The Mandie Collection : Volume 7 by Lois Gladys Leppard

Author:Lois Gladys Leppard
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781441260147
Publisher: Bethany House Publishers
Published: 2011-05-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

A STRANGE NEIGHBORHOOD

Even with her cold, Mandie could smell the strong odor of garlic in food cooking somewhere in the tenement building as she and Jonathan stepped inside the front hallway. The front door had been closed but was unlocked. A draft in the hallway indicated something was open beyond as the wind practically whistled through. She shivered with cold and fright. Snowball meowed loudly in her arms.

Jonathan held her hand as they paused near the front door. Mandie stepped closer to him. She could hear loud voices intermingled with even louder quarreling and children yelling from somewhere inside the building.

“Now what?” she whispered.

“Let’s look around,” Jonathan whispered back, holding her hand as they walked down the long hallway.

Several doors along the way stood half-open with different noises coming out from behind them. Some doors were closed. Mandie counted at least eight doors before they suddenly came to the back door. It stood wide open, hanging halfway off its hinges. The wind bellowed through it into the building.

Mandie shivered and held Snowball closer. What a terrible place to live, she thought. What kind of people inhabit this rundown building?

“What a horrible place to live,” Jonathan echoed her thoughts in a low voice. “Let’s go back to the front.”

Just as they came to the back side of the staircase, they both saw the strange man going up the steps. They quickly followed, but the man had a good start and disappeared before they could see where he went.

“Let’s go up to the top and we can search our way down,” Jonathan suggested.

The old staircase creaked, and the loose spindles in the banister rattled under their combined weight and the strong draft of air from below. Mandie would not have been surprised if the whole thing had collapsed at any moment.

“Let’s get off these steps,” she whispered to Jonathan when they finally reached the top floor.

Stepping into the hallway, Jonathan went toward a door straight ahead and said, “All right, but first let’s look on the roof and see if he went there.”

Jonathan pushed the door open, revealing a short staircase that he quickly climbed. Mandie followed, but as she stepped through the doorway, Snowball suddenly managed to jump out of her arms. He ran back into the hallway. The door slammed shut with Mandie on one side and Snowball on the other. She frantically pulled on the door but couldn’t get it to open.

“What are you doing?” Jonathan called down to her.

“The door shut and Snowball is in there. I can’t get the door open!” she cried out in panic.

Jonathan rushed down and helped her pull on the door, but without any results.

“The door must have locked when it slammed shut,” Jonathan told her in dismay, looking helplessly about.

“What are we going to do, Jonathan?” Mandie exclaimed. “Snowball will run off and I’ll never find him! Oh, Jonathan, we’ve got to do something.”

“We’ll just have to wait until somebody comes up here,” he said. “I need to search the roof, Mandie, to see if the man is out there.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.