‘I came for you, Caleb!’ Her voice is as loud as the lightning. ‘I came to save you!’ He’s sliding down the hall and the trapdoor flips open. He’s sliding to the trapdoor, back towards the underground. He can’t grab hold of anything to stop himself. ‘You’re worse than any of them! I hate you, Caleb!’ Hands reaching out of the basement. Grey, dusty hands ready to pull him down and never let go.
Misha wails a double note, layering them, and adds another, and it feels like the whole house tips and Caleb accelerates and
stops, and the notes stop too, and the air thins out, and the crawling electricity falls from the ceiling in shimmering sheets. Caleb looks back. Vic Sweet has Misha pinned by her throat to the doorframe, clawing at her clothing. He squeezes. No voice to make notes with, only rough choking.
Getting to his feet is Caleb’s mountain to climb.
Vic will kill her if Caleb doesn’t stop him.
Misha was going to kill Caleb.
He can’t let her die.
Can’t let anyone else die.
Up, and starting to run, every single muscle telling him to stop.
Eight, skittering across the floor, spinning, shooting out letters.
M O T H E R I S D E A D
F A T H E R I S D E A D
C A L E B I S N E X T
Massive letters crawling around the walls.
Misha finger-clicking, hard and loud snaps, fast rhythm.
Vic’s huge hand squeezing, arm bulging.
Caleb running; the hall must be stretching; they’re so far away. Click click click
Vic’s grip slackens. He’s pulsating. With each click click click
A wet explosion. A world turned red. A wave splashes over Caleb, thick and hot. The force pushes him backwards, clawing the splatter from his eyes, his mouth. He retreats while Misha, crimson, still gasps for air because
C A L E B I S N E X T
The words spin white-on-red in this hallway of gore.
She’s still whooping for breath as he staggers into a room. It’s hers, and he leaves bloody handprints on the surfaces, struggling to hold himself up.
She did that, Misha did that.
She could do that to anyone.
C A L E B I S N E X T
She can do anything she thinks of.
She can take the world, the very world itself, and turn it against anyone. She can turn it.
He has to get out, but now the house is ROARING
130
Hauling air down her ragged throat, Misha looks up in time to see Caleb stumble into her bedroom and he cannot leave, she’s chased him all over this town and he is
NOT LEAVING NOW.
‘Not leaving now!’
Her splattered hands are out at her sides, grab bunches of air
squeeze and
lift
and it resists and pushes back and doesn’t want to move and Misha is all blood and fury and everything will go her way.
She grips and twists.
Spark showers pour from her fists and the house ROARS and it starts to tear loose, a tooth from the gum, a tree from its roots. The undead crawling out of the basement fall away as the house and its foundations rip themselves free of the earth, and it rises up and up and up.
131
Caleb slides and tumbles down Daisy Hill, chunks of soil and concrete dropping off the bottom of the levitating building. A huge hole has opened up, a slice taken off the top of the basement labyrinth, letting all the dead out.
Caleb can’t care about that. He has to be out of sight before Misha realises he slipped and tore his way out of the window. His arms and side are bleeding from the ragged window frame and that is infinitely better than having her click click click those fingers.
The whole hill shudders and jumbles, crashing him into gravestones, more hard, dark bruises. It feels like a limb being pulled off the planet, like he’ll be torn away next. He throws himself in amongst trees and collapses. Flat on his back. Chest heaving. Torn arms burning. The earth rumbling under him as lumps of concrete crash down into the labyrinth.
He looks up at Daisy Hill. At the house in the air above it. At the dead things dragging themselves out of the hole. A graveyard torn open. The guts of the Underworld spilled forth. The plug pulled.
Caleb knows he should run, but he has no run left.
132
Crawl is the last option left, and it brings him here, to this graveside, because where else could he ever go?
He is on hands and knees above her, he is blood and dirt all over, he looks like the corpses stumbling down Daisy Hill. ‘Why won’t you come back?’ he asks, heart aching like it did the day she left. ‘Why didn’t you ever come back? I need you! I’ve always needed you!’ He thumps the ground, both fists. ‘Even Dad came back! Where are you? People who hate me are coming back, so where are you, Mum?’ Through all of this he has needed her, and she hasn’t returned. The only ones that have, in his street, underground, in the gardens, are murderous, deadly. Mum could not be one of them. His own mum couldn’t. His own mum won’t come back to him.
Caleb, the hated boy.
He screams, a note all his own. It is everything he cannot say, everything he wanted to tell Misha, everything he’s never been able to tell anyone. Mum said she’d stay forever but now she’s nowhere at all, and he screams on her grave as the dead descend Daisy Hill.
133
I waited in that house for three days, listening to the scratchings in the tunnels beneath me, knowing she was outside amongst the gravestones, biding her time. I waited for her to come to me, no sleep and no need of it. I waited while her dark shape shuddered across the hill.
I waited, until at last my Evelyn came to the door, and we met that final time.
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AlphaNumeric
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When dyslexic teenager Stu accidentally transports himself into a world populated by living numbers and letters, his arrival triggers a prophecy that pulls two rival communities into war.
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In this award-winning YA novel, six teenagers from around the world gather for a frantic chase across Peru, in search of a sacred object that can stop The Black Magicians’ final plan.
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FAEBLES
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The First Book in the Dani Moore Trilogy
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Kelly Lawrence She’s in love with a boy from the wrong side of town…
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