LERNERT ENGELBERTS Real Bad People - De Harmonie

The vibrations began again early the next morning. Kevin was still asleep when Dadappeared beside his bed and pulled the sheets off him.‘Come on. We need to keep going.’Kevin groaned and hid his head under the pillow.‘My shoulder hurts.’‘All you have to do is hold the light. Come on.’‘Why do we have to start at six in the morning? It’s the holidays. I’m going tostay in bed for a bit. I’ll be down soon.’ Somehow I hoped that Dad would ask me togo with him now that Kevin was on the skive, but that didn’t happen of course. Hethought I was too young. I could imagine him down there on his own, standing in thechocolate-brown water in the creepy crawlspace, swearing his head off.When the first vibrations started, the old illustration on the wall above my bedfell off its nail. It was a cross-section of a starfish that I’d found in a box in our house.It had probably hung on one of the classroom walls in the old school, where it hadtaught generations of schoolchildren what the inside of a starfish looks like. I can tellyou: it looks gross, all purple tubes and slime. I had no idea why children needed toknow about that sort of thing.I slipped into my shorts and jumper from the day before and noticed in thebathroom mirror that some of my hair had clumped together. Upon closer inspection,it turned out to be the paint that I’d plastered onto the surfboard yesterday. I musthave been waving the brush around a bit too enthusiastically. I could probably havegot it out with some of the stuff that Mum kept under the sink, but I was too impatientfor that, so I snipped the paint out with Dad’s nose-hair trimmers instead, losing agood chunk of my hair in the process. I’d have to wait and see whether I could stillmanage a Mohican.