Puppy Fat Read Online Free PDF Page B

hand.
    Something had stabbed him in the knuckle.
    He couldn’t see if his hand was bleeding so he gave it a suck just in case. His tongue felt the sharp end of a splinter. He crouched down and pulled it out.
    In front of his face was a gate post.
    Keith could just make out a jagged slash of new wood where the paint had been scraped off.
    He remembered how two days ago he and Mitch Wilson had seen the ambulance men accidentally give the gatepost a thump with the stretcher as they carried the body out to the ambulance.
    This was it.
    The dead man’s house.
    Keith hurried along the street, counting the houses all the way to the corner. Then he ran round the corner and along the back alley, counting the houses again till he got to the dead man’s back gate.
    He leant against the gate and closed his eyes and sent an urgent message.
    Sorry about this Mr . . . urn . . .
    He realised he couldn’t remember the dead mans name.
    Mr Milton?
    Mr Stannish?
    Mr Mellish, that was it.
    Sorry about this Mr Mellish, said Keith silently, but I’m desperate. Tracy can’t come now and this is the only other thing I can think of Sorry.
    He took a deep breath and clambered over the gate.
    He hit the ground on the other side, slipped on the cold damp grass, picked himself up and ran towards the house.
    He crouched at the back door, panting.
    The windows at the back of the house were dark too.
    Keith strained to hear if any sounds were coming from inside.
    Nothing.
    OK, he thought, the key.
    He felt under the mat.
    Nothing.
    In the darkness he could make out some flowerpots next to the back step.
    He felt inside them.
    Behind them.
    Under them.
    Nothing.
    Come on, he thought, everyone hides a back door key somewhere.
    He groped around the other side of the step, feeling for an old gardening shoe like Uncle Derek and Aunty Joyce used.
    There wasn’t one.
    Just an empty milk bottle which toppled off the step and smashed loudly.
    Keith froze.
    He waited for all the neighbours who’d gawked at the body on the stretcher to come rushing out of their houses and grab him and drag him off to the police station where he’d be charged with breaking and entering.
    â€˜I wasn’t really breaking and entering, officer,’ Keith rehearsed in his head, ‘I was just trying to find out how Mr Mellish died. Whether it really was from loneliness or whether it was from something else like drink or bad diet or radiation from a leaky microwave. There are two lives at stake. Three if you count me worrying myself to death.’
    After several rehearsals Keith realised he was still alone in the dark with his eardrums pounding.
    When they’d stopped, he began carefully feeling around for a key again.
    Then he heard it.
    Coming from inside the house.
    A high-pitched wail.
    It was very faint but Keith knew as soon as it started that it wasn’t a door creaking or a microwave leaking or the wind in a plug hole.
    It was somebody crying.
    Somebody or something.
    A thin, eerie, mournful sound.
    Keith’s eardrums started pounding again.
    He had a stern word with himself, reminding himself that he’d been around and he knew that ghosts were just a figment of the imagination.
    He tried to swallow but the inside of his mouth felt dry and woolly like the blanket that had covered Mr Mellish’s body.
    The wailing was the saddest thing Keith had ever heard.
    A thought slipped into his mind.
    What if . . .
    It was crazy so he waited for it to go away.
    It didn’t.
    What if, he thought, the wailing is Mr Mellish trying to tell me he did die of loneliness and I mustn’t give up trying to save Mum and Dad from a similar fate?
    Keith realised he was shaking all over.
    He had an even sterner word with himself, reminding himself that he hadn’t believed in ghosts for over two years.
    He listened to the wailing again.
    Then he turned and ran for the back gate as fast as he could.
    Keith lay