Pip and the Twilight Seekers Read Free Page B

Soldier,” said Mrs. McCreedy. “You can’t blame him. He’s just an old wounded hero, sent here to make you feel welcome in your new home.”
    “He’s evil,” said Edgar, and he threw the figure across the room and watched him land in a folded heap in the corner.
    “I’m sure it’s quite normal,” explained Ely McCreedy to his wife. “Edgar has had an ordeal. Moving home can be quite distressing for children. After all, he is in hiding. Who knows what such a thing does to a child?”
    When Edgar went to bed that night it was not until the early hours that he finally felt the weight of his eyes reduce him to sleep. But he tossed and turned again and his dreams were filled with nightmare creatures and sinister voices.
    He rose from his bed, his eyes opened wide, but all the while he stayed asleep. Pushing back the warmth of his bedclothes he slid into the shoes that were tucked under the frame. And then he walked across the room and picked up the figure of the old wooden soldier, holding it tightly in his hand.
    Then, without any hesitation, he walked up the step into the parlor and unlatched the front door. His movements went unheard by his parents and he stepped out into the night. He was now under the glowing torchlight that was fixed to the wall of the house.
    He marched purposefully across the street and through the stone archway that led to the footbridge.

    In a short while he had walked a good way across the hollow and now he headed, unheedingly, into the woods. As he did so Captain Dooley’s eyes shone brightly, glowing like little white moons in the snowy crisp darkness of the hollow, as if to affirm his satisfaction. If that little wooden face of his could have smiled, it would have done so.
    “Well, well, well. A little boy lost,” came a voice that seemed to appear from nowhere.
    A tall figure loomed over Edgar McCreedy. He had strange white hair, one dark eye, one milky gray eye, and two sets of long arms, but the boy seemed not in the least alarmed. Not even the sight of the wolf that walked alongside him was enough to perturb him.
    “You let me take care of your little wooden soldier, my boy, and come along with me,” said the man. “Mister Roach will look after you for sure.”
    Edgar handed the figure of Captain Dooley to Roach without so much as a shrug of his shoulders and then he took his hand, and off they walked, into the thick of the Spindlewood Forest.

    It was oh, so cold, but the captain had a feeling he had not had in a long while, almost as if he was returning home. The fresh cool air, the smell of Spindlewood, and the drowsy, dreamy feel of the forest. He opened his eyes to the trees. Endless pillars of frosted white bark that reached out forever, winding and twisting a snakelike walk into a black wilderness. “There’s no place like home,” whispered the captain quietly to himself, for h knew he should only speak when spoken to.

Toad had done it again. He’d lain there in the dark telling his sinister tales of the hollow into the early morning and then suddenly he was asleep and snoring, leaving Pip and Frankie half frightened out of their wits.
    “How does he do that?” said Frankie. “You know, falling asleep like that. Instantly, without any warning!”
    Pip chuckled to himself. Good old Toad. Seemingly nothing bothered him. But Pip did not have quite the same way of dealing with things. His mind turned with the events of the hollow and his troubled past chased on after him through the dark hours.
    He was eager to change the subject.
    “What is it like,” he began, “to be part of a family? You know, brothers and sisters and parents?”
    “Oh, don’t remind me,” Frankie said. “I miss them terribly, the young ones especially. I miss all their little ways. How they laugh and sing and make fun and how they’re always jolly.”
    “And what of your parents?”
    “I miss them too. My mother’s arms around me and my father’s smile. They are good people, Pip.