Mr Mumbles Read Online Free PDF Page B

concentrated I could almost make out what sounded like words. Broken words.
    Mumbled words.
    I concentrated harder still on the distorted, indistinct voice.And then, suddenly, the sounds made sense. I understood them. Every word.
    Time to die.
    I let the handset slip from my fingers. The plastic back flew off as it bounced on the carpet, letting the tired battery ping free. A low mumbling repeated over and over in my head –
time to die, time to die, time to die…
    I jumped as the CD player suddenly sprung into life. The electricity was off, yet somehow the orange LED display on front of the machine had blinked on. Hypnotised, I watched the track number display count slowly upwards. One. Two. Three. It made it all the way to track eight, then stopped.
    For a moment there was nothing but the faint
whirr
of the disk spinning, then the music began, loud enough to shake the walls. I threw my hands over my ears to protect my eardrums as Nan’s Christmas hits CD kicked in.
    You’d better watch out,
    You’d better not cry,
    You’d better not pout,
    I’m telling you why,
    Santa Claus is comin’ to town.
    My finger flew to the power button. I pressed it once, but the music played on, drowning out all other noise. Again and again I stabbed my finger against the controls, but the machine didn’t respond to any of them.
    Reaching down behind the player, I gave a short, sharp yank on the power cable. It would have to shut up after that.
    But it didn’t.
    He sees you when you’re sleeping,
    He knows when you’re awake…
    My whole body shook with shock. This couldn’t be happening. This was impossible.
    Frantic with fear, I brought the baseball bat down hard on the CD player. The plastic casing gave a
crack,
the disk let out a deafening screech, and then silence returned to the living room.
    I waited, bat raised, eyes fixed on the stereo. The storm howled outside, but inside all was quiet. Cautiously, Ilowered the bat, turned away, and got back to trying to think of a way out of this mess.
    Click.
Over my shoulder, I heard the display on the CD player blink into life once again. Track eight kicked back in straight away. This time, though, it seemed stuck in an endless repetitive loop.
    You’d better watch out, tsssk.
    You’d better watch out, tsssk.
    You’d better watch out, tsssk.
    I lifted my leg to stamp on the machine. Suddenly, the window to my right exploded inwards, showering the room with deadly shards of glass. The couch shielded me as I threw myself to the floor behind it, my hands held protectively over my head.
    As soon as the last pieces had fallen, I leapt back to my feet. A tall dark figure drew itself up to its full height on the other side of the sofa.
    Another lightning bolt cast a blue aura around the figure, revealing his long dark overcoat pulled up to his ears, and his black hat pulled down almost to meet it. My mouthflapped open and closed, acting out the motions of screaming, but too choked with terror to actually manage the noise.
    The figure fixed me with a beady glare and a million memories came rushing back, as if a dam had been thrown wide open in my subconscious. They were overpowering. Overwhelming. The sheer force of them nearly knocked me off my feet. They couldn’t be real. It couldn’t be true.
It couldn’t be happening!
    Deep down, though, I knew it was. Deep down I finally understood exactly what was going on.
    Mr Mumbles was back.

Chapter Five

A NEW FRIEND
    I remembered.
    Every line, every detail of the figure before me was…no, not the same. Familiar, but different. The Mr Mumbles of my childhood hadn’t been quite like this. He had been short and skinny with friendly, shining eyes and a gift for slapstick.
    His speech had always been impossible to understand, but he’d made up for it with his wide range of comedy pratfalls and skilful miming. He had been my funny little friend. My very own Charlie Chaplin.
    The thing standing before me now didn’t look funny at all.
    The