Page 40 of Skulk of Foxes
The building was rattling now. Whether the tree had stopped growing or not, I suspected that the entire structure was not long for this world. I had to move – and move fast.
I used the dressing table as a launch pad and sprang upwards. All I succeeded in doing was plastering myself against the wall. My fingers barely scraped against the now-visible roof timbers. That wasn’t any good. I got back to my feet, clambered on the dressing table again and readjusted my thinking. Snapping my fingers, I realised I had it.
I sprang up again, this time using the protruding branch as a sort of trampoline. The tree was healthy and young, so there was enough give on the branch when I landed on it to shoot me upwards an extra foot. It did the trick.
Letting out a loud, ululating, Tarzan bellow, I swung my legs up and hooked them onto one of the slanting cross beams in the roof. It was a tight squeeze but there was enough of a gap so I could push myself out onto the roof. After the claustrophobic, tree-filled house, it was a blessed relief to be outdoors again – though I couldn’t take the time to savour it.
I edged forward, intending to circle round the tree to reach the other side of the house. As soon as I moved, however, my foot slipped on one of the moss-covered tiles and I went flying.
My hands scrabbled at the air and my life flashed in front of my eyes. Fortunately, at the last minute the tree itself saved me. While I swung out with nothing but air between me and the hard pavement below, one of the slimmer branches snagged on my baggy T-shirt and held me back. It stopped me falling. Gasbudlikins. That was close.
I swayed to my right, hoping to use the same branch to get back to relative safety. I could already hear the fabric of my T-shirt ripping; I didn’t have long. With one deep breath – and just as the T-shirt gave way – I threw myself forward and wrapped my arms round the tree trunk to avoid falling again. Done.
I shimmied around until I was on the section of the roof where I needed to be. There was another loud creak; I could swear the building was swaying. As this was a terraced house, I prayed that it wouldn’t take down a dozen other houses with it when it fell. This was not the time for dominoes.
‘Morgan!’ I yelled.
His voice drifted back up to me. ‘Are you alright?’
‘I’m fine! You need to get the neighbours out. This building is about to collapse!’
I heard a moan from the mother but I didn’t have time to worry about her. Morgan could do the evacuations and tea and sympathy; the Madhatter would do the action.
I pivoted slightly. Unfortunately, the gap in the roof here was considerably smaller. Without a decent diet, I doubted it would be as easy to squeeze down on this side as it had been to squeeze up on the other side. I pursed my lips. The next house along had a skylight; that would have to do. With any luck, the adjacent wall had been destroyed and, once I was back inside, I could get through.
Reaching for a branch to keep my balance, I shuffled over to the skylight. It was firmly closed. I’d have to smash it to get in. Cursing the human who invented double glazing, I angled my heel downwards and slammed it onto the glass. It cracked and a spider’s web of tiny fissures appeared. I was going to need more than that.
Raising my knee, I kicked the glass again. This time, my entire leg went through, shards scraping through my jeans and piercing my flesh. I ignored the pain and the blood and set about clearing away as much of the glass as I could before lowering myself inside.
‘Maddy!’ I heard Morgan shout. ‘You need to…’ The rest of his words were swallowed up by the sound of approaching sirens. You had to feel for the fire brigade, I thought. They’d probably only just finished putting out the fires caused by the crazed rain from earlier; now they had trees with minds of their own to worry about. I bet all those burly firemen wished they had someone like me to help them out.
The neighbours’ house was in an equally sorry state. Branches from next door had punched through the walls. I darted over to the most damaged part and started yanking at the crumbling plaster to create a large enough gap to squeeze through. When there was enough space I dived through headfirst, hitting a small cot and knocking it over as I landed.
Gasbudlikins. Heart thumping, I leapt to my feet. The room was covered in fallen debris and it was almost impossible to see a thing. It would be ridiculous if I’d fought my way in here to rescue babies and then hurt those very babies because of my own actions. I ducked under another low-lying branch that was poking through the wall and heaved away the cot. No baby.
‘Bertie!’ I shrieked, my voice now reaching the same pitch as their mother’s. ‘Jess!’
There was no longer any crying. The house felt as if it were alive, breathing and creaking and moaning in the final gasps of its life, but of the children there was no sound. Was I in the wrong room? Were they hiding? Was…?
‘Maddy! Get the hell out of there! The whole place is about to collapse!’
I frowned and craned my neck round. There, outside the open window, was Morgan. ‘The children…’
‘They’re safe. They’re out.’ He outstretched his hand towards me. ‘Come on!’
I squinted. ‘Are you hovering in mid-air? Can we actually fly after all?’
He rolled his eyes. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’m on a ladder in the garden. One of the neighbours gave it to me.’
I got up to my feet, turned slowly and put my hands on my hips. ‘You got a ladder.’
‘Yes.’
‘From a neighbour.’
He glared at me impatiently. ‘Yes! Come on. We have to get out of here.’
I sniffed. ‘I’ve been clambering around the roof, risking my neck, possibly kicking a kid out of its bed, and you calmly got a ladder and put it in the back garden?’
