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Informationen zum Autor Mary Averling grew up across England and Canada, never far from the woods. She has degrees from the University of Victoria and Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge. Since she can't stay away from libraries for very long, she is currently working toward her PhD in Ontario, where she lives surrounded by all the magical, spooky, heartfelt books she can find. The Curse of Eelgrass Bog is her middle grade debut. Klappentext "Dark secrets and unnatural magic abound when a twelve-year-old girl ventures into a bog full of monsters to break a mysterious curse"-- Leseprobe I sneak back into the Unnatural History Museum at exactly two minutes past midnight, carrying a backpack full of bones. No one sees me. The town is half-drowned in fog, the ghostly kind that often creeps inward from Eelgrass Bog, and the watch fires burn low. Even the moon is hidden. I squeeze through a gap in the museum’s hedge, only stopping when my hair snags on a branch. Kess , a voice hisses from my backpack. Keep moving! “One second.” I yank my hair free. The hedge is getting wilder and meaner by the day. I need to trim it down before it swallows the footpath entirely. Are we home now? “Yes,” I say, “so please hush up.” The Unnatural History Museum looms in front of me, a tumbledown mess of clapboard and twisted chimneys. Most windows have been covered by ivy, and on windy nights like tonight, I can hear the wood groan. It’s as alive as a building can be—for now. I have a pretty good nose for sniffing out dead things, better than most people, and I can smell the rot in the walls. The voice in my backpack coughs loudly. “Yes, yes,” I grumble. “Be patient.” The front doors are too noisy to use, despite how frequently I’ve oiled them. They’ve had rusted hinges for as long as I can remember, and the doorknobs hang like loose teeth. But this is my home. I know every mouse crack and hidden entrance, including where ivy grows overtop an unlocked window. I wrench up the sash and roll inside with a flurry of dead leaves. Once the window is shut again, I adjust my round-rimmed glasses and scan the gloom in case Oliver is awake and waiting to ambush me. Somewhere a leaky pipe goes drip, drip . Aside from a couple of spiders scuttling across display cases, everyone—and everything—seems to be asleep. Good. I take a big, relieved breath and instantly regret it. “It reeks in here,” I say. Obviously. That would be me. I wrinkle my nose. “It’s worse than you.” Oh. The voice sounds disappointed. Guess I have competition. I tiptoe through the main hall, and my rubber boots creak against the floorboards. I don’t need a lantern. I know exactly where every exhibit is, even in the darkest dark. A chandelier hangs above my head, dripping strings of knucklebones, and behind me, dried kraken tentacles crisscross the wall like Christmas tinsel. I pass mandrakes, tusks, fossils spat from the deepest dredges of Eelgrass Bog. All dust choked and lifeless. Up a staircase. Underneath a woolly whale skeleton that swims through the air on invisible wires. Around the bog mummy exhibit, because bog mummies are too creepy in the dark even for me. Along the third-floor hallway until I find a broom closet. Once I’m safely inside, door locked and candle lit, I sit on an overturned mop bucket and pull three things from my backpack: A pair of magnification goggles. A paper bag full of bones. A pickled head floating in an oversize mason jar. Finally , the head says. I was getting dizzy. Even in an unnatural history museum full of peculiar things, Shrunken Jim is real ugly. Bulbous eyes, warts, and skin the same greenish color as pond water. I know dead things shouldn’t talk—especially not dead things who’ve had their mouths sewn s...
