Heaven Eyes by David Almond Read Free Book Online

echoed deep inside my mind. I felt the touch of her webbed fingers on my cheek. The little fire’s gentle heat drifted over us. I felt the Middens mud drying on me, encasing me.
    “It’s warm,” I said. “We’re tired, Jan. We have to stay, at least for tonight.”
    He glanced at Grampa, who stayed sitting at the table, taking no notice of us. He kept on writing, writing. He muttered and whispered as he wrote. Black dust fell from his hair and beard to the page.
    “They’re mad,” said January. “They’re bloody freaks.”
    “They won’t harm us.”
    “Like something from a bloody nightmare. Look at him. No knowing what he’ll do …”
    “But she’s lovely.”
    “Lovely!”
    “Yes, lovely. Old as us, but like a little girl. And so strange, Jan …”
    He shook his head and ground his teeth.
    “A freak, you mean. A mutant. Like something from a stupid zoo.”
    “Stop it!”
    He narrowed his eyes.
    “You’re under a spell, Erin. All that stuff about brothers and sisters and bestest friends!”
    “A spell! Ha!”
    Grampa grunted. He looked down at us.
    “Not brother,” he said. “Not sister.”
    I shook my head at him.
    “No,” I said. “We know that, Grampa.”
    “We know that, Grampa,” echoed January in a little mocking voice; then he lowered his head, turned his back to me. Soon his breathing slowed and deepened. Grampa turned back to his book.

B EHIND G RAMPA, THE SHELVES ON THE WALL were packed. I could make out broken bits of pottery, heaps of coins, rusted knives and tools. There were rows of bottles and metal boxes. There was a small boat’s propeller and a little anchor. There was a little stack of bleached bones. On the highest shelves, right up against the ceiling, there were boxes lashed tight with belts and ropes. Three spades leaned on the wall beside the door. There were several buckets, one inside the other. Grampa murmured and wrote. Heaven Eyes slept on my arm. Sometimes she hummed as she slept and it was like music that came from a thousand miles away. I rubbed my eyes to keep myself from sleep and dreams.
    Grampa’s hands were like ours, grainy and black.
    Black dust as well as scribbled words fell from his fingers. He kept staring into the darkness, pondering, tapping on his table.
    “Tuesday,” he said. “Unless I’ve lost me blinking brain again and I’m all befuddled again an it’s another day. But call it Tuesday. Discoveries, several. Three plates, broken. One cup, broken. One pan, no handle. Two coins amounting to two new pence and one old penny. A bag of bread, sodden. Umpteen pop bottles, plastic. One boot, one sock, one pair underpants, extra large. One wing, kittiwake. One dog, black, dead. One large thigh bone, source unknown. Jewelry, none. Riches, none. Treasure, none. Mysteries, one.”
    He chewed his pencil and stared down at us, lying in a row on his floor. I narrowed my eyes. I saw the bulge of his nose, the long hair hanging down, the outline of his ragged beard, the word SECURITY on his chest. He turned his face to the page again.
    “Mysteries, one. Creatures, three, crawling on the Middens in the dead of night. One craft, timber. Three creatures carried here by water and the moon. Three creatures crawling from the depths of the Middens’ mud. Three creatures, rescued by my Heaven.”
    He lifted a piece of corned beef and started to chew it.
    “There’s visitors come, Grampa. Devils or angels or something in between? Who can say.”
    He looked down at us, lying there on his floor. He wiped his sleeve across his mouth. He scribbled again.
    “No doubt tomorrow will shed light.”
    He leaned back in his creaking chair.
    “Tuesday over,” he sighed. “Wednesday still to come.”
    He started to sing about the sea, about someone who had gone too far out and couldn’t find the way home again. He sat there with his head lowered into the pool of candlelight. He glanced at us again.
    “And if these is come for shenanigans,” he said. “Then mebbe