Free The Crowmaster by Barry Hutchison Page A

peered inside the box properly. It was full to the top with the outfits. ‘So there are,’ I said, smiling too broadly. ‘Must be fifty of them in there.’
    â€˜Probably more. You sure you want to see them all?’
    I nodded, the plastic grin still stuck to my face. ‘Yep,’ I squeaked.
    This was going to be a very long night.
    â€˜That’s them all,’ Marion said. Her head and shoulders were inside the costume chest, giving her voice a booming, echoing quality. ‘Just odds and sods left.’
    â€˜Aww, that’s a shame,’ I said, fighting the urge to jump up and run around the room cheering.
    â€˜No, wait, I tell a lie. Here’s one.’
    I bit my fist. ‘Yay!’
    â€˜Oh, now I remember this,’ she said, holding up an orangey-brown jumpsuit with a furry hood. ‘It’s the lion.’
    â€˜It’s a lion,’ I agreed, trying to appear interested.
    â€˜No, it’s the lion. The cowardly lion, from the film.’ ‘What film?’
    She nudged me on the arm, almost making me topple over. ‘Were you even watching it?’ she asked. Her eyes were narrowed, but she was fighting back a smile. ‘ The Wizard of Oz .’
    â€˜Oh, right, yes,’ I stumbled. ‘Um… I liked the flying monkeys.’
    She rolled her eyes and chuckled. ‘Boys!’
    â€˜Sorry,’ I said, although I wasn’t quite sure why.
    She waved her hand, dismissing the apology. ‘At least you pretended to watch it. That’s good enough for me.’ Her eyes went from the costume to me and back again. Finally she said, ‘Actually, yes, you do owe me an apology. You need to make it up to me.’
    I frowned. ‘Um… what?’
    â€˜Put this on,’ she said, passing me the lion outfit. ‘See what it looks like.’
    I stared down at the tatty orange bundle in my hands. It was made out of a stretchy material, like a thick pair of women’s tights. ‘You can’t be serious.’
    â€˜Come on, it’ll be fun,’ she urged. Marion was keeping her face straight, but her eyes twinkled mischievously, like she could burst out laughing at any minute. ‘Been forty years since I saw anyone wearing that outfit. Go put it on. Just for a minute.’
    My mouth flapped open and closed as I searched for excuses. ‘It’ll be too small. It won’t fit.’
    â€˜My friend used to wear it. He was about your size.’
    â€˜But it’s… I mean, you can’t… It’s not…’ Unable to find an end to any of those sentences, I decided just to surrender to my fate. ‘OK,’ I sighed, standing up. ‘But only for a minute. And no laughing.’
    Marion pretended to scratch her nose, but I could tell she was really just covering the smile that had spread across her face. ‘Come on,’ she said, her voice cracking. ‘As if I would!’
    Ten minutes later I stood outside the living room, adjusting the costume. Putting it on hadn’t been the nicest experience. The whole thing smelled of damp and mould, and just as I’d expected, it was way too small. And because it was a one-piece outfit, this was causing me some problems.
    For one thing, the sleeves were far too short, coming to a stop halfway along my forearms, but that wasn’t the big issue. The real problem lay in the legs.
    The legs were exactly like tights in that they had feet at the bottom. This was fine – they stretched to allow my own feet in – but the legs were much shorter than my own. This meant that the crotch of the outfit hung down somewhere around my knees, and I’d had to contort my entire body to get the top part of the outfit up over my shoulders.
    Now it was on, the stretched material was trying to snap back together. It pulled down on my shoulders, turning me into a sort of deformed hunchback figure. A deformed hunchback figure dressed as the lion from