The Prince Of Mist

11

When the old lighthouse keeper finished his story, Max looked at his watch: it was a few minutes to five. Outside, light rain had started to fall across the bay and the wind from the sea banged insistently against the shutters.

‘There’s a storm brewing,’ said Roland, scanning the leaden horizon.

‘Max, we should get back home. Dad is going to call us soon,’ Alicia added.

Max agreed, reluctantly. He needed to consider everything the old man had told them, to try to fit the pieces of the jigsaw together. The effort of remembering his tale seemed to have plunged Victor Kray into a listless silence, and he stared blankly ahead from his armchair.

‘Max…’ Alicia hissed.

Max stood up and waved a silent goodbye to the old man, who responded with a tiny nod of his head. Roland observed the old lighthouse keeper for a few seconds more, then followed his friends outside.

‘What now?’ asked Max.

‘I don’t know what to think,’ Alicia declared.

‘Don’t you believe the story?’ asked Max.

‘It’s not an easy story to believe,’ Alicia replied. ‘There must be some other explanation.’

Max looked at Roland.

‘You don’t believe your grandfather either, Roland?’

‘Honestly, I don’t know what to believe… Anyway, let’s go before the storm reaches us. I’ll come with you.’

Alicia jumped onto Roland’s bicycle and they sped off on the return journey. Max turned for a moment to look at the cottage and wondererd whether years of solitude on the cliff top could have led Victor Kray to make up his grim story, which he clearly believed to be true. He let the cool drizzle refresh his face then set off downhill.

The tale of Cain and Victor Kray was still running through his mind when he reached the road that bordered the bay. Pedalling on through the rain, Max began to sort the facts into the only order that seemed plausible to him. Even supposing that everything the old man had told them was true – which was hard to accept – the situation was still unclear. A powerful magician who had been hibernating for many years appeared to be slowly coming back to life. If he followed this train of thought, the death of Jacob Fleischmann had been the first sign of Cain’s return. And yet there was something about the whole story, which the lighthouse keeper had concealed for so long, that just didn’t add up.

The first flashes of lightning stained the sky scarlet and the strong wind began to spit large drops of rain in Max’s face. He hurried on even though his legs had not yet recovered from that morning’s exercise. There were still a couple of kilometres to go before he reached the beach house.

Max knew he couldn’t simply accept the old man’s tale and assume that it explained everything. The ghostly presence of the statues in the walled garden and the events of those first few days in the town suggested that some sinister mechanism had been set in motion and nobody could predict what might happen next. With or without the help of Roland and Alicia, Max was determined to carry on his investigation until he got to the bottom of the mystery. He would begin with something that might hold the key to the whole conundrum: Jacob Fleischmann’s films. The more he went over the story in his mind, the more Max was convinced that Victor Kray hadn’t told them everything. Not by a long shot.

*

Alicia and Roland were waiting on the porch when Max, soaking wet, left his bicycle in the shed and ran over to take shelter from the downpour.

‘That’s the second time this week.’ Max laughed. ‘At this rate I’ll shrink. You’re not thinking of going back now, are you, Roland?’

‘’Fraid so,’ he replied, gazing at the thick curtain of water. ‘I don’t want to leave my grandfather alone.’

‘At least take a coat. You’ll catch your death out there,’ Alicia pointed out.

‘I don’t need one; I’m used to it. Besides, it’s only a summer storm. It’ll soon be over.’

‘The voice of experience,’ joked Max.

‘Well, yes…’

‘I think we shouldn’t talk about it any more until tomorrow,’ Alicia suggested after a pause. ‘A good night’s sleep will help us see things more clearly. That’s what my father always says.’

‘And who’s going to sleep tonight after a story like that?’ Max blurted out.

‘Your sister’s right,’ said Roland.

‘Creep,’ Max shot back.

‘Changing the subject, I was planning to go diving again tomorrow. I might get back the sextant someone dropped the other day…’ Roland stated.

Max was trying to think of a crushing reply – he thought it was a terrible idea to go diving around the Orpheus once more – but Alicia answered first.

‘We’ll be there,’ she said softly.

A sixth sense told Max that the plural she had used was just her way of being polite.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow then,’ Roland replied, his eyes never leaving Alicia’s face.

‘Hello, I’m here,’ said Max in a singsong voice.

‘See you tomorrow, Max.’ Roland walked off towards his bicycle.

They watched as Roland rode off into the storm, remaining on the porch until his figure had disappeared.

‘You should put on some dry clothes, Max. While you change I’ll make something for dinner,’ Alicia said.

‘You?’ Max retorted. ‘You can’t even cook.’

‘Who said anything about cooking? This isn’t a hotel. In you go,’ ordered Alicia, a wicked smile on her lips.

Max decided to follow her advice and went indoors. The absence of Irina and his parents increased the feeling the house gave him of being an intruder in someone else’s home. It was unusually quiet inside, as if something was missing. As he climbed the stairs towards his bedroom, he realised what it was. The cat. He hadn’t seen Irina’s odious pet for a couple of days now. All things considered, he decided it wasn’t a great loss and put the thought from his mind.

*

True to her word, Alicia didn’t waste a second longer in the kitchen than was strictly necessary. She prepared a few slices of bread with butter and jam, and poured two glasses of milk.

When Max glimpsed the tray with what was supposed to be his dinner, the expression on his face said it all.

‘Not one word,’ Alicia threatened. ‘I didn’t come into this world to spend my life cooking.’

‘You don’t say…’ replied Max, who wasn’t very hungry anyway.

They ate their meal quietly, waiting for the phone to ring with news from the hospital, but the call didn’t come.

‘Perhaps they rang earlier, while we were at the lighthouse,’ Max suggested.

‘Perhaps,’ said Alicia.

Max noticed the worried expression on his sister’s face.

‘If anything had happened, they would have called,’ he argued. ‘Everything will be fine.’

Alicia smiled meekly, confirming to Max his ability to comfort others with arguments that even he didn’t believe.

‘I suppose so,’ she agreed. ‘I’m going to bed. What about you?’

Max downed his milk and pointed towards the kitchen.

‘I’ll be up in a minute, but I think I’ll get something else to eat. I’m starving,’ he lied.

‘On you go. I’m done.’

Max watched his sister disappear upstairs. As soon as he heard Alicia close her bedroom door, Max put down his glass and went off to the shed in search of more films from Jacob Fleischmann’s private collection.

*

Max turned on the projector and the beam of light flooded the wall with the blurred image of what looked like a collection of symbols. Slowly, the picture came into focus and Max realised that what he’d thought were symbols were numbers placed in a circle and that he was looking at the face of a clock. The hands of the clock were still and the shadows they projected onto the face were clear and defined, from which Max inferred that the shot was filmed in full sunlight or at least under an intense source of light. The film continued to show the clock face until, slowly at first and then progressively gathering speed, the hands began to turn anticlockwise. The person operating the camera took a step back and it became clear that the clock was hanging from a chain. A further backward movement of a metre or so revealed that this chain was suspended from a white hand. The hand of a statue.

Max immediately recognised the walled garden that had appeared in the first of Jacob Fleischmann’s films they’d viewed a couple of days ago. As before, the position of the statues was different to how Max remembered it. Now the camera began to move through the figures again, with no cuts or pauses, just as it had in the first film. Every two metres or so the lens closed in on the face of one of the statues. One by one, Max examined the frozen expressions of the circus troupe. He pictured them fighting in vain to escape their horrific deaths in the pitch dark and icy waters of the Orpheus ’s hold.

Finally, almost in slow motion, the camera approached the figure marking the centre of the six-pointed star. The clown. Dr Cain. The Prince of Mist. At his feet Max noticed the motionless shape of a cat stretching a sharp claw in the air. Max, who didn’t recall having seen it when he visited the walled garden, would have bet his life that the uncanny likeness between this stone cat and the creature Irina had adopted at the station was no coincidence. As he stared at the images, with the rain pounding against the windowpanes as the storm moved inland, it was easy to believe the story the lighthouse keeper had told them that afternoon. The malevolent presence of the stone figures was enough to remove any doubt, however reasonable that doubt might have seemed in the light of day.

The camera now closed in on the clown’s face, pausing only half a metre away and remaining there for a few seconds. Max checked the reel: the film was coming to an end. Suddenly, a movement on the screen caught his attention. The stone face was moving, almost imperceptibly. Max stood up and walked over to the wall on which the film was being projected. The pupils of those stone eyes dilated and the lips arched slowly into a cruel smile, laying bare a row of long, sharp teeth, like the fangs of a wolf. Max felt his throat constrict.

An instant later the image disappeared, and Max heard the reel spinning as the film ended.

Max turned off the projector and took a deep breath. Now he believed everything Victor Kray had said, but this didn’t make him feel any better – quite the opposite. He went up to his room and closed the door behind him. Through the window, in the distance, he could just about make out the walled garden. Once again, the stone enclosure was submerged in a dense, impenetrable mist.

That night, however, the darkness didn’t seem to come from the forest, but from within himself. It was as if the mist were nothing other than the frozen breath of Dr Cain, waiting with a smile for the moment of his return.