Really Weird Removals.com Read Free

land on you like this, but my house is infested and I have nowhere else to go.”
    Infested? Rats, mice, cockroaches? Where on earth does this man live?
    I notice my mum’s face. She looks flustered and happy to see him and worried, all at the same time.
    “Oh Alistair. I don’t know…”
    “Where’s Duncan? Don’t tell me. He’s in his study. Writing. Luca, come out.”
    He says it just like that, loudly, all in one breath. Adil and I freeze.
    “Luca?” says Mum. “Come out from where?” she asks.
    “He’s round the corner. Look.”
    My mum comes and sticks her head out the gate.
    “What are you doing? And why are you still in your shinty strip?”
    “Well…” I begin, walking into the courtyard.
    “Apologies, Mrs Grant,” interrupts Adil, and runs away in a panic. It’s all too much for him.
    “Sorry, Mum. I heard him telling Kim he was my uncle.”
    “He is. This is your Uncle Alistair.”
    He looks a bit like Doctor Who, tweed suit, bow tie and all, except he’s blond. And very loud. 
    “You’ve got something on your shoulder,” I say, and his eyes widen. He looks at me like he can truly see me now. My mum looks at me too, then him, then me again.
    “Luca, go get yourself something to eat. We’ll come in a minute.”
    “ What is he seeing?” I hear her saying as I step inside.
    Their voices fade as I walk into my mum’s treatment room. It’s such a nice place. It makes you feel all relaxed and peaceful, just being in it. Every day there’s a different oil burning and a different scent in the air: today, it’s vanilla. There’s a soft glow from the candles and the oil burners, and a table lamp with an orange cloth on it to give the room a sunshiny sort of light. On the wall opposite the entrance there’s a painting of an American Indian woman and a wolf above a waterfall, topped with a little rainbow. For some reason my Aunt Shuna calls it “Morag and her poodle”. Shuna teaches art at Eilean High School, so she knows a thing or two about painting.
    I breathe in the vanilla for a bit, deeply. Then I open the door into our house and… I trip over something and nearly fall flat on my face. The something says, “Hey!”
    My sister Valentina is sitting cross-legged in front of the door, with her rabbit, Petsnake, in her arms. Yes, you read right, Petsnake. You see, she really, really wants a pet snake, but my mum and dad keep saying no. She hasn’t stopped trying, though. She even asked her teacher to tell my parents that a pet snake would greatly help her emotional development, but for some reason, the teacher refused.
    “Ouch! What are you DOING?”
    “I was just hanging out with Petsnake and then I heard shouting. What’s going on?”
    “Our uncle is here.”
    “We don’t have an uncle!”
    “We do now .”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Shhhhhh!!!!” I can hear voices rising again. “I better go see what’s going on. Who’s looking after you?”
    “I’m looking after myself !” she says, indignantly.
    I know I should say my sister’s annoying and she’s a pest and all the things boys usually say about their little sisters, but the truth is, Valentina’s a laugh. She’s a bit spacey and eccentric. She loves walking barefoot; she has long blonde hair, which she refuses to tie back; and big brown eyes. She’s also very, very sharp.
    She has a passion for animals. But not ponies and kittens and puppies like most little girls. No, Valentina’s into weird and scary creatures. My dad got her a subscription to Reptiles of the Americas (I suspect it has three subscribers: Valentina, the editor and the editor’s mum), which she reads avidly and cuts up to make scrapbooks. She’s into cryptozoology. You probably don’t know what it is – I didn’t either. It’s about animals nobody knows about, like the Loch Ness monster, the Yeti, unicorns and stuff like that. She has a magazine for that too. I flicked through an issue of it once; it was all about strange