Carlos Zafon - The Midnight Palace

Ben prepared himself for the worst but could never have imagined what he would witness a fraction of a second later.

As the crazed locomotive, cloaked in a tornado of flames, crashed into the wall, it changed into an apparition of eerie lights, the entire train sinking into the red-brick wall like a shadowy serpent, disintegrating in the air and taking with it the dreadful howls of the children and the deafening roar of the engine.

Two seconds later total darkness returned, and the silhouette of the orphanage stood out, unscathed, against the distant lights of the White Town and the Maidan to the south. The last of the mist vanished into the cracks in the wall and soon there was no evidence of the phenomenon he had just witnessed. Slowly Ben walked up to the back of the building and placed his palm on the undamaged surface. An electric shock ran up his arm, throwing him to the ground. On the wall the imprint of his hand was black and smoking.

When he stood up his heart was racing and his hands shook. Breathing deeply, he dried the tears provoked by the fire. When he’d calmed down, at least partially, he walked round the building to the kitchen door. Using a trick Roshan had taught him for lifting the inside latch, Ben opened the door cautiously, then crossed the kitchen and the downstairs corridor until he reached the staircase. The orphanage was still sunk in the deepest of silences and Ben realised that nobody but he had heard the roar of the train.

He went back to the dormitory. His friends were still asleep and there was no sign of a cracked windowpane. He walked through the room and lay down on his bed, breathing heavily. Again he picked up his watch from the bedside table and checked the time. He could have sworn that he’d been out of the building for at least twenty minutes, but the watch showed the same time as when he’d woken earlier. He held it to his ear and heard the regular ticking of the mechanism. He set the watch back in its place, then tried to put some order to his thoughts. He was beginning to doubt what he had witnessed, or what he thought he’d seen. Perhaps he hadn’t left the room and he’d dreamed the whole episode. The regular breathing around him and the unharmed windowpane seemed to confirm that explanation. Or perhaps he was a victim of his own imagination. Feeling confused, he closed his eyes and tried to doze off, hoping he might fool his body by pretending to sleep.

At daybreak, just as the sun was reaching the Grey Town – the Muslim sector in the east of Calcutta – he jumped out of bed and ran out to the rear courtyard to examine the back wall once more. There were still no traces of the train. Ben was about to conclude that it had indeed all been a dream, an unusually intense one but still a dream, when out of the corner of his eye he noticed a dark stain on the wall. He drew closer and recognised the shape of his palm clearly imprinted on the bricks. He gave a deep sigh and hurried back to the dormitory to wake Ian, who for the first time in weeks had managed to fall into the arms of Morpheus, free for once of his persistent insomnia.

In the daylight the Midnight Palace lost some of its magical aura and became just a sprawling old ruin of a house that had seen better times. Viewing their favourite setting without the embellishment and mystery of the Calcutta nights could have had a stark effect on the members of the Chowbar Society, but fortunately Ben’s words softened the impact. They all listened to him in respectful silence, their expressions going from amazement to disbelief.

‘And it vanished into the wall, as if it were air?’ Seth asked.

Ben nodded.

‘That’s the strangest story you’ve told this month, Ben,’ Isobel stated.

‘It’s not a story. It’s what I saw.’

‘Nobody is doubting you, Ben,’ said Ian, ‘but we were all asleep and didn’t hear a thing. Not even me.’

‘That really is incredible,’ said Roshan. ‘Perhaps Bankim put something in the lemonade.’

‘Is nobody going to take me seriously?’ said Ben. ‘You’ve seen the handprint.’

No one replied. Ben focused on his small asthmatic comrade, the most gullible when it came to spooky stories.

‘Siraj?’

The boy looked up and gazed at the rest of the group, assessing the situation.

‘It wouldn’t be the first time something like this has been seen in Calcutta … There’s the story of Hastings House, for example.’

‘I don’t see what one thing has to do with the other,’ Isobel objected.

The story of Hastings House – formerly the governor’s residence in the province south of Calcutta – was one of Siraj’s favourite tales and probably the most emblematic of all the ghost stories that packed the annals of the city. According to local legend, on nights when there was a full moon the phantom of Warren Hastings, the first governor of Bengal, drove a ghostly carriage up to the porch of his old mansion in Alipore, where he would then search frantically for some documents that had disappeared during his chaotic rule of the city.

‘The people of Calcutta have been seeing him for decades,’ Siraj protested. ‘It’s as much a fact as the monsoon flooding the streets.’

The members of the Chowbar Society became embroiled in a heated discussion about what Ben had seen, during which only the person concerned did not intervene. A few minutes later, when all reason seemed to have flown out of the window, those taking part in the argument turned their heads to look at the figure in white that was standing in the doorway to the roofless hall, watching them in silence. One by one, they stopped talking.

‘I don’t want to interrupt …’ said Sheere shyly.

‘An interruption is most welcome,’ said Ben. ‘We were only arguing. For a change.’

‘I heard the last bit,’ Sheere admitted. ‘Did you see something last night, Ben?’

‘I don’t know any more,’ he admitted. ‘How about you? Have you managed to escape from your grandmother? I think we got you into trouble last night.’

Sheere smiled and shook her head.

‘My grandmother is a good woman, but sometimes she gets obsessed and thinks there’s danger lurking round every corner,’ Sheere explained. ‘She doesn’t know I’m here, so I can’t stay long.’

‘Why not? We were thinking of going down to the docks; you could come with us,’ said Ben, much to the surprise of the others, as this was the first they’d heard of the plan.

‘I can’t go with you, Ben. I came to say goodbye.’

‘What!’ cried various voices at once.

‘We’re leaving for Bombay tomorrow. My grandmother says this city isn’t safe and we must leave. She forbade me from seeing you again, but I didn’t want to go without saying goodbye. You’re the only friends I’ve had in ten years, even if that was just for a night.’

Ben looked at her in astonishment.

‘You’re going to Bombay?’ he exploded. ‘Why? Does your grandmother want to be a film star? This is absurd!’

‘I’m afraid it isn’t,’ Sheere said sadly. ‘I’ll only be in Calcutta for a few more hours. I hope you don’t mind if I spend some of that time with you.’

‘We’d love you to stay, Sheere,’ said Ian, speaking for all of them.

‘Just a minute,’ Ben protested. ‘What’s all this business about saying goodbye? A few more hours in Calcutta? That’s nonsense. You could spend a hundred years in this city and not understand half of what goes on here. You can’t just leave like that. Even less now that you’re a full member of the Chowbar Society.’

‘You’ll have to talk to my grandmother,’ Sheere sighed.

‘That’s exactly what I plan to do.’

‘Great idea,’ Roshan said. ‘You made a wonderful impression on her yesterday.’