Free Elidor (Essential Modern Classics) by Alan Garner

someone look up, and every sound was an irritation. Then into this silence there broke the noise of a car engine. It hiccupped on one cylinder, hesitated, and the remaining cylinders fired. Mr Watson dropped his catalogue.
    “That’s our car,” he said.
    “Nonsense, Frank.”
    “I tell you, it’s our car!”
    He pulled back the curtain that stopped the draught from the front door, slid the catch, and ran out on to the footpath in his carpet slippers.
    “Frank! You’ll catch your death!”
    They all chased after Mr Watson, and came upon him standing outside the padlocked garage door. Inside the garage the car engine throbbed, about to stall.
    “Go and bring a torch and the key, Nick,” said Mr Watson.
    The engine picked up again.
    “Who can it be? How’s he broken in?” said Mrs Watson.
    “I don’t know, dear,” said Mr Watson. “It’s very funny.”
    “Perhaps it’s a ghost,” said David.
    “David!” said Mrs Watson.
    “Oh, no! Do you think it is?” said Helen.
    “Of course not. You see what happens when you say stupid things?”
    “Sorry, Mum,” said David. “Only a joke.”
    Even so, when Nicholas had brought the key and Mr Watson unlocked the door, everyone felt a creeping of the scalp as the door swung open.
    The car stood in a haze of exhaust smoke. Nobody was in the garage. The ignition was switched off, and the key was in Mr Watson’s pocket. He sat in the driving seat and frowned at the dashboard.
    “Aha,” he said, with an attempt at understanding. “Ah.”
    “What is it, Dad?” said Nicholas.
    “I’d not put the choke right back in.”
    Mr Watson stuck his finger against one of the knobs. The engine died.
    “There’d be just enough petrol seeping through to fire the engine,” he said. “Now then, all inside out of the cold! The mystery’s solved! Come along!”
    “But, Dad,” Roland heard David say as he helped Mr Watson shut the door, “you’d still need the ignition on to start the motor. Wouldn’t you?”
    If Mr Watson replied, Roland did not hear him.
    The diversion made half an hour pass. It was good to come to the fire from the dark, and they gathered round the hearth, warming their hands, and talking away the uneasiness they had all felt in front of the locked garage.
    But the heat of the fire drove them apart to their own little islands in the room. Mr and Mrs Watson faced eachother in armchairs. David and Roland, with their shoes off, were competing from behind their books for an unfair share of the sofa. Nicholas sat on a leather pouffe, reading the advice columns in all the magazines. Helen was drawing heads in profile looking to the left. She could never draw them looking to the right.
    The evening dribbled by.
    “Hark,” said Mrs Watson. “What’s that?”
    “I can’t hear anything,” said Mr Watson.
    “It’s upstairs.”
    The whole family listened.
    “Oh, yes,” said Helen. “It’s a – a sort of buzzing.”
    “Shut up a minute, then,” said David. “I can’t – oh, yes—”
    “Go and see what it is, Frank,” said Mrs Watson. “The immersion heater may not be plugged in properly.”
    “Then shall we have supper?” said Mr Watson. “I could do with a bite.” His soft, heavy tread creaked on the stairs.
    “Now what’s your father up to, I wonder,” said Mrs Watson after several minutes. “Has he gone to bed? It’d be just like him.”
    “No,” said Roland. “He’s coming. That noise is louder, too.”
    Mr Watson came downstairs as slowly as he had climbed. He halted in the doorway of the room: his face was blank with unbelief. In one hand he held his electricrazor. The razor was working, although in his other hand Mr Watson held the loose end of the flex.
    “It’s my razor,” he said.
    “Well, can’t you stop it?” said Mrs Watson. “Can’t you switch it off?”
    “There’s nothing to switch off. You plug it into the light.”
    “But that’s ridiculous, Frank! It’s not plugged into anything. You must be able