‘I knew something was happening,’ murmured Gary. ‘Deep down I knew, but I didn’t want to admit it to myself. I was enjoying it all, you see. The power. People’s fear. The destruction.’
‘What I want to know,’ said Fliss, ‘is what it felt like when you actually became the worm. I mean, did you know you’d changed?’
Lisa shook her head. ‘There was this terrific excitement, that’s all. You felt like you could do anything. Anything at all. Everybody was scared of you, see? It gave you power – a feeling of power.’
‘And hate,’ put in Gary. ‘You hated everybody and everything. You just wanted to smash everything in sight.’ He grinned ruefully, shaking his head. ‘You should’ve felt the hate we felt for you, Fliss. You and your plastic sword. It was awesome.’
‘I felt it,’ said Fliss.
‘But you came on,’ said Lisa, ‘I wonder what would have happened if you hadn’t?’
‘We’d have become murderers,’ said Trot. ‘The four of us. We just wanted to destroy everyone and everything in Elsworth. We must’ve been totally crazy.’
Fliss shook her head. ‘I told you, Trot – it wasn’t you.’
‘But if it hadn’t been for you, Fliss, the worm would’ve won and we wouldn’t exist as separate people – or as people at all, come to that.’
Fliss shook her head again. She smiled, her first smile in a long time.
‘It wasn’t me either,’ she said.
About the Author
Robert Swindells left school at fifteen to work on a local newspaper. At seventeen, he joined the RAF for three years, then worked as a teacher. Now a full-time writer, he is the author of a number of bestselling children’s titles for Random House. In 1994 he won the Carnegie Medal for Stone Cold (Hamish Hamilton), a teenage novel about a serial killer. Ruby Tanya won the Salford Children’s Book Award 2005.
Also available by Robert Swindells, and published by Random House Children’s Books:
Abomination
Blackout
Blitzed
In the Nick of Time
Nightmare Stairs
Room 13 and Inside the Worm
Shrapnel
The Shade of Hettie Daynes
Timesnatch
* * *
ROOM 13
Robert Swindells
The night before her school trip, Fliss has a terrible nightmare about a dark, sinister house – a house with a ghastly secret in room thirteen. Arriving in Whitby, she discovers that the hotel they will be staying in looks very like the house in the dream.
There is one important difference – there is no room thirteen.
Or is there? At the stroke of midnight, something strange happens to the linen cupboard on the dim landing. Something strange is happening to Ellie-May Sunderland too, and Fliss and her friends find themselves drawn into a desperate bid to save her.
‘A splendid spooky story’
The School Librarian
WINNER OF THE 1990 CHILDREN’S BOOK AWARD
0 440 864658
CORGI YEARLING BOOKS
* * *
INSIDE THE WORM
AN RHCB DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 448 10015 6
Published in Great Britain by RHCB Digital,
an imprint of Random House Children’s Books
A Random House Group Company
This ebook edition published 2012
Copyright © Robert Swindells, 1993
Illustrations copyright © Jon Riley, 1993
First Published in Great Britain
Doubleday 1993
The right of Robert Swindells to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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