Читать книгу Mystery Lady - Paul Magrs - Страница 10

‘Cassie..! What on Earth’s the matter with you..?’

The poor girl was hyperventilating as she lay there on top of the duvet.

To be honest, I was worn out and short on patience. I’d only just fallen asleep, at about three a.m. after a very long day. Now here was Cassandra having one of her out-of-body experiences and my nerves were just about at breaking point.

‘She’s been attacked…! Again..! By something unnatural…!’

I switched on the bedside lamp, it took me a moment to find the button. ‘Dearest, you look shocked!’

‘It was Helen Spedding in my dream. But it was more than a dream. I think she’s in awful danger.’

‘Shall I get you a brandy?’ I jumped up and opened the swish cocktail cabinet built into the bed’s headboard.

It was when I was on my feet that I noticed the horrible weather outside. Cassie gasped. ‘It’s a blizzard… just like in my dream!’

There was no chance for me to reply because at that very moment the windows blew in. Perhaps I left one of them on the catch. I couldn’t remember. It was as if that freezing wind had caught a claw inside the window frame and gave it a great, ghostly wrench.

Then, with a primordial howl of rage, the storm itself was inside the room with us. Cassandra was screaming as the bedclothes and all the furniture flew into the air. The lamp smashed and we were pitched into darkness. Freezing snow pelted us and instantly soaked my nightgown. I gasped and could barely catch my breath.

‘Dodie..!’ shrieked Cassandra. ‘What’s happening..? How can this be happening..?’

But there wasn’t time to think about it. I was clinging to the mattress, suddenly scared that we were going to be dragged out of the window and into the dark, chaotic sky.

What kind of power could smash its way into a bedroom like this? Some kind of evil elemental force, surely…

The bedroom door flew open and suddenly Timmy was standing there. Silhouetted in his pyjamas.

The wind howled mockingly. One of the windows shattered and deadly shards of glass whizzed through the air, narrowly avoiding us. I cried out to him: ‘Get back into the corridor, Timmy!’

Suddenly there was another kind of blizzard in the room.

Pages of typescript were tumbling through the air.

The unnatural wind had got at the parcel Miss Spedding had given to me for safekeeping. It had ripped open the brown paper and dislodged that neat pile. And now every page was being thrown into the tumultuous air.

‘Catch them! Quick!’ I cried out to the others. ‘It’s the whole manuscript! It’s the Horrible Book of Terror! Volume 27!’

‘What?’ cried Timothy Bold, quite befuddled.

‘It’s something supernatural, this blizzard,’ bellowed Cassie. ‘It’s a… visitation..! ’

In that instant I just knew that she was right. Cassie has the knack for seeing the truth.

‘Some unseen hand… is trying to steal the book! Quick! Catch the pages!’

There followed a desperate scene with the three of us leaping about the room in all that confusion, snatching at the flying pages of foolscap. They whirled about us mockingly… some of them flying straight out of the smashed windows…

‘What’s happening?’ Timmy shouted. ‘What on earth is going on here?’

At that very instant the blizzard stopped.

The howling ceased. The snow stopped bursting its way into the room.

The pages fluttered down on top of the cold damp carpet and bed.

We were left standing there, clutching soggy manuscript and staring at each other.

‘There’s something bad coming after us,’ said Cassandra, with a pale and terrified expression on her face.

I knew she was right.

At once I started putting the manuscript back together. How many pages were missing? Were the ones we had rescued soggy and useless?

‘Look at this,’ Timmy said. ‘I’ve got the contents page…’He brought it to me and we all peered at the list of story titles and authors. The room was dark now, though, and cold and damp. We decamped to the much cosier sitting room.

I hurried over to Timmy’s priceless Jacobean writing desk and smoothed out the dampened contents page.

‘What are all those strange marks?’ he asked.

‘I suppose they’re corrections that Helen Spedding made…’ I mused.

But my tone lacked conviction.

Cassandra whispered in my ear: ‘I wasn’t exactly a whizz at secretarial college. But even I know those aren’t copy-editing marks. They look more like…’

‘Some strange old language,’ said Timothy. ‘Like out of a pyramid or something. I don’t like it. It looks spooky.’

I nodded. They were both right.

Beside each name on the contents page there was a different symbol, scrawled in reddish black ink.

Those scratchy runes looked awfully ominous.

‘Oh, and Dodie – look!’

Timmy was pointing at the thirteenth name on the list.

My own.

I was at the very end.

Dodie Golightly.

My name in print.

And I had a symbol next to my name, too.

It looked like a horrid kind of skull.

‘Oh, Dodie,’ said my best friend. ‘What the devil have we got ourselves into this time..?’