Mirrors: Sparkling new stories from prize-winning authors. Wendy Cooling

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ What on earth—?’

      I turned over. ‘Dad.’

      A hammering headache filled the whole of my brain. Those burning eyes had drilled into the back of my head. They saw what I really was, reflected in their own fiery depths.

      ‘Where’s that—’

      ‘Mirror?’ Dad set it straight. ‘Must have fallen over in the night.’

      There he was, but he didn’t fool me.

      So the mirror-man was back on his mirror, with his wolf-legs folded around it as if he’d never been gone. Flashing around like a slip of silver all night. He’d changed his position, anyone could see. What did he think, we were stupid?

      ‘Why aren’t you in your bed?’ Dad bleated.

      ‘Doesn’t matter, does it?’ I said, turning over. ‘Leave me alone,’ I growled.

      The next night was Friday night, and we went to the cinema for Sam’s birthday treat, as her party was going to be only part of her birthday, as Sam gets everything she wants. The film was OK, not great. We spilled a whole tub of popcorn over the floor, plus these stupid boys kept annoying us, but anyway, it was all right.

      When I got home I remembered him. The mirror-man upstairs. I delayed for as long as I could. But finally I had to go to bed.

      It was the worst night yet. I finally got off to sleep all right, which I don’t usually after a Jumbo Cola and a giant bag of Pik ’n’ Mix, which was pants, as they had the wrong prawns and massively big worms, so you have to pay five quid to get one.

      So at last I was just drifting off. I don’t know, I may have been asleep – when I thought I saw him running round my room. Quick as quicksilver, the mirror-man, wolfing my slippers and flashing over my desk, his red eyes burning, his tongue slavering, his quick tail flicking and whipping.

      Who was he? The reflection of someone’s secret self, the last person to look into that mirror in the moonlight, after they’d ordered it by mistake? That mirror, that mirror, that mirror. Had been the cause of it.

      I started up in fright and launched myself at that mirror.

      In the moment before I smashed it, I saw what animal I was. The wolf rolled off the top of it and raged and boiled on the carpet, changing shape as I watched into the animal that was me, until I put my pillow on top of it, and another pillow on top of that, and my dressing gown and a pile of books, and everything I could find to weigh it down and stop it, that reflection of my secret self…

      ‘Happy birthday!’ Sam wishes herself, her head around Lisa’s bedroom door on Saturday morning. ‘I let myself in, all right?’

      Sam waits, but nothing happens; no move to get her her present. Instead, Lisa puzzles over the pieces of a mirror. Not a very nice mirror, either.

      ‘What are you doing?’

      ‘What does it look like? I just have to piece it together. Then I can send it back.’

      Sam picks up a twist of silver. ‘What’s this?’

      ‘What does it look like?’

      ‘A dragon?’

      ‘It was a wolf, but the wolf-man’s gone.’

      Sam looks at the dragon’s curved limbs, at the shape it’s designed to hold, its tail licking clean round an oval. ‘What’s this meant to be for?’

      ‘He sits on top of the mirror,’ Lisa supplies. ‘When he’s not—’

      ‘What?’

      ‘Broken,’

      ‘You said, alive.’

      Lisa’s eyes flash. ‘I said, broken.’

      Sam looks at her friend. ‘About my party tonight—’

      ‘Mind if I take it back?’ Lisa scratches Sam very slightly as she reached up to grab the figure. Blood wells up on Sam’s hand, in a ruby-red spot on her thumb. Lisa watches her eyes, and Sam gets the strangest feeling she’s looking into the mouth of a—

      The dragon in Lisa’s eyes smiles. ‘Thanks.’ Her fingernails close over the silver figure and place it over the top of the mirror-puzzle.

      ‘It’s my birthday.’ Sam sucks the scratch on her hand. ‘This isn’t supposed to happen.’

      But Lisa has eyes for no one but herself, mirrored in the scattered pieces of glass that make up a jigsaw on the floor. ‘Ever look into a mirror at night? After I mend it, you can put this in your room and see what animal you are.’

      Sam Lamb knows already. She leaves the bedroom, unnoticed, as downstairs Dad logs on to the computer and finds pub/mirrors.com offering ‘Reduced Gothic Mirrors at a Fraction of their Former Price’, over the search he makes for a book.

      ‘Lisa! That dot com company’s got those mirrors again!’ Dad yells up the stairs as a range of extraordinary mirrors appear when he clicks on them without meaning to. ‘Like that weird mirror you just got!’

      His voice washes over Lisa, guarding her broken mirror upstairs, seeing her fragmented face in it.

       Me and not me. Who am I?

       For a moment, I can see a reflection of myself as I might be. The girl in the mirror is me. Me, and not me, at the same time. I’m not sure I wanted to know, but I did what I knew I shouldn’t…

       I can hear Dad downstairs, ordering a mirror. I want to stop him, but I can’t. He will release his inner self. What animal will he be? A pig, a rat, a rabbit?

      Dad’s voice comes up the stairs. ‘You know, these mirrors aren’t bad – ‘Gothic Mirror in Gilt’ – I think I might – oh, I have clicked on it, what a stupid donkey I am, I think I might have just ordered it…’

       Jeremy Strong NEVER TRUST A PARROT

      Dear Pet Problem Page,

       You are my last chance of hope. I pray that you can help me. I have a problem with my parrot. I had better start at the beginning – there is so much that needs explaining…

      Jamie had never actually met a parrot that could talk before, but this parrot could not only talk but it had a lisp and couldn’t say its ‘r’s properly. ‘I am your fwend,’ it said, and fixed Jamie with a beady eye. Jamie gazed back into the black obsidian-like eye, almost hypnotised.

      ‘I СКАЧАТЬ