The Haunting of Aveline Jones by Phil Hickes EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Phil Hickes
- Language: English
- Genre: Children’s Paranormal, Occult & Supernatural Books
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
A CHILL IN THE AIR
It had been the coldest October for years. Nobody could escape the wind’s
icy breath, which somehow managed to squeeze through even the thickest
of scarves. Puddles froze. Pipes burst. People wobbled around on frosty
pavements with their arms stuck out as if pretending to be aeroplanes.
Schools closed early for half-term and children cheered.
Aveline Jones sat in her mum’s car and heaved a sigh that said more
about her melancholy mood than words ever could. While a few days off
school would normally have been cause for a major celebration, her plans
for doing a lot of not-a-lot had been scuppered. And now fate was taking
her to a different place altogether. A place that threatened to be even colder
than the frozen city she’d left behind.
Malmouth.
Her mum had told her that it could get bitterly cold by the sea, and Aunt
Lilian’s house was apparently so close to the shore that the windows were
crusted with salt. The thought made Aveline wince. That’s why her suitcase
groaned under the weight of scarves, coats, bobble hats, woolly jumpers,
thermal fleeces, thick socks, boots and gloves. She’d even brought her
zebra onesie, which didn’t normally make an appearance until December.
Aveline stared gloomily out of the car window as the countryside passed
by in a bleak blur. They must be getting close to Malmouth by now, she
thought, though seeing the weary expression on her mum’s face, she
resisted the temptation to ask how much further they had to go.
The journey down from Bristol had been long and miserable. Aveline
had tried listening to her music for a while, but the songs sounded forced
and out-of-place on such a dreary day and so she’d given up. The
countryside appeared to have given up, too. With most of their leaves
having been blown away, the trees resembled plucked chickens, their trunks
black and shiny with slime. The skinny hedgerows looked similarly hungry
and ill, all the colour having been sucked out of them by the vampire
weather. The only living things to be seen were the rooks that sat hunched
in the branches, hurling their angry curses across the empty countryside.
“I saw the sea, the sea saw me, I saw it first, tee-hee-hee,” Aveline’s
mum said, in a voice that sounded like laughing was the last thing on her
mind.
Aveline turned to squint between the manic windscreen wipers. Barely
visible on the horizon stretched a thin greyish-blue band of ocean, the wind
slicing the tops off the waves as if they were boiled eggs.
“Is that Malmouth?”
“Certainly is. Won’t take long now.”
Snakes wriggled in Aveline’s stomach. Her mum was off to visit
Aveline’s granny, who lay ill in a hospital in Scotland. The trip would be
too far and too upsetting for Aveline, her mum had decided, and so Aunt
Lilian had offered to put Aveline up over half-term until her mum returned.
Aunt Lilian remained something of a puzzle. Nice but cold, like ice
cream. She’d been a teacher at a posh boarding school but had moved to the
For More Read Download This Book
EPUB