Read The Whispers of Wilderwood Hall for Free Online Page A

paint … it’s not just faded and chipped like the other doors along the corridor, it’s also blistered and blackened on the bottom half.
    With a shiver, I push the battered door open and reluctantly step inside – and find myself in a room flooded with light. It’s because of the pair of windows directly in front of me. They’re not huge, but they’re big enough to let sunbeams spill across the bed, chest of drawers and piles of boxes I last saw when I packed up my room back in London, back home. It’s not till I walk over to the windows, till I’ve looked out at the view of the driveway, the swaying trees, the glimpse of buildings in the village beyond that I realize where I am.
    I’m here. In the room with eyes. Ha! It looked so eerie from afar, and yet close up … it’s so different.
    I flip around and lean against the slim piece of wall between both windows and survey my new room. And a glimmer of hope fills my heart like a weak shaft of sunlight peeking through a skyful of lurking grey clouds.
    You know, so far I’ve been
beyond
unimpressed by the echoing, elderly building site that Wilderwood is. But if I block that from my mind, I think I might come to like this one small part of it. My room at our old flat was at the front of our block, and overlooked by offices on the other side of the road. It was always in shadow. Not like this place, where I can see dust motes twirling gently in the air, air light with brightness streaming in from outside.
    And the quiet … ! There’s no roar of cars and vans, no bleeping of horns and meeping of reversing lorries. There’s no sound at all. Apart from a sort of low-level buzzing, or humming, that’s gently vibrating somewhere.
    Has Mr Fraser already begun drilling something downstairs? I twist around and put my ear right against the wall.
    And pull it away almost immediately.
    It’s voices. Voices whispering, whispering in the walls…

It’s a miracle. I
can
get a signal in my room. Well, bizarrely, after moving around – including a stint standing (shaking) on my bed with my mobile held above my head – I’ve found the best place to get any bars is sitting hunched down on the floor by the door.
    And miracle number two: Shaniya has forgiven me enough to talk to me.
    â€œWhat did the voices say?” asks Shaniya. “WE ARE COMING FOR YOU, MWAH HA HA!”
    Shaniya is always making jokes. I guess that’s what makes our friendship work – she’s loud and fierce and funny, and I’m … not. People say opposites attract, don’t they? Though sometimes we don’t get along. In Shaniya’s case, when I have one of my sense-of-humour failures. Or do stuff like not invite her to my mum’s star-studded wedding.
    â€œNo,” I reply, tucking my baggy jumper over my knees and turning myself into a woolly package. “I couldn’t make out actual words. It was more like … like I was hearing some conversation in another room.”
    I’d only heard the whisperings for a few seconds, but I’d been so freaked out by them I’d wanted to run downstairs and beg Mum to drive us back to our flat in London straight away. But that wasn’t going to work, not when Mum had already given up the lease on our old place and handed in the keys. And even if it
was
possible, I couldn’t physically ask her anyway; not when – as I could see out of the window – she was with Mr Fraser, excitedly pointing at bits of broken-down building, with Cam trailing uselessly behind them.
    So my second-best option was to swallow my pride and call my best friend.
    â€œWell, that’s probably all it was, then! Gawd, you can be so dramatic sometimes, Ellis!” Shaniya laughs.
    â€œI’m not trying to be dramatic,” I protest, feeling ripples of anxiety lap at my chest. “It’s just that Wilderwood is really …
strange
. I