Read Chill for Free Online Page B

If there were anything to find in that room then he, Charles, would be the one to find it and no one else. Samuel had no right, he fumed, no business … It was their house, not his; it was their sorrow, their loss. Any secrets or mysteries contained within its walls were theirs to bear, a private legacy that belonged only to them, the Morton children.
    He crossed the dark room to the green leather-topped writing desk in the centre. There it stood, largely untouched since the day his father died. He guessed that if there were anything worth seeing here, his mother would have confiscated it by now, secreted it away in some private hiding place, but it was worth a try. He bent down and began to search. The writing desk shuddered as he pulled open each drawer. Lots of papers burst from the drawers, old receipts and bills that had never been tidied or cleared away – his mother was not very good at throwing things out.
    When he found his father’s letter, written on the day he died, he sat back in the chair and stared at it for a long time. He shone the beam of the torch on it, reading the last words his father had written, then slid the letter into his pocket and carried it away with him, back to his room.

Dusty Secrets
    Mrs Morton sat at the kitchen table, holding her mobile phone tensely to her ear. She had spent the best part of a morning trying to get through to the Council, and her nerves were in a bad state.
    “I’ve been trying to reach you for days,” she told them sharply, in her sternest possible tone.
    “You and the rest of the world, madam,” the man on the other end of the line replied. “Listen,” he said. “We have eight major towns in the Stirlingshire area which need attending to. “You are, I believe, the only residents on Sheriffmuir?”
    “Well no, as a matter of fact,” she began in a tone of righteous indignation. “There is the Sheriffmuir Inn and Lynns farm as well. We all …”
    “Yes, madam, but I understand the road up on Sheriffmuir is a single track lane? With no road markings?”
    “Yes, but …”
    “Then it is
not
a priority road. We may be clearing as far as the inn within the next few days, but the Council bears no responsibility for clearing the road beyond that point. And besides,” the man from the Council informed her, “if we
were
to clear the snow, your children would be the only ones in an empty classroom. All the schools in the Stirlingshire area are closed until further notice.”
    Mrs Morton put the phone down sharply.
    “I’m going back to bed,” she announced to the room in general.
    To help ease Mrs Morton’s bad mood, Granny Hughes suggested that a bout of spring-cleaning might do the trick.
    “What about getting the wee ones to clear those boxes in the attic for you? You’ve been meaning to do that for ages now, and never got round to it.”
    “Count me out,” Charles said. “Too busy.”
    “Busy doing what?” Fiona snapped.
    “Ah, can’t say. Top secret.”
    “I’ll only do it if Samuel can help me,” Fiona bargained, quick as a flash.
    “It’s a deal,” her mother agreed.
    So Samuel and Fiona were assigned the task of sorting through the boxes of old toys and clothes that had been mouldering away under the eaves for the past decade.
    As they climbed the narrow ladder to the attic, Samuel felt more than a little apprehensive.
    “There’s no light up there, by the way,” Fiona told him. “The bulb went, and no one thought to replace it. So we’ll have to take a torch.”
    They inspected the boxes and crates in the shadows, old toys spilling from them, as well as bundles of smelly moth-eaten clothes.
    “Why we kept all of these things, I don’t know,” Fiona said. Then she rushed forward and bent down to examine an old dolls’ house.
    “I haven’t seen that for years,” she cried. “I could clean it up and put it back in my room.”
    “I think we’re supposed to get rid of stuff, not keep it,” Samuel reminded her.
    Dust filled