Read Online Twisted Winter by Catherine Butler - Free Book Online Page B

find.”
    The boy jerked his head upwards suddenly, almost dislodging Brad’s hand. “They’d find two sets of footsteps leading down,” he said. “That’s what they’d find.”
    This wasn’t going right, not right at all.
    But you didn’t stop Brad Williams just like that! “Cold and wet,” he went on, “and filthy tasting too, I bet, wriggly things swimming right into your mouth, couldn’t stop them, could you?”
    The kid was still squirming, and somehow managed to twist himself again, flinging his head back. “You’d be surprised what I can do, Brad Williams,” he gasped. “Always called my mum a witch, didn’t you, well, you see just what a witch’s brat can do!”
    And from somewhere the little runt found a way of pulling right out of Brad’s grasp, and uprighting himself, so that it was Brad who stumbled and almost slipped into reeds and mud.
    Just because the ground was so slippery, that’s all it was. He’d get his balance again in a minute.
    But he didn’t. Almost as though his legs wouldn’t move, he was stuck there on the muddy slippery edge, trying to stop himself lurching right forward into the lake…
    â€¦the icy surface, that now seemed to have got thicker and more shining, the black depths almost glowing beneath it. Then something seemed to break through, just below the glassy surface…
    Bloody hell! It was a
girl
! A girl’s face looking right up at him out of the water, flattened beneath the ice.
    He could see open dark eyes, the dark hole of an opened mouth, the whiteness of her skin, and the dark tendrils of hair that floated and waved beneath the surface.
    Almost as though she was trying to cry out under the ice. But the face didn’t look scared. It looked… angry.
    And suddenly he could feel something on the back of his neck, the boy’s bird-like claw holding him tightly and then pitching him forward.
    He threw out arms to stop himself, but it was no good. Something seemed to come up at him rightout of the water, something long and wavy like an octopus’s tentacle, only this had a girl’s hand at the end…
    And it gripped him around the back of his neck, harder than anyone had ever held him before, and pulled him down.
    He could feel the cold coming off the icy surface as he fell, feel the impact as his face smashed against it, and amid shards of icy cold was pulled further and further down, so that the shock of the freezing water hit him with a great smack in the face. Then below that and below still, and because he hadn’t had time to take a breath before he was pitched in, he knew that he wasn’t going to be able to breathe for much longer.
    His lungs hurt, his chest, his head pounded, his ears drummed. As his mouth opened, he could feel the foul taste rushing in and wriggling things rushing in too…
    And her face, that white open-mouthed face just below his, and now she seemed to be laughing.
    His arms, still above the ice, flailed uselessly on the hard glassy surface. Something seemed to be holding his legs in a vice.
    His head was bursting. His eyes were going to pop out of his head, his heart had swelled to a huge size, and then there was just blackness, blackness and pain, and he felt his whole consciousness starting to go and the life was being pulled from him…
    Then suddenly it was all over. The force that had been holding his legs down now tugged him out, so that his head came juggling and lurching out of the ice, and the brightness flooded his eyes.
    He fell face down on the wet grass while the water gushed and bubbled out of his mouth, his nose. He was sick, throat-raspingly sick all over the grass. Then at last he managed to sit up, trembling all over.
    He stood up, slowly. He looked around. The kid was standing there, looking at him thoughtfully, swinging his school bag, a few feet away. He said, “You really didn’t