Carlos Zafon - The Midnight Palace

‘It was my fault. We just wanted to show your granddaughter the courtyard behind the building,’ he said.

Not even deigning to look at him, Aryami went straight over to Sheere.

‘I told you to wait here and not move,’ she said, her face flushed with anger.

‘We’ve only been a few metres away,’ said Ian.

Aryami looked daggers at him.

‘I didn’t ask you , young man,’ she retorted, not bothering to be polite.

‘We’re sorry to have worried you, we didn’t mean to-’ Ben insisted.

‘Leave it, Ben,’ Sheere interrupted. ‘I can speak for myself.’

The woman’s hostile expression softened for a moment. This didn’t go unnoticed by any of the young people. Aryami pointed at Ben and her face grew pale in the faint light of the lanterns dotted around the garden.

‘Are you Ben?’ she asked, lowering her voice.

The boy nodded, concealing his surprise as he met the old woman’s inscrutable gaze. There was no anger in her eyes, only sadness and anxiety. Aryami took her granddaughter by the arm.

‘We must go,’ she said. ‘Say goodbye to your friends.’

The members of the Chowbar Society nodded farewell and Sheere gave a shy smile as she walked away, her arm still held tightly by Aryami Bose. They disappeared into the dark streets of Calcutta. Ian went over to Ben, who seemed lost in thought, his eyes fixed on the retreating figures of Sheere and Aryami as they ventured into the night.

‘For a moment I thought that woman was frightened,’ said Ian.

Ben nodded, still staring.

‘Who isn’t frightened on a night like this?’

‘I think you’d all better go to bed,’ said Bankim from the doorway.

‘Is that a suggestion or an order?’ Isobel asked.

‘You know that my suggestions are always orders,’ declared Bankim, pointing to the building. ‘In.’

‘Tyrant,’ whispered Siraj to himself. ‘Enjoy your last few days.’

‘The ones who re-enlist are always the worst,’ added Roshan.

Bankim nodded happily as he watched the six boys and the girl file past him, ignoring their mumbled protests. Ben was the last one through the door and he exchanged a look with Bankim.

‘However much they complain,’ he said, ‘they’ll miss you in five days’ time.’

‘So will you, Ben,’ laughed Bankim.

‘I already do,’ he murmured to himself as he started up the staircase to the first-floor dormitories, aware that in less than a week he would no longer be counting the twenty-four steps he knew so well.

At some point in the early hours Ben woke up and thought he could feel a gust of icy air on his face. A beam of pale light flickered through the narrow pointed window. Ben reached out a hand towards his bedside table and turned the face of his watch to catch the moonlight. The hands were crossing the equator towards dawn: three o’clock in the morning.

He sighed, suspecting that sleep had deserted him, evaporating like dew in the morning sun. Perhaps the spectre of Ian’s insomnia was haunting him for a change. He closed his eyes again, conjuring up images of the party that had ended a few hours earlier, trusting they would soothe him to sleep. Just then he heard a strange sound that seemed to be whistling through the leaves of the courtyard garden.

He sat up, pulled back his sheets and walked slowly towards the window. From there he could hear the tinkling of the darkened lanterns in the branches of the trees and the distant echo of what sounded like children’s voices, laughing and talking in unison, hundreds of them. Leaning his forehead against the windowpane and peering through the condensation made by his own breath, he thought he could make out the silhouette of a slender figure standing in the middle of the courtyard, wrapped in a black cloak. The figure was staring straight at him. He jumped back in alarm, and before his very eyes the windowpane slowly cracked, starting with a small fissure in the centre that spread like a spider’s web gouged out by hundreds of invisible claws. The hairs on the back of Ben’s neck stood on end and his breathing quickened.

He looked around him. All his friends were fast asleep. Ben heard the children’s voices again and noticed that a thick mist was filtering through the cracks in the glass. He moved closer again and looked down into the courtyard. The figure was still standing there, but this time it stretched out an arm and pointed at him. Suddenly its long sharp fingers burst into flame. Ben stood there for a few seconds, gripped by the vision. Then the figure turned and began to walk away into the darkness. Ben rushed out of the dormitory.

The corridor was deserted, the only light coming from an ancient gas lamp that had survived renovation works at the orphanage a few years before. He hurtled down the stairs, across the dining halls, and emerged through the kitchen side door just in time to see the figure disappearing into the dark alleyway that led round the back of the building. The narrow alley was filled with a thick mist that seemed to rise from the sewer gratings.

Ben immersed himself in the tunnel of cold swirling fog, running for about a hundred metres until he came to a large open space to the north of St Patrick’s – a wasteland that housed both a scrap-metal dump and a citadel of empty shacks once belonging to the most deprived inhabitants of North Calcutta. Dodging the muddy puddles that covered the path through the twisting maze of burnt-out adobe huts, he advanced into the place Thomas Carter had always warned them against. The children’s voices came from somewhere deep inside that desolate swamp of poverty and filth.

Ben headed through a narrow gap between two derelict shacks, then suddenly stopped when he realised he’d found what he was looking for. Before him stretched an endless deserted plain filled with the remains of old huts enveloped by a blue mist wafting out of the darkness. The sound of the children seemed to be coming from the same spot, only this time it wasn’t laughter or nursery rhymes that Ben heard, but the terrible panicked shrieks of hundreds of trapped children. A cold gust of wind hurled him against the wall of one of the shacks, as out of the mist came the furious roar of a huge steel machine that made the earth tremble beneath his feet.

He blinked then looked again, thinking he must be hallucinating. A train was emerging from the fog, its metal armour red hot and enveloped in flames. He could see the agony on the faces of dozens of children who were trapped inside it as burning fragments rained down in all directions in a cascade of sparks. The engine itself, a majestic steel sculpture, seemed to be melting. In the driver’s cab, standing motionless amid the flames, was the same figure he had seen in the courtyard. The creature was watching Ben, with arms open wide as if to welcome him.

Ben could feel the heat of the fire on his face and he covered his ears to stifle the excruciating howls of the children. The blazing train tore across the deserted plain and Ben realised with horror that it was racing straight towards St Patrick’s like a guided missile. He ran after it, dodging the shower of sparks and molten iron, but was not able to keep up with the train as it accelerated towards the orphanage, tinting the sky scarlet as it flew by. Gasping for breath, he screamed with all his might to alert those who were sleeping peacefully in the building, unaware of the tragedy that was about to befall them. He watched in despair as the train homed in on St Patrick’s. Any moment now the engine would pulverise the orphanage and fling its inhabitants into the air. He fell to his knees and screamed one last time as he watched the train enter the rear courtyard and rush uncontrollably towards the large wall that formed the back of the building.