Emily's Penny Dreadful Read Free Page B

Raymond.
      “ How long will your
new house take?” Emily asked.
    “ How long is a piece of
string?” asked Uncle Raymond.
      “ I don’t know,” said
Emily. “Which piece of string do you mean?”
      “ It’s a metaphor,”
said Uncle Raymond. “It means, I don’t know how long it will
take.”
      “ Uncle
Raymond?”
      “ Yes,
Emily.”
    “ If you aren’t going to
sell your Penny Dreadful to buy a new computer, can I borrow it to
read? It might inspire me. I might be able to write my own dreadful
story. I know I said that I’ve got lots of ideas but there’s room
in my head for lots more.”
      “ Hmm,” said Uncle
Raymond. “Yes, I suppose so.
    On the strict condition that you take the
greatest care of it. And provided you take your leave now.”
      “ You mean you want
me to go?” said Emily.
      “ Yes,” said Uncle
Raymond.
      “ Okay
then.”
      “ I’ll give you the
Penny Dreadful at dinner time,” said Uncle Raymond. “First I’ll put
it into something to keep it safe and clean when you’re not reading
it. You won’t like the story in the Penny Dreadful, though,” he
cautioned. “In fact, it might even give you more
nightmares.”
      “ It’s a story ,” Emily reminded him. “It’s not for real.”
      “ Of course it
isn’t,” said Uncle Raymond. “But I’ve warned you
nonetheless.”
      “ If you’re too
worried, you can give me a clue what the story’s about,” said
Emily. “Just don’t tell me everything. There have to be some
surprises.”
      “ I suppose I
should,” said Uncle Raymond. “But not right now.”
      They both heard the
sound of another voice in the kitchen.
      “ That’s Dad,” said
Emily. “He’s back home. You’d
    better go and say hello to him.”
      “ On the other hand,”
said Uncle Raymond,
    reconsidering, “perhaps I
should give you a quick summary of the story first. After all,
forewarned is forearmed.”
      He sat down again.
Emily’s chair creaked a little. It had never creaked before, Emily
was absolutely certain of that.
     

PART TWO
     
    EMILY’S PENNY DREADFUL
     
     
    Chapter Five
             
             
     
    “ What are you doing?’ asked
Sibbie.
      “ What does it look
like I’m doing? I’m writing.”
      Sibbie looked over
Emily’s shoulder. She read:
     
    The Devil’s Element
    A dreadful story, written by Emily
     

Chapter 1
    It was a dark and story night . . .
     
      “ You can’t write that ,” said Sibbie, pressing her
finger on top of Emily’s first sentence. “And what does The Devil’s
Element mean? It sounds sinister. I don’t like
sinister.”
    “ It doesn’t matter whether
you like it or not,” Emily
    replied. “It’s my story. I can use whatever
words I like. And I can call my story whatever I want to call it.
And I don’t like you looking over my shoulder.”
    Sibbie lifted her finger
off the page. “Two reasons you can’t write what you’ve written,”
she said. “First reason, you’ve put ‘story’ when you obviously
meant ‘stormy.’ You’ve left out the ‘m’. Second reason, nights
are always dark
so you don’t need to write ‘dark’. You just write, ‘It was a stormy
night.’ I used to have the same teacher as you do now,” she
reminded Emily.
      “ It’s not that dark
when the full moon shines,” Emily pointed out.
      “ No, it’s not,”
agreed Sibbie, “but it’s still dark. Way darker than
day.”
      “ I
like my sentence
much better,” Emily said. “They’ve been here a whole week already,”
she added, trying to distract her sister.
      Sibbie nodded. “Time
flies.”
      “ Until they get
money from the insurance, all they have left in the world is a
magazine,” Emily told
    Sibbie. “And the clothes on
their backs.”
      “ How do you know
that?”
      “ I asked,” said
Emily, “and Uncle Raymond told me. The day they came. Everything
else was burnt to a cinder. He showed me the