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BLACKAMOOR
MANOR (1993)
Simon
Alterman was a nerd. No one liked him and all the boys in my tutor group
teased him rotten. He stood before me, bespectacled and swamped in his
maroon anorak. His badges shimmered in the moonlight, like milk bottle
tops. He really was an odd shape, a bit like a pillar box, topped with a
head that looked too big for his body - like a baby's. He didn't only look
like a baby but usually acted like one, not like a kid of thirteen. I was
now discovering just how cowardly he was.
"I
don't think I want to do it anymore," he said.
"yes,
you do," I said, dropping down into a crouching position like a frog.
"I've got to. I don't want to be called chicken. Now get on my
back."
He
was no heavier than a medicine ball as I straightened up bearing his
weight on my shoulders. I could feel him stretching up for the brick wall.
I felt his feet lift off my shoulder, return again and then lift off
again. At one point I thought he was going to fall.
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"How
am I going to get down? It's a long jump," he griped. He sat above me
now, with his legs out of sight, dangling over into the garden.
"Hold
on, I'm coming up."
I've
always been something of a fly so it didn't take me long to join him, and
soon we were both staring into the dark grounds of Blackamoor Manor.
Blackamoor
Manor and its brick-walled gardens had always frightened me ever since I
was a kid. The house was an old ramshackle building that would make an
ideal dwelling place for Dracula. All the times I had known it I had never
seen anyone go in or come out.. It had been the talking point in the
school playground for years with some of my mates. For all its thousands
of decaying rooms only one room had ever been seen with a light on, and
that was the room right at the back of the house near the East wing. One
day when we were talking about it Mary Lawrence bet us all that we were
too chicken to go and visit the place in the dark.
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