حس عجیب

Chapter three

Feeling Awkward

Nobody said much at dinner. When Martin finished eating, he got up silently and went into the living room. After he had left, Mum put her fork down and looked at her daughter. ‘Why was your bedroom door shut earlier?’ she asked.

‘I’m allowed some privacy, aren’t I?’ replied Kara angrily. ‘Of course you are. But.’

‘But what?’ said Kara. ‘Are you worried I’m going to do something stupid again?’

‘No, of course not,’ said Mum. There was an awkward silence. That’s a funny word, Kara thought suddenly. ‘Awkward’. It sounds. awkward.

It looks. awkward. Kara looked across at the alphabet letters that were stuck to the fridge. She imagined the letters of the word moving awkwardly on the fridge door, changing position, spelling the word ‘awkward’. Then she imagined four of the letters from the word moved again. This time they spelt her name.

‘Kara.’ Martin was calling her from the living room. ‘Kara, there’s no TV!’

Kara stared angrily at her mother. ‘Mum,’ she said, ‘is there really no TV?’

‘I wanted to find somewhere quiet to go on holiday,’ replied Mum. ‘Somewhere we could spend some time together.’

Kara left the kitchen, still angry, and went through to the living room. It was a long room with large leather armchairs and sofas grouped around a fireplace.

‘What are you doing, Martin?’ Kara asked.

Martin was kneeling down and putting pieces of newspaper in the fireplace. His eyes were bright with excitement.

‘Look, Kara! I’m making a fire,’ he said. ‘Come and help me.’

‘I don’t think we should make a fire, Martin,’ Kara replied. ‘Mum will be very angry.’

But Martin wasn’t listening. He was concentrating on building his fire. He put more pieces of newspaper in the fireplace and then took a box of matches from a small table.

‘Are you ready, Kara?’ he said.

Then Martin took a match from the box and lit it.

‘Martin! Don’t!’ Kara shouted.

She run to the fireplace and took the match from Martin’s hand, before he had light the fire. Mom heard Kara shouting and she came quickly from the kitchen.

‘What’s going on?’ mom asked.

‘She started it!’ Martin shouted, pointed at Kara.

‘It was Martin!’ Kara sad.

Mom looked at Kara.

‘You tired Kara, go to bad.’ She said calmly.

‘But mom?’ sad Kara

‘I sad go to bad!’ sad mom.

Kara walked out of the room and quickly went upstairs and into her bad, closing the door behind her. She stood next to the door and listen. For a few minutes she could not hear anything, than she heard Martin running up the stairs and down the corridor. He went past car’s door and straight into his own room. After that there was a silent.

Kara sat down at the desk, and turn on the laptop. She learnt on to the Owl Hall site and clicked one the blog section. A massage invited her to starter blog and keep record if her stay. At the top of the page there was a title: “Day 1”

She steered at the word for about a minute, thinking about what to wright. Then suddenly the word rushed into her had. When Kara went down stairs for breakfast the next morning, mom was sitting at the table riding a magazine.

Kara trikes some fruit juice and watched to her mother. When mom at first talked about this holyday Kara thought that she wanted to talk about the incident. Mom did not want to talk about it at home. So Kara thought her plan had been to take Kara and Martin away to a place were talking would be easier.

Kara hoped they would be long conversations about what did happened and how they could help each other but now Kara was not so shore. Mom and Kara were alone in the kitchen and it was the perfect moment to start talking.

Mom did not seem to want to talk about the incident. She wanted to talk about the weather, about how well she had slept and about breakfast cereals. Mom did not like talking about the problems. Dad had been opposite. Dad always sad, that a problem could not be fixed until everyone sat down and talked about it.

Then they could find a solution that they will all happy with. But mom did not agree with him. And she did wanted sit down and talks. They had been a lot of arguments before dad left to go to Australia.

‘Can I go out?’ Kara asked.

‘Alright but don’t go too far,’ Mum replied.

Martin was in the bathroom having a shower. Kara knocked on the door and told him she was going to explore outside. He said he would come out in a minute. Then Kara put on a jacket and picked up her phone. There was still no signal but as she was looking at the phone Kara had an idea.

She could use its camera to make a video of Owl Hall. She turned the phone onto video and started filming as she walked out of her room and along the corridor towards the stairs.

‘Awkward Productions presents.’ she said in her worst American accent, ‘Owl Hall - the movie. directed by Kara.’ She imagined herself making a real film as she moved the phone around her, exploring the floor, the walls, the doors. ‘This is Mum’s bedroom.

She has the biggest bedroom, of course. and now we’re going downstairs and out the front door. into the courtyard of Owl Hall.’ Kara filmed the courtyard and the pond with the strange silver sphere in the middle. Through the windows on one side of the courtyard she could see the gym that she had read about in the Welcome Pack.

Kara’s video tour continued outside the courtyard in the driveway. She filmed the Owl Hall sign they had seen in the darkness when they had arrived the night before. Then she walked to the far end of the building and filmed two of the holiday cottages next to the main house.

The cottages looked empty. After that she walked to the other side of the house, past the window of the third small cottage. She looked in the window but could not see anything.

Behind the main building there was a large, open field with trees at the end. Kara held her phone camera up to film the trees. She wanted to record the sound of the leaves moving in the wind.

‘And over there,’ she said, ‘there’s a.’

Kara moved the phone camera towards where some trees and bushes were hiding a large old barn. As Kara began to film the barn, she thought she saw someone moving in the bushes. But as she was going to get a closer look, Martin suddenly appeared and jumped on her.

He pulled her to the ground and knocked the phone from her hand. Kara pulled herself free and looked over at the barn just in time to see a figure running into the trees at the end of the field.

‘What is it, Kara?’ said Martin, laughing. ‘Why do you look so frightened? Have you seen a ghost?’