The Spindlers Read Online Free Page A

barest outlines of dark shapes in the mist.
    She turned back toward the bookcase. She placed the broom carefully on the ground by her feet. Then, using both hands, she shoved and wiggled and inched the bookcase along the wooden floor, until slowly the hole in the wall was revealed.
    This, too, appeared to have grown larger. Normally Liza had to double forward and squeeze herself into the crawl space when she wanted to hide, and even then she had to be careful not to move around too much or she would bang her elbows on the walls or her head on the ceiling.
    But now she stood at the edge of an enormous, gaping circle, twice as tall as she was. She could see nothing but a few feet of rough dirt pathway; beyond that, everything was blackness. She heard a howling wind that seemed to be blowing from somewhere miles and miles away. It carried with it strange smells that reminded Liza of very old paper, and the mud that clogged the storm drains in the spring.
    She bent down, retrieved her broom, and walked forward into the hole. The ground beneath her feet was crisscrossed with faint silvery threads, all pulsing faintly in the dark, as if illuminated by a strange, evil energy. There could be no doubt that the spindlers had been here. This must be how they came in and out, up and down.
    Liza took only a few steps before the darkness swallowed her completely. The air was cold and damp and weighed on her like a terrible, sweaty hand. The smell of mud and decay grew stronger and fouler as the ground sloped steeply downward.
    She went slowly, gropingly forward, terrified that at any second she would trip and fall and be sent into a wild hurtle into black space. She had the sense of walls pressing down on her, but when she swept from side to side with her broom, she encountered no resistance: nothing but air.
    Then, from her left, she heard the unmistakable sounds of scratching: louder, much louder than she had thought possible.
    Bigger.
    Liza froze. Fear drove through her, an iciness in her veins. She gripped the broom so tightly in her hands, her knuckles began to ache.
    No. Now the scratching was on her right.
    Closer. Closer.
    Behind her.
    Just like that, the terror that was ice in her veins became a gushing tidal wave, and Liza began to run. She ran blindly through the dark, her heart scrabbling into her throat, suppressing a cry of terror, stumbling over uneven ground. From all around her—above and behind, on her left and her right—came the sound of scratching feet and claws.
    Then her foot snagged on something hard, and Liza tripped, and just as she had feared, went hurtling downward into the dark.

Chapter 4

T HE R AT
    F irst there was rushing wind; and then a warm, dark fog; and then a tremendous snapping and crackling sound as Liza passed through what seemed like a floating pile of dried autumn leaves.
    â€œOof.” After several seconds, she landed on her back on a large fur rug. Dizzy and disoriented, she sat up, relieved to find that the broom had fallen just a few feet away from her and appeared undamaged.
    Above her, dark branches covered with glossy purple leaves and strung with hundreds and hundreds of lanterns formed a kind of vaulted ceiling. In one place, the leaves and branches had been broken apart where she had passed through them, and a Liza-size shape was now imprinted in the ceiling. Pretty, lace-edged leaves, disrupted by her fall, swirled through the air around her.
    â€œExcuse me,” came a muffled voice from directly underneath her. “But this position is really quite uncomfortable. Quite squashily uncomfortable.”
    Liza yelped, and scrambled to her feet.
    The fur rug shook itself, unfolded, and stood.
    Liza gaped. She saw that it was not a fur rug at all.
    It was a rat.
    It was the largest—and also the strangest—rat Liza had ever seen. Rather than scuttling around on all fours, first of all, it was standing on its hind legs, and it was so tall it reached almost nose to