Home Sweet Home, Adrian Sturgess [accelerated reader books TXT] 📗

He ran, stillscreaming, from the room and made straight for his parents bedroom.At least such was his intention, but he came to a confused haltwhere the stairs should be, for there were no stairs and underfootwas nothing but rubble and broken glass. By now Ben was crying forhelp at the top of his voice and running pell-mell, crashingthrough shards of glass, through the door that hung from one hingeand out into the garden. He ran down the lawn away from the houseand crouched in the bushes at the end of the garden sobbing in fearand without any clue as to what he should do.

The apple treewas a towering and sinister presence looming close by and seeminglygrowing larger and more frightening each time he looked at it, andall the time the image of what he had seen so recently wasemblazoned on his mind. There had been two bodies lying side byside on the floor with the unmistakeable figure of Mrs Smithcrouching over them. It had been dark, but he was neverthelessquite certain of what he had seen.

Ben crouched,shivering, at the end of the garden for an indeterminate length oftime. He was exhausted, frightened and terribly lonely and hewasn’t entirely sure that this wasn’t all just a terrible dream.But, if it was, he had no idea when it would end, or how he shouldend it. He had never been in a situation before, where his parentscouldn’t help him and he missed them terribly. He had an emptinessinside him that longed for the succour of his mothers smiling faceand reassuring words.

In due coursethe suns’ first feeble tendrils cast upwards from the horizon andthe inky night sky was slowly softened to a milky grey that failedto provide the least shred of comfort to the small boy as he layhuddled on the dew-sodden lawn, knees tucked tightly up into hischest and knuckles thrust painfully between his clenched teeth.

Ben had spentthe night in a fitful and interminable state of semi–wakefulness.He was stiff with cold and lack of movement and had been staringfor some time through half closed eyes at an object that, perhapshis eyes or mayhap his torpid brain, could not quite resolve. Asthe cold early morning hue turned by degrees to the warmer tones ofincipient sunrise, so the image took on a clearer form. Slowly itmoved, by mere inches, to and fro, to and fro. Metronomicaly,hypnotically it swung, whilst Ben’s sub-consciousness followed therhythmic motion, poised, as it was, midway between wakefulness andsleep. Finally and with a great flourish, the sun entered itsdomain and piercing shards of light brought Ben to cruel and suddenwakefulness. At first he merely stared uncomprehendingly but thenhe jumped to his feet and gasped in horror, for the moving shapewas none other than a large man swinging lazily by the neck up inthe Apple tree. As the body swung, so it turned until there couldbe no further doubt; Ben found himself staring straight into thebloated and hideously distorted face of Mr Smith.

InstinctivelyBen fell backwards, away from the dreadful apparition, and crashedthrough the shrubs at the rear of the garden and out through thegap in the fence onto the road behind. The accumulation of thatnight’s horrors had sent him mindless with terror and he ran backtowards the village in great stumbling strides, his only coherentthought being to reunite himself with his parents and bring thisrelentless nightmare to a close.

After a coupleof minutes he came to the junction of the lower road and the mainroad into the village. He stopped momentarily and stood gasping forbreath, but he knew not what nameless horrors still pursued himand, though his legs would scarcely carry him, he turned left andcontinued his desperate run up the gentle incline of the road intothe village, before careening sharply left up the garden path tothe front door of the house, where he fell to his knees inexhaustion and hammered on the door with both fists, whilstscreaming for his parents continuously at the top of his voice.

*****

Mrs Smith satbeneath the branches of her beloved Apple tree and gently swungherself backwards and forwards on the home made swing that herhusband had made for their daughter Josie, twenty years before. Theswing had been a feature of the garden for so long now; that itseemed it had always been there. It had hung unused through thelong cold winters only to be reawakened each spring by theshrieking laughter of Josie and her friends as they rediscoveredthe endless possibilities for play that the swing couldprovide.

Of course, astime passed and Josie grew up, the swing had seen less and less useand eventually it hung idly from its branch for most of thetime.

Mrs Smith hadsuch fond memories of this Garden. As she swung gently on the swingso she remembered the summer that Josie had arrived. She used toposition Josie’s pram in the dappled shade beneath the Apple tree,whilst she went about her daily chores and sometimes she just satcontentedly beside her baby and gazed in wonder at the littlemiracle that brought her such unending pleasure.

Later on, whenJosie was maybe two or three years old she began to help her mum togather up the windfall apples before they rotted on the ground andwhen she was much older she helped her mother to harvest the applesfrom the tree itself, climbing the ladder and leaning across toreach apples that were almost out of her reach with an assurancethat made her mothers heart swell with pride.

Mrs Smith hadalways wished for a fruit tree and when she and her husband hadfirst set eyes on this house, with the apple tree in the garden,everything had seemed so perfect about it, that they bought itthere and then and never even considered moving again. It was to beas it were, their ‘forever’ house.

She rememberedthe very first time that Josie had brought Archie back to thehouse. She had brought one or two casual boyfriends back previouslyand Mrs Smith had done her best to be open minded about them, butwhen she met Archie she had secretly hoped that he would turn outto be ‘the one’ and