Free The Hidden World by Graham Masterton Page A

light.
    â€˜I felt very tired and weak, but my fever had broken, and I was over the worst.’
    â€˜Did you tell Mrs Pennington? Did you give her the ring?’
    â€˜Yes, I did.’
    â€˜Was she pleased?’
    â€˜Not … at all. For some reason she was very angry with me. She said that I was making up cruel stories and that I must have stolen the ring from her jewelry box. She said I was never to talk about it again, or else she’d have me arrested for being a thief and a liar.’
    â€˜Did you never find out why?’
    Mrs Crawford shook her head.
    â€˜Did you try to do it again?’ asked Epiphany. ‘Go through the wallpaper, I mean?’
    â€˜I did it once more, but I had been moved to another bedroom then, with green wallpaper that looked like thorn bushes. When I went through it was very dark and there were some horrible prickly shapes in the darkness, and believe me they gave me a very bad fright. I couldn’t get out of there quickly enough.’
    â€˜And you’ve never tried to do it again since then?’
    â€˜Some things are best left as memories, or puzzles. In any case, a short time after that, all of the Pennington children got sick and died and Mrs Pennington let my mother go. We moved to live with my aunt in Darien and I never went back to that house again.’
    â€˜That’s sad.’
    â€˜Yes, it was. They were such lovely children. But it was a long time ago now.’
    â€˜Do you think I could walk into my wallpaper?’
    â€˜As far as I know, anybody can do it, given the right amount of belief, and the right kind of wallpaper pattern. But I wouldn’t recommend that you try it. The usual rules of nature obviously don’t apply, and who knows what scary things you might find there? Those prickly things, for instance, or those creatures that looked like wolves.’
    â€˜So what do you think I ought to do?’
    â€˜About your voices, you mean? I don’t think you should do anything. Whoever they are, whatever they are, I don’t see how you can possibly help them. If they’re facing some kind of danger, you’d have to face it too.’

The Leaves of Memory
    O n Tuesday morning, Grandpa Willy drove her to Dr Leeming’s clinic in his old green Pontiac. Dr Leeming was bald but very handsome, with sharp blue eyes and minty-smelling breath. He removed the stitches very carefully, but Jessica still heard a noise inside her head like wool being pulled through cardboard.
    When he had finished he swabbed her cut and stuck a clean dressing on it. Then he gave her an eye test and made her place differently shaped bricks into a pattern, to test her co-ordination.
    â€˜Well, young lady, I think you’re ready to go back on active service,’ he told her. ‘You haven’t been having any headaches, have you? How about your memory? Can you remember the day when you fell downstairs?’
    â€˜Mostly. I can’t remember actually falling, but I can remember everything else.’
    â€˜Have you had any unusual reactions? For instance, have you seen things that you don’t normally see?’
    Jessica felt herself blushing. ‘No … nothing like that.’
    â€˜Sometimes, when they’ve suffered a concussion, people see shadows out of the corner of their eye. Or flashes of light. Sometimes they even think they hear voices. You haven’t experienced anything like that?’
    â€˜No,’ said Jessica, even though she felt guilty about lying. But Renko had heard the voices too, so they couldn’t be anything to do with her knocking her head.
    â€˜Okey-dokey,’ said Dr Leeming. ‘But if you have any more headaches, or you feel nauseous, or if you experience any other symptoms, you come see me pronto, all right?’
    As they left the clinic Grandpa Willy said, ‘How about a cheeseburger with everything on it?’
    â€˜I didn’t think Grannie let you eat