Read Online The Hidden World by Graham Masterton - Free Book Online

women is that they only read romances about swooning heroines who fall in love with disreputable rogues, or books about neurotic thirty-somethings who keep worrying about their weight and can’t find boyfriends. They don’t understand that you can only get power over men by treating yourself with unwavering respect.’
    â€˜I was still reading fairy stories when I was your age. Well, I still do now.’
    â€˜Fairy stories are all right. They’re a celebration of the essential mysticism of the female psyche.’
    â€˜Oh.’
    They entered the woods, with Sebastian tearing away from them, and then tearing back again, his pink tongue steaming. Frozen twigs crackled under their boots, and four or five loons flurried up from the pond beyond the trees.
    Epiphany swung a stick. ‘Did you really see a face under the ice?’
    â€˜About as clearly as I can see you now.’
    â€˜Do you think somebody’s trying to get through to you?’
    â€˜What do you mean?’
    â€˜Well, you talked about another world, like Fairyland, right next to this world. It seems like somebody from that world wants to talk to you. You’ve heard voices, haven’t you? And you’ve seen a golf bag that looked like a dog and a lamp that looked like a man.’
    â€˜I don’t know. I’m beginning to think it’s all in my head.’
    They circled the pond and walked back along the track that led to the main farm gate. Epiphany sang, ‘I like bread and butter … I like toast and jam … that’s what my baby feeds me … ’cause he’s my loving man’ in such a shrill, high-pitched voice that Jessica had to clamp her gloves over her ears. When they arrived at Mrs Crawford’s house, Mrs Crawford said, ‘You’re coming in, aren’t you? I can put some brownies in the microwave.’
    â€˜Oh yes please,’ said Jessica immediately. She always liked going into Mrs Crawford’s house, not because of her microwaved brownies, which were invariably gooey, but because of all the arcane clutter that filled the hallway and the living-room: cuckoo clocks and totem poles and statuettes of naked dancers, umbrellas and stuffed cockatoos and strange pictures of people in evening dress, floating through the air.
    â€˜This is Epiphany,’ said Jessica. ‘I call her Piff. She’s a feminist.’
    â€˜Well, that’s wonderful,’ said Mrs Crawford. ‘I always think that all of us ought to have some kind of cause, even if it’s nothing more than free walking-sticks for the elderly. Here –’ she picked a heap of women’s magazines from the worn-out brown corduroy couch, and dropped them onto the worn-out carpet – ‘do sit down, and I’ll put the brownies on to ping.’
    Jessica and Epiphany took off their coats and sat side by side on the couch. It was warm in Mrs Crawford’s house, almost uncomfortably warm. A log fire was burning fiercely in the cast-iron grate, and it wasn’t long before Sebastian came trotting in from the kitchen and flopped himself down in front of it. He smelled strongly of steaming dog.
    â€˜Poor Sebastian,’ said Mrs Crawford, as she came back in. ‘I think you’ve exhausted him.’
    Epiphany looked around at the tall vases filled with dyed-gold pampas grass, the boxes of jigsaws and the porcelain busts of inanely smiling girls. Over the fireplace hung a large dark oil painting which depicted a woman in a black cloak emerging from a solid oak door, as if she had walked right through it, like a ghost.
    â€˜That’s called “The Appearance of Eve”,’ said Mrs Crawford. ‘It was painted by a Dutchman who went mad shortly afterward, Jan van der Hoeven. He always swore that it was painted from life.’
    â€˜I’m not surprised he went mad,’ said Jessica.
    â€˜But you’re not mad,’ Epiphany reassured