Raven Summer Read Online Free PDF Page B

weight and you feel the snakes’ fangs are inches away. But you know you can easily jump to the side, even with the mask on. And the others guide you:
Two more feet, one more foot.
And they hold out their arms if you show any sign of tottering. You know that somebody will reach out, will give you an arm or a hand.
    Then it starts to be a joke:
It nearly got you! Aaaaagh, look out! A bit to the left! Oh no, I meant the right! The plank’s cracking! Jump! Jump!
    Then prodding, and poking, and shoving. And we’re all giggling and laughing and cursing, filled with excitement andterror. And when the mask’s on you know that there’s nobody there to help, there’s only things to make it worse, to make it harder. And you think of the snakes and their slithering shapes and their jaws and fangs and venom. But you do it anyway because it’s so weird, it’s so engulfing, because you’ve never done anything like it before. And then of course one of us falls, Eddie Marks, a skinny lad, twelve years old. He topples as we’re prodding him. He can’t react in time and leap for the rim. He sprawls in the pit. We haul him out even as he’s falling. The snakes don’t get him. We throw him into the grass and he lies there screaming like a baby and he just won’t stop. And most of us are gasping air and shuddering and shaking and stamping and cupping our hands to our mouths and trying not to howl. And Nattrass moves among us, grinning. Then I crack. I go for him. I shove him over and grab him by the throat. He pushes me off and we writhe and struggle on the grass. I try to drag him to the edge of the pit. I see Eddie and Ned coming to us. Any second now there’ll be a boot in my face. But it doesn’t come, and anyway Nattrass is stronger. He’s fighting me off easily. He’s laughing.
    “Oh, Liam,” he says. “I thought folk like you were all peace and love and joy. But you’re a bad bugger just like me, aren’t you, brother?”
    And it’s him who’s dragging me, and he’s laughing and snarling and spitting and bleeding and I’m wishing I had Death Dealer with me to scare him off with.
    He gets me to the pit.
    “Come and get the bastard!” he yells at the snakes. “Come on!”
    The snakes slide and slither but come no nearer.
    “Come on!” he yells.
    Then there’s a man’s voice, from Nattrass’s house, far away at the end of the overgrown allotment.
    “Gordon!”
    Nattrass is suddenly dead still.
    “Gordon!” comes the voice again.
    “Aye, Da?” yells Nattrass.
    “What the hell you up to out there?”
    Nattrass looks up at me. His dad’s disabled, lost his right arm in a tractor accident years ago. He hardly ever gets out. He’s hardly ever seen. I remember him, slouched in a dark room on a sofa watching TV. I remember the half-closed door, the smell of piss, stale beer, cigarettes.
    “Nowt, Da!” yells Nattrass. “We’re just messing about, Da!”
    He lets me struggle free.
    “That’s right, isn’t it?” he whispers. “Just messing about. Just playing, eh? Just joking?”
    I kneel, stand. There’s blood and saliva and snot all over me and I can’t tell which is his and which is mine. Nattrass is trying to pull himself together.
    “Who’d’ve thought that Liam Lynch had that in him?” he whispers. He slips closer to me. “You’re just like me at heart, Liam. Just like you always were, if truth be told.”
    “Gordon!” comes the voice again.
    “Aye, Da! Aye!”
    He waves the others away.
    “Shove off,” he says. “Shove off, all of you. Quick!”
    They start to go.
    I spit blood onto the grass.
    “We’re blood brothers,” he says. “Remember? We’re linked in blood.”
    “Piss off, Nattrass,” I whisper.
    “OK, brother. But you’ve started something. You know that, don’t you?”
    “Gordon!”
    He grins as I shove past him. I follow the others, past the dilapidated cowshed, heading homeward. Eddie Marks crouches in the next field, vomiting. I whisper to him that he’ll be