Free Abomination by Robert Swindells Page A

spite of the evening sunlight streaming through the window.
    ’Course we are, you plank . Well, yes, but you don’t know what we’ve got in our cellar, do you Scott? I showed you my secret stuff, but not ours. Not the family secret.
    When I was little I used to have nightmares about the monster in the cellar. I thought it was Mary. Don’t laugh, Scott. Please don’t laugh, because it isn’t funny. There’d been noises in the night, see. Lights. Muffled footsteps. In the morning there was no Mary but we had this thing in the cellar, this Abomination nobody must know about. I thought Mary had changed in the night, that she’d somehow become this creature. Well, I was only six. And that’s when the nightmares started. I’d wake screaming, but my room was at the top of the house so nobody heard. Nobody came.
    Try to imagine, Scott. I thought people changed. That I might fall asleep a little girl and wake up as something they’d have to keep in the cellar. It had happened to my sister so why not me?
    I realized eventually, of course. When the postcards started coming. That’s why I had to save the postcards. They drove away the nightmare. Kept it away. Mary was somewhere else but she was still Mary. She’d been in this town and that, so she couldn’t be in the cellar. They saved me from going mad, those cards.
    Trouble is, I’ve started to wonder lately whether the truth isn’t every bit as ghastly as the nightmare.

37. Scott
     
    I was in bed by nine but I couldn’t sleep. Thoughts chased one another round and round the inside of my skull like bikers on a wall of death. Pictures, too. Bits of Martha’s house. Her face when she saw me on the step. The awful room she’d be in right now, thinking about me or trying to transmit a message to her sister with her mind. Martha calling Mary. Come in, Mary. Are you receiving me? Over .
    She’s crazy about her sister, that’s for sure. Those dumb postcards. She’s been everywhere. D’you want to look? I should’ve said yes. Probably hurt her feelings, saying not just now. I’ll make a point of asking to see them next time, if there is a next time. ’Course there’ll be a next time. Just ’cause she went in and shut the door before you’d finished waving doesn’t mean . . .
    That’s how it was going. Round and round. No wonder I couldn’t sleep. It was ten past eleven when I had the idea. Brilliant idea. Something I could try for Martha that she couldn’t try herself.
    The Internet. What if I managed to contact Mary on the Internet? A long shot, I admit, but better than telepathy. I got out of bed, switched on the computer and selected AOL. There’s a site called TRAVEL that has a message-board. Martha says her sister travels, so maybe she checks out the message-board. Maybe. I typed in this message:
Martha Dewhurst would like to hear from her sister Mary, somewhere in England. Contact SCOXON [email protected]
     
    I’d just posted this when my door opened and Dad looked in. ‘Do you know what time it is, young man?’
    ‘Sure, Dad, it’s on-screen. Eleven seventeen.’
    ‘Exactly, and you have school tomorrow. Switch off now and get into bed.’
    ‘OK, Dad.’ I signed off and shut down, thankful that my message hadn’t been on-screen when he stuck his head round the door. I suspect that, if he’d read it, he’d have accused me of rushing in where angels fear to tread.

38. Martha
     
    There’s one thing in my hidey-hole I didn’t let him see. It’s nothing much. Just a clipping from the newspaper with CHILD HELPLINE and a number. I keep it in case a day comes when I can’t stand it any more. One evening, a few months ago, I thought that day had come so I called the number. I meant to let it all out, including Abomination, and have done with it once and for all. I’d no idea what would happen, but I felt sure that whatever it was couldn’t possibly be worse than the way things are:
    A woman answered. Hello, caller. You’re through to Child