Summer Of The Year 2000
‘It’s haunted,’ says Auburn, poking Willow so hard in her skinny ribcage that she almost falls over. She rights herself by clinging on to her brother, Angel, who is almost as skinny as her, and trying to look completely unaffected by the whole adventure.
As part of his attempt at bravado, he pushes Willow away with both hands. She’s the youngest of the siblings by several years – always smaller, always quieter, always the butt of the jokes, always on the receiving end of the pranks. Always determined to prove that she’s not the weakest link, and usually getting herself into trouble along the way.
‘No it’s not,’ says Willow, staggering a few steps along the corridor and bumping into the wood-panelled wall. It’s an old building, this, all dark wallpaper and high ceilings and ornate plasterwork. It’s big, and filled with labyrinth-like corridors full of mystery. It’s also been, for this one summer, their unofficial – and slightly terrifying – playground.
‘It’s not!’ she repeats, glaring at Auburn in defiance. ‘You can’t have only one room haunted in a whole massive house. That doesn’t make sense!’
‘Course it does,’ says Auburn, looking to her big brother for back-up, red hair flashing in the dim lighting. Van is fifteen, and the oldest of the gang. He’s already six foot tall and has the musculature of a runner bean to go with his unfashionable Nirvana T-shirt and shoulder-length grease-bomb hair. He thinks he’s really cool, which doesn’t quite make up for the fact that everyone else thinks he’s a complete dork.
Willow gazes up at him from her significantly shorter eight-year-old’s height, frowning. She’s worshipped her big brother for a long time, but is starting to suspect that he might actually be evil. He definitely smells evil. She eyes the stains on his T-shirt, knowing that in a few years’ time, as soon as she’s big enough, she’ll be expected to wear it. Hand-me-downs are a way of life for the Longville family.
All three of the younger siblings stare at Van, waiting for his pronouncement. Auburn looks fierce; Angel is biting his chubby lip and trembling, and Willow has her arms crossed defiantly over her passed-down-several-times Barney the Purple Dinosaur T-shirt.
‘It could be …’ he says, creeping towards the door at the end of the corridor, ‘… that the evil spirit only resides in this particular room. Maybe something terrible happened there.’
‘Like what?’ asks Willow, trying to sound tough but wishing she could just run away and find her mum. She knows she can’t, though – Auburn would never let her live it down. Besides, her mum is leading some kind of meditation workshop out in the garden, and she’ll kill her if she interrupts it. Well, not kill her
