‘Ring ring,' the phone rang. Hurriedly, the girl rushed downstairs and picked the phone up. “Hello,” she panicked, her heart thumping wildly like a bongo drum. 

“Parents on the stairs, you’d better be scared,” whispered the eerie voice. 

“AAAHHH!” she screamed, slamming down the phone. Running for her life, the girl ran upstairs and threw the covers over herself. She would never come out, she would never face the voice that had just told her that her life was coming to an end. She thought her biggest nightmare had ended, but really it had just started…

 

Terrified, she dashed downstairs and thundered open the door. Hastily, she rushed outside and saw her neighbours Edith and Thomas. “AROOO”, howled a wolf. 

All of a sudden, all three of them disappeared…

 

A crystal- clear circular base trapped the three naivechildren from going anywhere. The girl looked down. Her modern house was fading out of sight, whilst the mind-numbing clouds blocked them from getting any view of the world.  All they could see was a flight of stairs, with all of their parents standing and constantly waving, with beaming smiles upon their faces. Would any of them ever get to see their parents again? 

I persuaded my big brother Sam to play with me.  My team was Arsenal and his team was Juventus. He was playing in his messy room and I was playing in my tidy room.

The game was very exciting.  With 75 minutes played it was one goal each.  All of sudden my controller started to shake like an earthquake and a bright red light came from the Xbox button. I could feel myself being sucked in to the game like the rubbish going up a hoover. The next thing I knew I was on the emerald-green pitch and up front playing for my favourite team Arsenal.  The crowd were chanting my name “Summers, Summers”.  

In real life my brother watched in amazement as I was subbed on the pitch for Arsenal’s best player. He could hardly believe his eyes. His little brother was ACTUALLY playing in the game on the screen in front of his eyes. He screamed for his parents to come and see what he was seeing.  They ignored his screams because it wasn’t unusual on a Saturday afternoon in this house to hear lots of screaming!

The game stayed at 1-1 but in the 90^th minute I dribbled the ball down the line, cut back, shot with my right foot and scored - cross bar and in. The crowd went wild. 

Sam sat in his room dumbstruck and rubbed his eyes in disbelief. The ref blew his whistle and the score was 2-1 and I had scored the winning goal for Arsenal.  The fans were pitch invaders, they lifted me up, I was their hero.

Soon after the final whistle I could feel myself fading away from the exciting game and being sucked back in.  In the blink of an eye I was sat back in my seat with my controller having beaten my brother.  Sam flew into my bedroom.  Neither of us could believe what had happened and no one else would believe us either. This wasn’t an ordinary Saturday afternoon at all. 

 

House number 13 was a house full of mysteries.  No lights have ever been on; whoever lived there must have liked the dark, until now.

 

I know this because I live next door.  Yes. I live next door to the eerie, creepy, haunted house.  I am, therefore, going to investigate.

 

A few moments later, I found myself walking through the doors, which were falling apart, and I heard a scream it was coming from the top right crooked room.  This was where the light was coming from.  A shiver ran down my spine, as my heart skipped a beat. Who was it? What was it?

 

As I went up the ancient, creaky, slanted staircase, I stopped and realised that I’d just gone past a massive, ink-black spider. Without thinking, I sped into the nearest room I could find but this was the glowing room.  Suddenly, a finger poked me on the back.  How scared am I?

 

Shall I dare turn around? I took my chances and spun around.  In the corner of my eye, I saw a figure.  A figure that I followed, through the dense darkness of the scary corridors.  The strange shape led me to a neglected ruined shed.

 

The shed was tilted to the right, but the wooden door still stood high.  This mysterious building was mustard-brown and causing me to step back, knees knocking together, treading on a skeleton’s skinny finger.  CRACK!  I leapt forward and screamed.  In front of me stood a 6 foot high monster. 

 

This monster had 8 eyes like saucers, swimming through the murky dismal sky. Twitching bulbous nose as big as an elephant’s foot. Wiry thick hairs, sprouting from his immense head. Ears as pointy as elf shoes.  Sharp teeth as pointy as fangs.  A long giraffe’s neck. His belly rumbled like thunder. This creature’s feet were red-raw and flaky.

 

The monster is chasing me. Without thinking, I raced into the shed.  A voice shrieked

“don’t shut the door!...Noooooooo!!”

Oh No I accidentally slammed the door.

“I suppose we’re in here together.  We’re going to have to make a plan, aren’t we?” I said, disappointedly.

 

Hang on a minute, I recognise your voice.  You’re Grace from my drama group.

“Yes!” Grace replied.

“Well, we can’t go out the door because the monster’s guarding it.  Is there a loose wooden panel anywhere?” I whispered.

 

We both search the inside of the shed and HOORAY! we were in luck. One panel slid to the right enabling us to quickly slide through a small gap and escaped.

“There’s my garden fence and it’s still has a hole in it which we could both squeeze through,” I whispered quietly to Grace.  In a blink of an eye we were both through my fence and running towards my back door.

 

“Wow Grace, what a day that was. I’ll make us some hot chocolate while my mum phones your mum.”  Was I glad to be home?

It all started with a nightmare of an experience.

Becky Thomas was only 6 when she had her left arm amputated.  For her and her family, this traumatic event was the result of an aggressive illness which left them no other option…

Becky was in her shambolic room, scoffing cake and goodies whilst playing the latest video games.  At the end of one truly magnificent game, she realised she had just played against her old school bully, Jackie Jones.

PING! PING! PING!

A message flew onto her phone, the writing in a scribbled font.  Becky read it, it said, “You will NEVER win, you and your ugly arm!”.  Shocked, Becky wept deeply onto her ruffled pillow, Pippin the dog licking her salty, teary face.

The next day at school, Becky saw Jackie being tormented and bombarded with insults by a fearsome senior school girl.  Courageously, Becky screamed, “Stop! Leave her Alone!”.  With that, the fierce girl wandered away, looking extremely smug.

To Becky’s surprise, Jackie stared back at her, eyes like lasers in the eerie midnight darkness.  Jackie seethed, “I could have done that myself you little troll!”.  Crying, Becky ran home, her eyes leaking with salty tears.

The next day, Becky and her family went out into town.  The sun was shining the day away whilst the care-free family gleefully skipped into “Auntie Faye’s Crumpet and Waffle Bar”.  Gloomily sat in the corner was unsurprisingly Jackie Jones, alone, and rather noisily slurping a sloppy milkshake.  Becky tried to ignore the fact that her foe was sitting in the same coffee shop.  She sat down with her family at a different table while Jackie did not realise Becky was there.

Slowly, a few terrible days passed and Becky was just about living with her anxiety.

The same typical winter’s morning, Becky got up for school and set off.  As soon as she got there, she realised she had double history.

BRRRING!

“Come on now, get your seats!”  Pleasantly shrieked MS Doodle.  Everyone groaned.  Nobody liked Ms Doodle.  She had ebony braids as thick as a matted rug and multiple shimmering rings that barely fitted her pale, chubby fingers.  She wore a rose-pink blouse and scarlet jeans; ending with violent, violet heels.

“What a tiring day” Becky muttered under her breath, yawning as she returned home.  Eagerly, Pippin the dog leapt onto Becky, panting.

KNOCK

Becky opened the screeching door; the door knob was stiff.  Becky peered through the gap, her hand shaking.

“No way!" Becky thought, “Its Jackie!!”There, looking miserable, was indeed Jackie Jones.

“Now, listen.  I’m really sorry that I have been rude, or in this situation…bullying you.  If you could forgive me, I am pleased to say I won’t do it again…honestly… but, just saying, I totally don’t mind if …”

“I really, totally, honestly want to forgive you!” Interrupted Becky.

A huge grin appeared on Jackie’s face.

                     

 

 

“Hi” I muttered. She looked down then smiled gleefully

“Why hello dear” she croaked gesturing for me to go in. Immediately after going in, I felt a wave of stink drown me. I plopped onto the sofa and made a start on my homework. This was going to be a tedious weekend.

Unsurprisingly, I couldn’t survive a whole hour of spellings, so I paced towards the attic to find something interesting. The floor boards seemed to get creakier as my heart began to beat abnormally quickly. I opened the door and stepped in

 The room was cold and dark and as I was looking for the light switch, I felt something on my foot

“AAAAHHHH!”

I screamed loudly and kicked as hard as I could. The anonymous object scuttled away leaving me in shock. there, in front of me was a small group of multi-coloured monsters.

I was awestruck. Frozen to the spot as these strange creatures gathered around me. As I sighed heavily I realised they were harmless I bent down to stroked them and they purred like kittens. They were quite cute.    They were discussing something, but I wasn’t quite sure what until they all turned to me.

“hello” they said to me in a strange but understandable voice.

“um, hi” I replied shyly as some of them crawled onto my lap.

“we like you” the creatures started doing an action that resembled smiling. I smiled to but also began to wonder what they were. The words came out of my mouth before I could stop them and the next thing I knew I was having a conversation about all kinds of mythical creatures. They were telling me about hippogriffs when we heard a shout from downstairs

“Dinner time! It’s your favourite, cabbage soup” though this weekend would be a smelly one, it certainly wouldn’t be as tedious as I thought .

One Saturday afternoon, there was a ring at my front door. I went to answer it but nobody was there. No Tesco man, not a delivery guy in sight, but just some note lying on the floor saying, ‘Beware of the thunderstorm coming your way’. Abruptly, I wandered over to my shiny glass window. All I saw was a lovely bright sun and a baby-blue sky. As soon as I turned my back, there were yellow beams everywhere, and dark heavy clouds. I hurried my siblings back inside as it wasn’t safe to be out in a thunderstorm. Do you know why I don’t like thunder? I have a phobia of the sound of it. It makes me shiver and shake and tremble inside. 

Suddenly, my dog Charlie, who is a Great Dane, howled like a were-wolf in fear. We were together in this. We both hated the sound of the thunder.

Just then, there was a blinding flash of light shooting down from the sky, at the speed of a cheetah. I picked the note back up, I had missed something; it said to stop the thunder and lightening you would have to find a hidden scroll and then read the message on it backwards four times. I continued to read the instructions in the note, which said that the scroll could be found in my loft. 

First before I went up I needed to find a ladder and a headtorch. I went up the stairs to my messy loft. I started looking for this scroll. About twenty minutes later I found the scroll, hidden amongst some old dusty books. It read:

‘What key swings on trees,

Do you eat your peas

I like leaves’.

I read the words backwards four times and the sky glowed a neon yellow, and there was no more thunder and lightening.

Slowly, one by one my siblings all came up the stairs, they came to ask me if I could take them to the skate park. I replied ‘yes, why not?’. ‘Do you all want to come?’ I had 3 siblings, one was eight, the other 5 and the youngest was two. I was the oldest of all of them. I was eleven. Only Ruby wanted to come, she was 8 years old.

So off we went to the skatepark. Ruby got her board and she went zooming up and down the ramps. ‘Now what’s this I see? It’s a note stuck to the bottom of my comfy Converse shoe’. I went to sit on the old bronze park bench. The note said, ‘Well done, you did brilliantly, next time just find the scroll and read it backwards four times. So you are now known as the beautiful Thunderina. Good bye, hope to see you again’.

I walked home hand in hand with Ruby, excited to tell Charlie, that we never needed to worry about thunderstorms again, as I had mastered the skill of being Thunderina.