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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.’
Alicia hugged him tightly. Max stood still, his arms hanging by his sides, not knowing whether this was an outpouring of sisterly love or a reaction to the terror she had experienced earlier, when they were trying to revive Roland.
‘I love you, Max,’ Alicia whispered in his ear. ‘Do you hear me?’
Max didn’t reply. He was perplexed. Alicia released him from her embrace and turned towards the door of the hut, with her back to him. Max could see that she was crying.
‘Don’t ever forget it, little brother,’ she whispered. ‘Now get some sleep. I’ll do the same.’
‘If I fall asleep now, I’ll never get up again,’ Max sighed.
Five minutes later, the friends were sound asleep in the beach hut and nothing in the whole world could have woken them.
14
THE SUN WAS SETTING WHEN VICTOR KRAY stopped about a hundred metres from the beach house where the Carvers had taken up residence. This was the same house where the only woman he had ever loved, Eva Gray, had given birth to Jacob Fleischmann. To see the white facade again opened old wounds, just when he had hoped they had healed forever. All the lights were out and the place looked deserted. Victor Kray assumed that the youngsters must still be in the town with Roland.
The lighthouse keeper walked straight on, through the white fence that surrounded the beach house. The same door and the same windows he remembered shone in the last rays of sun. He crossed the garden towards the backyard and from there he walked out into the field behind the house. The forest rose in the distance and close to the forest’s edge stood the walled garden. He had not been back there for a long time and he stopped to observe it from af
ar, dreading what was hidden behind its walls. Through the dark bars of the gate a thick mist was spreading towards him.
Victor Kray had never felt so old, or so frightened. The fear that gnawed at his soul was the same fear he’d experienced decades ago in the narrow alleys of that industrial suburb where he had heard the voice of the Prince of Mist for the first time. Now, in the twilight of his life, that circle seemed to be closing and, with each new twist of the game, the old man sensed that there were no longer any aces up his sleeve.
The lighthouse keeper now advanced steadily towards the enclosure and soon the mist reached up to his waist. He thrust a trembling hand into his pocket and pulled out his old revolver, carefully loaded before he left the cottage, and a powerful torch. Weapon in hand he entered the walled garden, then turned on the torch. Its beam revealed an extraordinary scene. Victor Kray lowered the gun and rubbed his eyes, thinking he must be imagining things. Something had gone wrong – at least, this wasn’t what he’d expected to find. He sliced the beam through the mist once more. It wasn’t an illusion: the garden of statues was empty.
Disconcerted, he drew closer to examine the vacant pedestals. As he tried to put his thoughts in some sort of order, he heard the faraway rumble of a new storm approaching and lifted his head to scan the horizon. A blanket of dark murky clouds spilled over the sea like an inky stain. A flash of lightning split the skies and the echo of thunder rumbled towards the coast, a drum roll announcing the onset of battle. Victor Kray listened to the insistent growl of the storm that was gathering at sea and, remembering that he had gazed at that same vision on board the Orpheus twenty-five years before, he finally understood what was about to happen.
*
Max woke up drenched in a cold sweat and it took him a few moments to realise where he was. He could feel his heart pounding. A few feet away he recognised a familiar face – Alicia, asleep next to Roland – and then he remembered that he was in the beach hut. He could have sworn he’d only slept for an instant, although in fact he’d been asleep for almost an hour. He got up quietly and went outside for some fresh air. Harrowing images of a nightmare in which he and Roland were trapped inside the Orpheus began to recede from his mind.
The beach was deserted and the high tide had carried Roland’s rowing boat out to sea. Soon the currents would drag the small vessel even further away and it would be forever lost in the immensity of the ocean. Max walked down to the shore and dampened his face and shoulders with cool water. Then he went over to a small cove and sat on the rocks, dipping his feet in the water, hoping to recover the calm sleep had not provided him.
Max knew there had to be some hidden logic behind the events of the last few days. He could sense everything was part of a complex mechanism that was slowly but surely coming together, and at its centre was the tragedy of Jacob Fleischmann. It was all connected – everything, from the mysterious visits to the walled garden he’d seen in the old films to the indescribable creature that had almost taken their lives that very afternoon.
Bearing in mind what had happened that day, Max realised they couldn’t allow themselves the luxury of waiting for the next meeting with Dr Cain; they had to anticipate his movements and try to foresee what his next step would be. For Max there was only one way of finding out, and that was to follow the trail Jacob Fleischmann had left years ago in his films.
Without bothering to wake Alicia and Roland, Max got on his bike and rode off towards the beach house. In the distance, above the line of the horizon, a dark point appeared from nowhere and began to expand like a cloud of lethal gas.
*
Back at home, Max threaded a film onto the reel of the projector. The temperature had plummeted while he was cycling over, and now it was getting even colder. The first echoes of the storm could be heard between occasional gusts of wind that banged against the shutters. Before watching the film, Max hurried upstairs and threw on some warm clothes. The old wooden structure of the house creaked beneath his feet, assailed by the wind. As he was changing his clothes, Max looked out of his bedroom window and saw the approaching storm covering the sky with a cloak of darkness, bringing the onslaught of night a couple of hours early. He secured the window lock and went downstairs to turn on the projector.
Once more, the images projected on the wall stirred into life. This time the camera showed a familiar scene: the corridors of the house by the beach. Max recognised the inside of the very room he was sitting in. The decor and the furniture were different and the house looked quite opulent as the camera panned out, displaying the walls and windows. It was as if a trapdoor had been opened into the past, allowing Max to visit the house more than ten years before.
