Free The House with a Clock In Its Walls by John Bellairs

with a clunk like a book falling out of a bookcase, but Blücher did not come. The blue arrows sliced into the red squares, splitthem up, tore them to pieces. Now the blue arrows turned into an army marching up the hill, an army of tall men wearing bearskin hats that made them even taller. They had long black moustaches and carried muskets with bayonets on the end. They were coming for Wellington, who now looked very red-faced and crabby. He tore off his hat and stomped on it. He threw his watch on the ground and stomped on it too.
    “Ooh-
waah!
” he screamed. “Greenwich Mean Time! Very mean time! I want to go home
now!
”
    Whereupon the scene changed, and Lewis and Uncle Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmermann were back in the dark shadowy dining room by the warm fire. The purple china clock on the mantel whanged tinnily eleven times. The whole show had taken only an hour.
    Jonathan got up, stretched, yawned, and suggested that they all go to bed. Lewis thanked Mrs. Zimmermann for the wonderful party and went home with Jonathan. He went upstairs to bed, but he did not sleep.

CHAPTER FIVE
    As the luminous hands of his new Westclox bedside clock crept around toward midnight, Lewis lay, fully dressed, under his covers. The room was dark. His heart was pounding, and he kept saying over and over to himself, “I wish I didn’t have to do it. I wish I didn’t have to do it.”
    He felt in his pants’ pocket for the piece of paper with the magic circle copied on it. There was a fat piece of yellow chalk in his other pocket. What if Uncle Jonathan came to his room to see if he were all right? He’d just have to pull the covers up to his chin and pretend that he was asleep.
Tick-tick-tick-tick
. Lewis wished that it was next week, and that he had never made his stupid promiseto Tarby. He closed his eyes and stared at the patterns that formed on the insides of his eyelids.
    Minutes passed. Suddenly Lewis sat up. He threw back the covers and stared at the clock. It was five minutes after twelve! He had promised to meet Tarby in the cemetery at midnight, and now he was going to be late! What could he do? Tarby wouldn’t wait for him. He would go home, and tomorrow he would tell all his friends how Lewis had chickened out.
    Lewis rubbed his face and tried to think. The cemetery stood atop a long ridge that rose just on the other side of Wilder Creek Park. You had to walk half a mile beyond the city limits to get to the road that ran up the ridge. There was a short cut, of course, but Lewis hadn’t intended to take it. Now he had no choice.
    Slowly, carefully, Lewis eased himself down onto the floor. He knelt down and groped under the bed for his flashlight. It was a long, old-fashioned flashlight with a fluted handle and a big round lamp on the end. The metal felt cold and slimy in his hand. He went to the closet and put on his heavy jacket. It would be cold up on Cemetery Hill.
    Lewis opened the bedroom door. The hall was dark, as usual, and from the next room he could hear Uncle Jonathan snoring. Lewis felt awful. It was like being sick to your stomach. He wished with all his heart that he could run into Jonathan’s room, wake him up, and tellhim all about the adventure he was going on, and why he had to go through with it. But he didn’t do any of these things. Instead, he tiptoed across the hall and opened the door that led to the back stairs.
    It didn’t take long for Lewis to get to the other side of town. When he had reached the CITY LIMITS sign, he poked around by the side of the road until he found a little wooden staircase that ran down the gravel bank to Wilder Creek Park. The creek was fairly shallow at this point, so Lewis waded across. The water was freezing on his ankles. When he got to the other side he looked up. His hands felt sweaty, and he almost turned around and went home.
    He was looking at Cemetery Hill. It was a high, flat-topped ridge cut across in two places by a narrow dirt road. It wasn’t a hard hill to