Monkey and Me Read Online Free PDF Page A

the perfect HQ. We don’t have to actually go into the house, there’s a few old ruined buildings in the grounds.”
    The Black Gate. You might as well suggest we dig up a grave in the cemetery and climb in the hole with the dead, even that wouldn’t be as scary as going into the Black Gate.
    Pete-the-Feet can run fast but his brain tendsto lag behind a bit. A bit like a relay race.
    â€œJust under the fence. That’s all we have to do. There’s a least half a dozen acres and we don’t have to go anywhere near the house,” he gabbled.
    Everybody knows that there are creatures in there that can sneak out the grass, fall out a tree, jump out the dark, snatch you from the bushes, and then drag you screaming into the Black Gate – which is what the old country house is called. It was a couple of miles beyond where all the other houses had been built. It had been sold off years ago but there was some kind of legal stuff that stopped anyone buying it and redeveloping the site. There’s a huge sign over the old iron gates: Dangerous Building – Condemned – Keep Out . Along the top of the old walls are strands of barbed wire to make sure no one can get in, but you wouldn’t want to because everyone knows there’s something inhuman in the Black Gate. People have heard screams and sounds of someone moving round inside, but when the police investigated they didn’t find anyone – or anything.
    Definitely haunted then.
    And obviously by a creature with fangs and claws – a throwback mutation that could have beencreated when the sewage works blocked up last year and spilled into Millbrook’s Farm. It flooded five acres of King Edward potatoes with disgusting stuff which stank for months – but it gave the farmer a bumper crop. I’ve never eaten spuds since then. Not even Mum’s beyond excellent thick-cut home-made chips. Can you imagine what she’d be deep-fat frying? Sealing in all the goodness, she used to say. I don’t think so, Mum.
    â€œYou’re off your head,” Skimp said again.
    â€œWell, we could always leg it if it got too scary,” Pete-the-Feet replied.
    He would say that, wouldn’t he?
    â€œWhat? And leave us for bait?” Rocky pointed a finger at him.
    â€œNo one’s ever got out of there alive,” I told them.
    â€œDon’t talk rubbish, Beanie,” Rocky said.
    â€œNo one’s ever died in there,” said Mark.
    â€œThat’s because no one knows how many people have gone in and never come out,” I tell them.
    I’m not sure even Pete-the-Feet could run fast enough to escape the ghosts and sabre-toothed monsters, whose teeth are probably all gunged up with the remains of anything that walked or crawledin there. Kimberley Morris says her brother went in and hasn’t been heard of since – but everyone knows he really got nicked for stealing cars and is in prison. Still… you never know. She and her mum and dad have never visited him. So maybe he’s not – in prison I mean. Or alive.
    I hear myself say words that make no sense to my brain… I don’t know where I get these ideas from sometimes. Like climbing up onto the Sweet Dreams Sweet Factory top floor, or the time I tried to balance across the old stone bridge and fell in the canal, or when I climbed the tree and the branch gave way and I broke my wrist – and that started a lot of problems. Hospitals! But even they aren’t as frightening as the Black Gate. You’d have to be two spanners short of a tool set to even think about going in there… but the words fell out my mouth. It was so cold all the letters froze in the air and you could have hung them on a clothes line.
    â€œI’ll go inside. I’ll do it. I will. You’ll see.”
    â€œYou’re going home,” said Mark. “It was a mistake letting you join the gang.”
    â€œHe’s only a probationary