Read The Ogre Downstairs for Free Online

air. “What about going out tonight, after dark, for a fly round town?”
    Caspar was about to say that this was the best idea Johnny had had in his life, when there was a thump on the door behind him. He flung himself against it, with his feet braced. “Go away. We’re busy.”
    “Buzz off!” Johnny shouted down from the ceiling.
    The doorknob began turning. Caspar grabbed it and held it hard. In spite of this, the knob continued to turn and the door moved slightly. Caspar had not thought Malcolm was so strong. “Go away!” he said.
    “I only want to borrow Indigo Rubber,” said a much deeper voice than Malcolm’s. “What’s so special that I can’t come in?”
    Caspar looked up helplessly at Johnny’s alarmed face. “I thought you didn’t like Indigo Rubber,” he shouted through the door.
    “I’ve come round to them,” Douglas called back. “And I’ve got some friends coming tonight who want to hear it.”
    “You can’t have it,” called Caspar.
    “But I promised them,” said Douglas. “Be a sport.”
    “You’d no business to promise them my records!” Caspar said, with real indignation. “You can’t have them. Go away.”
    “I knew you’d go and be mean about it,” said Douglas. “It’s typical. I only want to borrow their second LP for an hour this evening. I won’t hurt it, and you can come and listen, if you like. Father’s said we can have it in the dining room.”
    “You should have asked me first,” said Caspar. But put like that, Douglas’s request was reasonable, and he did not want to be thought mean.
    “Tell him to come back for it in five minutes,” Johnny whispered from the ceiling. “Then get me some water.”
    Caspar drew his breath to shout, but Douglas had lost patience. “You are a mean little squirt, aren’t you?” he said. “It’s no good trying to be polite to you. You lend me that record, or watch out!” The doorknob turned sharply under Caspar’s hands and the door began to open.
    “Come back in five minutes!” Caspar said desperately, his braced feet sliding.
    “And give you time to hide it?” said Douglas. “What kind of a fool do you think I am?” The door opened nearly a foot, and Douglas’s leg and shoulder came through the gap. It was clear that the rest of him was following.
    Johnny did the only thing he could think of. With a strong thrust at the ceiling and a desperate kick of his legs, he got himself to the open window and, as the door crashed open and Douglas plunged into the room, he pushed himself out of it. And, whether it was the draught from the door, or the different conditions outside, Johnny promptly soared. The last Caspar saw of him was his bare foot and his shoe vanishing upwards beyond the top of the window.
    Luckily, Douglas was looking malevolently at Caspar. “Got any more mean excuses?” he said.
    “It’s not mean. You shouldn’t promise things that aren’t yours,” said Caspar. But his heart was not in the argument. All he could think of was Johnny soaring away into the heavens.
    “Well, I’d have asked you this morning, only you’d gone by the time I’d persuaded Father to let me have the dining room,” Douglas said. “Are you going to lend it me, or not?”
    “You can have them all. They’re down there by my bed. And I’ve got their new one too,” Caspar said hastily.
    “Their new one!” Douglas said delightedly. “Really? Brainpan , you mean?” He waded over to Caspar’s bed and went on his knees by the window to sort out the records. Instead of taking the records at once, he knelt there looking disgusted. “I wonder you can hear these,” he said. “They’re coated with dust. Hasn’t anyone ever told you to keep LPs clean? You’re ruining them and your stylus.”
    “I know, but I’ve lost my cleaner,” said Caspar, almost beside himself with impatience to get to the window and see what had become of Johnny.
    “I’m not surprised,” said Douglas, looking round the crowded room.