Spellbinder by Helen Stringer Read Free Book Online

the old lady wouldn’t listen to reason and stay at home; she’d be marching through the darkened streets in her sensible shoes to try and save the day.
    No, the best thing to do was just wait for Aunt Deirdre.
    Belladonna checked the locks on the front and backdoors and drew all the curtains. She sat in front of the television for a few minutes, but couldn’t concentrate on it. She got up and decided that she’d better make sure that all the windows were closed and locked. By the time she reached the front bedroom, it was pitch-dark outside. She checked the latches, rattled the windows, and was about to turn away and check the other bedrooms when she saw a movement out of the corner of her eye. There was something in the garden.
    She looked down. There was a large black shape in the middle of the lawn, right next to the water feature. It seemed to be some kind of dog, though it was nothing like any dog that Belladonna had ever seen. Its head was huge, and its body was massive and muscular. As she looked at it, it seemed to notice her and the great black head tilted up. Two cold yellow eyes met her gaze. They weren’t the eyes of a dog; there was intelligence in them . . . and recognition.
    They stared at each other for a moment, then the dog turned and loped out of the garden and away down the street, always keeping to the shadows until it became a part of them and was gone.
    Belladonna stood at the window, frozen. Was that the dog that she had seen in the shadows the night before? It seemed bigger now, but perhaps that was just because of her state of mind. She remembered once, when she was little, she had kicked up an enormous fuss over a “gigantic” spider in her room, butwhen her Dad had come up and caught it in a glass, it had turned out to be quite small. Perhaps it was just an ordinary stray dog after all.
    On the other hand, maybe it wasn’t. She strained to see it further along the street, but there was no sign of it. She bit her lip for a moment, then turned and raced through the house, turning on every available light. Finally, she took the phone into the sitting room, turned the television up loud, and sat in front of it, her back against the fireplace, waiting.
     
    Three hours isn’t really very long. Unless, of course, your parents have just vanished and you’re sitting alone in an empty house with a large, slavering, black doglike creature outside somewhere.
    If that’s the case, then three hours can seem more like three weeks.
    Belladonna sat and waited. She turned the television down, in case the sound masked something more sinister, like scratching at the doors. She didn’t turn it off because the bright movement made things seem more normal. She looked at the toppled chair and felt the tears welling up in her eyes again. She wiped them away with the back of her hand. This was no time to cry, she knew that, but the knot in her stomach had turned into a deep, dark pit. What if her parents never came back? What if this time they were gone for good?
    It would be worse than the first time. At least then,there had been the hospital and the crash and things sort of made sense. But to get them back and then just have them vanish—to be left alone again . . .
    Belladonna stood up and straightened her mother’s chair.
    Time crept slowly by.
    Gradually, she became less scared and more irritated. She wanted to do something. Sitting, cowering, and waiting for someone to come and save her seemed so spineless. If she were a character in a TV show, she thought, she’d turn it off in disgust.
    She stood up and turned off the living room lights, then she went to the window and opened the curtains. Outside, everything seemed normal. The stars were out, there was no black dog, and she could see Mr. Loftus from across the road, arriving home. He always worked late. She watched him get out of his car. No evil creatures waylaid him before he got to his front door, and nothing crept from bush to bush. He just