Stallo Read Online Free Page A

tells her what is in the fridge. But she refuses to believe him. Without a word she walks ahead of him into the cabin.
She stares at the bat and is suddenly angry. She says, ‘What the hell …?’ and blames him. He is the one who has put it there.
Then he bursts into tears, and when she realises that he is distraught and the crying stems from anger, she crouches down in front of him. She asks him if he is sure it was not him.
‘Yes, honest!’
He rubs his tear-filled eyes with the palms of his hands and sniffs.
‘Well then,’ she says, ‘someone’s playing a joke on us, that’s all.’
She tears off a sheet of kitchen roll and uses it to pick up thebat, then walks outside and throws it from the same place, this time hurling it far in among the trees. The paper falls away and floats like a leaf to the ground.
Then she goes in and gets the fridge rack and stands with it under the pump, scrubbing it with a washing-up brush. The boy asks if there is blood on the rack, but she does not answer.
*
The pine needles which have collected in the folds of the tarpaulin fall off in huge slabs as they uncover the lawnmower. Spread over the hood is a layer of flattened cardboard boxes. When the boy lifts them off, the earwigs race around like brown sparks.
‘What are they doing? What are they doing?’ he shouts, excited and alarmed at the same time.
His mother shakes the handle, and when she hears the splashing in the petrol tank she pulls the starter cord. After a couple of attempts she straightens up, grimacing at the sun.
The boy scratches his cheek where he has a row of mosquito bites.
When the motor finally starts with a rattle he runs out of the way and sits on the veranda. He covers his ears with his hands and watches as she forces the machine through the overgrown grass. It is a struggle. The motor keeps stopping. It growls and then falls silent. He squints. The sun has wedged itself between the tree trunks and is shining directly at him now. She crouches down to clear out the clippings from under the hood. He studies his kneecaps and the downy hairs shining on them. Where there was once a scab the skin has turned light red and is slightly raised and there might be a scar, so his mother has said. He presses his thumb against the redness and then immediately starts scratching his calves until he breaks the skin. He has been careful to shutthe door of the cabin, but the mosquitoes come in anyway. It is worst on his calves and ankles – they really feast there while he is asleep. After that they go and sit on the wallpaper and the ceiling and no one knows they are there until night comes. Then they let go and drop down.
‘Magnus!’
His mother is half standing and pointing to the edge of the forest diagonally behind the cabin, where the brush-like branches of the trees weave together and make everything dark. What is she pointing at?
At first he can see nothing, but then he notices that something is moving, and the next second a grey head sticks out. Knobbly ears, pointing backwards, and whiskers hanging straight down from its mouth like long strings of saliva. A matted, flattened forehead turned towards them.
‘Can you see?’ she shouts. ‘Can you see the hare?’
*
It feels exciting having a forest animal on the doorstep, exciting that it wants to be with them, and because they do not want to frighten it they go indoors. Cutting the grass can wait. There is no rush, and perhaps it has its young in the grass? Baby hares so small that they are rabbits?
His mother opens a can of vegetable soup and heats it up on the stove, while the boy sits glued to the window, giving reports about where the hare is and what it is doing. Not that there is much to report. Its jaws move from time to time but mostly it sits looking straight ahead.
When they are sitting with the soup bowls in front of them, blowing on their soup, he asks her who put the bat in the fridge.
She does not know.
Is it the man they borrowed the cabin from?
‘It