The Grasshopper's Child Read Online Free PDF Page B

House kitchen floor, stabbing at Heidi with a carpet tack. The dark tower under her was full of noises, creaks and mutterings. A throbbing murmur rose from the depths, as if the sea had got in: flabby footsteps fell clammily on hundreds of winding stairs. With a jolt she woke in darkness, sitting bolt upright; and only then knew she’d been asleep.
    There was no moonlight. Rain pattered at her window; which probably explained the sea-sounds in her dreams. The nightmare hadn’t been with her, for once. There was no foul smell, no horrible warm dint in the duvet.
What time was it? She reached for her candle and the matches (more precious than
candles: you can light a candle again and again, but when you light a match, it’s gone). The room appeared, bare and shabby as in daylight. Her door was slightly open. She was sure she hadn’t left it like that, but she’d been very tired. Her phone wasn’t on the seat of the broken chair. She remembered she’d left it in the kitchen, and felt as horrified as if she’d left Mum alone down there.
    Okay, it wasn’t a person, it was just a phone, but she had to have it. She couldn’t sleep without knowing it was safe, and anyway she needed to know the time.
    She was already wearing her jumper, over the teeshirt she used as a pyjama top. She stowed the precious matches in her trackie-bottoms pocket: put on her trainers so she wouldn’t step barefoot on any slugs down in the kitchen, and set out. At the top of the steps she stopped to check for carpet tacks. All clear, she must have forgotten to scatter them before she went to bed, but there was light coming from somewhere. She snuffed the candle, put it in her pocket and descended cautiously. Surely the Old Wrecks couldn’t still be up?
    The windows on the Studio Floor landing were black dark. The light, a blueish glow, welled up from the floor below. Heidi peered over the bannisters, and immediately jerked back. Old Wreck Tallis was there, staring right up at her.
    Nothing happened, so she looked again. Old Wreck was still there, but she wasn’t staring at Heidi. She stood in the open doorway of a room on the forbidden Bedroom Passage, staring at something invisible in front of her. No, not quite invisible. Heidi made out a small transparent figure, like the luminous shadow of a child, wearing a short, filmy nightie; a bit too big for her, slipping off her shoulders.
    The child had her back to Heidi, her face to Old Wreck: who gaped in horror, in total dumb terror, at this shadowy vision—
    Heidi sat down, very quietly, on the Studio Floor stairs. She wondered if she was
dreaming. The cold felt real, the stairs felt real. She could smell the dust of the rooms she wasn’t allowed to clean. She wondered if she was somehow seeing a nightmare that Tallis was having . But how was she going to get by? She absolutely must have her phone.
    A door closed, the eerie glow vanished. Heidi looked down again, and couldn’t see a thing: the Bedroom Floor was now pitch dark. She carried on, without her candle. Down to the front hall, down to the basement, and into the night kitchen: where she dared to strike a match (it sounded incredibly loud) and light her candle again. All was quiet. Everything looked midnight-strange, as if the pots and pans had been playing all kinds of tricks until the moment she struck a light, but she saw her phone immediately.
    She grabbed it. Mission accomplished!
    In the dank well with the three doors she crushed the candle flame, between fingertips toughened by years of doing that job, stuffed the candle away, and listened. She couldn’t exactly hear anything, but she could feel that sea-sound: like the echo of a whispered, sinister conversation; somewhere close. Something weird’s going on in this house, she thought. She switched on her phone’s torch, and held it up.
    The Steel Door gleamed. In her nightmares Dad was behind there. Dad was dead, but