The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman Page A

my ears. “Because you won’t like it in the attic.
Not just because it’s dark up there, with the spiders, and the ghosts. But
because I’m going to bring my friends. You can’t see them in the daylight, but
they’ll be in the attic with you, and you won’t enjoy them at all. They don’t
like little boys, my friends. They’ll pretend to be spiders as big as dogs. Old
clothes with nothing inside that tug at you and never let you go. The inside of
your head. And when you’re in the attic there will be no books, and no stories,
not ever again.”
    I had not imagined it. Her lips had brushed my ear.
She was floating in the air beside me, so her head was beside mine, and when she
caught me looking at her she smiled her pretend-smile, and I could not run any
longer. I could barely move. I had a stitch in my side, and I could not catch my
breath, and I was done.
    My legs gave way beneath me, and I stumbled and
fell, and this time I did not get up.
    I felt heat on my legs, and I looked down to see a
yellow stream coming from the front of my pajama trousers. I was seven years
old, no longer a little child, but I was wetting myself with fear, like a baby,
and there was nothing I could do about it, while Ursula Monkton hung in the air
a few feet above me and watched, dispassionately.
    The hunt was done.
    She stood up straight in the air, three feet above
the ground. I was sprawled beneath her, on my back, in the wet grass. She began
to descend, slowly, inexorably, like a person on a broken television screen.
    Something touched my left hand. Something soft. It
nosed my hand, and I looked over, fearing a spider as big as a dog. Illuminated
by the lightnings that writhed about Ursula Monkton, I saw a patch of darkness
beside my hand. A patch of darkness with a white spot over one ear. I picked the
kitten up in my hand, and brought it to my heart, and I stroked it.
    I said, “I won’t come with you. You can’t make me.”
I sat up, because I felt less vulnerable sitting, and the kitten curled and made
itself comfortable in my hand.
    â€œPudding-and-pie boy,” said Ursula Monkton. Her
feet touched the ground. She was illuminated by her own lightnings, like a
painting of a woman in grays and greens and blues, and not a real woman at all.
“You’re just a little boy. I’m a grown-up. I was an adult when your world was a
ball of molten rock. I can do whatever I wish to you. Now, stand up. I’m taking
you home.”
    The kitten, which was burrowing into my chest with
its face, made a high-pitched noise, not a mew. I turned, looking away from
Ursula Monkton, looking behind me.
    The girl who was walking toward us, across the
field, wore a shiny red raincoat, with a hood, and a pair of black Wellington
boots that seemed too big for her. She walked out of the darkness, unafraid. She
looked up at Ursula Monkton.
    â€œGet off my land,” said Lettie Hempstock.
    Ursula Monkton took a step backwards and she rose,
at the same time, so she hung in the air above us. Lettie Hempstock reached out
to me, without glancing down at where I sat, and she took my hand, twining her
fingers into mine.
    â€œI’m not touching your land,” said Ursula Monkton.
“Go away, little girl.”
    â€œYou are on my land,” said Lettie Hempstock.
    Ursula Monkton smiled, and the lightnings wreathed
and writhed about her. She was power incarnate, standing in the crackling air.
She was the storm, she was the lightning, she was the adult world with all its
power and all its secrets and all its foolish casual cruelty. She winked at
me.
    I was a seven-year-old boy, and my feet were
scratched and bleeding. I had just wet myself. And the thing that floated above
me was huge and greedy, and it wanted to take me to the attic, and, when it
tired of me, it would make my daddy kill me.
    Lettie Hempstock’s hand in my hand made me braver.
But Lettie was just a girl, even if she was a