Harry the Poisonous Centipede Goes to Sea by Lynne Reid Banks Read Free Book Online

to hunt and stop things because it was so easy to just eat tree-droppings and other things the Hoo-Mins ate.”
    George and Harry were flabbergasted. A centipede who lived with Hoo-Mins! It was unthinkable. Totally uncentipede.
    “Didn’t they ever hunt you?”
    “No. I was careful. I only foraged in the dark-time. They never saw me. Not once.”
    George, struck crackle-less for a long moment, at last said, “Well. If you know somuch about Hoo-Min nests, how can we get out of this one?”
    “I’ll show you.”
    She ran across the kitchen floor to where there was a door. It was slightly open. “We go through here first,” she said. “After that, we just keep feeling where the fresh air is coming from, and head for that.”
    “What if there’s a straight-up-hard-thing in the way?”
    “Listen, Hoo-Mins have to get in and out of their nests, just like us,” she said. “There’s never a place without a way out. And in an emergency, you can always hide. Their nests are full of good hiding places. Find something close to the ground and dive under that, like we did before. Now let’s eat. There’s lots of good food, I can smell it.”
    Centipedes normally like to catch live prey. They don’t like eating dead things. But there wasn’t much choice here. They found, and stopped, a few unwary ants (which they crunched up like peanuts), and there was a cockroach that had already stopped. When George tried eating it, he wasn’t so sorry that they were faster-than-us because it was fairly disgusting. Besides, the taste reminded him of bad times.
    But Josie was very happy. She found an apple core, quite fresh, under the sink, which had been thrown at the waste-bucket and missed, and lots of crumbs and some smears of jam that she got quite excited about.
    “It’s like tree-droppings, only much nicer!”she said. “Do try it!” But the centeens wouldn’t. They’d found a sort of dried-out puddle with some meat-scraps in it.
    “I wouldn’t mess with that,” said Josie uneasily, as the other two crawled over the rim and started devouring the meat.
    “Why not?” asked Harry, raising his head. George went on eating.
    “I – I just don’t think you should,” said Josie. “There’s something about that thing you’re in. I don’t like the smell of it.”
    “Smells of good meat!” said George with his mouth full.
    “It smells of something alive, not stopped meat,” murckled Josie. But the others were eating too greedily to listen to her. So she just stood well back, looking unhappy.
    Then they found another puddle with some tasty white stuff like water in it and they hung over the rim and had a gooddrink. Josie reluctantly joined in. She was too thirsty not to. But the minute she’d drunk her fill, she scuttled away from the two puddles and moved towards the door.
    “I think we should go now,” she said.
    But as she approached the door, it began to move.
    It was being pushed wider. Around the edge of it came a big, round, hairy head. The head took one look and sniffed.
    Josie reared up in horror. “Look out!” she crackled.
    The next moment, total chaos broke out.

11. The Hairy-yowler
    Imagine a face. Straight ahead of you, but higher. It’s looking down at you. It’s round and furry, with pointed ears, a triangular nose, and whiskers. But the main thing about it is that it’s enormous. Its face is as wide as you are with your arms stretched out, and then as wide as that again.
    Now imagine that this monster is glaring at you with green eyes as big as your head, and that it then opens its mouth, which is full of teeth, makes a furious hissing noise, and takes a lunge at you.
    Now you know what Josie saw when the monster came round the kitchen door and saw her.
    It’s hard to describe the turmoil that followed.
    Josie shot out of its way. The others, after a horrified moment when they were paralysed with fright, shot in different directions. The creature went mad. It chased George up a wall as far as