Carlos Zafon - The Prince Of Mist

‘I’ve seen it myself,’ Max interrupted, saving the old man a description of the creature he had set eyes on only a few hours before. ‘Go on.’

‘I wondered why Fleischmann and his wife weren’t there, trying to save the boy, so I looked over at the house. A troupe of circus figures whose bodies seemed to be made of stone was holding them back on the porch.’

‘The statues from the walled garden,’ agreed Max.

The old man nodded.

‘All I could think of was that I had to save the child. The creature had taken him in its arms and was dragging him into the sea. I hurled myself at its tentacles and fell straight through them. The enormous watery shape faded back into the darkness. Jacob had gone under. I dived a few times until I found him and was able to rescue him and take him back to the surface. I hauled him onto the sand, far from the water’s edge, and tried to revive him. The statues had disappeared along with Cain. Fleischmann and Eva ran towards me to help the boy, but by the time they arrived we couldn’t feel his pulse. We took him into the house and tried everything, but it was no use: the boy was dead. Fleischmann was beside himself with grief and he ran outside, shouting at the storm and offering his own life to Cain in exchange for the life of his son. Minutes later, inexplicably, Jacob opened his eyes. He was in shock. He didn’t recognise us and couldn’t even remember his own name. Eva wrapped the boy in a blanket and took him upstairs, where she put him to bed. When, after a while, she came down again, she walked over to me and calmly told me that if the boy continued to live with them, his life would be in danger. She asked me to take care of him and bring him up as if he were my own son, the son who, if fate had taken a different course, might have been ours. Fleischmann didn’t dare enter the house. I accepted what Eva Gray was asking of me and saw in her eyes that she was renouncing the one thing that had given her life any meaning. The following day, I took the boy home with me. I never saw the Fleischmanns again.’

There was a long pause. The old man was probably trying to hold back his tears, but his face was hidden behind his pale, wrinkled hands.

‘A year later I found out that Fleischmann had passed away from a deadly infection he had caught after being bitten by a wild dog. Even now, I don’t know whether Eva Gray is still alive… We let the townspeople think Jacob had drowned…’

Max searched the old man’s face. He looked so distraught that Max realised he’d misjudged him.

‘You invented a story about Roland’s parents; you even gave him a new name…’ Kray nodded, admitting the greatest secret of his life to a thirteen-year-old boy he’d met only a couple of times.

‘So, Roland doesn’t know who he really is?’ asked Max.

The old man shook his head repeatedly and Max noticed there were tears of anger in his eyes – eyes that had been damaged by all those years of vigil from the top of the lighthouse.

‘Then who is buried in Jacob Fleischmann’s plot in the cemetery?’ Max asked.

‘Nobody,’ replied the old man. ‘Officially, no one ever built that tomb and there was no funeral. The mausoleum you saw the other day simply appeared in the local cemetery the week after the storm. The people in the town thought that Fleischmann had it built for his son.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Max replied. ‘If it wasn’t Fleischmann, then who put it there, and why?’

Victor Kray smiled bitterly.

‘Cain,’ he replied at last. ‘Cain put it there. He’s been reserving it for Jacob.’

‘My God,’ whispered Max, realising that perhaps he’d wasted precious time, forcing the old man to confess the entire story. ‘We must get Roland away from the beach hut immediately…’

*

Alicia woke up to the sound of waves crashing on the beach. Night had fallen and the rain was pounding on the roof of the hut as if the storm was trying to destroy it. She sat up in a daze and saw that Roland was still lying on the bed, whispering incoherently in his sleep. Max wasn’t there. She walked over to the door, opened it and took a quick look at the beach.

A ghostly mist was creeping up from the sea towards the hut, and Alicia could hear dozens of voices whispering from its midst. She slammed the door and leaned against it, determined not to let panic take over. Startled by the banging of the door, Roland opened his eyes and pulled himself up, not quite understanding how he’d got there.

‘What’s happening?’

Alicia opened her mouth to speak, but something stopped her. Roland watched in amazement as the thick mist filtered through every join in the hut and entwined itself around her. The girl screamed and the door on which she’d been leaning flew outside, torn off its hinges by an invisible force. Roland jumped out of bed and ran to help Alicia, who was being pulled away towards the sea, wrapped in a tentacle of eerie mist. A figure stood in his way. Roland recognised the watery spectre that had pulled him down to the ocean depths. The clown’s wolfish face lit up.

‘Hello, Jacob,’ the voice whispered behind gelatinous lips. ‘Now we’re going to have some fun.’

Roland punched the liquid form and it disintegrated in the air, water cascading down onto the floor. As he rushed outside, Roland was struck by the force of the storm. A swirling dome of dense purple clouds had formed above the bay, from which a blinding flash of lightning shot out towards one of the peaks of the cliff, exploding tons of rock, which rained down in a shower of fragments onto the beach.

Alicia screamed, struggling to free herself from the lethal embrace that imprisoned her, and Roland ran across the stones towards her. He tried to reach out and grab her hand but a large wave knocked him over. When he got up, the whole bay was shaking beneath his feet and Roland heard an enormous roar that seemed to be rising from the depths of the sea. The boy took a few steps back, struggling to keep his balance, and saw a gigantic luminous form emerging from the waters, sending waves several metres high in all directions. In the centre of the bay, the shape of a mast was beginning to appear. Slowly, before his incredulous eyes, the Orpheus was floating to the surface, enveloped in a supernatural aura.

Standing on the bridge, wrapped in his cloak, Cain pointed a silver wand to the heavens and another bolt of lightning flashed above him, illuminating the Orpheus. The magician’s cruel laughter echoed through the bay as the spectral tentacle dropped Alicia at his feet.

‘You’re the one I want, Jacob,’ Cain’s voice whispered in Roland’s mind. ‘If you don’t want her to die, come and get her…’

Max was cycling through the rain when a bright flash of lightning startled him. It revealed the sight of the Orpheus re-emerging from the depths, glowing with a hypnotic light that emanated from her metal frame. Cain’s old ship was once more sailing across the furious waters of the bay. Max pedalled on desperately, afraid that he wouldn’t reach the beach hut in time. He’d left the lighthouse keeper behind – the old man couldn’t possibly keep up with him. When Max reached the edge of the beach, he jumped off his bike and sprinted towards Roland’s hut. He discovered that the door had been torn clean off its hinges. On the shore, he caught sight of the paralysed outline of his friend, standing spellbound as he watched the ghostly ship plough through the waves. Max thanked the heavens and ran over to embrace him.

‘Are you all right?’ he shouted against the howl of wind.

Roland looked back at him, startled, like a wounded animal unable to escape its predator. Max saw in him the childish face that had held the camera in front of the mirror and he shuddered.