The Maloneys' Magical Weatherbox by Nigel Quinlan Read Free Book Online

breeze.
    â€œLIZ!”
    I jumped at Dad’s shout and blinked.
    â€œHere! Here!”
    I backed away from Mrs. Fitzgerald, and she kept pace with me as I stepped backward out of the barn and into the yard.
    â€œLiz, are you OK?”
    â€œYeah,” I said. It was hard to turn my back on her but I had to get Dad and Neil out of there. In a day of shocks and shoves and frights and fear, I knew that the worst danger in the world was in that barn and in that woman. “Come on, let’s get out of here. Let’s go!”
    Dad looked confused, and gave Mrs. Fitzgerald a puzzled glance. Neil was dressed and looking soggy and sorry and defeated. John-Joe had his hands on his hips and his lower lip stuck out and the toe of his left boot was tapping impatiently. Hugh had tilted his chin up so he could sneer properly down his nose at us.
    â€œOK,” Dad said, and he waved us both out of the yard ahead of him, and we walked our bikes back down the narrow road. I let Neil cycle mine, and Dad sat me up on his crossbar. The farther we got from the farm, from the thing, from her , the safer I should have felt. But I didn’t. The closer we got to home, the more the sense of danger grew, and somehow I knew that today had been a bad day, but tomorrow was going to be even worse.

 
    CHAPTER 7
    NEIL
    The cycle home from Loch Farny was one of the most horrible, uncomfortable, disgusting things I have ever had to go through. My clothes were wet and cold because I didn’t have anything to dry myself with before putting them back on. They stuck to me and got into corners and itched and scraped and chafed until I thought I’d go mad. Worse than that, Liz’s bike was too small for me and my knees were sticking out and it was almost too hard to pedal and I was so tired and the road just went on and on and I thought it would never end, and then it did, and I wished it hadn’t.
    I was in trouble. Liz was in trouble. The Tourist was in trouble. Even Owen was in trouble because he kept bringing the cat into the house. Liz and I kept trying to explain in different ways that Mum and Dad were in trouble, too, though we couldn’t exactly say how or why, only that it had to do with the Tourist, the cat, the old women in the woods, the Fitzgeralds, the thing in the lake and the other thing in the barn—oh, no, wait, I think that must have been the same thing.
    But Mum and Dad were having a hard time just dealing with me going off and jumping in the lake and with Liz sneaking off to follow Dad when he went to rescue me from jumping in the lake.
    I showered and changed my clothes and had something to eat, and the whole time they were interrogating me to within an inch of my life, until I broke down crying and begged them to stop. Then they got embarrassed and said they were sorry and Liz muttered that I was a softy, but we both knew if it hadn’t been me it would have been her.
    Mum and Dad brought out the picnic table and chairs and set them up on the lawn. I got the broken one that creaked when you moved. We sat in the rosy glow of the evening, insects rising from the grass and crows flocking to roost.
    Dad made me go through what I’d seen and done under the lake for the millionth time. Then he made Liz go through what she’d seen in the barn for the million and oneth time. She kept adding stuff about two mad old women in the woods and something about Owen’s cat, which she seemed to think was important, and I reminded him of the Tourist turning up out of nowhere and knowing stuff, and how it all added up to … something. Dad didn’t argue, but he didn’t look entirely convinced, either.
    Mum was like a black cloud, glowering and staring, her eyes flashing with far-off bursts of lightning. She listened to me and Liz, glaring at the hill beyond the road as if daring the monsters hidden there to take one step closer. The monsters stayed in hiding, which was just as well for