Free Long Lankin by Lindsey Barraclough Page A

song in the sitting room at Guerdon Hall, how I had passed the night listening for her voice and watching Mimi’s chest peacefully rising and falling, too full of fear to go to sleep myself.
    Mimi. Outside. Alone.
    “Mimi! We’ve left her for ages!” I rushed down the aisle. The boys followed, the sound of our pounding feet echoing in the rafters.
    I pulled open the heavy wooden door.
    Mimi wasn’t where we’d left her. For a moment, I thought I saw her, the form of a little child against a gravestone, but I blinked and realized it was the bobbing shadow of a tree. I ran out of the porch. She wasn’t anywhere on the path. A lump filled my throat.
    “Mimi! Mimi!” we screamed, chasing round the outside of the church. My chest was bursting.
    “Roger! What are we gonna do? Where is she? Where is she? Mimi! Mimi!”
    “Shh,” said Pete, putting his finger on his lips. “Listen!”
    It was a wailing noise, coming from a distance.
    “I think she’s in the lane!” cried Roger, and we shot off down the path and out of the gate.
    “Oh, thank God! Look, she’s there!” I shouted, spotting the corner of her little white dress fluttering as she turned left into the Chase ahead of us, running as fast as she could in her big boots.
    We tore up the lane after her. Even though she fell over once, she sped along so quickly we never caught up with her till we reached Guerdon Hall.
    “Auntie Ida! Auntie Ida!” she screamed, rushing over the bridge and banging with all her might on the great wooden door in the porch. “Auntie Ida!”
    From inside the house, Finn started barking furiously. The crying baby stared at us from its place over the arch as Pete, Roger, and I raced over the bridge. Auntie Ida and the dog, bounding with excitement, came out.
    “What on earth is going on?” cried Auntie, lifting Mimi up in her arms and pushing her hair off her face. “Get down, Finn! Calm down!”
    Auntie rummaged in the pocket of her pinny for a hankie and wiped Mimi’s nose. Mimi wouldn’t stop crying.
    “There was this — this — man!” she gulped. “That — horrible — horrible — man!”
    “What are you talking about? What horrible man, Mimi? Where have you been?”
    “That — that place where we went. Down there — that church — it’s nasty — that — that man’s down there!”
    “What man? Who?”
    “That — that scary man with the black dress! They went in. He — he come and said things!”
    Auntie Ida looked up and stared at us. Her eyes hardened into two pieces of jet-black coal. “Cora!” she said in an awful shaking voice. “Have you — have you dared to go down to the church?”
    My head went dizzy.

    In a moment, Mrs. Eastfield had almost thrown Mimi down to the ground and was on us. She grabbed Cora by the arm and dragged her through the door into the house. Cora could hardly keep up with her, squirming as she tried to get away, but Mrs. Eastfield had her fast, her fingernails digging deep into Cora’s skin.
    Mimi was at their heels, crying, “Cora! Cora! Don’t do that, Auntie Ida!”
    Pete and me didn’t know what to do.
    We hung about on the stone flags in the porch for a second, then quickly walked in through the big front door as it began to creak shut.
    Following the shouting, we got to the open kitchen door just in time to see Mrs. Eastfield land a great wallop on the side of Cora’s face — such a whack that it sent Cora sprawling. As she went down, she banged her leg on the side of the table and then fell hard on her bottom on the stone floor. The money jingled in her pocket. She cried out.
    Mrs. Eastfield was breathless with fury, the whites of her eyes wide in her bright-red face.
    Cora could hardly get her legs to stand her up again, but Pete and I were too scared to go through the doorway to help her.

    I tried to get up, but my backside hurt so and my face stung like burning. I tried to push myself up on my hands, but I couldn’t get them to work. They didn’t seem to