London Pride Read Online Free PDF Page B

quite green.
    She didn’t argue at that, in case somebody walked through the wall and put her in a mask. She was feeling more and more upset by everything they said.
    â€˜I’ll tell you somethink else,’ Fred said, ghoulishly. ‘If the mask didn’t work, they used ter wall ’em up alive.’
    The idea of being walled up alive was so terrifying that she couldn’t keep her feelings hidden any longer.
    â€˜They never,’ she said, her eyes bolting with fear. Oh what a dreadful thing to be walled up alive. It was making her feel panicky just to think about it.
    â€˜Straight up. Bricked in they was an’ left ter croak.’
    Fear swelled in her throat until she thought she was going to croak herself. She could imagine it, boxed in, with bricks all round her and no light and no air, boxed in, struggling to breathe, waiting to die. Oh it would be a dreadful, dreadful thing to be walled up alive.
    â€˜Come on,’ Sam said, seizing his advantage because he could see how frightened she was. ‘They got the instruments a’ torture in the room above this. I’ll show yer.’
    He was through the second door and blundering about in the passage behind it, before she could say anything.
    Fred went leaping after him, waving the torch. He was taut with fear himself and it was making him swagger more than ever. ‘There’s the stairs,’ his voice called out of the darkness. ‘Come on, Peg. I dare yer!’
    Left on her own with her imagination, Peggy was so frightened she hardly knew what to do. In the horrible half light the great stones of the Tower walls seemed to be moving towards her, inch by inch, ready to crush her. I shall be shut in for ever, she thought, and she could already feel herself being buried alive under all those awful stones with ghosts walking about everywhere, trailing their long arms and covered in blood. Oh please God don’t let me be buried alive. I couldn’t bear it.
    â€˜Wait for me!’ she called, running through the archway towards the stairs. Her heart was beating so wildly she could feel it in her throat and her knees were so wobbly it was an effort to walk leave alone climb stairs, but she couldn’t stay there on her own waiting to be crushed under those walls. She couldn’t.
    The second staircase was steeper and narrower than the first had been, but she stumbled up, feeling her way along the stones, peering through the dusty half-light. Then she was round the first spiral and the curve of the walls suddenly cut off the light. She was on her own in total, terrifying darkness, with the hair standing on the nape of her neck and panic crushing her chest like a vice. She turned on the sloping step and flung herself downwards again.
    â€˜I’m going back down,’ she called, trying to be sensible even then.
    â€˜What?’ Sam’s voice answered, eerily from the darkness.
    â€˜I’m going back down.’
    But she hadn’t gone more than four steps before something really dreadful happened. Somebody punched her in the small of the back.
Somebody
punched her. It was such a violent blow and so terrifying when she was already trembling in panic, that she stumbled and fell forward, losing her footing and her control at the same time and screaming like a banshee. ‘It’s the ghost! The ghost! On the stairs! Aaaaah! Aaaaaah!’
    Panic and fear were constricting her throat like a noose. She was shaking all over. Even her stomach was shaking. There was nothing in the world except that awful shattering terror. She had to get out. To get out now. To get away. Now. Now.
    Somehow or other her feet carried her downwards, stumbling and slipping, and then she was in the moonlight again and there was the high window gleaming before her and she threw herself at it, scrambling onto the stone sill and beating at the glass with both fists. ‘Help! Help! Dad! Oh please somebody help me!’
    After that