The Icy Hand

by Chris Mould

  Stanley turned in horror. But it was too late—there was nothing he could do.

  In some ways it was the best thing for the dear old fish. Indeed, it would not have mattered … but the Ibis was still lying in the stomach of the pike.

  For the first time in a hundred years, every fragment of the Ibis’s beautiful, delicate shape was surrounded by water. A ripple of tremors resounded across the earth and at that very moment, right there and then, the quickening began.

  An ancient, crusty old treasure chest filled with aching bones lifted open ten thousand leagues under the sea, and a horde of fiendish skeletal forms began to assemble.

  The soil moved beneath a gravestone out upon the moors of old England, to reveal a long purple-fingered hand searching through the dirt.

  A tombstone was heaved to one side many, many miles away and two glimmering eyes stared out from the blackness.

  From every dark corner of the earth they began to move and soon, in all their ghastly forms, the seekers would be on Crampton Rock.

  Text and illustrations © 2007 Chris Mould. First published by Hodder

  All rights reserved

  Children’s Books, a division of Hachette Children’s Books, an Hachette Livre UK company.

  Published by Roaring Brook Press

  Roaring Brook Press is a division of Holtzbrinck Publishing

  Holdings Limited Partnership

  175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010

  www.roaringbrookpress.com

  eISBN 9781429992435

  First eBook Edition : March 2011

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Mould, Chris.

  The icy hand / by Chris Mould.—1st ed.

  p. cm.—(Something wickedly weird ; 2)

  Summary: Spending the winter at Candlestick Hall, the home he inherited from his great-uncle Bartholomew, young Stanley encounters a headless ghost, a talking fish, and a female companion who joins Stanley in a battle against “deadly” pirates bent on stealing a magical family heirloom.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-59643-385-4 (alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-59643-385-X (alk. paper)

  [1. Supernatural—Fiction. 2. Ghosts—Fiction. 3. Dwellings—Fiction.]

  I. Title.

  PZ7.M85895Ic 2008 [Fic]—dc22 2008011260

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  First Edition September 2008

  Book design by MT Dikun