Darkest Hour (Age of Misrule, Book 2) by Mark Chadbourn Read Free Book Online Page A

Redskins or one of those other old fogey bands you like. I don’t know how you got into all that stuff. Most of them were playing before you were born.”
    “You’ve got to appreciate the past to know where you’re going.”
    “You’ve been reading books again, haven’t you? I told you it was bad for you.” She smiled, but it drained away once she realised they were standing outside his home. Over the year her imagination had turned it into some kind of nightmarish haunted house, the place where all bad things originated. Even on the few times she’d been into the empty place there’d been an unpleasant atmosphere mingled in with the cheap cigarette smoke and smell of fried food. “Are you sure he’s not in?”
    “He never misses a meeting.” Lee led her round the side of the house. The small back garden was in darkness; a few items of clothing still fluttered on the washing line.
    “What about your mum and Kelly?”
    “They’ll have stopped off for a drink after the bingo.”
    “Lee, why are you bringing me here?”
    “There’s something I want to show you. To put your mind at rest.”
    “About what?”
    “That everything’ll be all right.” She still seemed unsure, so he took her hand and tugged her towards the shed in the shadows near the rear fence. It was much larger than average. Mick had put it up when he was thinking about breeding racing pigeons, but he’d never got round to that, like so many other things in his life.
    “You don’t want to get down to it here one more time, do you?” she said with a sly smile.
    “Wait and see.” They stepped into the darkness of the shed and its familiar smell of turps and engine oil. He took her hand and waited a couple of seconds before saying in a clear voice, “Come out. It’s me.”

    In the dark Sunita looked at him in puzzlement; she could feel his hand growing clammy. “Who are you talking to?”
    He hushed her anxiously. He kept his gaze fixed firmly on the back of the shed and when he didn’t get whatever response he had been expecting, he tried again, a little more insistently. Still nothing. “Please,” he said finally. “This is Sunita. I told you about her. She’s okay, you know that.”
    He waited for another moment and then sighed. “We better go,” he said reluctantly.
    Outside, she gave him a peck on the cheek. “It’s a good job I love mad people. Now are you going to tell me-“
    “You better not laugh!”
    “Of course not.”
    “Promise?”
    “I promise, idiot. Now get on with it.”
    He bowed his head with the odd, wincing expression which she knew signalled deep embarrassment. “It started a couple of weeks ago. I kept hearing noises in the shed.”
    “Noises?”
    “Yes, you know … voices. They kept chattering in there. I thought some smackheads had broken in, but every time I went to check there was no one in there.”
    “Ooh, spooky!”
    “Yeah, that’s what I thought. But then last week there was someone there.”
    Sunita eyed him askance, trying to predict the punchline. “Who was it?”
    He rubbed his chin, obviously not wanting to continue. Finally he said, “Do you believe in fairies?”
    “Fairies?” She burst out laughing.
    “You said you weren’t going to laugh!”
    “Sorry, but … You can’t be serious!”
    He looked away grumpily.
    “Okay, go on!” she said, tugging at his sleeve. “What did they look like?”
    “They looked like fairies! Well, a fairy. Small, pointed ears, green clothes. It was just like one I’d seen on a book I had when I was a lad.”
    It took him another ten minutes to get her to take him seriously, but eventually she accepted it. “Okay, there’s been a lot of strange stuff going on all over. If you say fairies, I believe fairies,” she said, bemused. “So there are, really and truly, fairies at the bottom of the garden.”

    “I don’t know why I even bother with you,” he sighed. “Just listen then, if you’re not going to believe me. I tell you, I