‘Search the cupboard,’ said Sinclair.
‘Um … you mean this cupboard, boss?’ asked Dennis.
‘There’s only one cupboard in this room, and when I said, “Search the cupboard”, I was pointing at it,’ said Sinclair, sounding like he was speaking through gritted teeth. ‘How could that not have been clear?’
‘I was just checking. You know, just in case when you said, “Search the cupboard”, you actually meant, “Have a look outside in the front garden”, or “Make me a cup of tea with a dash of milk but no sugar”, or something like that.’
‘But if I … Ahhh! Just do it!’
‘Sure, boss. I’m here to help.’
Daisy heard a door open followed by various cupboard-searching noises that are actually very hard to describe. Just use your imagination.
‘This is strange,’ whispered Ben.
‘Of course it’s strange,’ Daisy whispered back. ‘We’re sitting in our attic listening to people rob our house.’
‘No, I mean they’ve already gone past a TV and an iPod in the living room, and a microwave in the kitchen, and now they’re ignoring a computer in the office. Robbers like to get in and out quick. What are they looking for?’
‘I don’t know. Jewellery?’
‘In an office?’
Daisy shifted her weight and the beam let out a loud creak. She froze.
‘What was that?’ asked Dennis below.
‘It must be the kid who lives here spying on us from the attic. She’s probably got her dog up there with her and it’s probably a talking dog, so let’s pull out the guns we’ve got hidden in our pants and go up there and shoot them until they’re totally dead.’ That’s what Daisy was scared Sinclair was going to say, but what he actually said was, ‘Be quiet and keep looking.’
The two men spent several more minutes in the office, and then Daisy heard their footsteps pad across the hall to her parents’ bedroom. She and Ben cautiously moved over to the other side of the roof where there was another air vent. There was more scuffling about.
‘Presents, boss!’ exclaimed Dennis.
They must be searching at the back of her dad’s shoe cupboard. That’s where her parents always hid her presents. Daisy had almost forgotten it was her birthday tomorrow.
‘Leave them,’ ordered Sinclair.
‘They’re beautifully wrapped. The cards say, “To Daisy”. Wow! I wish I was Daisy. Hey, boss, do you remember what’s happening tomorrow? Do you remember that tomorrow is actually somebody’s birthday?’
‘Come on. Focus! Keep searching.’
‘But it’s someone a bit special who’s having a birthday tomorrow, boss. Someone a bit special who’s actually in this room … and who isn’t you. Any ideas? Or shall I give you another clue? Okay. It’s someone who is actually talking right now. To you. Like right now. Do you get it? Okay, I’ll tell you. Me!’
He has the same birthday as me, thought Daisy.
‘If you don’t shut up and keep searching,’ growled Sinclair, ‘your head will be having its birthday in a different part of the planet from the rest of your body!’
There was a pause and then Dennis said slowly, ‘I don’t really understand that, boss. I mean, my head is attached to my body so …’
Sinclair sounded as if he was about to explode. ‘Please! Be quiet and search!’
‘Okay, boss,’ said Dennis cheerfully, ‘why didn’t you say so? By the way, could I have a lolly?’
‘If you do some good searching, then you can have one when we’re finished.’
A few moments later Dennis called triumphantly, ‘Look, boss! Rings! Necklaces!’
Daisy realised that they must have found her mum’s jewellery at the back of her undies drawer. Maybe they were jewel thieves after all.
‘Put that back! We’re not here for trinkets.’
Or maybe they weren’t.
‘But they’re pretty! So pretty.’
Daisy heard a sharp slap followed quickly by an ‘Oww!’ from Dennis.
‘I said, put them back,’ said Sinclair. ‘And carefully. We don’t want anyone knowing we’ve been here.’
‘That hurt!’
‘I only slapped your hand.’
‘But I’m crying!’
‘It’s just sweat.’
‘Eyes don’t sweat,’ whined Dennis pitifully. ‘They cry.’ He sniffled for a while and then said, ‘Boss, can I ask you something?’
‘As long as it doesn’t stop you searching,’ replied Sinclair gruffly.
‘Are we evil? I mean we’ve broken into someone’s house and now we’re going through all their stuff. Isn’t that wrong?’
‘We’re only doing it because we have to. It’s not evil like, for example, Gamion is evil. He’s really evil. That’s why he’s in gaol.’
‘Would we go to gaol if we get caught, boss?’
‘No. Well, maybe. But we’re not going to get caught, so we don’t have to worry about it.’
A few seconds later, Sinclair’s stern voice came again. ‘Why have you stopped searching?’
‘Sorry, boss. I was worrying about it.’
‘About getting caught?’
‘Yeah. And about us being evil like Gamion.’
‘Look, we’re not like Gamion, and we won’t get caught. All right?’
‘Yes, boss, I suppose.’
‘So let’s keep searching. The sooner we find it the sooner we can get out of here.’
Listening above, Daisy wondered who Gamion was. Maybe he was some notorious criminal, but Daisy had never heard of him.
‘Come on, help me move the bed,’ said Sinclair
‘You want to steal a bed?’ replied Dennis, sounding confused. ‘Instead of jewellery?’
‘I want to move the bed,’ said Sinclair slowly, as if he were speaking to a simpleton, which, as far as Daisy could tell, he quite possibly was.
They heard the sliding and scraping of heavy furniture being pulled and pushed across floor, accompanied by the grunting and groaning of those doing the pulling and pushing. Then there was what sounded like someone carefully tapping the floorboards with their knuckles.
‘Curses!’ said Sinclair eventually. ‘No secret hidey-holes.’
There was a long pause. Daisy suspected that Sinclair was thinking, and that Dennis wasn’t.
‘Now could I have a lolly, boss?’ asked Dennis eventually.
‘No. Later.’
There was another, even longer, pause.
‘Is now later, boss?’ asked Dennis.
‘No, now is now,’ replied Sinclair crossly.
Another silence.
‘I suppose the attic’s too obvious,’ said Dennis eventually.
‘The what?’ replied Sinclair sharply.
‘Sorry, boss. I’ll shut up.’
‘Where’s the attic?’
‘Upstairs, of course. If it was downstairs it’d be a basement.’
‘I mean, how do you get up there?’
‘Oh. There’s a fold-away ladder. In the hall.’
Daisy’s blood ran cold. Actually not really, because humans are warm-blooded animals, but she felt as if she had a really powerful air conditioner inside her and someone had just switched it on to full. Below, footsteps left the bedroom. Daisy looked around. She motioned urgently for Ben to follow, and then quickly slid further along the beam towards the front of the house. She heard the ladder being pulled down. Daisy reached a junction where the beam she was on met another one that ran across the house and slowly – but quickly as well because she could hear them coming up the ladder – eased herself over it and down onto the plaster, lying down to spread her weight out as much as possible, hoping that it would hold her. She heard a slight crack beneath her and braced herself, but the plaster held. Ben laid himself down next to h
er.
Daisy heard the trapdoor swing up and a shaft of light shone into the attic from below. The two men pulled themselves up.
‘We’re close. I’m sure of it,’ declared Sinclair.
‘Where is it, then?’
‘Shhh. Let me concentrate.’
Silence descended. Then, after a few seconds, Daisy saw something odd. A blue glow. It pulsed on for a couple of seconds, then died, then pulsed again, on and off. It seemed to be coming from just over the other side of the beam she was hiding behind.
‘Aha!’ exclaimed Sinclair triumphantly. ‘This way.’
‘Okay, boss,’ said Dennis.
Rapid steps headed towards them.
Sinclair called, ‘Wait! It won’t hold y–’, but even before he had finished there was a splintering crash.
‘Ahhh!’ screamed Dennis. There was a thump below, the sort of thump a large human with lots of curly hair makes when it hits a floor after falling through a ceiling. Dennis let out a low moan and whimpered, ‘Boss. I think I’m dead.’
Despite the danger, and the fact that their ceiling now had a Dennis-shaped hole in it, Daisy felt an almost irresistible urge to laugh, proving that no matter where you are or what you are doing, someone falling though a ceiling is very funny.
‘Stay there,’ said Sinclair, probably unnecessarily as it didn’t sound like Dennis was going anywhere.
‘Oh, boss. Oww! I’m crying again.’
‘You’ll be all right. Can you move all your bits?’
‘I can’t move my little toe!’
‘No one can move their little toe.’
‘Or my liver. I can’t move my liver!’
‘Just shush now. You’re fine.’
‘Oh, I really need a lolly now. Pleeeaasse.’
‘I haven’t got any lollies. Just be patient. I won’t be long.’
It sounded as if Sinclair was crawling along the same beam that Daisy had, towards the front of the house and the still-pulsing blue light, which meant that soon he would surely see them. Daisy’s urge to laugh completely vanished and was replaced by an urge to be somewhere else, preferably somewhere that served chocolate milkshakes. Sinclair was now so close that Daisy could hear him breathing. Ben pawed her shoulder. She turned to face him and he bared his teeth. She knew what he was asking: ‘Should I attack?’
Daisy didn’t know what to do. If Ben attacked, would Sinclair hurt him?
Sinclair was on his hands and knees, just about at the junction of the beam that Daisy was hiding behind. He reached out his arm, stretching towards the blue glow.
Ben pawed her again, more insistently this time. Daisy looked at him, still unsure. Whether Ben thought he saw a ‘yes’ in that look, or he made the decision himself, Daisy didn’t know, but Ben leapt up onto the beam and barked ferociously at Sinclair.
‘Ahhhh!’ cried Sinclair, throwing himself backwards. He lost his balance and toppled off the beam onto the attic floor. The plaster cracked and then he too started to fall through the ceiling. This time it seemed to happen in slow motion. Sinclair sank gradually, unable to stop himself, as if he was sinking into quicksand. Ben barked angrily again. As Sinclair sank lower he thrust out a bony hand towards the blue glow, but his hand fell about half an arm’s length short.
Then something impossible happened. Sinclair’s arm stretched out as far as it could go, and then it stretched further. His arm was actually getting longer, until it was about one and a half times the length it had been. It now reached all the way to whatever the blue glowing thing was, and Sinclair’s hand closed around it. As he retracted his arm back to its normal length, a blue glow came from inside his closed fist. Sinclair’s mouth was set in a triumphant smile. As he slipped through the hole in the ceiling down to the hallway below he looked up and his gaze met Daisy’s. His eyes widened in surprise then narrowed again as if he was trying to make sure he remembered every detail of Daisy’s face. Then he was gone.
Below they heard another dull thud that sounded much more like a human landing on another human than a human landing on a wooden floor, followed immediately by Dennis squealing, ‘Oww! Right on my liver.’
‘Come on!’ said Sinclair.
They heard a scrambling, then a flurry of footsteps heading towards the back of the house, accompanied by Dennis’s voice. ‘Hey, boss, you know you wanted us to make sure we didn’t make a mess so they wouldn’t know we’d been here? I just wondered, do you think those two big holes in the ceiling might give it away?’
Then they heard the back door slam shut.
Daisy spent the next hour in a state of shock. After waiting to make sure that Sinclair and Dennis weren’t coming back, she and Ben had cautiously descended from the attic. Daisy got Ben some water and a dog treat because he deserved it, and made herself a big glass of lemon cordial because cordial always makes you feel better on days when two men break into your house, steal something you didn’t even know existed, and then fall through your ceiling.
They sat at the kitchen table and Daisy eventually calmed down enough to write out a list of questions that they didn’t know the answers to.
– Who the heck were those guys?
– What is the blue glowing thing?
– How did it get in our attic?
– How did the older man sense it was there as soon as he got into the attic?
– How the heck did he get his arm to stretch like it was made out of elastic?
– Why is the younger man so stupid?
– How can I explain the two holes in the ceiling to Dad?
– How did the two men get into the house?
Their back door had shown no sign of forced entry. And finally:
– What will happen if we run out of bread?
The last question wasn’t especially relevant, but Daisy wanted to have at least one on the list that she knew the answer to. Next to it she carefully wrote:
– Tell Dad to buy some more, and in the meantime eat corn crackers.
After answering the bread question, they both stared at the rest of the list for a long time, until Ben said: ‘Well at least now we know what we don’t know. I mean it’s only eight questions. That’s much better than if it was 18, or 88, or 8,888 or …’
Daisy raised her hand. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Huh?’
‘We were up there because I wanted an adventure. But that was … that was scary. That man. The non-stupid one. Yikes.’
‘Yep. I was scared too.’
‘You? But you jumped up and barked at him. That was brave.’
Ben waved his paw dismissively. ‘That wasn’t brave.’
‘What was it then?’
‘Instinct.’
‘Instinct?’
‘When dogs get scared we have to act. We just have to. It’s impossible for us to lie still and hide. Instinct takes over.’
‘Well, it looked brave. Anyway, they’ve got what they wanted, they’ve gone and that should be the end of it.’
‘Really?’
Daisy nodded. ‘Definitely. It was too scary.’
‘Well, I think that’s a sensible decision, Daisy. Very sensible.’
‘Good. We’ll just put it all behind us, live our lives and soon it will all fade away.’
Which sounds all very nice and sensible, doesn’t it?
But that’s not what’s going to happen.
Chapter 5
AN UNUSUAL PRESENT
Brian Malone wasn’t very good with the unexpected. The unexpected upset him, worried him and sometimes even made him cry, as did the unpredictable, the surprising, the slightly unusual and even the nearly-but-not-quite normal. The previous year their fridge had broken and when they had bought a new one Brian Malone had spent days eyeing it suspiciously, unwilling to touch it because, ‘I don’t know how it works.’
‘Dad, you just open the door,’ Daisy had said.
‘It’s not that simple,’ he had sulked.
‘Actually it is,’ said Daisy, pulling the door open and getting out some cheese.
A few months ago Brian Malone had been driving home from work and had got a flat tyre. Rather than change it, he had sat sweating and swallowing, frozen into inaction until eventually the police had arrived and done it for him.
So Daisy knew that if her father arrived home and saw two large holes in the ceiling he would probably slowly back out of the house and then run away.
Which is why they met him outside the front door on his way in from the garage.
‘Dad, before you go in I have to tell you something.’
Brian Malone’s hand went to his forehead and his eyes darted around. ‘Oh no, it’s something bad, isn’t it? Are we all going to die? Is that it?’
‘No, Dad, calm down. We’re not all going to die.’
‘But some of us are. Is that what you’re saying? Me? Everyone else is okay, but I’m going to die from a horrible incurable illness? Probably one that involves lots of pus. Is that what you’re going to tell me? Oh no! Why me?’
‘Dad, stop it. You’re not going to die. There’s just been a little accident, that’s all.’
‘I knew it. The house has burnt down! Oh no! I can smell the ash. Oh my gosh, what a tragedy! How did it happen?’
‘Dad, the house is right in front of you. You’re looking at it.’
Brian Malone looked suspiciously at the front of their house. ‘Right. Good point. What is it then? Have we been robbed? Oh no. Don’t tell me they got my collection of rare nuts and bolts. They didn’t take the 1948 double-threaded twin self-drilling carriage bolt, did they?’
‘We haven’t been robbed, Dad,’ Daisy lied. ‘It’s just that up in the attic there were these two really heavy pots that Mum brought back from somewhere, and for some reason they weren’t put on the part of the attic that has a proper floor and they’ve crashed through the ceiling into the hall.’
‘Oh my goodness. There’s a big hole in the ceiling?’
Daisy Malone and the Blue Glowing Stone Page 4