In short, we were happy. And I trusted that nothing would come into our lives to disturb that happiness. We would be left in peace.
Chapter Twenty-six
AS I WRITE THESE last few paragraphs, it is late at night in December. Outside, the night is dark and the streets are filled yet again by this awful London fog. The house is chillier than usual, it has been for some nights now, despite the fact that I load extra coal in the fire and keep it stoked throughout the evening.
Eustace has been quieter these last few days and I do not know why. I asked him whether everything was all right and he simply shrugged and claimed not to know what I meant. I chose not to insist upon an answer. If there was something wrong, then he would tell me in his own time.
Tonight, however, as I tried to fall asleep I was distracted by something. A noise of some sort from outside the window. I rose and looked outside but could see nothing out there through the haze. I stood still and listened and realized that, no, it was not coming from outside at all; the sounds were coming from inside the house.
I stepped out into the dark corridor, holding a single candle in my hands, and made my way to Eustace’s door, which had been closed in the night despite the fact that I always insisted he leave it ajar. I moved my hand to the latch, preparing to open it, but before I did so I was surprised to hear noise emerging from within. I pressed my ear to the door and realized that it was voices, two voices, locked together in a serious and quiet conversation. My heart skipped a beat. Was Eustace playing a game of some sort? Putting on a false voice and holding a conversation with himself for some perverse reason? I pressed closer and tried to hear what the two were saying, and it became clear to me that while one of the voices was definitely Eustace’s, the other belonged to a girl. How could that be? There was no girl in this house; no female except myself had set foot in it since we had moved here.
I listened more closely, not wanting to open the door until I could understand what was being said, but the words were too muffled through the oak. And then one word came through to me, as clear as day. Just one, a clutch of syllables, stated in Eustace’s clear tone and passing from his lips through the air, beneath the door and to my ear. I stood there, my blood freezing, my expression growing cold, a sense of incomprehension and terror filling my body when I realized what it was he had said.
A single name.
“Isabella.”
John Boyne was born in Ireland in 1971 and is the author of eight novels, including the international best sellers The House of Special Purpose and The Absolutist, as well as three novels for younger readers, including The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, which won two Irish Book Awards, topped the New York Times bestseller list, and was made into a Miramax feature film. His novels are published in more than forty-five languages. He lives in Dublin.
www.johnboyne.com
John Boyne, This House Is Haunted
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