Carlos Zafon - The Prince Of Mist

The water creature twisted round and Roland was confronted with the ghostly face he had seen in his dreams, the face of the clown. The clown opened up two enormous jaws filled with long jagged teeth as sharp as butcher’s knives, and its eyes grew in size until they were as big as saucers. Roland was running out of air. The creature, whatever it was, could change into whatever it wanted and its intentions seemed clear: it wanted to drag Roland inside the sunken ship. As Roland wondered how long he’d be able to hold his breath before giving up and breathing in water, he realised that the light around him had disappeared. He was inside the bowels of the Orpheus, surrounded by total darkness.

*

Max swallowed hard as he put on his mask and prepared to jump into the water in search of his friend. He was aware that a rescue attempt was absurd. For a start he barely knew how to dive, and even supposing he did, he couldn’t begin to imagine what would happen if, once he was underwater, the strange thing that had trapped Roland came after him. And yet he couldn’t just sit in the boat and let his friend die. As he put on his flippers, he thought of a thousand reasonable explanations for what had just happened. Roland had suffered a cramp, or he’d had some sort of fit because of a change in the water temperature… any theory was better than having to accept that what he’d seen dragging Roland to the depths was real.

Before jumping in, he exchanged one last glance with Alicia. His sister was clearly caught between her wish to save Roland and panic at the thought that her brother might share the same fate. Before common sense could dissuade them both, Max jumped into the waters of the bay above the hull of the Orpheus. He kicked his flippers and swam in the direction of the ship’s prow, the place where he’d last seen Roland before he vanished. Through the cracks in the hull below, Max thought he could see flashing lights moving towards a space that gave off a faint glow: it was the breach opened by the rocks in the bilge twenty-five years before. He swam towards it. It looked as if someone had lit hundreds of candles inside the wreck.

When he was vertically above the entrance to the vessel, he rose to the surface to take in more air, then dived down until he reached the hull. Descending over ten metres turned out to be much more difficult than he’d imagined. Halfway down he began to feel a painful pressure in his ears and he thought his eardrums were going to explode. When he reached the cold current all the muscles in his body tensed like steel cables and he had to kick his flippers with all his might so that the current didn’t drag him away like a leaf in the wind. Max held firmly on to the edge of the hull and struggled to compose himself. His lungs were on fire and he knew he was only one step away from panicking. He looked up at the surface and saw the rowing boat’s tiny form; it seemed to be miles away. He realised that if he didn’t act immediately, diving all the way down would have served no purpose.

The glow seemed to be coming from inside the hold. As Max swam towards it the ghostly landscape of the sunken ship came into view. It looked like a macabre underwater catacomb. He entered a corridor in which shreds of tattered canvas floated by like jellyfish. At the end of the corridor was a half-open hatch which seemed to be the source of the light. Ignoring the repulsive caresses of the rotten canvas on his skin, he grabbed hold of the handle and pulled as hard as he could.

The hatch led to one of the main compartments in the hold. In the middle of it Roland was struggling to escape from the water creature, which had now adopted the shape of the clown. The light Max had seen blazed from its eyes, cruel and disproportionately large for its face. As Max burst into the hold the creature raised its head and looked at him. Max felt an instinctive urge to flee, but the sight of his trapped friend forced him to remain, confronting the wild and angry eyes. The creature’s face changed and Max recognised the stone angel from the cemetery.

Roland’s body stopped writhing and went limp, and the creature let go of him. Without waiting for the creature to react, Max swam over to his friend and grabbed him by the arm. Roland was unconscious. If Max didn’t get him up to the surface in the next few seconds, he would die. Max pulled him towards the hatch, but at that moment the creature with the face of an angel and the body of a clown threw itself on Max, displaying two sharp claws and a row of fangs. Max pushed his fist through the creature’s face. It was only water but was so cold that mere contact with it produced a searing pain. Once more, Dr Cain was demonstrating his box of tricks.

Max pulled his arm away. The apparition vanished and with it the light. Using what little air he had left, Max dragged Roland down the corridor in the hold towards the outside of the hull. His lungs felt as if they were about to burst, and unable to hold his breath another second, he exhaled all the air he had kept in. Then, grabbing hold of Roland’s unconscious body, he flapped his way towards the surface, thinking he would lose consciousness himself at any moment.

The agony of those last few metres seemed endless. When at last he reached the surface, he felt as if he’d been reborn. Alicia threw herself into the water and swam towards them. Max took a few deep breaths, fighting against the sharp pain in his chest. It wasn’t easy to get Roland into the rowing boat and Max noticed that as Alicia struggled to lift the dead weight of his body, she scratched her arms on the splintered wood.

Once they had managed to haul him into the boat, they placed him on his side and pressed on his back repeatedly, forcing his lungs to expel the water he had inhaled. Her arms bleeding, Alicia seized Roland and tried to force him to breathe. Finally, she took a deep breath and, pinching the boy’s nostrils, blew frantically into Roland’s mouth. She had to do this five times before Roland’s body reacted with a violent jerk and he began to spit out seawater and go into spasms.

At last Roland opened his eyes and his skin began, very slowly, to regain its usual colour. Max helped him to sit up and gradually he began to breathe normally.

‘I’m all right,’ Roland stammered, raising a hand to try to reassure his friends.

Alicia burst into tears, sobbing as Max had never seen her do before. He waited a couple of minutes until Roland was able to sit up on his own, then took the oars and started rowing towards the shore. Roland was looking at him without saying a word. He had saved his life. Max knew that the look in those eyes, full of despair and gratitude, would remain with him forever.

*

They placed Roland on his bed in the beach hut and covered him with blankets. None of them felt like talking about what had happened, at least not for the moment. It was the first time the threat posed by the Prince of Mist had become so painfully real and it was difficult to find words with which to express the terror and anxiety they were all feeling. Common sense seemed to dictate that the best thing to do was attend to their immediate needs and that is what they did. Roland kept a basic first-aid kit in the hut, and Max used it to clean Alicia’s wounds. Roland fell asleep a few minutes later. Alicia watched over him, her face distraught.

‘He’s going to be all right. He’s exhausted, that’s all,’ said Max.

‘What about you? You saved his life,’ said Alicia, her voice unable to hide her concern. ‘No one could have done what you did, Max.’

‘He would have done the same thing for me,’ said Max, who wasn’t ready to talk about it.

‘How are you feeling?’

‘The truth?’ Max asked.

Alicia nodded.

‘I think I’m going to throw up,’ Max said, smiling. ‘I haven’t felt this bad in all my life.’