The Wolf in the Attic by Paul Kearney Read Free Book Online

winter dusk is falling fast, and I am pretending to read The Coral Island , but I have read it many times before – it is one of my favourites – and I am not focussing on the words, but peeking at Miss Hawcross over the top of the book, and exchanging glances with Pie, and every so often yawning so wide that the faked yawns become real, and Miss Hawcross catches them and covers her mouth to yawn herself.
    She is knitting, but not with much attention, and the clacking of the needles has slowed. I tell her I think I shall go up to bed, and yawn again. She nods, clearly relieved. ‘Your father should be back soon, Anna. I believe I shall make my own way home, while there is still a little light.’
    She pauses. ‘I shall see you up to bed… Are you… are you all right in the house by yourself?’
    ‘Quite all right,’ I tell her, and smile brightly. ‘I have Pie, and my book, but I am tired anyway. I can get myself to bed, Miss Hawcross, really I can. Let me see you to the door.’
    She gathers her things, her black boater and cloth bag, and she pins the hat in place on her head with a stab of pins. ‘I suppose that’s all right.’
    As I see her out the door, she turns and looks at me. Her breath is steaming yellow in the light of the hall. ‘I shall see you tomorrow then.’
    I nod. She seems a little unsure about going so I smile again, and close the door firmly on her. Then I listen. There is no sound for a long moment, until finally I hear her heels tapping down the steps, like the sound of her knitting needles, only sharper.
    ‘At last,’ I say to Pie. I do not have a desert island of my own to roam, but for a while at least, the house is mine.
     
     
    I GLIDE THROUGH the upstairs rooms like a ghost, touching the sheeted furniture so that the dust rises off it in tiny glowing mites that float in the very last of the day’s weak sunlight. Already, the street below is in blue shadow, but if I look out of the windows here I can peer over Port Meadow to the hills beyond, Botley to the left, Wytham to the right, and the light sinking fast behind the rising ground, winter-red, a bloody sun falling behind blue-grey hills, and the night above it swooping in.
    I shiver a moment, and hug Pie, and wonder if it would not be better to be down below in the firelight. But the thought makes me angry, too. Angry because after all this time I am still unprepared. I must search for matches and a candle, and waste more of this precious solitary time.
    I find them in the basement, though the candle is only a stump; and by that time the night has truly fallen, and the lamps are all unlit and cold except for the one in the front room, and the fire is sunk to red coals, and the rest of the house is heavy with the dark, and the loud ticking of the two clocks we keep wound. And I almost falter again. But then I think of the Greeks, cooped up in the dark of the wooden horse under the walls of Troy, and know that I have it in me to do this thing.
    Pie agrees. (She always does.) I light the candle, wedge it in a holder, and up we go again.
    I talk to her as we ascend the stairs, but on the topmost flight I run out of things to say, and the candlelight seems very weak against the loom of the shadows.
    I know these rooms, all of them. Not so well as the lower floors of the house, but I am no stranger here. All the same, I cannot think where the entrance to the attic might be. I scan all the ceilings, ignoring my shadow as it capers candlelit across them, but there is no hatch or door up there. It really is quite infuriating. And for a while the puzzle of it makes me lose all fear.
    The clocks strike six, far below, and I know that time is slipping away from me. I stamp my foot in frustration, and do my round of the third floor rooms again.
    And that is when I spot it. Hidden behind a tall, shrouded cabinet, there is a crack in the wall. As I prod the candle closer, it becomes the outline of a low door, one even I should have to stoop to