Read Online The Week at Mon Repose by Margaret Pearce - Free Book Online Page B

and cauliflower covered in lumpy white sauce. The girls excused themselves from the dessert of roly-poly pudding covered with what looked like the same lumpy white sauce as the cauliflower and went along to look at Ahmed again.
    His skin was a more glowing green. His body was even flatter along the small bed. There seemed a lot less of him than before dinner. He definitely was fading fast. He seemed unaware of the three girls inspecting him with such horror.
    â€œHe doesn’t look to me as if he will last until tomorrow night,” Jenny said, her worried expression returning.
    â€œJust shut up,” Marilyn shouted. “He said three days, so he just has to last three days.”
    â€œSo let’s get back to our bedroom,” Allie suggested, not taking any offence at Marilyn’s rudeness. “We can set the Ouija board up and at least start trying to find some help.”
    Allie led the other two out of the room in gloomy silence. They shouldn’t have let Mr. Masterton talk them into helping call Ahmed up in the first place. What was happening wasn’t exciting anymore; it was just plain nasty. Ahmed’s dreadful end was going to be their fault.
    The trouble they were going to be in when their parents discovered they had to have four hundred dollars for horses that had vanished had suddenly become trivial and unimportant.

 
    Chapter Eleven
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    Allie sneaked a look at their little travelling clock. They had been sitting at the Ouija board for hours. The background mutter of conversation and the clatter of crockery from supper had died down. There were goodnights called and doors slammed as the guests at Mon Repose settled down for the night.
    At one stage, Marilyn’s mother had put her head around the door. “The boys were saying you weren’t in bed yet?”
    â€œI’m staying with the girls for the night,” Marilyn explained.
    â€œYou should have told me,” her mother said and went away.
    â€œThis just isn’t going to work,” Jenny grumbled, spotting the direction of Allie’s glance. “We have tried every combination of every question for hours, and not even a twitch from the glass.”
    â€œMaybe something will happen at midnight,” Marilyn insisted. “We’ve just got to keep on going.”
    Allie sneaked another look at the clock. It was fifteen minutes to midnight. “Maybe the questions aren’t getting through,” she suggested.
    â€œYou can say that again,” Marilyn said with a sigh.
    â€œAll those variations of the question, ‘please help Ahmed get better’, mightn’t be aimed at the right person,” Allie continued. “We’ve got to get through to someone who really cares about what’s happening to Ahmed.”
    â€œHe’s a genie,” Marilyn said thoughtfully. “Do you reckon they have a union or committee for genie safety, like our road safety crowd?”
    â€œWe need a short sentence that we can do over and over again,” Jenny said. She reached for the notepaper and her pencil. “Got any ideas?”
    There were plenty of ideas, and the pages of the notebook filled rapidly. Marilyn pointed out that it would take them until dawn to even spell the page of explanation about the danger of Ahmed fading into nothingness, letter by letter on the Ouija board. At last they settled on one sentence.
    Allie sneaked a look at the clock. It was exactly midnight. They gathered around the Ouija board again and placed their fingertips on the glass.
    â€œAll together now, and I will spell the letters out as we go around,” Jenny said.
    They spelled out their message once and waited. The glass remained inert under their fingertips.
    â€œAgain,” Jenny said.
    Allie looked despairingly at Jenny. Marilyn was biting her lip and glaring at the glass.
    â€œAgain,” Jenny repeated.
    The glass spelled out the message again. Again the girls waited. Nothing