House of the Lost Read Online Free

stacked on the windowsill and leafing through the drawings he had left on the table. Through the terror he was aware of a sudden surge of anger because how dared they look at his things, his most private paintings he did not show anyone, not even his father or Mara.
    Without any warning the cupboard door was pulled open and one of the men stood looking down at him, starting to smile. This was the most frightening thing yet: Mara always said the men’s smiles would be the worst part – they would have teeth like the jagged-edged saws Wilma’s cousin used when he mended people’s windowsills or roofs. The man’s teeth were not like the jagged saw, but the smile was still frightening.
    He said, ‘Matthew.’ He did not make it a question, he made it a statement as if he knew quite well who Matthew was. ‘Come out of there. There’s no need to hide. We aren’t going to hurt you. We just want to talk to you.’
    They stood in the centre of the room and although there were only two of them they seemed to fill up all the space.
    They gestured to him to sit on the edge of the bed and talked to him. They did not shout or make their voices sharp in the way grown-ups and teachers at school sometimes did, but their voices were so cold that if you had been able to see their words, they would have looked like icicles, white and cold, with horrid sneering faces in the ice and long, dripping-icicle fingernails like pictures of Jack Frost.
    At first Matthew did not understand what they wanted. Then he thought he sort of understood but he could not see the point. It sounded as if they wanted him to listen and watch everything that went on in the village and tell them about it every time they came to this house.
    ‘Nothing much happens here,’ he said. ‘Hardly ever. Nothing worth telling. It’s—’ He had been going to say it was a boring place, but that might sound rude so he said, ‘It’s very quiet.’ Greatly daring, he added, ‘It’s why my father likes living here. He likes to be quiet for his work.’
    The men glanced at one another, then the one Matthew thought of as the leader said, ‘We like quiet places as well, Matthew. But we need to know about the people who live here, you see. That’s the law.’
    Matthew did not really understand about laws, but he knew the men could march into houses without being asked and that they could rap out questions in their icicle-voices and people had to answer them.
    ‘Most of all,’ said the man, and now there was a tiny change in his voice, so tiny that Matthew thought if he had not been listening extra-specially hard he would not have noticed it, ‘most of all we need to know about your father.’
    When the man said this, Matthew realized they were not really interested in the village at all: they were only interested in his father. This was starting to be very scary indeed. Trying hard to keep his voice smooth and ordinary, he said, ‘What do you mean? What do you need to know about him?’
    ‘Oh, about his writing.’
    ‘He writes books,’ said Matthew, feeling on safer ground. ‘He always says there isn’t much to say about it. You just sit down and do it, that’s what he says.’
    ‘We know about the books. But he writes other things as well, doesn’t he?’ said the man and moved nearer. ‘Things he sends to other countries.’
    ‘Articles,’ said the other one. ‘You know what articles are, don’t you, Matthew?’
    ‘Um, things in newspapers. Yes, he writes stuff for newspapers sometimes.’ It surely could not hurt to say this. It was something his father occasionally joked about, saying the newspaper work did not provide their bread and butter, but did provide a bit of jam to spread on the bread.
    ‘It’s the newspaper articles we’re interested in,’ said the first man.
    ‘But you could read them, couldn’t you?’ said Matthew, puzzled. ‘You’d just have to buy a newspaper. None of it’s secret or anything.’
    Secret. Neither of the men