The Book Of Lost Things

“Don’t tell me what to do, child,” he said. “I could tear your head off if I chose, and use it to adorn my dinner table. I could bore a hole in your skull and stick a candle in it, once I’d eaten my fill of whatever was inside-which wouldn’t be much, I expect. You’re not a very bright boy, are you? You enter a world you don’t understand, chasing the voice of someone you know is dead. You can’t find your way back again, and you insult the only person who can help you return, namely me. You are a very rude, ungrateful, and ignorant little boy.”

With a snap of his fingers, the Crooked Man produced a long, sharp needle, threaded with coarse black string made from what looked like the knotted legs of dead beetles.

“Now why don’t you work on your manners before you force me to sew your lips shut?”

He released his grip on David’s face, then patted his cheek gently.

“Let me show you a proof of my good intentions,” he purred. He reached into the leather pouch upon his belt and drew from it the snout that he had severed from the wolf scout. He dangled it in front of David.

“It was following you, and it found you as you emerged from the church in the forest. It would have killed you, too, had I not intervened. Where it went, others will follow. They are on your trail, and growing ever greater in number. More and more of them are transforming now, and they cannot be stopped. Their time is coming. Even the king knows it, and he does not have the strength to stand in their way. It would be well for you to be back in your own world before they find you again, and I can help you. Tell me what I want to know and you will be safe in your bed before nightfall. All will be well in your house, and your problems will have been solved. Your father will love you, and you alone. This I can promise you if you answer just one question.”

David didn’t want to bargain with the Crooked Man. He couldn’t be trusted, and David felt certain that he was keeping many things from him. No deal made with him could ever be simple, or without cost. Yet David also knew that much of what he was saying was true: the wolves were coming, and they would not stop until they found David. Roland would not be able to kill them all. Then there was the Beast: terrible though she was, she was only one of the horrors that this land seemed to conceal. There would be others, perhaps worse than Loups or Beast. Wherever David’s mother now was, in this world or another, she seemed beyond his reach. He could not find her. He had been foolish ever to think he could, but he had wanted so badly for it to be true. He had wanted her to be alive again. He missed her. Sometimes he would forget her, but in forgetting he would remember her again, and the ache for her would return with a vengeance. Yet the answer to his loneliness did not lie in this place. It was time to go home.

And so David spoke. “What do you want to know?” he said.

The Crooked Man leaned toward him and whispered. “I want you to tell me the name of the child in your house,” he said. “I want you to name for me your half brother.”

David’s fear was replaced by puzzlement. “But why?” he said. If the Crooked Man was the same figure he had seen in his bedroom, then wasn’t it possible that he had been in other parts of the house too? David remembered how he had awoken at home with the unpleasant sensation that something or someone had touched his face while he was asleep. A strange smell had sometimes hung about Georgie’s bedroom (stranger, at least, than the smell that usually came from Georgie). Could that have been an indication of the Crooked Man’s presence? Was it possible that the Crooked Man had failed to hear Georgie’s name spoken during his incursions into their house, and why was it so important to him to know the name anyway?

“I just want to hear it from your lips,” said the Crooked Man. “It’s such a small thing, such a tiny, tiny favor. Tell me, and all this will be over.”

David swallowed hard. He so badly wanted to go home. All he had to do was speak Georgie’s name. What harm could that do? He opened his mouth to speak, but the next name spoken was not Georgie’s but his own.

“David! Where are you?”

It was Roland. David heard the sound of digging from above. The Crooked Man hissed his displeasure at the intrusion.

“Quickly!” he said to David. “The name! Tell me the name!”

Dirt fell on David’s head, and a spider scurried across his face.