Goodness me! I’m sure that when I posted Chapter 7 over a month ago, I apologised for there being such a long gap. So it seems a little lame to apologise for an even longer period without another installment.
Maybe I should recap? Can you remember what happened to Cooper last? It’s been quite an eventful couple of days for him, what with natural disasters, parental conflict and tales of fire demons on the loose.
However, we left him in the rather pleasing position of dunking biscuits whilst listening to some fanciful gossip from his friend’s mother. I obviously don’t want to spoil anything further, especially if you’ve not been with us from the beginning (which you can return to by reading Lacunae: Chapter 1 HERE by the way!)
Onwards to Chapter 8!
EIGHT
The cobweb twizzled in an air current blowing through the half-open door. Cooper lay staring up at the dusty dancer, doing his best to block out the incessant babbling from Trent, who was spouting crackpot theories as he practiced fighting skills on his Xbox.
It had taken a lot of self-control not to laugh in Mrs. Arnold’s face earlier, something Cooper achieved by giving no comment. But despite not wanting to appear rude, he wished he had told her just how ridiculous her tale of doom sounded because she seemed to think his silence was a sign of shocked acceptance, and continued to exercise her imagination to new levels. It made Iris’ rantings look normal.
And now her son was carrying on with the crazy lecture. Fuelled by a trail of anecdotal ‘evidence’ he had unearthed from a Google search for ‘fire demons in volcanoes’, Trent believed Ludlow Province was about to be besieged by an ancient, deadly deity that resided beneath the mountain, allegedly only surfacing to hunt when Neptune was closest to the Sun. Or something like that.
