House of the Lost Read Online Free PDF Page B

then, on the crest of this thought, as clear as lightning against a night sky, the name came scudding into his mind. Matthew.
    Matthew. There was a moment when Theo thought – Matthew, yes, of course, that’s who he is, I should have realized right away! He did not think he knew any Matthews but he liked the name. Matthew. Yes, it was exactly right. He pressed the Save key at the end of the scene where Matthew was drawing master-spy faces on his troublesome arithmetic lesson, and ended the paragraph with a description of how Matthew suddenly looked up from his drawing and listened for the footsteps. Matthew’s bedroom curtains were open and for a moment Theo caught a fleeting glimpse of what lay beyond that window – there was a dark garden with an uneven brick wall, and on the horizon was the fearsome Black House which Matthew and the small school friend seemed to fear so much. But what else was beyond that wall? Was it the fields – those fields Theo himself saw from the windows of this house? Was it even possible that the Black House was St Luke’s Convent? He got up to stare through the windows, but the flickering image had already vanished, and in any case it was too dark to see anything, so he closed the curtains, and went back to the table, switching on the small lamp, grateful for the warm pool of light it cast.
    He had intended to close the chapter with Matthew’s gradual realization that the footsteps were approaching, which should make for a nicely tense ending. But the paragraph did not go that way and, instead, Theo found himself describing how there was someone Matthew feared even more than the men. This was the person who gave the men their orders. It was not another man who did this, though, it was a woman.
    No one Matthew knew had ever seen this woman, but everyone knew how powerful she was. She was beautiful but evil and cruel, and if people did not do what she said, she had them thrown in prison. The younger children said she was like somebody from an old fairytale – the Snow Queen or the wicked stepmother – and if she caught you she would put you in a cage or bake you in the oven and eat you up. Matthew knew this was silly because people did not eat children, but all the same, he hoped he never met her.
    Theo typed all this without pausing, then broke off to read it with growing puzzlement. He had not envisaged an evil beauty as being part of this strange story, and even if he had intended to create such a character he certainly would not have added that touch about the Snow Queen or the oven – it gave a Gothic flavour to the whole thing, and Theo’s work had never been remotely Gothic. But he knew this female very well indeed; he even knew her name. She was called Annaleise.
    He frowned, and returned to the footsteps. At one moment there was an ordinary quietness inside Matthew’s house – Theo thought that for all the old timber creakings and sighings it was rather a silent house for most of the time – and then the next moment the footsteps began. At first they were faint and distant like a tap dripping or a thin drum skin softly vibrating, but then they grew louder and stronger. Matthew, seated at the ramshackle little desk in his bedroom, looked up, his eyes dilating with fear . . .
    It was at this point Theo realized the sounds were no longer solely in his story – they were real sounds and were coming from just outside. He listened intently but there was nothing. You really are taking me over, Matthew, he thought, but as he prepared to go on typing the sounds came again. Soft light crunches – exactly as if someone was walking along the gravel path that wound down to the old boathouse. There could be no mistake: someone was outside. He pressed the Save key so the Snow Queen would not be lost, reached across to switch off the table lamp, and sat absolutely still in the faint glimmer from the monitor. The footsteps had stopped. Had the walker seen the light go out and paused? Perhaps