Escape of the Nerk Twins

Chapter XV

I don't own the Beatles.  I actually don't know what this means -- all of this has been dictated by the real writer; I'm just the ghost writer/typist!  The real writer is (prepare to gasp) . . . JK ROWLING!  Just kidding.  She told me to write that.  (Feel the doubt!)

A/N:  And yet another chapter!  Don't expect this daily update thing to become regular.  I've just had time on my hands and a lot of fun coming back to this :0)  Ta to all my wonderful reviewers:  WattPad - Macca40; FanFiction - ThisBirdHasFlownToRhye and leah9712.  Thanks for sticking with this!

Smokey clouds formed a drifting haze around the red, dying sun that was sinking into the rippling lake. The water flickered blue and orange, as if for a few precious minutes it had caught on fire. The silhouette of a lone crow danced before the inferno, swooping and soaring, sending its raucous caw echoing across the barren purple hills and through the deep evergreen forests.

John leaned out the pointed Gothic arch of the window. His fingers gripped the crumbling stone and moss as he breathed in the sharp tang of the evening breeze. He craned his neck to look down at the shimmering wavelets gently wearing away at the foundations of the slowly eroding castle, and for a gasp of time he imagined that he was the crow, diving in the thermal currents above the flaming lake.

"I wish we hadn't burnt out the flashlights," complained Paul. Squinting against the glare of the sun, he stuck his head out the other window and turned to look at John. John turned to look at his bandmate, his eyes temporarily obscured by the sunlight reflecting off his glasses. Paul was clutching a comic book in one hand, while the other maintained a firm grip on the rough grey stone of the windowsill.

"Don't be such a downer!" John replied. His voice bounced off the stones of the castle and reverberated through the loch, little ripples of Scouse sending tiny, gleaming silver fish scurrying into the deep blue, frigid depths.

"Come back in, then," said Paul, withdrawing from the sunset into the growing shadows of the castle. John reluctantly copied him, casting one last glance back toward the crow, just in time to see the bird swoop back around the corner of the castle to its high aerie.

"What should we do, if we can't see to read or anything?" asked Paul, settling down into his sleeping bag.

John wandered over to his own sleeping bag, the one closer to the door. "I wonder who lived here before?"

"Before what?" asked Paul, contemplatively delving into a bag of pretzels and fishing around for a handful.

"Before us," replied John, pushing himself as deeply as he could into his sleeping bag.

Paul snorted. "We don't live here, John. Not yet, anyroad."

"Yeah, we do," countered John as Paul munched on another handful of pretzels. "For tonight, we live here."

Paul shrugged. "I guess some sort of nobleman lived here. Maybe a knight or something?"

"And his fair daughter Margaret," added John. "She slept in that room that was all full of bird poo."

Paul threw a pretzel at John. It fell short and rolled into a crack between flagstones.

"You're disgusting sometimes, Lennon, you know that?" said Paul.

"Says the man who still resorts to throwing food," countered John, staring at the window-ledge as the last traces of red sunlight dripped off into the lake.

Paul turned the pretzel bag upside-down and shook it. A tiny puff of salt and crumbs floated to the floor next to him. He crumpled the bag into a ball and threw it across the room, where it landed on top of the discarded comic books in the deep shadows beneath the windows.