Six Impossible Things Read Online Free PDF

landing there was another distinct bump from overhead.
    The next night after dinner, when my mother was elbow deep in marzipan research, I went into the storeroom and climbed the ladder attached to the wall under a manhole. Fourteen rungs. The old-fashioned rounded ones. They dug in, even through sneakers. The ladder was set out only about six centimetres from the wall. When I got to the top and undid the stiff manhole bolt, something was weighing down on the cover. It wouldn’t budge. I gave it an awkward shove with my shoulder and head, and heard a crash from the other side as something heavy hit the attic floor.
    I froze. Someone had tried to block this entrance to the attic. My mind spat through a kaleidoscope of nasty possibilities – psychotic criminals, hungry rats, ghosts taking the form of small children with vacant eyes, sick little smiles and pointy incisors . . . a vampire ghost? That’s just dumb. Ghosts don’t eat. It would have to be one or the other. Enough. I gave myself a mental smack on the side of the head, started breathing again, and ventured up another rung for a look.
    I zipped the torch beam around. Nothing scuttled or charged from the blackness, so I hauled myself into the space.
    Like the rest of Adelaide’s house, it was large, dusty, and full of stuff – mostly trunks and wooden storage crates. A box of books had been blocking the manhole cover and had tipped sideways and spilt when I shoved. Who had put it there? I walked around checking between trunks and bits of furniture. Whoever put the box there had either used another exit to get out of the attic, or they were still here. A wave of goosebumps shivered across my skin.
    There must be another hatch down into the house. I found it hidden behind a huge camphor-wood chest, but it too had a heavy box on top of it. Much as I searched around, I couldn’t find a third access point back down into the house. It was creeping me out. I swung the torch beam up and looked into the roof cavity. There was the round window you could see from the street, but I couldn’t imagine anyone getting out that way.
    As the beam of light washed back down the party wall, I noticed a gap in the brickwork, about a door’s width and half its height, blocked from the other side. This was the wall separating our attic space from Estelle’s. Looking more closely, I could see the gap was blocked by flattened cardboard removal car-tons. I gave a tentative push and they fell in with a bit of a crash. I stopped breathing, but there was no response to the noise, so I crawled on through.
    This was not a space for rats, or possums, or even ghosts. I saw in a glance that it belonged to a girl. Estelle. I checked again, making sure I couldn’t hear anything, and shone the torchlight around. My heart thumped like a maniac. Of course I knew I was trespassing, and not just by being on someone else’s property – no, this was a private space. Despite that, there was no way I was leaving without having a look around. I didn’t consciously decide to stay and snoop, I just did it.
    There were candles everywhere – in a huge pair of blackened silver candelabras sitting in the middle of the floor, in tall crystal candlesticks, in small Venetian glasses. There was a large nest made up of brocade curtains, faded cushions and intricately patterned patchwork quilts. Next to it was a pile of books and a mohair rug.
    On a small desk sat a glass paperweight, a miniature black lacquer Chinese cabinet with hand-painted ivory inlay panels – I can’t help the cataloguing, it’s all that time I spent with Posy – some very old notebooks or journals filled with delicate copperplate writing, a doll with a porcelain face, dressed in French sailor’s clothes, some exercise books and pens, a small bottle carved from pale green jade. Embroidered silk shawls decorated the walls. Estelle had tied ribbon loops onto the corners of the shawls and pinned them up with drawing pins. Overlapping