Chapter Three LIGHTNING
There are lots of turrets in Spookie House, but the best one to watch thun- derstorms from is the haunted turret. The haunted turret is not really haunted. Well, I've never seen a ghost there and I have spent many hours looking. But it is the tallest turret and is so high in the sky that you feel as though you are right in the middle of the storm. It is very exciting.
After you push open the little door with the weird creak that goes "Eeh-aaaah . . . Ooooh, " you climb up some rickety, cobwebby stairs, but you must not step on the third stair or the seventh because they are rotten because of some very big woodworms who live there. The stairs go around two corners and are really dark and steep. At the top is a dusty old velvet curtain, which is inhabited by some fierce moths that do not like being disturbed and dive-bomb your head, so it is best to squeeze through the curtain very slowly and carefully. Once you are in the turret you have to walk around the edge because there is a big hole in the middle of the floor where a bath- tub fell through. Aunt Tabby used to keep lots of old bathtubs in the turret, but she made Barry help her take them all out after that.
Anyway, as I carefully walked around the edge of the turret I was really happy to see a bright flash of lightning. I stopped and counted the seconds until the loud crash of thunder came. It was not even two seconds, more like one and a half. That meant that the middle of the storm--the exciting part where the lightning is right overhead--was really close. Great, I thought, I'm here just in time. I climbed onto an old box by the win- dow so that I could see out, as the window is very high up. It is also very dirty, as Aunt Tabby does not clean windows because it lets the light in and Aunt Tabby thinks that houses should be nice and gloomy, which is why she paints everything brown. I think she would even paint me brown if I stood still for long enough.
I rubbed a clean patch on the glass and peered out. Even though it was not yet dinnertime it was almost dark out- side. There were heavy gray clouds filling up the sky and a few fat spots of rain were falling. It was perfect-- and really spooky. In the distance, all misty through the rain and the grubby window, I saw a car's head- lights. I watched the lights, expecting them to keep going along the big road, but to my surprise the car turned off onto the lane that goes by Spookie House. I wondered where it was going--since Aunt Tabby put up a sign that says danger, unexploded mines not many cars drive past. As it drew nearer I could see that it was going really slowly, as if it was looking for somewhere, and then it stopped--right outside our front gate. At the very moment that it drew up out- side Spookie House there was the most enor- mous Craaaack. A brilliant white streak of lightning shot down and hit the car. It was amazing. A blue flame whizzed around the outside of the car and I held my breath, wait- ing for it to explode. It was very disappointing--nothing hap- pened. The car did not explode at all. Instead the rain started to pour from the sky in buck- ets and the car didn't even sizzle.
It was a weird car. It was very long and I knew I had seen cars like that before but I could not think where. The window was misting up with my breath, so I rubbed it again and then I could see more clearly. The car outside Spookie House was a hearse! With a coffin in it. I wished I had Wanda's telescope. I could just about see three people sitting in the back of the hearse with the coffin--a girl who looked almost grown up, a little kid, and an old lady. The driver was sitting on his own in the front; he wore a top hat and had a very white face that almost shone through the window. All the time I was watching the hearse, thunder was rolling around the sky, and in the distance every now and then lightning streaked down from the clouds.
The rain was falling harder now, it was splashing in through the rotten window frame and dripping onto my socks. I rubbed the window clear with the end of my sleeve, and when I looked again the white-faced driver had gotten out. He opened an enormous black umbrella, and was holding the door open for the old lady. She stepped out of the hearse very carefully and was fol- lowed by the little kid and the almost grown- up girl. Even though I did not want to be a detec- tive anymore because now I had decided that I was going to be a werewolf hunter, I still practiced my detecting skills when I got the chance. I thought the people in the hearse were on their way to a funeral. That was pretty obvious because if they had been on their way back from the funeral, the coffin would not have been there.
And it was obvi- ous that they were going to a funeral and not just taking the coffin out for a ride in a thun- derstorm because they were dressed in black and were wearing hats. The old lady had a veil covering her face and the little kid had a funny black cap on. I watched the almost grown-up girl get out of the hearse. She wore a neat black hat perched on the back of her head and a black dress almost down to the ground, the kind that I would not mind wearing when I grow up. She lifted the hem of the dress out of the way of the huge puddle that always lurks outside our gate when it rains and she tiptoed up the path underneath the umbrella along with the old lady, while the little kid hung back in the rain and looked like he didn't want to be here.
A flash of lightning lit up the purple sky, and there was a sudden crash as the thunder rolled back over the house. Far away down- stairs, I heard the doorbell ring. Yes! We had a hearse with a coffin and spooky visitors in the middle of a thunder- storm. What could be better?