Long Lankin by Lindsey Barraclough Read Free Book Online

almost like something you can put out your hand and touch. I can hear my ears singing. Our footsteps echo off the polished tiles up into the rafters.
    The church is very small, with only eight pairs of pews, each one closed in with a little hinged door.
    The walls are plain, but up towards the timber beams, some of the white paint is peeling away and pale pictures are showing through the flakes, like the faded figures on the walls of Auntie Ida’s bathroom. Jagged scratches mark the plaster lower down, but somebody has painted over those as well. A dirty mossy stain about a foot high rises up the walls from where they meet the stone floor, continuing in a green band all around the inside of the building.
    “Is that mould down there?” I whisper.
    “Well, I think it might be, because there was this enormous huge flood when Dennis was a baby,” says Roger in a lowered voice. “The water came right up onto our veranda, and we were marooned. When it went back, there were dead fish in the garden from our pond. It was really exciting, and we were lucky because the flood didn’t actually get in the house — missed the doors by an inch — but down here I’d have thought it would have been quite bad. Maybe the walls have never dried out properly. Smells, doesn’t it?”
    Brasso and polish, damp earth, wax and old wood, and underneath, a stink like — like dead rats. I know the smell, metallic and sweet at the same time, because once we found a dead rat in the cupboard under the kitchen sink at home. It stank the place out for at least a week till we had a good search and I noticed its tail curling round a packet of Flash. Dad wrapped it up in the
News of the World
and chucked it in the dustbin.
    On our left, a huge arch opens out into the bottom of the tower. A thick embroidered curtain is hanging against the wall to one side, and on the other is a wooden door. In the middle of the floor is a carved stone basin covered with a wooden lid, pointed at the top like a steeple.
    “What’s that for?” I whisper. “That pointy thing?”
    “It’s a font, for baptizing babies,” says Roger. “This is a Protestant church, so they call it christening. You pour water over the baby and it gets its name. The nuns say we’re not allowed to come into a Protestant church, but Pete and me do anyway.”
    Three thick ropes are looped up to hooks in the wall.
    “They pull the bells with those,” Roger goes on. “The fluffy bits in the middle stop you getting blisters. If there’s a funeral, Mr. Hibbert rings one bell on its own. It’s that one over there, that plain old rope hanging down by itself. You can hear it even from our house, all that way. Sometimes, when I’m in bed at night and there’s a real wind blowing, I can hear it ringing, even if there’s nobody here. Honest, I really can.”
    I look up to see where the ropes disappear through holes in the ceiling. To my surprise, I suddenly feel uneasy, light-headed. I sway a little, unsteady on my feet.
    “Blimey! You all right?” says Roger. “You’ve gone all white.”
    “Yeah, yeah,” I say, rubbing my head. “What’s up there?”
    “Dunno. Just the bells, I suppose, and the steeple.”
    “I don’t like it in here.”
    “Come and look at the big window, then.” Roger pulls me by the arm. “It’s really nice.”
    At the other end of the church is a huge stained-glass window. People dressed in scarlet, purple, brilliant yellow, and emerald green are dancing upwards towards a golden point radiating lines of light across a deep blue sky.
    “Who are all them people?” I ask.
    “It’s the holy souls,” says Roger, “going up to heaven.”
    As we stand there gazing, the sun suddenly bursts out from behind a cloud beyond the window and we see everything — the walls, the pews, the stone floor, the glass lamps, even our faces — blazing with moving bands and patches of coloured light, as if the church has been scattered with rainbows.
    Roger whispers,