matt was climbing up on the table next to Sandie. Shocked and relieved, Sandie hauled him up on to the kitchen chair, preparing to hoist him outside with his sister. The entire flat was shaking with each terrible thump from the men at the door. Then Sandie noticed.
    The wall was trembling. Not the door.
    She tore the sketchbook from Matt’s hand. When she looked at it, she couldn’t help herself. She burst into laughter. Matt grinned at her.
    The twins had sketched the apartment’s front wall without a door, trapping the visitors out in the hall with no access to the flat. The intruders were pounding furiously on a wall where the door should have been.
    ‘Mum, we should go,’ urged Matt.
    Sandie cupped her hands and hefted Matt out on to the roof to join Em.
    Another searing howl of pain filled the house. Before climbing after her children, Sandie stared at the wall more closely. Her laughter died in her throat. Sticking through the middle of the plaster where the door should have been was a man’s left hand and forearm. The fingers were limp, and the hand was already turning a mottled blue-grey.
    Feeling sick, Sandie heaved herself outside. Ushering the children forward on their hands and knees, she leaned back in, pushed the chair off the table and dropped the skylight closed behind them.
    The howls of the man trapped in the wall followed them across the roof.

NINE
    W hen Matt and Em were safely on the cobbled courtyard in front of the mews, with only minor scrapes on their hands and knees to show for their escape, Sandie shredded the drawing from Matt’s sketchpad into little pieces, tossing them into a neighbour’s rubbish bin.
    ‘What are you doing?’ said Matt, trying to stop her. ‘Ripping it up will make the wall go back to normal!’
    ‘We can’t leave Violet and Anthea’s wall like that, Mattie, it wouldn’t be right.’ To say nothing of freeing the man whose arm was trapped, Sandie added to herself. She trusted his injury would slow the hunt down.
    ‘When we’re far enough away, our drawings stop working anyway,’ added Em without thinking.
    ‘Shut up, Em!’ hissed Matt.
    ‘Exactly how many times have you done something like this?’ Sandie demanded.
    Em looked sheepish; Matt was still scowling. Sandie collapsed on the neighbour’s garden wall. Oh, she really didn’t want to know the answer to that question. Suddenly, she was overwhelmed by how much Matt and Em needed to learn about who they were. She was paralysed by how truly unprepared she was to teach them.
    In her head, she’d rehearsed over and over again what she’d say when the time came. She’d even started to explain to them about their special abilities – their supernatural powers – when they were only toddlers and their dad was still a part of their lives. The lesson hadn’t gone as planned. Sandie hadn’t been able to bring herself to use the word Animare : the ancient and more accurate term that defined them.
    ‘When you’re older,’ she had started, as the twins had scribbled at the Abbey’s long kitchen table, ‘your imaginations, your drawings, will be able to alter reality. You’ll have the power to change things in the real world.’
    ‘Can you hear yourself?’