Groosham Grange by Anthony Horowitz Read Free Book Online Page A

covers. But otherwise the two of them were alone. When the lights had gone out at nine-thirty, the other boys in the dormitory had already been asleep. Now their beds were empty, the covers pulled back. He directed the torch on to their chairs. Their clothes had gone too.
    Quietly, he slipped out of bed and put on his dressing-gown and slippers. Then he went to the door and opened it. There were no lights on in the school. And the silence was more profound, more frightening than ever.
    He tried a second dormitory, then a third. In each one the story was the same. The beds were empty, the clothes were gone. Outside, the rain was still falling. He could hear it pattering against the windows. He looked at his watch again, certain that he was making some sort of crazy mistake. It was twenty past twelve. So where was everybody?
    He could feel his heart tugging against his chest as if it were urging him to go back to bed and forget all about it. But David was wide awake now. He would get to the bottom of this even if it killed him. And, he thought to himself, in all probability it would.
    He tiptoed down the corridor, wincing every time he stepped on a creaking floorboard. Eventually he reached a fourth dormitory. He shone the torch on the handle of the door.
    Behind him, a hand reached out of the gloom.
    It settled on his shoulder.
    David felt his stomach shrink to the size of a pea. He opened his mouth to scream and only managed to stop himself by shoving the torch between his teeth. It was a miracle he didn’t swallow it. Slowly he turned round, the back of his neck glowing bright red with the beam of the torch shining through his throat.
    Jill stood opposite him. Like him, she was wearing a dressing-gown and slippers. She looked even more frightened than he did.
    “Where are they?” she whispered. “Where have they gone?”
    “Nggg…” David remembered the torch in his mouth and pulled it out. “I don’t know,” he said. “I was trying to find out.”
    “I saw them go.” Jill sighed, relieved to have found David awake and out of bed. “It was about twenty minutes ago. One of them woke me up as she left the dormitory. I waited a bit and then followed them.”
    “So where did they go?” David asked, repeating Jill’s own question.
    “I saw them go into the library,” Jill replied. “All of them. The whole school. I listened at the door for a bit but I couldn’t hear anything, so then I went in myself. But they weren’t there, David.” Jill took a deep breath. David could see that she was close to tears. “They’d all vanished.”
    David thought back. He had been in the library after tea, surrounded by the stuffed animal heads. It was a small room, barely big enough for sixty-three people. Apart from a table, a mirror, a dozen chairs and the animals, there was nothing in it. And that included doors. There was only one way in. Only one way back out again.
    “Maybe they’ve all gone outside?” he suggested. “Through a window.”
    Jill scowled at him. “In this weather? Anyway, the windows in the library are too high. I know. I tried…”
    “Then they must be somewhere in the school.”
    “No.” Jill slumped against the wall, then slithered down to sit on the floor. She was exhausted – and not just through lack of sleep. “I’ve looked everywhere. In the classrooms, in the dining hall, in the staff room … everywhere. They’re not here.”
    “They’ve got to be here somewhere!” David insisted. “They can’t just have disappeared.”
    Jill made no answer. David sat down next to her and put an arm around her shoulders. Neither of them spoke. David’s last words echoed in his thoughts. “They’ve got to be here somewhere! They can’t just have disappeared.”
    But sitting in the dark and silent passage he knew that he was wrong.
    Impossible though it seemed, they were alone in Groosham Grange.

CHRISTMAS
    Three days before Christmas it began to snow.
    By Christmas Day the whole island