The Monster of Shiversands Cove Read Online Free PDF Page B

ON HARRY!’ he shouted.
    Which was when I felt small, sharp teeth nip my behind, as, out from underneath me, something zoomed. Something which was wearing sparkly gold shorts. Something which was flapping sparkly gold wings. Something which was chattering furiously and gnashing two very big front teeth, more like fangs, right in my face.
    A fairy. It was a small, angry fairy.
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    Chapter Seven
    Harry the Horrible
    It was like being in the middle of a dream: the weirdest dream of my whole life. This could
not
be happening.
    First, there was a sea monster in the bay and now there was a fairy in the garden. And there was no way of talking to Dad about it because, well, what could I say?
    â€˜Dad, there is a sea monster in our cove. Oh, and Harry the fairy is also real. But you can’t see either of them because you don’t have magic eyes.’
    No. I couldn’t say that. How could I? There are some things you just
can’t
say to a dad.
    To make matters worse, Harry the fairy was
horrible
.
    He had sparkly fairy shorts and sparkly fairy wings but he also had weird eyes: mean little eyes,angry eyes, which were a dark reddish colour. He had bushy eyebrows, creepy curved fingernails and low-set ears. His ears were as weird as his eyes. They were long and narrow, and a tiny bit furry, laid flat on his little fairy head.
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    And Harry the Horrible did
not
like me, not since I almost sat on him.
    He glared at me and chattered his teeth. Then, he started sniffing round my head, sniffing my hair, sniffing in my ears, sniffing wherever he could.
    He was behaving like Bagel. That’s what Bagel always did, every walk we went on; every time Bagel met another dog, he’d start sniffing it.
    Now, Harry started sniffing right in my face. ‘Get OFF me,’ I yelled, batting him off. ‘Pest!’
    â€˜Don’t be a
horrid
, Stan,’ tutted Magnus, wagging his finger. ‘Harry’s not a pest. He’s a little fairy. And he wants to be your friend.’
    â€˜He does NOT want to be my friend,’ I said, batting him off again. ‘And anyway, he’s not a proper fairy. Where’s his wand? Aren’t fairies supposed to have wands and do little bits of fairy magic?’
    Although I was quite glad Harry
didn’t
have a wand. He might be even worse. Then Harryswooped down and started sniffing round my knees. ‘STOP that!’ I yelled, kicking up with my knee. Harry didn’t like that. He flew up and flapped his sparkly wings in my face, hissing and gnashing his teeth.
    â€˜You know what?’ I said. ‘I’m not even sure he
is
a fairy. Look at those teeth and the furry ears. He’s creepy. More like a flying hobgoblin.’
    But I had bigger things to worry about than Harry, like a sea monster, here, in Shiversands Cove.
    I left Magnus and Dad in the cove and went back up to the cottage. I had a
lot
of thinking to do. That painting, the one in the sitting room, it was looking likely that it
was
of the monster, so the sea monster was probably
not
passing through. This was probably where the sea monster lived.
    I checked the painting. It was old. It had a signature I couldn’t read, and a date on it: 1904, a long time ago. Was it a very old sea monster, then? How long did sea monsters live? Hundreds of years? Or was it a
family
of sea monsters? Was this a grandchild of the sea monster in the painting?
    I had a scary thought: maybe there was more than one sea monster. Maybe there were lots ofsea monsters, a big family, and they all looked alike.
    No. If they were family they would do some swimming together, surely. So it was probably just the one monster I had to worry about.
    Still, it couldn’t be a ferocious monster because if that sea monster
was
ferocious, people would know about it. There would be gruesome discoveries: fishing boats with jagged holes in them and no sign of their owner; tourists disappearing without trace.
    No. There