Chapters (45)
‘… you name it, he’s dragged it back with him like a bagful of Beelzebub’s beetles.’ He stopped to snigger at his own cleverness, then went on even more spittingly than before. ‘Greasy, poisonous things – all those spitting frogs. And now he’s tampering with the electricity supply! All those contraptions of his should be smashed and stopped. Every last one of them.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ the lady said. ‘Nathaniel Clemm is harmless. You’re the one who needs stopping.’
So the Moth Man was called Nathaniel Clemm.
‘Harmless? Spinal cords lying around the place, and you call that harmless?’
Spinal cords!
‘Well,’ the lady said, ‘vultures have to eat.’
‘Vultures!’
‘Just one vulture,’ she said, drumming her fingers again. Her nails flashed silver, like Christmas decorations. ‘And she didn’t stay long – he was just sheltering her between zoos. He’s a conservationist, not a butcher. You want to round up anyone who’s not the same as you, don’t you? You can’t stand people who are different.’
With a ridiculous walrus-like ‘Harrumph!’ the old man turned his back on the lady and stomped out of a side door. The lady looked like she might come my way, so I sneaked back into the main hall and blended in like a total spy. The investigation was going better than I could possibly have hoped, but what was the next step?
Suddenly it was obvious: I’d go and look at this spooky old charnel house myself.
Thought I’d got past Mum easy. She was trying to make Lily eat a cupcake, which is just about impossible because Lily hardly eats anything since she got bullied super badly when she moved up into Year Eight last year. (That’s why we had to move here, to get Lily a brand-new life.) Anyway, Lily and Mum were in a cupcake standoff, but Mum must have clocked me, and just as I reached the door, she struck.
‘Where do you think you’re off to now?’
Never even knew she could creep up on people.
‘Need fresh air,’ I said. Then a brainwave happened. ‘And can I meet up with Sam? I’ve done nearly an hour here.’ Sam would freak when I told him about Nathaniel Clemm and Ash House. We could recce the place together.
She looked at me suspiciously.
‘It’ll give me more exercise …’
Her mouth stretched into a straight line with dimples at each end, which meant I’d won but she still disapproved. ‘Go on then. But you’re going nowhere without this.’ She pulled out my blue padded monstrosity of a coat from nowhere that made any sense.
‘Not that puffy thing! It’s hardly even raining now.’
‘No coat, no go. You will need it, and you will take it.’
I grabbed the evil thing and cleared out.