Other Alice by Michelle Harrison Read Free Book Online Page B

them. Do you hear me? They’ll say
anything . . . just get away from them . . .’
    ‘Stop, you’re hurting!’ I prised her fingers off my arm. ‘Alice, please . . . you’re frightening me!’
    She bent her head over the notebook, her pen almost touching the paper, but unmoving. ‘I need to think, I need to think . . .’
    My head was fuzzy with confusion. What was she doing with her notebook if she thought there was someone coming after her? My fears shifted, from the worry of a stranger outside in the night
to the far more likely possibility of Alice having a fever.
    ‘Alice, you’re not making any sense. You don’t look well,’ I said. ‘I think you should lie down.’
    ‘I can’t. Don’t you see? I have to make him go away, I have to . . .’
    ‘When was the last time you slept?’
    She shook her head, impatient. ‘I don’t have time to sleep, I—’
    A whistled tune, like a short burst of birdsong, floated through the window. But there were no birds around at this hour.
    ‘It’s him,’ Alice whispered. ‘He’s still out there.’
    Slowly, I crept out of the corner and climbed on to the bed. The window was wide open, but the night air was almost as still and sticky as it was in the attic.
    ‘Don’t,’ Alice moaned, wide-eyed with fear. ‘He’ll see you!’
    I raised myself on to tiptoes and stared out through the darkness, across gardens and houses and parked cars that I saw every day. In daylight, all these things were familiar, but at night,
and from so high up, it was like looking out on an unknown land. Everything was still, too warm even for foxes and cats to be on the prowl. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something shift
down by the lavender in the hedge. Such a slight movement in the deep shadows, but the spell was broken and I could see him now.
    He was thin and tall, but stooped, with long hair that hung past his shoulders. He glared up at the attic window with one eye; the other was hidden beneath a ragged bandage wound round his
head. Even though it was dim outside, I could see it was stained with a dark mark. A streak of blood? Something was thrown over his shoulder. A long, thin rope. A noose.
    Despite the suffocating heat, I shuddered and, at the jerking movement, he tilted his head sharply, bird-like. He whistled again, long and low, then slid further behind the hedge, out of
sight.
    I dropped to the bed, heart thudding. There was something incredibly eerie about the man, like he had stepped right out of a horror movie. He didn’t belong on our nice, normal
street.
    ‘You saw him, didn’t you?’ Alice whispered. ‘You saw him, too.’
    ‘Who is he?’ I kept my voice low, even lower than Alice’s. The night was so still that I imagined each word carrying down to the stranger in the shadows.
    Alice shrank back further into the corner. ‘The Hangman.’
    The words sent a horrified shiver down my spine. ‘The Hangman ?’
    ‘No one knows his real name,’ Alice said hoarsely. ‘But he knows your worst secret. The thing you’re most ashamed of . . . the thing you would die
before you let anyone find out. That’s how he does it. How he kills people.’
    ‘K-kills people?’ I stuttered. ‘Is that what the rope he’s carrying is for? He hangs you with it?’
    Alice shook her head, her eyes glassy. ‘By the time he’s through with you, you do it yourself.’
    ‘But why?’ I asked. ‘What would this person want with you , Alice? How does he even know you?’
    She gave a short laugh, more of a bark. ‘Because I made him up.’
    I stared at the film of sweat glistening above her eyebrows. She had to be in the grip of some kind of fever, although that still didn’t explain who the man outside was.
‘Alice,’ I said gently. ‘I think you need to—’
    She shoved the notebook at me, scrabbling through the pages. ‘You don’t believe me? Look. It’s here! It’s all here!’
    And it was. The word jumped out of the pages, over