Digger Field by Damian Davis

said, ‘Maybe I should be the lookout, just in case anyone comes.’
    ‘No way,’ I said. ‘Tearley, you be the lookout. Give me the camera.’
    Tearley passed it over. I switched it to the night-vision mode. Even though it was bright outside in the full moon, it would be dark in the house.
    ‘Okay. Let’s go,’ I said.
    Wrigs and I raced into the house. I made Wrigs take the lead so he couldn’t chicken out. We ran down the hallway into the kitchen. We couldn’t find the manhole in the dark. I stamped on the floor.
    All I could hear at first was the bup , bup , bup sound of my shoes on the wooden floorboards, but finally I heard a boing noise. We both dropped to our knees to touch the metal door.
    There was a tap on my shoulder.
    ‘What the …?’ I said.
    It was Tearley. She had followed us inside. We’d been making so much noise we hadn’t heard her.
    ‘I was just seeing if you were okay,’ she said.
    ‘I nearly died of a heart attack,’ I said.
    ‘I got scared out there by myself,’ she said.
    Then we heard another noise. It sounded like someone walking down the pathway. We raced into the little room behind the kitchen and hid in the shadows. There was no space in there so we huddled together.
    If someone came in through the door we only had one escape route. An old broken window. Wrigs was closest to the window, I was in the middle and Tearley was closest to the doorway to the kitchen.
    It was a disaster. We were sitting there, just waiting to be caught.
    The person outside reached the bottom of the path but they didn’t come straight into the house. They walked around the outside, stopped right in front of our broken window and stood looking out over the river. We could see the shape of the person in the moonlight.
    It was Mr Black.
    He was carrying a hessian bag again.
    And it was moving.
    I turned the video camera and pointed it at him.
    As I switched it on, a little red light came on to show that the camera was recording. We hadn’t noticed the red light before, but if Mr Black turned around he would see it for sure.
    I turned the camera off, just in time. Mr Black turned towards us. He mustn’t have been able to see us in the dark.
    He looked away again and walked around to the front entrance of the house. Then he walked down the hallway, his torch flickering around to show him the way. Tearley pushed as hard against me as she could, so she wouldn’t be caught by the beam. The light flashed across her leg but Mr Black mustn’t have noticed. We heard him put down his bag, and put the torch on the ground.
    Tearley’s weight moved off me. She squeezed past me and Wrigs and climbed noiselessly out of the broken window beside us.
    I pushed Wrigs and pointed after Tearley. I wanted him to follow her, but he was frozen with terror.
    We could hear Mr Black fumbling with the latch, and a key turning.
    The door to the manhole creaked as it opened. Mr Black was picking up his torch when there was a crash from outside the house. It sounded like a brick hitting the corrugated iron that we used for the EWS.
    Tearley! She must have done it to distract Mr Black and give us a chance to get out.
    Mr Black called out, ‘Who’s there?’
    He sounded startled. He was breathing heavily.
    Mr Black stumbled down the hallway and out into the night.
    Wriggler scrambled to the window and threw himself over the sill.
    I wanted to follow him, but this was the one chance we had to see what was in the hole. I raced into the kitchen and almost tripped over the hessian bag. It was sliding across the floor all by itself.
    The manhole was still open. It was too risky to jump into the hole. Mr Black could be back any second. So I lay down next to the opening and hit the record button on the camera.
    Then I stuck my arm down into the hole and panned the camera around, hoping it would film something.
    I was just pulling my arm out when Mr Black’s torchlight came bobbing down the hallway. I didn’t have time to get back into