Free Mice by Gordon Reece Page B

alone.’
    I didn’t believe her and I could tell from the trembling of her hands and the catch in her voice that she didn’t believe it herself. When a cat gets into the mouse hole it doesn’t go away leaving the mice unharmed. I knew how this story was going to end. He was going to rape me. He was going to rape Mum. Then he was going to kill us both.
    With a tremendous effort, I finally managed to move my left leg to the cold outer edge of the bed. With that, the millennia-old spell was broken and I was able to sit up and reach for my dressing gown.
     
    The burglar was younger than he’d sounded. He was a weedy youth of no more than twenty with a thin weasel face and long black hair that hung in his eyes and coiled around his neck in greasy rats’ tails. He wore a scruffy olive-green bomber jacket and filth-encrusted jeans that hung so low on his hips they seemed on the point of falling down.
    From five feet away I could smell the stink of alcohol that surrounded him like an invisible mist. He was clearly drunk, but he was more than drunk . He was unsteady on his feet and his unhealthy pale face oozed with sweat. He was barely able to stay awake; his eyelids kept drooping, flickering wildly with the effort to remain open. His eyes glazed over and rolled up into his head and he seemed to be on the point of passing out, when he suddenly came to with an ugly jerk of his shoulders, looking all around him as if trying to recollect where he was.
    He held a huge knife in his right hand – the type hunters use to gut rabbits.
    He stood at the top of the stairs, swaying crazily from side to side like a man on the deck of a storm-tossed ship ( would he fall? Please God, let him fall down the stairs and break his neck! ) but he didn’t. He motioned with the knife for Mum and me to go down.
    Trembling and terrified, we obeyed him.
    I went first, the floorboards ice-cold beneath my bare feet. Below me I could make out the front door at the bottom of the stairs. Outside was the safety of the darkness, a hundred places to hide. If I made a dash for it, could I get out in time? The chain was pulled across. If I fumbled with that . . . and he was right behind Mum with that savage knife.
    I stepped off the last stair, and the chance – our last chance? – was gone.
    He herded us into the lounge and switched on the lights. I was freezing after the warmth of my bed, and began to shiver uncontrollably. Instinctively Mum wrapped her arms around me and started rubbing me vigorously to warm me up, but my shaking didn’t stop. I realized I wasn’t shaking with cold. I was shaking with fear.
    ‘Stay here,’ he grunted. ‘Don’t do anything or you’ll get this!’ and he jabbed the knife violently at Mum, the serrated edge passing just a few inches from her left eye.
    He negotiated the half-dozen paces into the dining room with difficulty, as if the floor he walked on was banked sharply at forty-five degrees, and he was evidently relieved when he reached the table and could steady himself against it. Mum and I stood hugging each other in the middle of the lounge, Mum whispering to me over and over again, ‘It’ll be all right, Shelley, it’ll be all right.’ I buried my face in her neck and squeezed my eyes tight shut. Please let this all just be a nightmare , I prayed, please say this isn’t really happening!
    I could hear him talking incoherently to himself as he rifled through the drawers in the sideboard and the antique writing desk. As his searching grew more frantic, I heard the bowl of potpourri get swept to the floor, the birthday cards slapped into the air like a flock of cardboard birds, the vase of dried flowers shatter into pieces on the parquet. All the time, he kept up a nonsensical, babbling commentary punctuated with fits of childish giggles and explosions of vicious swearing.
    ‘What’s he looking for, Mum?’ I whispered.
    ‘I don’t know, darling. I’m not sure he knows. Don’t worry. He’ll be gone in a