The Boatman Chapter One

To the ghosts that haunted the nearby cemetery, Izzy’s pale face peering through her dark bedroom window must have looked like an oddly shaped pupil in the mansion’s only open eye. To Izzy looking out, it was barely light enough to see as far as the back fence let alone what lay beyond. But that hardly mattered. She knew.

 

Ghosts tend to linger.

 

The early morning sun peeped shyly over the trees of Slaughter Wood as if it too feared what the coming day would bring. Wisps of curling fog, tinted sinister shades of red and purple, rose from the damp ground and softened the appearance of everything. Izzy shivered though she was anything but cold. Some of the reaching tendrils had the in-and-out look of partly formed people. One floated up to Izzy’s second-floor window and seemed to look in at her. Its body stretched grotesquely and its mouth opened and closed as if speaking in some strange language Izzy didn’t understand.

 

Undeterred, Izzy turned away and snatched up her sketchbook and pen with her already ink-stained hands. She considered washing up a bit but then laughed the idea away. The Boatman X2 Washing up was a crazy thing to do. There was no need to worry about being clean when in the graveyard. The dead hardly cared about dirt.

 

She shoved herself into her tattered old trousers and her favorite wool sweater, not bothering to remove her nightdress first. Then, as quietly as she could, Izzy stepped through her bedroom door and into the hallway. She listened to be sure no one else was awake, but all she heard were the raspy sounds of the house as it snored and the voices of the stairs that grumbled when, a moment later, she went down them.

 

Like a mouse that had just caught wind of a hungry cat, Izzy skittered across the enormous foyer. She made for the shadows, of which there were many, just to be safe.

 

The footing got trickier as the carpet gave way to a slippery, black-and-white tiled floor that was always polished to a high sheen, reflecting everything upside-down. It made Izzy feel as though she were walking on the cold hard feet of another girl who looked just like her and had been trapped in a strange topsy-turvy world. The girl below looked up as Izzy looked down, their eyes meeting in the middle. Izzy grinned and the other Izzy grinned back. This was not the first time they’d snuck out together.

 

A green upholstered chair that looked comfortable but wasn’t—Izzy knew this from experience—sat near the door. There was a strange, permanent indent in its center, as if squashed under the bum of an invisible observer. A tall lamp with a fancy beaded shade stood on a skinny wooden table nearby. Izzy saw her face reflected a thousand times in its beads as she hurried past.

 

Aunt Slaughter’s butler, Albert, snoozed while standing at his post next to the door. He appeared to be hung on one of the numerous coat hooks like a noisy and particularly strange looking article of clothing. His hair and skin were the color of dust, his face deeply wrinkled and somehow smudged. Izzy thought he looked like a poorly cut tree stump or a sleeping troll that hadn’t moved in years.