Lizards Leap

Chapter One

There was an air of excitement that popped along with the children’s Rice-Crispies at breakfast that morning. This was the long-awaited Saturday, which had captured their imagination and creativity for weeks. It was the day of the school’s summer fair. The children had been making and baking, collecting and selecting, painting and sticking, and all manner of other fair-related activities for weeks. Finally, that bright, sunny second Saturday in June had arrived, and they would be going with their mothers to St. Mary’s Junior School summer fair.
That morning, just like every other, Mark and Vicki Forest were arguing. Mrs Forest was busying herself with a batch of hot biscuits that she had just taken from the oven. The smell of the warm, fresh treats wafted out from the kitchen and spread throughout the house. It was tempting and delicious. Mark and Vicki were given one each and munched happily.
Victoria Anne Forest was the eldest of the four children. At twelve years-old, her greatest passion in life was ‘boy bands’. She knew everything there was to know about Get This and The Herb Boyz and countless others. Her bedroom walls were adorned with bright posters of her heroes, all with dazzling white teeth and big cheesy grins.
Nobody would ever have been unkind enough to call her daft, but “ditzy” and “scatterbrained” were two words that fit her as snugly as her leopard-print leggings. Vicki was a chatterbox, she always had a lot to say, and sometimes some of it even made sense.
Mark Forest was Vicki’s brother. He was eight.
Mark was clumsy. He regularly fell over his feet, he fell over other people’s feet, and he even fell over invisible feet. He walked into things, dropped things, broke things, lost things, stood on things, forgot things, stubbed his toe, skinned his shin, banged his head, cut his hand, and grazed his knee. Daily. Mark was a walking disaster, a public liability, and a pest. He was also loud. Mark saw no sense in talking to someone quietly. If he shouted, then he could reach a much wider audience, and possibly annoy ten people instead of one. He called it “value for oxygen.”
“Mu-um,” Vicki moaned, in her usual two-tone whine. “Mark said Luke Dross is rubbish, and that he’s stupid.”
“Did he, love?” sympathised Mrs Forest. “Well,” she said, in mock seriousness, “he can’t look good and be clever, now can he?” Mrs Forest smiled to herself as she turned away from her daughter.
Mark was ecstatic with this minor triumph over his sister, and wasted no time in beginning his victory chant: “Luke Dross is stupid. Luke Dross is stupid. And even mum thinks so!”
Vicki had heard quite enough and jumped up from the table, preparing to stomp off in her usual huffy manner. How dare they insult the Godlike Luke Dross?
“Er, just one minute young lady. Where do you think you are going? I did not hear you excuse yourself from the table, and those dishes aren’t going to rise up and float into the dishwasher you know.”
Vicki turned back to the table and sat down. “Sorry mum, may I be excused please?” She managed this with good grace so her mum nodded that she was allowed to leave the table and she smiled at her daughter. The children set about clearing the breakfast debris while bickering over whose iced buns were the most artistic.
In a similar kitchen three streets away, much the same morning rituals were taking place. This was the home of Emma and Kerry Taylor. Mrs Forest was Mr Taylor’s sister. This made Vicki, Mark, Emma and Kerry cousins. The four children were also best friends. Mrs Taylor was icing a huge chocolate cake. It looked almost too good to eat, but, given half the chance, neither Emma nor Kerry would care about that. The girls were very excited about the school fair, and chatted ten to the dozen as they watched their mother. It was going to be a wonderful day.
Emma was the eldest of the two sisters. She was ten and a very important three-quarters. It has to be said that Emma had attitude, and yet - almost in contradiction to this - she was a shy girl, and was the least self-assured of the four children. If someone she did not feel comfortable with spoke to her, she hung her head and mumbled incoherently into her cardigan. But, get the same girl on her own terms and she was a natural comedian. Emma was the one with the off-the-cuff, quick-as-a-flash, witty replies. She had an answer for everything, and could be more sarcastic than most adults three times her age. Emma was the clown of the four, always playing practical jokes on the others and always looking for the funny side of any situation.
Kerry was Emma’s younger sister by two years. She was eight, and younger than Mark by just a week; the baby of the four. Yet in some ways Kerry could be mistaken as the eldest. She was the most determined of the children, and often got her own way.

*

St Mary’s summer fair was in full swing. The four cousins had opted to take the first turn on the stalls. Vicki no longer attended St. Mary’s, having moved the September before last to a secondary school, but she was still allowed to take a turn with Emma running the Tombola stall. It felt odd to be back at her old school and was a reminder that she was always getting into trouble when she had been a pupil at St. Mary’s. Like, for instance, the time when Miss Jameson had told her off for humming in the middle of a history lesson. At playtime Vicki had been talking to some of the girls. She had them all bent over laughing as she did an impression of Miss Jameson. Vicki said that her teacher “had a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp.” The girls had suddenly gone quiet, so to try and get another laugh Vicki just mentioned that the elderly teacher “could do with a personality transplant.” The girls looked at their feet and shuffled. Vicki didn’t understand this so she t!
ried another joke at the teacher’s expense. “Miss Jameson is such an old bag that you could put your shopping in her,” she had said loudly, before following the gaze of one of the girls and seeing none other than the dreaded Miss Jameson standing behind her. The two had never got along well after that, and Vicki had tried to keep a healthy distance from the teacher whenever possible.
Mark and Kerry had been in charge of the White Elephant stall. Mark was upset because in all the junk they had sold there was not one single white elephant. Well, to be more specific, there had not been any elephants at all - white or otherwise. Kerry had told him not to use the word ‘junk’ in front of the customers. She used a little creativity and called the chipped ornaments and battered books “finest antiques from the Jurassic era, which meant” she said “junk from way back, when the dinosaurs still walked the earth.”
Later having finished their stints as stallholders, the children had been relieved of their duties, and were now free to wander round and spend their pocket money.
“Oh look”, said Vicki, pointing excitedly at the bric-a-brac stall. “It’s a poster of The Big Wet Wusses. I have got to get it before Sharon Lazenby does, otherwise she’ll brag all next week. If I can get there first she’ll be green with envy, and anyway, I can brag better than she can.” With that Vicki flew across the hall, dragging a surprised Kerry behind her. Emma and Mark rolled their eyes at each other and moved on to the cake stall, hoping to buy four of Mrs Forest’s chocolate chip cookies, if they hadn’t all sold out.
“I got it! I got it!” Vicki came charging back after just a couple of minutes. Her cheeks were slightly red with excitement and her eyes shone. She waved the poster of the latest chart-topping boy band over her head.
But she was running too fast and crashed into Miss Jameson just as the class three teacher chose that precise moment to come round the corner. Vicki nearly bonked her on the head with the poster as she went past.
“Oops, sorry Miss! Didn’t see you there,” muttered Vicki, colouring an even deeper red.
Mark sniggered into his hands. Vicki’s for it now, he thought.
Miss Jameson looked as sour as usual, even amidst the excitement of the summer fair. “Victoria Forest. I see the new school has not begun to make a young lady of you yet. Please try not to do anybody any serious harm with that…that…what is that, anyway?”
“It’s a poster of the Big Wet Wusses, Miss. They are at number one in the charts.”
Miss Jameson took the poster from Vicki’s hands. Vicki held her breath. What if the old battleaxe rips it up? I wouldn’t put it past her, she thought to herself, praying silently that the precious, glossy picture of the five young men would survive the scrutiny.
Miss Jameson unrolled the poster slowly and deliberately. She looked at it for a long time. It showed Tommy Knocker - the lead singer - with his shirt off, baring his entire chest. Vicki had a bad feeling about this: if she doesn’t rip it up, she’s bound to confiscate it, she thought, as she began to hop from one foot to the other impatiently. If she rips it, Sharon Lazenby will never believe that I ever had the poster! Vicki began to fret as Miss Jameson peered intensely at the picture of the young men. She finally finished looking at the poster over her half moon glasses. Rolling the picture back up with care, she then did the most extraordinary thing any of them have ever seen her do. She began to sing in a very gruff voice that was very nearly, but not quite, in tune. This woman was no Tommy knocker, but it was his number one song all right:

“If you’re gonna hurt me, don’t hurt me. Love me good - yeah baby,
If you’re gonna love me, just love me. Don’t cover me in mud - yeah Baby.”

Miss Jameson accompanied this rendition of ‘Love Me’ by bending her knees and wiggling her bottom. She moved her arms in front of her, and looked rather like a strange train chugging towards them. The four children were amazed, and stared at the elderly teacher with open mouths. Miss Jameson winked at them, said, “Good day, children,” very formally, and then walked off.
The cousins looked at one other in astonishment. Suddenly, they all burst into gales of laughter. Miss Jameson - who was at the other side of the room by this time - must have heard them, because she bent her knees and gave one more bottom-wiggle before disappearing out of the door. Vicki watched her old teacher leave with a very new level of respect for the lady.
The children wandered from stall to stall, haggling over some little trinket or must-have article that life simply couldn’t continue without. They munched on biscuits, and then joined their mothers, who were having coffee in the school’s cafeteria. The children were given some orange juice and to Mark’s delight yet more biscuits.
Mrs Taylor was expecting a baby and looked very uncomfortable. The little one was due just before Christmas and would be a new brother or sister for Emma and Kerry. They both wanted it to be a boy, and fought constantly over who would change his nappy and bath him first. Mrs Taylor smiled at the thought of her sensitive children changing a soiled nappy.

The Taylors and the Forests were an extended-but-close family. The two mothers were not only sisters-in-law but also best friends and the children had all been brought up together. The hub of the family was the big house on the hill where the children’s grandparents lived. All the family gatherings occurred there. Normally, at the weekend, the four children stayed at their Nanna and Granddad’s, going back home after tea on Sunday. They had their own bedrooms. Mark and Kerry shared one room because they were the youngest, and Vicki and Emma shared the other. They always had a lot of fun at their grandparents house, and were going back there for a big family meal after the fair that day. The two ladies were deep in discussion about what their offering for the meal should be.
Soon the cousins were bored sitting at the table and still had some money in their pockets that was screaming out at them, “Spend me! Spend me! Spend me!” Vicki and Mark had spent most of theirs, but Emma and Kerry had not spent much at all. This was the way it always was. On pocket money day Mark would go straight to the sweet shop to spend all his money straight away. It was usually gone - with nothing to show for it - very quickly. Vicki was just as quick to spend hers, but it would go on posters and magazines. Emma would spend some of her money on one magazine or one packet of sweets, and save the rest to use during the week. Kerry would save all her pocket money in her raptor moneybox, only taking it out when she had something really special to spend it on. That day she had grudgingly taken two pounds out, leaving her with thirty-six pounds eighty-seven pence.
The children were having a go on some of the side stalls. Emma won a bottle of apple and lemongrass bubble bath, and Mark won a knitted doll toilet roll holder that he was less than pleased about. Vicki was sulking because she only had about twenty pence left, and she hadn’t won anything at all.
“Well Vicki,” said Emma. “It could be worse. You might have won that awful toilet roll holder that Mark got.”
Now it was Mark’s turn to sulk!
It was then that Kerry saw it. All day people had been coming with bags and boxes, stalls were constantly being added to as people donated their old ‘what-nots’, and stallholders would occasionally bring something up from the floor behind them. They had all been instructed to keep some of the better things back to add to the stalls as the day progressed. This meant that all the best items wouldn’t be sold within the first five minutes, leaving nothing of interest for the rest of the day.
On the White Elephant stall Mrs Poole, the reception class teacher, had just finished sorting a box full of bits and pieces and arranging and displaying them to their best advantage. Kerry saw the picture of the Statue of Liberty from across the room, but it didn’t interest her in the slightest. What did make her gasp in wonder was the frame that housed the picture. It was beautiful! She made a beeline for the stall, and plucked up the picture as though it was a rare and undiscovered treasure.
The twelve-by-fourteen-inch frame looked very old. It had a broad section a full four-inches wide, and was made from solid rosewood. It was intricately carved with flowers and vines. But what made Kerry crave this item, what made her want it in a way that nothing else in the entire fair had inspired her, were the two carved lizards that climbed up the sides of the frame. The six-inch sand lizards were carved from the bulk of the wood. They were perfect in their detail, and looked very realistic. Kerry ran her fingers over each of the lizards lovingly. Like Vicki with the poster earlier, Kerry had to have this frame.
“Hello, Mrs Poole. How much is this picture please?”
“Isn’t it a beautiful picture, Kerry? It’s the Statue of Liberty, you know. Let’s see now. How does two pounds grab you?”
Kerry’s face fell. She looked down with something akin to loathing at the purchases she had already made: a stuffed rabbit with a loose eye, a game of Mastermind which may or may not have all the pieces intact, and a book on ancient Egypt. She had been pleased with the book, and was looking forward to reading it, but the other items had been bought just for the sake of having bought something. She neither liked, nor wanted them, and now it seemed they would cost her the beautiful picture frame. Kerry reached into her purse and took out the money remaining. She had just eighty-two pence.
“Hey, Kerry!” Mark shouted, as he appeared at her side, startling her and almost making her drop the last of her money. “Wazz-up?”
“Oh, Mark, I’m glad to see you,” Kerry said. “Have you got any money left?”
Mark looked at his cousin with suspicion. She had just said two very worrying things. The first was that she was glad to see him. People were not usually glad to see Mark, and if they were, they never told him so. And secondly, she had asked him if he had any money left. Now, Mark wasn’t the brightest child in the entire solar system, but he knew that when Kerry asked if he had any money left it was going to mean trouble.
“Might have. Dunno.”
“Well look, stupid”, Kerry snapped at him.
“Oh well, if you’re gonna start shoutin` at me I’m going to take my money and buy a cake or somefink.”
Kerry knew better than to lose her temper and start shouting at Mark. It wouldn’t do any good. So she set her features into what she hoped was her sweetest smile.
Mark checked his flies. He didn’t like this game. He didn’t understand the rules. Kerry was smiling at him. His flies weren’t down, so she wasn’t smiling at him because she was going to tease him about that. She must be smiling at him because she wanted something. Mark was ready to say goodbye to the last of his pocket money. He knew it was no good trying to argue with Kerry. She was smarter than him, and would just make him feel guilty until he handed it over anyway, so he might as well give up without a fight.
“I’ve got thirty-six pence left. I was saving it for when they sell off all the left-over cakes cheap at the end of the fair, but you can have it if you like.”
Kerry was not above using her determination to get her own way, but she was also a child with a fair sense of justice. She knew that for Mark to give her the last of his money was a pretty big sacrifice.
“Oh, thank you Mark. Tell you what, I’ll swap you your thirty-six pence now for a pound when we get home.”
Kerry now had one pound eighteen. She was still clutching the picture possessively. Vicki and Emma had ambled over at some point throughout this exchange.
“How much do you need, Kez?” Vicki asked. “I’ve still got twenty pence that you can have, as long as you give me it back later. There’s nothing else I want here, anyway.”
“Thank you, Vicki. That means I’ve got one pound thirty-eight pence. I’m still sixty-two pence short. Can you help me please, Emma?”
“Nope! No way” Emma had her ‘I possibly could help, but don’t see why I should’ head on.
“Oh, Emma, please. I’m desperate. I really, really want this frame. Please Emma, don’t be selfish.”
“Well, I don’t want to buy a share of a rotten old picture of the rotten old Statue of Liberty, and anyway, last time I wanted to borrow ten pence off you, you said no. So now I’m saying NO.”
This was very true. Kerry had not been keen to lend her sister some of her money. Now she felt sorry. Another point about Emma was her ‘elephant’ memory. They say an elephant never forgets. If somebody does something against Emma, she doesn’t forget it in a hurry. She had been sitting on this grievance for a long time and this was her moment of glory.
“Maybe I will lend you the money, but it’ll cost you.”
Kerry was getting desperate. “Anything. Just tell me what you want.”
“Five pounds, please.” Emma stuck her chin out in a stance of defiance.
“Whoa,” Mark said. “Cool!”
“Aww! Emma, that’s nasty. Don’t be mean,” Vicki cut in.
Kerry had a brainwave. “I’ll tell you what. As I’m already giving Mark a pound, I’ll give you and Vicki a pound each, too. Providing you let me have the sixty-two pence please, Emma?”
“Deal!” Emma said, emphatically. She wasn’t a greedy girl. She had just wanted to teach Kerry a lesson.
Emma emptied her purse into her hand and began to count out the sixty-two pence. But Kerry’s face fell when disaster struck. Emma only had fifty pence left. This meant that with all of them coppering up every penny they had, Kerry was still twelve pence short of being able to buy the beautiful carved frame. Their mothers had left some time ago, arranging to come back for the children later, so she couldn’t ask them. There was nothing else to be done.
Kerry felt tears stinging her eyes as she placed the picture back on the front of the stall. Mrs Poole came back over. “Changed your mind, Kerry?”
“Yes, Miss.”
“Oh, that’s a shame. It’s a beautiful picture.”
“Yes, Miss.”
“Have you gone off it now?” she asked.
“No, Miss. Haven’t got enough money, Miss.”
“O-oh, I see,” said Mrs Poole. “Well, how much have you got?”
“One pound eighty-eight, Miss.”
“Well you know, now that I look at it again, it does look a bit dirty. I don’t think it’s worth two pounds, after all. I think I’d be very pleased if I got one pound eighty-eight for it. So it’s yours if you want it, Kerry.”
Kerry’s face lit up like a tree at Christmas. She was delighted, and walked away with the picture in a large carrier bag. She couldn’t wait to get home and clean the frame up. Her mind was racing with what she would actually put in it to replace the Statue of Liberty print that didn’t do it justice. She was ecstatic as she walked across the hall with the frame clutched tightly to her chest.
Suddenly, Kerry’s step faltered and she stopped in the middle of the hall. Standing by the door, was a strange looking lady and she was staring straight at Kerry. The others had carried on walking, and Kerry looked round to see if there was someone else near her who the lady could be looking at so intently; but no, it was definitely her. She felt uncomfortable, and a little scared.
The lady did look very odd. She was quite old, sort of bent over, and yet at the same time there was something about her that didn’t look old at all. She was a large lady, not very tall, but quite round. She had grey hair that was pulled into a bun at the back of her neck; but little wisps had come loose and were falling over her face. She looked as though she had probably started the morning tidy and smart, but as the day had worn on she had begun to come apart a bit. On the top of her head was a floppy black hat that looked too small for her. Perhaps it had slipped a bit, or maybe she had put it on at an odd angle that made her look rather comical? Whatever the reason it did look funny. Her clothes were strange, too. She wore a purple skirt that had little silver bells around the bottom, and it was so long it brushed the floor. The toes of scuffed, black boots just stuck out from underneath her skirt, and when she moved her foot Emma could see that they laced u!
p the front like the old fashioned boots that Victorian lady’s wore. On her top half she had a long flowing tunic in purple and dark red, and around her neck was a bright orange silk scarf, which circled her throat several times and still trailed almost to her middle on both sides. Kerry had never seen anyone who looked quite that colourful or mismatched before. What really caught her attention, though, were the lady’s eyes. She stared straight at Kerry, and as much as she wanted to, Kerry found that she could not look away. Those eyes fixed her with the most piercing stare that she had ever encountered. She looked down and her arms were covered in goose pimples. She shivered; the lady was scaring her.
Vicki came bounding back across the hall and linked her arm though her cousin’s. “Come on slow-coach,” she said. “What did you stop for?”
Kerry finally managed to break the stare with the strange lady, and she turned to Vicki. “Vicki, look at that funny woman over by the door. She keeps staring at me.”
“There’s nobody by the door silly, come on.” With that she began to pull Kerry across the room.
Kerry looked back towards the door, the lady had gone!
They went outside to wait for their mothers. The women would be here to pick them up any time now, so they walked round the corner and sat on a wall to wait. Kerry told the others about the strange lady. When she told them about the bright clothes and floppy hat, Mark and Emma laughed, but Vicki didn’t.
“Oh, you’re such a liar, Kerry. I think you’re just making it all up. I looked in the hall and there was nobody there.”
“I am not making it up!” Kerry said, indignantly. “She was there and she was a witch.” This time they all started laughing, but Mark stopped very suddenly.
“Oh-Oh,” he said. “Here comes trouble.”
The lady who had scared Kerry was walking towards them. They all recognised her from the description Kerry had given. It was her, alright.
“Flippin` heck,” said Emma under her breath. “The sights you see when you haven’t got a gun!” She had heard her Dad utter this little gem when a middle-aged, scantily dressed lady had crossed the road in front of the car just last week. Emma thought it sounded cool, so she had stored it in her mind to bring forth at just such an appropriate moment as this. Mark Sniggered.
“See, Vicki,” Kerry whispered. “I was not lying.”
Vicki began to hum nervously. One of her most annoying habits is her singing. Vicki sings. That doesn’t mean that Vicki could sing although undoubtedly she could. It means that Vicki did sing. She sung at breakfast, and her mum told her off for singing at the table. She sung in class and Mrs Barnes told her off for being disruptive. She even sung on the bus until her dad shook his head and hid his face in his hands. Yes, Vicki sung, and hummed, and clicked, and sometimes just did “la la la…”
The lady was out of breath by the time she drew level with the children. Her face was red, and she had a thin coating of perspiration on her forehead. Vicki instantly felt sorry for her. The strange lady walked slowly and with a slight limp. She had a wide bottom that swayed from side to side as she walked. The beads on her skirt jingled like tiny bells, and the bells kept time with the beads. She had a smile on her face and didn’t look scary, but she was definitely coming over to them. Kerry began to rock backwards and forwards in time to Vicki’s humming. Mark and Emma just stared at the approaching woman.
“Hello my dears,” the lady said, as she drew close to them. She was smiling broadly, and Vicki thought she looked rather kind. “I’m sorry to bother you on this lovely sunny day. My name is Sylvia, and I just had to come and talk to you. You see the picture that you have belongs to me, my lovelies. It was given to the fair by mistake, and it holds great sentimental value, though it isn’t worth much in actual money. Please will you sell it back to me? You seem like such nice children, and I’m sure you’ll want to help a silly old woman. What are you all called?”
They were struck by the look on the lady’s face. She had the greenest eyes any of them had ever seen. They were piercing and bright and so, so green. Her body looked old, but her eyes made her appear to be a lot younger than she probably was. The lady was still smiling sweetly, but somehow the smile never made it all the way up to her eyes. All four of the children felt a little nervous.
They looked at each other uncomfortably, not knowing what to do or say. None of them told the lady their names. Mark started kicking some stones with his shoes.
“I don’t know nuffink about no picture,” he lied, both unconvincingly and ungrammatically. The others looked at Kerry, who clutched the picture more tightly to her chest.
“I’m really very sorry,” Kerry said to the lady politely, “but the picture isn’t for sale.”
The Lady smiled pleasantly at Kerry. “Oh, come on now. What can you possibly want with it? It’s only a foisty old picture. How much did you pay for it? I’ll give you double.”
Kerry was starting to feel a little scared. She looked at the ground and muttered in a very small voice, “I don’t want to sell it. Sorry.”
“Little girl, I need that picture back.” The old lady suddenly wasn’t quite so nice. She wasn’t nasty exactly, but the friendly tone had disappeared out of her voice, and the smile had faded. “I’ll give you five pounds for it.”
Kerry shook her head stubbornly.
“Ten,” the lady said icily, her gaze boring into the top of Kerry’s lowered head.
Again Kerry shook her head. She felt tears stinging her eyes. The lady was scaring her, but for some reason that she didn’t understand Kerry knew the picture was very important to her, even though she had only owned it for just fifteen minutes. She couldn’t let it go now. Like the lady said, it was only a picture, and yet she felt more attached to it than anything else she owned. It didn’t make sense.
Vicki risked looking up at the woman. She had been told many times not to talk to strangers. They all had. She looked past the lady and back towards school. Maybe they should go back inside and let a teacher sort it out, but that would mean pushing past the lady.
“I would like you to give back my picture now please, young lady. Or I will ring your parents and sort it out with them. I haven’t got time to be standing here arguing, now give me the picture please.”
She took a step towards Kerry and held out her hand for the picture.
“Go away please or we’ll call a policeman”, shouted Emma. She looked frantically round for a grown-up to call out to.
It was all too much for Mark. “RUN!” he shouted, and the next thing anybody knew he was off down the road as fast as his legs could carry him. Almost as a reflex reaction the others followed him; their feet pounded the road as they ran full pelt down the hill.
“Steady on, legs,” said Emma in her deep voice, as her legs seemed to be going faster than her body could keep up with. They ran round a corner and leaned against the wall panting.
“Where’s Vicki?” they all shouted in unison.
“Oh no, the Wicked Witch of the North has got her,” said Emma.
Vicki had made a run for it with the others, but she had been just a fraction of a second slower to catch on. The lady made a grab for her. She caught Vicki by the upper arm and gripped her painfully. Vicki cried out and looked at the woman, terrified. The lady’s green eyes seemed to be even brighter than they had been a few minutes earlier. They flashed with anger and impatience. Vicki found that she couldn’t look away from them.

“Don’t be silly, child,” said Sylvia. “I’m not going to hurt you. You are all being foolish. You should have given the frame back to me. You don’t know what you have, or what you are dealing with. I have to warn you to be careful. You could be in terrible danger if you are not very careful.”
Vicki was scared out of her wits by this time. She twisted out of the crazy woman’s grip and stumbled to the floor, grazing her knee. She was free, and began to limp off towards the others with tears streaming down her cheeks, and blood trickling down her leg. She heard the old woman calling after her: “I’m Sylvia Sanders, child! I live in Brampton Hall! Come to me when you need my help! Beware of the picture! You don’t know what you’re dealing with!”

*

The children ran all the way to Emma and Kerry’s house, which was the closest to the school. They burst through the door just as their mothers were leaving to pick them up. Through tears and much excited babble the children recounted their story. Vicki felt very important as she showed her mother the ugly bruise on her upper arm. Karen Forest and Debbie Taylor were furious. You heard of people approaching children at schools all the time, but never expected it to happen to your children. They rang the school to make a formal complaint. Then they rang the police. The policeman who came out to interview the children listened to their story, making notes in his book and stopping them every now and then to ask the occasional question.
“Are you sure the lady said Brampton Hall, Vicki?” the officer asked her.
“Yes. Positive.”
“Well, that’s funny,” said the Policeman. Brampton hall has been empty and shuttered up for years.” He left with a promise to look into the incident.

Later, at Granddad’s house, the children were in Kerry and Mark’s room, they had the frame on the bed in front of them. But no matter how closely they looked, they couldn’t see anything special about the twelve-by-fourteen-inch picture.
“Scary!” said Mark.

“As Scooby-Doo,” replied Emma, and they laughed for the first time since getting away from the creepy woman. Mrs. Taylor said they should feel sorry for the strange lady because she obviously had some mental problems.

“Yes, she’s nuts!” Emma said, with her usual comic timing.
But that night both sets of children slept with the lights on, and their bedroom doors open.

Got any feedback on this work? Click here and quote reference number 169 or email the writer directly