The guttering lamps threw the room into a skewed menagerie of shadow monsters, climbing the walls and stretching their forelegs across the low roof, menacing and oppressive. Paul had no eyes for them. He watched the old man sitting at the little wooden table, rapt with interest. Over the top of the table, a shadow hung in the air, as if it had ( Read more... )

Alexander's room was not unlike the rooms of most boys his age. It had a wall with a window, a wall with a door, a wall plastered in posters and a wall of shelves - a vast pigeon-pocketed clutter of toys and books. The posters over his bed reached across the room, spreading slightly onto the ceiling. The mysterious eyes of astronauts and racing ( Read more... )

"She's asleep," whispers the monkey, pulling for purchase at the sheets of the bed ( Read more... )

As lonely as she was, Lucy should still probably not have built the robot ( Read more... )

In Treehill mothers tell stories of the Frorgrwar as they sit next to their children, smoothing the sheets on their son's beds, and brushing the hair from the eyes of their daughters. The children listen in fear as their mother tells them of other little boys and girls, just like them, who were naughty and carried off into the night ( Read more... )

A scarlet butterfly fluttered through the air, washing back and forth on the shore wind, coming to rest on a standing stone, overlooking the rocky cliff that descended into the waves below. It stretched its wings in the sun, clinging to the mottled rock of the standing stone ( Read more... )

“There is a man called morning. Tendrils of his long misty beard tangle in the growing grass. When the sun rises, he cries. And that is where dew comes from ( Read more... )

Max wrapped the dirty rag around the shard of glass and crouched behind the bricks. The little room shivered in the light from the candle, shadows juddering too fast over the walls, and on Max's grimy face. He narrowed his eyes. The candle stood a foot tall, fat and waxy, the flame a dirty orange. George the cat lay curled around the base, his ( Read more... )

Wind whistled between the bases of the jagged rock spires that dotted the craggy ground. The wind was visible, churning white air rushing and splitting around the stone. Swarms of insects, caught in the storm were blown along in a river of dark bodies and waving legs ( Read more... )

Henry never had an imaginary friend ( Read more... )