Hotel Ambrose

Chapter 5: The Hobgoblin

I woke up in the middle of the night. I lay next to Sophie and the baby for a while, listening to the hotel. Sophie murmured something about dogs then went quiet. Her breathing was slow and soft. I couldn't hear the baby's breathing but I could feel its chest moving. I listened for the Hobgoblin, but it wasn't making any noise – fast asleep on its hob I guess. The moon was a narrow face out the bedroom window. I fancied it was looking at me. All around me the hotel mumbled and creaked, and I thought about all those rooms up and up, and those narrow towers, and the bell hanging in the belfry in the dark.

In the kitchen I had a glass of water that was very cold. The pipes thumped when I turned the tap on, and I thought about miles and miles of pipes going away into the hotel and through the floors and into the ground. I ate some chips while I thought about this.

I went back to the bedroom and got a blanket and Dirty Joe's book, and went into the lounge room where the TV and everything was. I was almost at the end of the book about the rabbits. You wouldn't think a book that was about rabbits would be any good, but it was the best thing I'd ever read. I sat on the couch and pulled the blanket up around myself and read the book. I got to the end. It made me sad.

I was about to flip back to the start and begin reading it all over again when I noticed something. There were a few blank pages at the back, like in any book, but then there was another chapter after the blank pages. It wasn't called anything, and it was only a few pages long.

I started to read it.