The Mysteries of Brambly Hollow

what way?” she grinned back at him conspiratorially.
    George swivelled his long neck and studied the character on screen, his face wrinkling thoughtfully. “With those swollen cheeks and funny eyes,” he replied after a moment.
    “Have you seen Finn lately?” She enquired, prodding him along as gently as she could.
    George shook his head. “Nope.” He picked up the remote, and began tossing it in the air.
    “Do you think he might have moved away?” George gave a little shrug. “Do you miss him?”
    “No, but I miss Cassandra,” he managed to throw that in, letting the remote drop onto the pillow. Cassandra was his name for the pregnant mouse. Meli suspected that the choice of name was deliberate, as it could be shortened to Cass, just to annoy his sister. In the end, Tim had offered to take the mice and find them a new home. Meli had never asked what he’d done with them, and she didn’t really care either, just as long as they weren’t in here.
    A herd of bison came hurtling up the stairs, and materialised in the room in the shape of David and Quassi.
    “Wann gibt es Mittagessen?” David yelled on seeing his mother. Quassi yapped several times in agreement.
    “You’ll have to translate that for me, I seem to have left my phrase book down stairs,” Meli said, fighting off Quassi as he leaped on the bed and sticking out his tongue tried to plunge it in her ear. If there was anything good that came out of Quassi understanding German, it had to be that the boys were encouraged to learn another language.
    “Quassi and I are hungry. When is lunch? When is lunch?” David began to chant.
    “But its only eleven-thirty,” Meli protested, glancing at her watch. “And you’ve only been up about an hour.”
    “But we didn’t have any breakfast, ‘cos it was nearly lunchtime,” he reasoned.
    Meli was not sure if this was just some obscure form of childs logic, or an excuse for being lazy. Whichever it was, she knew she would not get anything further from George.
    Refusing their request for pancakes, the boys had to settle for spaghetti on toast. Ten minutes later she gave them a call and then leaving them eating, went across to her studio. All but two of the masks were boxed ready to go, and the two remaining were almost complete. Picking up a string of plaited hair and a needle, she began the delicate task of threading the hair into the hair line.
    Thinking back over her conversation with George, she couldn’t decide whether she had been the butt of some childish practical joke all along concerning Finn. Had they made him up just for her? Basing him on some fictitious character, similar to the one in The Living Dead? After all, no one looked like that for real, not unless there was something seriously wrong with them, and in this day and age she was sure that most cases would be treatable with surgery. No, the boys must have made Finn up, no one who looked so hideous could remain unnoticed. The boys had certainly made a buffoon out of her. The finger of guilt still pointed firmly at Elsa as being responsible for all the strange occurrences in the lodge. She wouldn’t have put it past their eccentric neighbour to have had an extra key cut when the lodge was converted, which would easily explain how she gained access. It was so simple really.
    She was disturbed by a scratching sound. Glancing round, she saw that Tabby was on the sill, tapping the glass with a paw to get her attention, her mouth open in a soundless meow. Tabby often appeared when she was working, and loved coming inside to investigate, when Quassi wasn’t around. Smiling, she rose and opened the door. Instantly Tabby bounded past her and ears back, went leap-frogging across the room, vanishing behind some boxes.
    Ignoring the ear-grating sounds of steeled claws needling cardboard, and the occasional throaty mewling, Meli was soon busy again, head bowed, fingers deftly working the needle. Her concentration was broken by another sound from outside. Twisting her upper body, she was just in time to catch a glimpse of someone shuffling passed the window. A flash of black hair, a mean scowl. There was a loud rapping of knuckles on the door. Meli’s breath snagged in her throat as though it was barbed. What the dickens did Bill Barber want? He knocked again, louder this time. Had he seen her as he passed? She was tempted to crawl behind the boxes with Tabby and pretend not to be there. You’re behaving totally irrationally, she