Steemjammer: Through the Verltgaat Read Online Free PDF Page B

floor boards and faced the window. He remembered his father telling him: “You have to smash their brains to fully stop them. The problem is they can hide them almost anywhere: their chest, stomach, bottom – and some try to throw us off and actually keep them in their heads.”
    Only now did Will realize how limited that advice was, and he wished he’d asked his father how you knew where their brains were!
    “Run!” he told his sister, planting his feet firmly on the floor and hefting the battle axe into attack position.
    The dark shape moved up to the window ominously. He wished he were stronger. Trembling, he stood his ground, tightening his grip on the handle.
    “What are you people doing in there?” a muffled female voice said from the other side of the glass, and they realized her shadow had been magnified out of proportion.
    Brother and sister stared in astonishment and then broke down laughing. It wasn’t some nefarious assailant from their father’s stories - it was their first cousin, Giselle!
     
    ***
     
    “Don’t you ever look out your windows?” said Giselle Steemjammer, who struggled to get comfortable in the oversized armchair in the den. Shifting this way and that, nothing felt right. She ended up settling herself onto a heavily padded footstool. “I was out there for almost an hour.”
    “You could have knocked,” Angelica said.
    Giselle’s large, gray-green eyes flashed. They were almond shaped and exotic - not bugging out like her Uncle Henry’s, but certainly mysterious and capable of powerful expression. She had long, straight brown hair that was only double-cowlicked. This caused it to have counter-rotating swirls in the back, which made it relatively easy to brush.
    Giselle was older than Will by a few months. Angelica thought she was very pretty and had always looked up to her, when they weren’t arguing. Giselle claimed to be “disturbed by small children” but in truth was often nice to Angelica.
    “You could have looked outside and seen me,” she said with only the slightest hint of a Dutch accent.
    “But why didn’t you knock?” Angelica persisted.
    “Because I don’t like knocking, and your door hurts my knuckles. With all those carvings, there’s no flat place to knock.”
    “You could have pulled the door chain.”
    “And be zapped by your creepy gong?”
    “It doesn’t ‘zap’ you.”
    “It zaps my eardrums and makes them ring for hours. And then the little door flaps open with that disturbing face popping out! No, I’m not about to pull your door chain, thank you very much.”
    Will laughed. When someone used their door gong, a small panel opened to the side, and a hideous white face popped out with a puff of steam. His father thought it was a tremendously good joke.
    “Dad says it keeps away door-to-door salesmen,” he said.
    “I’m sure it would,” his cousin automatically agreed. “What was that again? A door salesman, you said?”
    Will shrugged. They’d never had any, so he wasn’t really sure.
    “Speaking of Onkel Hendrelmus, is he here?” Uncle .
    “He was,” Will said, “until three days ago.”
    “He’s gone?”
    “There was a noise in the basement, and he went down to check it out.”
    “Aha!”
    “You know what happened?”
    “No, I said ‘aha’ to sound knowledgeable, like I’m in command of the situation. Don’t be so easily fooled.”
    Angelica smiled. She loved it when her cousin spoke like she had some secret, mysterious power and wished she could do the same.
    “Anyway,” Will explained, “when we came back from our chores, he wasn’t here. No note. Nothing but his lantern on a work bench by the boiler.”
    He folded his hands, not sure what else to say. An uncomfortable silence passed.
    “There are ice crystals around your air vent,” Giselle spoke at last. “I see an actual icicle. Do you people enjoy shivering?”
    “The cooling system’s on the fritz,” Will said. “We’d rather it be frosty than a