LERNERT ENGELBERTS Real Bad People - De Harmonie

when she’s doing anything. She always hums and whistles, not tunelessly like RonTayle, but very nicely indeed. It was really calming to see Mum at work like that and Ifelt like running over to her and throwing my arms around her legs – but you don’t dothat kind of thing when you’re eleven.‘Where are those vibrations coming from?’ I asked her, and she pointed at theorange extension cable coming out of the kitchen window and leading towards theold school. I followed the cable. The vibrations got stronger with every step. I wasalmost scared that my fillings were going to jump out of my teeth.The old school bell that still hung on the building was ringing quietly. I pressedmy nose against the glass in the door and it just popped open. I could see a lightshining up the stairs at the end of the long, wide corridor, which was where the dinseemed to be coming from.I’m no fan of dark, abandoned spaces like that, because, with every step youtake, you expect to see some scrawny cat leaping out and hissing at you, or evenworse, a gang of rats. I mean, hello? Not my idea of a good time.‘Hold it straight,’ I heard my dad say. The glass in the classroom windows wasshaking. Damp had driven out all of the normal school smells and replaced them witha sort of mushroomy pong. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s mushrooms, especiallymushroom soup. Mum had made some recently, because everyone else in the familylikes it. I stirred my spoon around the bowl for a while so that she wouldn’t feel tooupset and I looked at the rest of them gulping it down. They actually seemed to beenjoying the disgusting stuff. Mum pulled a long, dark hair out of hers with her spoon.I was the only one to notice. This was before she’d gone to get her hair dyed blondewith my sister, and it was clearly one of Mum’s brown hairs that had ended up in thepot. I stared down at my bowl so that I wouldn’t have to look at her, but I still saw her