Monkey and Me Read Online Free PDF Page B

Some of the stone had crumbled and the gap was just choked with weeds.
    â€œNice one, Skimp,” said Pete-the-Feet. But I don’t think he meant it as a compliment.
    â€œYou said you wanted to find a way in, well, here it is.”
    â€œYeah, but maybe not right now. This is just a recce,” Rocky whispered.
    Mark looked at his watch. It’s supposed to be a Swiss Army watch, but it’s just a knockoff we got down the market, so it’s not always as accurate as a Swiss watch would be and there are times I hope the real Swiss Army has real Swiss Army watches because if they haven’t and they’ve bought a knockoff like us, they’re never going to be on time for anything – like avalanches, which appear to happen at fairly regular intervals. Though I don’t think you can time them.
    â€œIt’s nearly ten past,” Mark said, “Mum’ll be home soon for our tea.”
    Rocky looked at his watch. His is an Argos digital. It always works. It was really cheap too, cheaper than Mark’s Swiss Army knockoff – it just didn’t have the little red cross logo, but so what? He was always on time because he said soldiers had to be in the right place when they were supposed to – that’s called getting to the RV. I’ve never really had an RV – which means rendezvous – unless it’s getting out of bed and down to breakfast on time. I don’t need a watch for that because Mum always shouts so loud, Dad says she could wake the dead.
    The dead.
    â€œAre timeless.”
    â€œWhat?” Mark said.
    â€œThe dead are timeless,” I told him. “They don’t need watches. Ghosts hover everywhere all the time, even in monster form. It depends on the light. When the light fades and it gets darker, they suck it in and that gives them a shape to their bodies.”
    â€œWhat are you on about?” Skimp asked.
    â€œIt doesn’t matter what time it is, as long as it’s daylight. I think we’ll be safe as long as we are out of there by the time it’s dark.”
    Skimp checked his watch. “Mine says a quarter to,” he said.
    â€œIt’s exactly eleven minutes to,” Rocky said. “If we’re going to do this we’d better be quick about it because it might take us ages to get to the house. I think that’s an animal track through the bushes.”
    No one said anything for a minute because we were all thinking of what kind of animal could have made it. One thing was for sure – I knew it wasn’t made by the postman. Because that’s my dad and he’s never been here in his life. I suppose it could be someone getting in to read the electricity meter.I’ve heard of people being sent electric bills when they’re dead. But I don’t think that’s the case here. No one in their right mind would really go into the Black Gate.
    I squeezed between the gate and the pillar.
    Sometimes you just have to be brave. That’s what Dad says when we go to the hospital.
    It doesn’t matter how many times you see a scary movie or read a book about vampires or monsters or graveyards where people pop out the ground and grab you and drag you below – walking in the grounds of a haunted house is a hundred times worse than that. Because he was leader of the gang Mark had to go first and because I was his brother I went second, the others shuffled and shouldered each other because no one really wanted to be Tail-end Charlie. Everyone, but everyone knows the last person in line always get snatched first. It’s the law.
    Rocky ended up at the back but he found a hefty stick and promised everyone that if anything twitched in the bushes he was going to attack it. But by the time we got to the old gravel driveway that looped around the house like a snake curling aroundits victim, nothing had moved. We hadn’t even heard a bird singing. Things were worse than I thought.
    The windows