Читать книгу The Land of Roar - Jenny McLachlan - Страница 13

It turns out attics are extremely creepy at night, especially empty ones.

Moonlight streams in through the single window, lighting up the camp bed and making Prosecco look extra glittery. I step inside, my duvet trailing behind me, and flick on the light switch.

Nothing happens.

It takes several more pushes before I realise the bulb must have gone. It doesn’t matter. I’m going to sleep. I don’t need a light to open up a camp bed and fall asleep.

And yet . . . it is very shadowy up here, and quiet, and Prosecco’s silver eyeballs are staring right at me. I take a step to the left. Prosecco’s still staring at me. Step to the right. He’s still staring. This is stupid. Prosecco can’t stare. He’s made of wood and doesn’t have functioning eyeballs, and Prosecco is not a he: Prosecco is an it, an inanimate object!

That for some reason is rocking ever so slightly.

I’m about to step forward when I have the uncanny feeling that someone, or something, is up here in the attic with me. Immediately I think of the shadow I saw at the window, the wizard, and for a second I actually feel weak at the knees. So I decide to do what Dad says he does whenever he feels scared. I laugh out loud.

‘Ha ha ha ha!’

Wow. Dad is so wrong about that.

I tell myself that it’s my mind playing tricks on me again, then I put my shoulders back and walk towards the camp bed. I’m a step away when I hear a tiny fluttering sound. I freeze and hold my breath and listen. I hear it again. It sounds like wings brushing against something, and wings remind me of the map, and of the wild-looking face grinning at me from the window of the Crow’s Nest.

Crowky.

I’ve thought a lot about Crowky since I found the map. It was Rose who invented him out of the two things I hated most in the world: scarecrows and crows.

My scarecrow fear began when I once got lost in a maize maze. I’d run on ahead of my family and suddenly realised I was all on my own. Except for the scarecrows, and they were everywhere. I ran round a corner and saw a policeman scarecrow; I ran left and saw a Father Christmas scarecrow. I was about to start screaming when I spotted Mum on the next path. ‘Mum!’ I shouted, forcing my way towards to her and grabbing the sleeve of her denim jacket. Then her arm fell off.

It wasn’t Mum. It was an Elvis scarecrow, and that’s when I started screaming.

I swear to this day that their jackets were identical.

I’d have probably got over the scarecrow thing if, later in the day, Rose hadn’t thought it would be funny to feed some birds by sprinkling crumbs in my hair. A crow landed on my head and got a bit stuck, and the next time we were in Grandad’s attic Rose came up with Crowky. She could do his voice really well, all scratchy and wicked. ‘I’m going to get you, Arthur Trout! ’ she’d rasp, filling me with dread. ‘I’m going to get yoooou! ’

And it’s exactly that dread I’m feeling right now as I stand as still as possible, hardly daring to breathe, listening to every sound.

A pipe gurgles. The window rattles in its frame. Outside, Grandad’s bonfire crackles. Then I hear it: a violent, wild fluttering as if something huge and feathery is trapped inside the camp bed.

I turn and run for the door.

Rose, I decide, is forgiven.