Chapters (45)
‘To my house!’ Sam said when we reached the gate and collected his bike. We ran, straining to hear the Bentley or Mr Clemm striding up the hill, but there were only our running feet and the tick-tick-tick from Sam’s wheels.
‘Your hair!’ Sam gasped. ‘It’s all electrified! Are you burned?’
I slowed down and felt my scalp. My skin felt slithery and hot, but it didn’t hurt. ‘Nothing there.’
Sam slowed too. ‘That was lucky.’
‘Lucky? No, it was Mr Clemm. He saved me. I might have been electrocuted. You too! Maybe he isn’t as bad as people think.’
‘What?’
‘Maybe he’s weird because of the way people treat him.’
‘Maybe people treat him like that because of the way he acts.’ Sam sounded annoyed. ‘But there’s the other stuff about animals, anyway.’
‘What if that isn’t true? Maybe he does some scary things and some weird stuff, but he’s a good bloke as well somewhere deep down.’
‘So he keeps a creature like Whizzy prisoner, then when you let it out, he tries to catch it again, and suddenly you think that’s fine?’
‘No! ’Course I don’t! But maybe we’ve got it wrong. Maybe he had her locked up for a good reason. And maybe he wants to catch her again to help her somehow.’
‘Why have you changed your mind?’ Sam was nearly shouting. ‘Why have I just done you a massive favour and totally shown myself up in your street for absolutely nothing?’
‘No, I’m glad you did it,’ I said quickly, ‘but which is the real Mr Clemm, and which is the Cloaked Strider people have terrified each other with? The people in this village have muddled Mr Clemm into a total knot.’
We were now in Sam’s farmyard. He looked like I felt – soaked; beaten up T-shirt.
‘Doing that stupid distraction was so embarrassing,’ he said, ‘and I’ve still missed Whizzy. What do I have to do?’
‘I think she’s shy. She needs to get to know you. If we stay close together she’s bound to come back. And hey, listen – she! We know she’s a she now! Just awesome!’
We’d almost reached Sam’s front door when the weather began to change. Hot, heavy air seemed to drop down from the sky.
Sam said, ‘Let’s get inside.’
‘Chill, we’re safe here. Even if he came back, I think we could just ask him questions about her now. He knows we know her. It’s all out in the open.’
But he ignored me and marched straight up to his room, which was stifling. Very quickly, everything started to feel thundery and prickly and wrong, but Whizzy was nowhere to be seen. There must be a thousand places to hide in a house, especially if you’re faster than the wind and can drift like smoke.