Aunt Effie: Part 2

By JACK LASENBY

Later, the flames died down, and the furniture stepped back into the dark amongst tall mirrors, a dented suit of armour with a bullet-hole through the helmet, and a blunder-buss. A musket and a cutlass hung on the back of a chair. A pike, a halberd, and an ancient banner leaned in a corner. Sometimes we could see the pike had something stuck on it, something with long hair ....

A cannon stuck its ugly mouth out the window, and a tidy pyramid of cannon-balls stood beside it. Where most people had the handle of a chamber pot sticking out from under their bed, Aunt Effie had a tarred barrel with a drawing of a skull and crossbones. Daisy, who disapproved of strong drink, said the barrel was filled with rum, but Peter said it was just gunpowder for the cannon. None of us dared look because of the thing that moved in the shadows under the bed.

Publisher: Longacre Press

Price: $16.95

Age group: 9-13 years


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