The Book of Lost Things (2006) by John Connolly Page A

thrill to think that his father might be a spy, or at least know about spies. So far, it was the only interesting part of the war.
    That night, David lay in his bed and watched the moonlight streaming through the window. The skies were clear, and the moon was very bright. After a time, his eyes closed, and he dreamed of wolves and little girls and an old king in a ruined castle, fast asleep on his throne. Railway tracks ran alongside the castle, and figures moved through the long grass that grew beside them. There was a boy and a girl, and the Crooked Man. They disappeared beneath the earth, and David smelled gumdrops and peppermints, and he heard a little girl crying before her voice was drowned out by the sound of an approaching train.
     
V
     
Of Intruders and Transformations
     
    THE CROOKED MAN finally crossed over into David’s world at the start of September.
    It had been a long, tense summer. His father spent more time at his place of work than he did at home, sometimes not sleeping in his own bed for two or three nights in a row. It was often too difficult for him to return to the house anyway once night fell. All of the road signs had been removed to thwart the Germans if they invaded, and on more than one occasion David’s father had managed to get lost while driving home in daylight. If he tried driving at night with his headlights off, who knew where he might end up?
    Rose was finding motherhood difficult. David wondered if his own mother had found it as hard, if David had been as demanding as Georgie seemed to be. He hoped not. The stress of the situation had caused Rose’s tolerance for David and his moods to sink lower and lower. They barely talked to each other now, and David could tell that his father’s patience with both of them was almost extinguished. At dinner the night before, he had exploded when Rose had taken an innocuous remark of David’s as an insult and the two of them had begun to bicker.
    “Why can’t you two just find a way to get along, for crying out loud!” his father had shouted. “I don’t come home for this. I can get all the tension and shouting matches I want at work.”
    Georgie, seated in his high chair, started to cry.
    “Now look what you’ve done,” said Rose. She threw her napkin down on the table and went to Georgie.
    David’s father buried his head in his hands.
    “So it’s all my fault,” he said.
    “Well it’s not mine,” replied Rose.
    Simultaneously, their eyes turned toward David.
    “What?” he said. “You’re blaming me. Fine!”
    He stomped away from the table, leaving his dinner unfinished. He was still hungry, but the stew was mainly vegetables with some nasty pieces of cheap sausage spread through it to break the monotony. He knew that he’d have to eat the rest of it tomorrow, but he didn’t care. It wasn’t going to taste any worse reheated than it did already. As he headed for his room, he expected to hear his father’s voice demanding that he return and finish his food, but nobody called him back. He sat down hard on his bed. He couldn’t wait for the summer holidays to be over. A place had been found for David in a school not far from the house, which would at least be better than spending every day with Rose and Georgie.
    David was not seeing Dr. Moberley quite as often, mainly because nobody had time to take him into London. Anyway, the attacks had stopped, or so it appeared. He no longer fell to the ground or experienced blackouts, but something far stranger and more unsettling was now occurring, stranger even than the whisperings of the books, to which David had grown almost accustomed.
    David was experiencing waking dreams. That was the only way he could find to describe them to himself. It felt like those moments late in the evening when you were reading or listening to the radio and you grew so tired that for an instant you fell asleep and started dreaming, except obviously you didn’t realize you’d fallen asleep so that