Читать книгу Awful Auntie - David Walliams, Quentin Blake, David Walliams - Страница 16

But Stella had to try to flee. Even though this great country house was her home, she didn’t want to be alone here with this creepy lady a moment longer. The girl had always found Aunt Alberta spooky when growing up. The woman would sometimes tell her niece traditional bedtime stories, but with a twist. The twist was that in Alberta’s versions evil would always triumph.

Hansel and Gretel

It’s not the witch that is shoved in the oven at the end, but the two children. The witch lives happily ever after in her house made of sweets.

Three Little Pigs

The big bad wolf huffs and puffs and blows all three little piggies’ houses down. He then has roast pork for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day for a week.

Goldilocks and the Three Bears

When Goldilocks gobbles up their porridge, the bears get their revenge by gobbling up her.

Snow White

When Snow White finds the seven dwarfs’ cottage they lock her up and make her do all their cooking and cleaning. Snow White then spends the rest of her life hand-washing seven pairs of dirty dwarf underpants every day.

Sleeping Beauty

She never wakes up. Just blows off violently in her sleep. Alberta particularly enjoyed adding the sound effects on this one, even providing some with a trumpet.

Jack and the Beanstalk

Jack loses his grip on the beanstalk while climbing up it and falls down to earth, landing on top of his mother with a giant SPLAT!

Rapunzel

She’s completely bald. When the handsome prince tries to climb up the tower all he does is pull her wig clean off.

The Frog Prince

The princess kisses the frog and contracts a waterborne disease that makes her bottom explode.

The Three Billy Goats Gruff

The troll who lives under the bridge eats all the goats, then eats the bridge, and then does a gigantic BURP. Again Aunt Alberta always adored providing the sound effects here.

The Little Mermaid

She drowns. The end.

These twists spoke of how Alberta herself was twisted. Stella had to escape.

The girl waited for the sound of her aunt’s footsteps to grow fainter as she disappeared down the long corridor. The bell the woman had put in her mouth had a bitter rusty taste, and she pushed it away with her tongue. It rolled down her body and rested on the top of her stomach. Stella looked down at herself. Everything below her neck was tightly wrapped in what must be miles and miles of bandage. Aunt Alberta had told her that every bone in her body was broken. But could that really be true? More likely the bandages were just a way of keeping her captive. The girl lifted her head. She could circle her neck around perfectly. Something told her that if she could only wrestle her way out of these bandages, she could make a run for it.

Saxby Hall was a few miles from the nearest village, situated beyond a huge expanse of moorland. It was too treacherous to cross at night, but during the day she might make it to the nearest farmhouse in a couple of hours if she ran as fast as she could. Stella could knock on the first door, and beg for help. The girl desperately needed to discover for herself the truth about how her parents had died.

But before she could escape from the house, Stella had to escape from the bandages.

The girl began trying to rock her body from side to side. A flicker of a smile crossed her face as she realised she could move a tiny bit.

To the left.

To the right.

To the left.

To the right.

Like a swing, she went a little further each time.

To the left.

To the right.

The bell rolled over her stomach and dropped on to the wooden floorboards below.

THUD.

DING!

It was a long way down to fall. Still the girl kept rolling from side to side.

To the left.

To the right.

Momentum was building now.

To the left.

To the right.

To the left.

For a moment, she was balanced on her side. Suddenly she felt weightless. Then even more suddenly she was lying face down on the floor. THUD.

“Owww!” she cried, before cursing herself for making a sound.

The bandages had loosened a little now, and Stella found she could move her legs and arms a tiny bit. That means they can’t be broken! she realised. She shuffled along the floor with all the speed and grace of a caterpillar. After a minute the girl realised she had only moved a few inches. It was pitiful. She lay on the floor, utterly exhausted and dejected. At this rate it would take a month to make it to her bedroom door, and a year to drag herself all the way downstairs.

Stella knew she wasn’t going to get anywhere until she had wriggled out of these bandages. But how? She couldn’t move her hands or feet. Then she had an idea.

She was going to have to bite her way out.

Stella tucked her chin down as far as it could possibly go. Next she stuck her tongue out, and tried to hook a piece of the bandage with the tip. Like trying to hook a rubber duck with a rod at the fair, it was much more difficult than it looked. After trying and trying and trying, finally she managed to catch the end of the bandage between her teeth.

Yanking her neck back she tugged at it. Shaking her head from side to side she loosened it. When she had pulled a long enough strip of bandage loose, she held it tight in her mouth. It was like she was a dog who had found a very special stick and was never letting it go.

Stella shuffled back towards her bed. Exhausted but determined, she hooked the loose piece of bandage on one of the sharp metal springs under the mattress. Next she rolled herself over. And over. The more she rolled the more the bandage unravelled.

It was working!

With each roll she could feel her body moving that little bit more. Soon she could waggle her arms a little, then her legs.

The human caterpillar was hatching into a butterfly.

The excitement at slowly becoming free filled her tired body with an electric energy. Soon she was rolling faster and faster, and waggling her arms and legs frantically. As soon as her left arm was free she grabbed the end of the bandage with her hand.

It was unravelling at speed now.

Next her right arm came free. Now she could push the bandage down and soon she kicked her legs free.

For a moment she lay on her back on the floor of her bedroom. The epic struggle was over. The bandage was curled up next to her, like a snake she had killed with her bare hands.

Stella’s bedroom was two floors up. In her nightdress she crawled over to the window. Looking down to the snow-covered lawn she realised she was far too high up to jump.

A huge white figure loomed at the end of the long sloping garden. It looked like a snowman, but it was nearly as tall as the house. A ladder leaned next to it. What was it? Stella was transfixed by it for a moment, but darkness was descending. And there was no time to lose.

But there was a problem.

The only way out of her bedroom was the door, and it was locked.

There was only one key.

On the other side of the door.