Vile Visitors by Diana Wynne Jones Read Free Book Online Page B

Simon and Marcia were kept very busy carrying cups and plates. In the kitchen Mum was baking and boiling the kettle nonstop, while Dad grimly undid packets and mixed cake-mix after cake-mix.
    By this time Simon was finding it hard to be sorry for Chair Person at all. “I didn’t know you thought you were so important,” he said as he brought Chair Person another plate of steaming buns.
    â€œThis must be – hn hm – reported to Downing Street,” Chair Person told the meeting, and he interrupted himself to say to Simon, “That is because I – er, hn hm – always take care to be polite to people like you who don’t snuffle count... I shall make you feel good by praising these cakes. They are snuffle country soft and almost as mother used to make.” And turning back to the dazed meeting, he said, “Ever since the days of the Pharaohs – hn hm – Egypt has been a place of snuffle mystery and romance.”
    There seemed nothing that would ever stop him. Then the doorbell rang. Unfortunately, Dad, Mum, Marcia and Simon were all in the kitchen when it rang, pouring the last of the cake-mix into paper cases. By the time Marcia and Dad got to the front door, Chair Person had got there first and opened it.
    Two men were standing outside holding a new armchair. It was a nice armchair, a nice plain blue, with a pleasant look on the cushion where Chair Person’s face had come from. Marcia thought Mum and Dad had chosen well.
    â€œI – er, hn hm – I said take that thing away,” Chair Person told the men. “This house is not big enough for snuffle both of us. The post is – hn hm – filled. There has been a mistake.”

    â€œAre you sure? This is the right address,” one of the men said.
    Dad pushed Chair Person angrily aside. “Mind your own business!” he said. “No, there’s no mistake. Bring that chair inside.”
    Chair Person folded his waving arms. “Er, hn hm. My rival enters this house over my dead body,” he said. “This thing is bigger than snuffle both of us.”
    While they argued, Auntie Christa was leading the coffee morning people in a rush to escape through the kitchen and out of the back door. “I do think,” the Vicar said kindly to Mum as he scampered past, “that your eccentric uncle would be far happier in a Home, you know.”
    Mum waited until the last person had hurried through the back door. Then she burst into tears. Simon did not know what to do. He stood staring at her. “A Home!” Mum wept. “I’m the one who’ll be in a Home if someone doesn’t do something!”

hair Person got his way over the new chair, more or less. The men carried it to the garden shed and shoved it inside. Then they left, looking almost as bewildered and angry as Dad.
    Marcia, watching and listening, was quite sure now that Chair Person had been learning from Auntie Christa all these years. He knew just how to make people do what he wanted. But Auntie Christa did not live in the house. You could escape from her sometimes. Chair Person seemed to be here to stay.
    â€œWe’ll have to get him turned back into a chair somehow,” she said to Simon. “He’s not getting better. He’s getting worse and worse.”
    Simon found he agreed. He was not sorry for Chair Person at all now. “Yes, but how do we turn him back?” he said.
    â€œWe could ask old Mr Pennyfeather,” Marcia suggested. “The conjuring set came from his shop.”
    So that afternoon they left Mum lying on her bed upstairs and Dad moodily picking up frost-bitten apples from the grass. Chair Person was still eating lunch in the kitchen.
    â€œWhere does he put it all?” Marcia wondered as they hurried down the road.
    â€œHe’s a chair. He’s got lots of room for stuffing,” Simon pointed out.
    Then they both said, “Oh no !” Chair Person was