The Fearless Read Online Free Page A

around the curtain.
    There was something wrong with the woman’s eyes. They were silvery and dull, and her pupils were enormous.
    Suddenly, I remembered the photograph of the man in that newspaper article.
    Dad began to move.
    It was like he was only half-awake. His feet twitched and his hands pawed at the air. But he was alive.
Alive
. As his eyelids flickered open, I started to cry, half from fear, half from relief. ‘Mum, he’s waking up! We have to help him!’ I whispered through my sobs. But all she did was stand there, her back to the wall, gasping.
    Dad raised an arm and let it drop. His eyes were still half-closed. I remembered a few years ago when Sol and I were bouncing on the top of his bunk bed. Sol jumped up, hit his head on the ceiling, then fell off the bed and hit his head on the floor. Afterwards he was really sleepy and kept being sick, and said he couldn’t see properly. He had to go to hospital, and stayed off school for two days. When he came back, he told me proudly that he’d hit his head so hard it had shaken his brain against the inside of his skull and given him concussion.
It’s really dangerous
, he told me.
I could have DIED
.
    What if that was what had happened to Dad?
    ‘Mum,’ I moaned, tears spilling down my cheeks. ‘
Do
something.’
    But her eyes were closed. She didn’t even seem to hear me.
    The woman looked over her shoulder. A few moments later, two men pushed their way through the hole in the hedge. One was quite young, also dressed in an army uniform that was crusted with mud. The other was older than Dad, wearing an ordinary jumper and jeans. They were filthy too. Both men had the same weird silver eyes as the woman.
    The older man bent over Dad, put two fingers under his jaw and tilted his head back. Dad struggled feebly, trying to push him away. The younger man straddled him, kneeling on his arms and legs to pin them down. The woman unzipped the pouch around her waist, taking something out – a syringe with a long needle that glinted cruelly in the glow from the outside light. It was full of liquid that looked like watery blood.
    Grabbing Dad’s hair with her free hand, she pulled his head roughly to one side and brought the needle down hard, stabbing it into the back of Dad’s neck.
    Dad jack-knifed, hard enough to throw the man sitting on him off and send the empty syringe flying out of the woman’s hand, his eyes springing open and his mouth opening in a soundless howl. Then he collapsed again.
    I squeezed my eyes shut, telling myself that the last few minutes had just been a bad dream, and that when I looked through the window again, I’d see Dad walking towards the back door with the stick in his hand.
    He’d smile and give us a thumbs-up to say
everything’s OK
.
    He’d come inside and we’d load up the car and wait for Mr and Mrs Brightman and Sol to arrive.
    And we’d all be safe.
    ‘Oh God,’ I heard Mum say behind me in a high, trembling voice. ‘Oh God, oh God, oh God.’ When I opened my eyes again I saw the older man lifting Dad over his shoulders.
    The woman looked towards the window and pointed.
    Mum grabbed my hand and dragged me into the kitchen, where she pulled out the two biggest knives from the block by the cooker.
    ‘
Mum!
’ I wailed as she led me out into the hall. We were going towards the front door. Going
outside
. I tried to pull away from her, but she was still holding my hand too tightly. It wasn’t until we got to the door that she let me go.
    ‘We’re going to try to get to the Brightmans’ house, OK?’ she said. Her voice was croaky and thick with tears.
    ‘I don’t want to go out there,’ I said, shaking my head.
    ‘We have to. They know we’re here. That woman heard us scream.’ She tried to hand me the smaller of the two knives, and when I shook my head again, pushed it at me more insistently. ‘I don’t want you to use it unless you absolutely have to. I’ll try to protect you. But if anything happens to