Dear Grandad,

Do you remember that I told you about how I was glad that I don’t have Annie’s bedroom because it looks across towards the spooky house opposite and, worse, the spooky house looks in on it? Well now I am not so sure that my room is better. Last night I had just drifted off to sleep after reading my book when I was woken up by voices coming from the lane behind the house. I couldn’t really hear the words that were being spoken, just odd ones here and there, but it was the voices that I didn’t like. They were all rough and shouty with lots of rasping and coughing sounds. I think that if I ever heard a pirate that is what they would sound like. Even though I couldn’t really hear what they were saying it was a bit scarey. I knew that they were down in the lane but it’s so close to the house that that it almost felt like they were coming into my room, coming to get me. It didn’t help that some of the words I did hear were “get them”, “then they’ll see”, “make them pay”, At one point there was a horrible groaning noise and I heard the sound of glass smashing.

I lay awake for quite a long time, first while the voices were making all their noise and then for what felt like ages afterwards. Each time I heard a small noise I thought it was all going to start up again and that kept me from getting back to sleep. At one point I was really brave and I got out of bed and peeped underneath the bottom of my curtains to see if I could see anything, but it was so full of shadows and dark corners down there. I did see the neighbour’s cat jumping down off their wall and snooping around and although it made me jump out of my skin when it first appeared, seeing it down there made me feel a bit better as it was like it was checking things out to make sure everything was okay, like it was looking after me. But I suppose it was really just a cat going about at night doing cat business.

In the morning at breakfast I kept doing huge yawns – you know, the ones where you stretch your mouth so wide it feels like your face is going to break apart – and Mum said “What’s up with you today sleepy-head? I’ve told you not to read for too long”. When I told her about the voices she said it would just have been some men going home from the pub but that doesn’t really make sense because when we go to the pub for a meal sometimes we go to have a nice time and it didn’t sound to me as if those men had had a nice time at all. In fact, it sounded like they were having a terrible time and wanted to make sure other people had a terrible time too. I don’t like it when people talk and you can’t understand what they are saying…
I don’t mean when people talk in a different language like in France or something – that’s confusing but it’s not really scarey… I mean when they are shouting like last night and you can only catch some of the words or like when Old Shuffler walks along muttering to himself and you can’t hear anything he is saying but you know he is saying something. The voices last night were much scarier than Old Shuffler. Maybe the men last night were broken like Old Shuffler seems to be. Maybe that’s what happens when people get broken – they don’t talk properly anymore. I hope they don’t come by again tonight. Perhaps having Annie’s bedroom and looking out on the Spooky House wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Lots aargh of aargh love arrgh,

Kate

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