Read Online The Swallow by Charis Cotter - Free Book Online

when it came back. The Door Jumper. One minute I was alone, looking out at the cemetery, and the next I was enveloped in darkness and the moonlight snapped out as if someone had turned off a light.
    It was different this time. I was in the center of a swirling blackness, as if someone had flung a huge black cloak around me, layers and layers of dark wool. But it didn’t feel like it wanted to kill me. It was more like it was trying to tell me something, trying to get a message through.
    “Winnifred?” I gasped. “Is it you?”
    Instantly the entity changed. A roar like a freight train thundering through a tunnel filled my ears. Then I saw lights again and felt that falling sensation I’d had in the graveyard. Only this time there was no thud. I just kept falling and falling.
    “ STOP IT !” I screamed. “ STOP TRYING TO SCARE ME !”
    Then it was gone. I was kneeling on the floor by the window, and a shaft of moonlight lit up one of the big pink roses on the carpet in front of me.

COOKIES
    Polly
    I reached across Rose’s bed for my sixth chocolate-chip cookie. Rose was still on her first, nibbling along the edge like a mouse. They’d been cooling on cookie racks when I came home from school, so I’d helped myself to a paper-bagful. Okay, so I was only allowed to take two at a time, but they smelled so good and I thought I should get a few for Rose. Who knew she could make one last half an hour? With any luck the twins would get blamed for the missing cookies and I’d avoid the “Polly, that’s just greedy” lecture from Mum and the “Polly, you’re getting fat” remarks from Moo and Goo.
    “So, you really think the Door Jumper is Winnifred?” I asked through a mouthful of cookie.
    Rose frowned. “You’re getting cookie crumbs all over my bed, Polly. I’m not supposed to have food in my room.”
    “Sorry, sorry,” I said, trying to brush them off and instead sending them flying all over the place. “But what about Winnifred? Why did you think it was her?”
    “I don’t know. I just got a very strong feeling. You know what I think, Polly? I think that room used to be Winnifred’sbedroom. My grandparents probably slept in my parents’ bedroom when Winnifred was alive. It’s the biggest bedroom in the house and it has its own bathroom.”
    “You have two bathrooms? Wow,” I said. “I thought our houses were the same, only backwards. We only have one bathroom. Sometimes I have to wait so long for Moo and Goo …” I stopped. Rose was frowning at me again.
    “I guess the houses aren’t identical,” she said impatiently. “That’s not the point. You see, if my grandmother’s room was originally Winnifred’s, then Winnifred could get up to the attic through her closet. And that’s probably her stuff up there—the girls’ books and the ghost books and the little reading corner and—”
    “And she’s still there,” I breathed. “She’s haunting your attic and her old bedroom!”
    Rose
    Polly’s mother made good cookies. At least, they smelled delicious. But my stomach had been in knots since the night before and I could barely swallow.
    I felt trapped. I didn’t know how I was going to shield myself from this latest ghost. The white light didn’t seem to be working. Not only was it an entity, the most dangerous kind of ghost, but it was also a relative. This haunting was personal. It wanted something from me. But all I wanted to do was crawl under my bed and stay there forever.
    “You know what’s really weird?” said Polly, reaching for yet another cookie. “That falling thing. You said you felt it before, in the cemetery?”
    “Yes,” I replied, brushing some more crumbs off the bed. “When we were at her gravestone. It was awful. I felt like … I felt like I was going to die.”
    Finally Polly stopped chewing. She just sat there staring at me.
    “But you didn’t? I mean, you were falling but you didn’t hit the … the bottom?”
    “I did in the cemetery. There