Carlos Zafon - The Midnight Palace

‘What was that?’ asked Ian.

Ben shrugged his shoulders.

‘Look!’ cried Seth. ‘In the middle of the bridge!’

All eyes focused on that point. The tracks were glowing red, the heat radiating in all directions and giving off a light halo of smoke. After a few seconds both rails began to bend. The entire structure of the bridge started to drip huge tears of molten metal into the Hooghly, producing violent explosions as they hit the cold water.

Paralysed with fear, the five boys witnessed the steel structure, over two hundred metres long, melting before their very eyes like a lump of butter in a hot frying pan. The liquid metal sank into the river, its intense amber glow reflected on the faces of the five friends. Finally, the incandescent red faded into a dull metallic tone, and the two ends of the bridge collapsed over the Hooghly like weeping willows caught staring at their own reflection.

The sound of the steel hissing in the water slowly abated. Then, behind them, the five friends heard the voice of the old Jheeter’s Gate’s siren cutting through the Calcutta night for the first time in sixteen years. Without uttering a single word, they turned round and crossed the frontier into the ghostly setting for the game they were about to play.

Isobel opened her eyes as she heard the siren shriek through the tunnels like an air-raid warning. Her feet and hands were firmly pinned to two long rusty metal bars, and the only light she could see filtered through the grille of a ventilation shaft just above her. The echo of the siren slowly died away.

Suddenly she heard something creeping towards the grille. She looked up at the slivers of light and noticed that the bright rectangle was darkening and the grille was opening. She closed her eyes and held her breath. The metallic hooks that immobilised her feet and hands snapped open and she felt long fingers grab her by the nape of her neck and pull her up through the gap. She screamed in terror as her captor flung her onto the floor of the tunnel.

When Isobel opened her eyes, she saw a tall black silhouette standing in front of her, a figure without a face.

‘Someone has come for you,’ the invisible face whispered. ‘Let’s not keep him waiting.’

Immediately two burning pupils lit up, flaring in the dark. Grabbing her arm, the figure dragged her through the tunnel. After what seemed like hours of an agonising walk through total darkness, Isobel at last made out the ghostly shape of a train. She was hauled towards the guard’s van and didn’t have the strength to resist when she was flung inside and heard the door being locked.

As Isobel fell onto the charred floor of the carriage, a sharp pain seared through her belly. Something had gashed her badly. She groaned. She was seized by panic as a pair of hands took hold of her and tried to turn her over. She shouted out and came face to face with a dirty exhausted boy who seemed even more frightened than she was.

‘It’s me, Isobel,’ whispered Siraj. ‘Don’t be afraid.’

For the first time in her life Isobel let her tears flow freely as she hugged the bony, frail body of her friend.

Ben and his comrades stopped under the clock with the drooping hands on the main platform of Jheeter’s Gate. All around them was a vast landscape of shadows and faint slanting light that filtered through the steel and glass dome.

From where they stood, the five youngsters could envisage what Jheeter’s Gate must have looked like before the tragedy: a majestic luminous vault held up by invisible arches that seemed to be suspended from heaven, above rows and rows of platforms arranged in curves, like ripples on a pond. Large noticeboards announcing departure and arrival times. Elaborate newspaper kiosks made of carved metal with Victorian reliefs. Palatial staircases rising through steel and glass shafts to the upper levels, with corridors seemingly hanging in mid-air. Crowds strolling about its halls and boarding long express trains that would take them to the furthest reaches of the country … Nothing remained of all that splendour, only a dark broken shell.

Ian noticed the hands of the clock, distorted by the flames, and tried to imagine the magnitude of the fire. Seth had the same thought; they both avoided making any comment.

‘We should separate into groups of two. This place is immense,’ said Ben.

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ replied Seth, who couldn’t get the image of the collapsing bridge out of his head.

‘Even if we did split up, there are only five of us,’ said Ian. ‘Who would go alone?’

‘I would,’ replied Ben.

The others looked at him with a mixture of relief and anxiety.

‘I still don’t think it’s a good idea,’ Seth insisted.

‘Ben’s right,’ said Michael. ‘From what we’ve seen so far, it will make little difference whether we’re five or fifty.’

‘A man of few words, but always so encouraging,’ Roshan remarked.

‘Michael, you and Roshan could search the upper levels,’ Ben suggested. ‘Ian and Seth can check this floor.’

Nobody seemed prepared to dispute the assignment of locations. One area seemed as unattractive as the next.

‘What about you?’ asked Ian, already guessing the answer. ‘Where are you going to search?’

‘In the tunnels.’

‘On one condition,’ said Seth, trying to impose a modicum of common sense.

Ben nodded, listening.

‘No heroics or any other such nonsense. The first person to notice something must stop, mark the place and return to look for the others.’

‘Sounds reasonable,’ Ian agreed.

Michael and Roshan also nodded.

‘Ben?’ Ian asked.

‘All right,’ Ben murmured.

‘We didn’t hear you,’ Seth insisted.

‘I promise,’ said Ben. ‘We’ll meet back here in half an hour.’

‘Let’s just pray you’re right,’ said Seth.

She woke into a nightmare. As she opened her eyes, Sheere vaguely remembered her vain attempts to free herself from the relentless grip of the fiery shape that had pulled her through a maze of narrow passageways. She also remembered Ben’s face as he lay writhing on the floor of a familiar-looking house, although she didn’t know how long ago that had been. It could have been an hour, a week or a month.

As she regained consciousness and felt the bruises the struggle had left on her body, Sheere realised that what she could see around her was not part of a dream. She was inside a long deep room, flanked on either side by rows of windows which let in enough murky light for her to be able to make out the wreckage of what seemed to be a narrow lounge. The broken skeletons of three glass lamps hung from the ceiling like withered branches. The remains of a cracked mirror shone in the half-light behind a counter that once might have been part of an elegant bar.

She tried to sit up. She worked out that the chains binding her wrists behind her back were fastened to a narrow pipe, and instinctively understood where she was: inside a train stuck in the underground galleries of Jheeter’s Gate.

Straining her eyes, she scanned the mass of fallen tables and burnt debris in search of a tool that might help her free herself from the chains. The interior of the carriage didn’t seem to contain anything but the useless remains of scorched objects that had miraculously survived. She struggled, but only managed to make the chains tighter.

Two metres in front of her a black shape that she had taken to be a pile of rubble suddenly turned towards her. A luminous smile on an invisible face lit up in the darkness. Sheere’s heart skipped a beat as the figure came within a breath of her face. Jawahal’s eyes shone like embers in the wind and Sheere detected the acrid penetrating stench of burnt petrol.