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.’
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 K Ray 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 afar, 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.