The Prince of Mist

by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

  Suddenly, Max felt certain that someone was looking at him. He spun round and saw a large cat staring at him through the bars of one of the station windows. The cat blinked and, with a prodigiously agile leap for an animal of that size, jumped through the window, padded over to Irina and rubbed its back against her pale ankles, meowing softly. Max’s sister knelt down to stroke it, then picked it up in her arms. The cat let itself be cuddled and gently licked the little girl’s fingers. Irina smiled, spellbound, and, still cradling the animal in her arms, walked over to where her family were waiting.

  ‘We’ve only just got here and already you’ve picked up some disgusting beast. Goodness knows what it’s infested with,’ Alicia snapped.

  ‘It’s not a disgusting beast. It’s a cat and it’s been abandoned,’ replied Irina. ‘Mum?’

  ‘Irina, we haven’t even got to the house yet.’

  Irina pulled a face to which the cat contributed a sweet, seductive meow.

  ‘It can stay in the garden. Please …’

  Alicia rolled her eyes. Max watched his older sister. She had not opened her mouth since they had left the city; her expression was impenetrable and her eyes seemed to be lost in the distance. If anyone in the family was not overjoyed by the promise of a new life it was Alicia. Max was tempted to make a joke about ‘Her Highness the Ice Princess’, but decided not to. Something told him that his sister had left behind much more in the city than he could possibly imagine.

  ‘It’s fat and it’s ugly,’ Alicia added. ‘Are you really going to let her get her own way again?’

  Irina threw a steely glare at her older sister, an open declaration of war unless the latter kept her mouth shut. Alicia held her gaze for a few moments and then turned round, sighing with frustration, and walked over to where the porters were loading the luggage into a van. On the way she passed her father, who noticed her red face.

  ‘Quarrelling already?’ asked Maximilian Carver. ‘What’s the matter?’

  Irina presented the cat to her father. The feline, to its credit, purred adoringly. Never one to falter in the face of authority, Irina proceeded to make her case with a determination she had inherited from her father.

  ‘It’s all alone in the world. Someone’s abandoned it. We can’t leave it here. Can we take it with us? It can live in the garden and I’ll look after it. I promise,’ Irina said, her words spilling over each other.

  The watchmaker looked in astonishment at the cat, then at his wife.

  ‘You always said caring for an animal gives a person a sense of responsibility,’ Irina added.

  ‘Did I ever say that?’

  ‘Many times. Those exact words.’

  Her father sighed.

  ‘I don’t know what your mother will say …’

  ‘And what do you say, Maximilian Carver?’ asked Mrs Carver, with a grin that showed her amusement at what had now become her husband’s dilemma.

  ‘Well … We’d have to take it to the vet and …’

  ‘Pleeease …’ whimpered Irina.

  The watchmaker and his wife exchanged a look.

  ‘Why not?’ concluded Maximilian Carver, who could not bear the thought of starting the summer with a family feud. ‘But you’ll have to look after it. Promise?’

  Irina’s face lit up. The cat’s pupils narrowed to a slit until they looked like black needles against the luminous gold of its eyes.

  ‘Come on! Hurry up!’ said the watchmaker. ‘The luggage has been loaded.’

  Holding the cat in her arms, Irina ran towards the vans. The creature, its head leaning on the girl’s shoulder, kept its eyes nailed on Max defiantly.

  ‘It was waiting for us,’ he muttered to himself.

  ‘Don’t just stand there in a daze, Max. Move it,’ his father insisted as he walked over to the vans, hand in hand with his wife.

  Max followed, reluctantly.

  Just then, something made him turn around and look again at the blackened face of the ancient station clock. He examined it carefully. Something about it didn’t add up. Max remembered perfectly well that when they reached the station the clock had said half past midday. Now, the hands pointed at ten minutes to twelve.

  ‘Max!’ his father’s voice called to him from the van. ‘We’re leaving!’

  ‘Coming,’ Max said to himself, his eyes still riveted to the clock.

  The clock was not slow; it worked perfectly but with one peculiarity: it went backwards.

  2

  THE CARVERS’ NEW HOME STOOD AT THE END of a long beach that stretched along the sea like a blanket of white sand, dotted here and there with small islands of wild grass that rippled in the wind. The town itself, from which the beach extended, was made up of ornate Victorian houses arranged in a long, winding parade of spiky gables and colourful sash windows. Most were painted a soft pastel colour, their gardens and white fences all neatly aligned, reinforcing Max’s first impression that the place looked like a collection of doll’s houses. On their way, they drove through the town, along the main street and past the town square, while Maximilian Carver filled them in about the enchantments of their new home with the enthusiasm of a tour guide.

  It seemed a peaceful place, wrapped in that same luminosity that had captivated Max when he saw the ocean for the first time. Judging from what he could see, most of the town’s inhabitants favoured bicycles to get about, or simply walked. The streets were spotlessly clean and the only sound, except for the occasional rumble of a motor, was the soft pounding of the sea on the beach. As they passed through, Max noticed his family’s different reactions to what was going to be the new landscape of their lives. Irina and her feline ally gazed at the neat rows of streets and houses with a calm curiosity, as if they already felt at home. Alicia, predictably, seemed a thousand miles away, lost in her thoughts, confirming Max’s conviction that he knew little or nothing about his older sister. Teenage girls, thought Max, were a mystery of evolution not even Copernicus himself could fathom.

  His mother regarded the town with resignation, maintaining a forced smile to disguise the anxiety that, for some reason Max could not decipher, had taken hold of her. Finally, Maximilian Carver observed his new habitat triumphantly, glancing at each member of his clan, who in turn responded with an approving smile – anything else might have broken the watchmaker’s heart, so convinced was he that he had led his family to a new paradise.

  As Max surveyed the tranquil streets bathed in warm sunlight, the spectre of war seemed very far away, almost unreal. Perhaps, he thought, his father’s decision to move to this place was an inspired one. By the time the vans drove up the road leading to their beach house, Max had already forgotten about the station clock and the jitters that Irina’s new friend had produced in him. Scanning the horizon, he thought he could distinguish the black silhouette of a ship sailing like a mirage through the haze that rose from the ocean’s surface. Seconds later, it had disappeared.

  *

  Their new home was spread over two floors, stood some fifty metres from the edge of the beach, and was surrounded by a garden with a white fence that was badly in need of a fresh coat of paint. The house itself was built of wood and, with the exception of its dark roof, was also painted white and seemed to be in a reasonably good state, considering its proximity to the sea and the wear and tear the damp, salty wind must have inflicted on it.

  As they drove towards the house, Maximilian Carver told his family that it had been built in 1924 for a prestigious surgeon from the city, Dr Richard Fleischmann, and his wife, Eva, to serve as their seaside home during the summer months. At the time, the whole project had seemed a bit strange to the local population. The Fleischmanns were a solitary couple with no children, and mostly kept to themselves. Despite this, and because nothing much ever happened in the town, the local gossips latched onto this news and quickly reached a consensus that the couple were probably trying to leave something behind. Bad memories, most likely. The kind that follow you no matter how far you go. On his
first visit, Dr Fleischmann had made it clear that the builders and all the building materials were to come directly from the city. Such a whim practically trebled the cost of the house, but the surgeon seemed to have plenty of money to pay for such expense. City folk, the locals thought; they think money can buy everything.

  Throughout the winter of 1923 the locals eyed the endless coming and going of workers and trucks with mild suspicion, while day by day the skeleton of the house at the end of the beach slowly began to rise. Finally, the following spring, the decorators gave the house one last lick of paint and a few weeks later the couple moved in for the summer. Whatever bad memories had been trailing them, the house by the beach seemed to be the lucky charm that changed the Fleischmanns’ fortunes. The surgeon’s wife, who, again according to confidential information shared only by the local gossips, had been unable to conceive a child as a result of an accident she’d suffered some years earlier, became pregnant that first year. And on 23 June 1925, assisted by her husband, she gave birth to a son, whom they named Jacob.

  The local legend was that little Jacob was a blessing from heaven and his arrival transformed the bitter, solitary nature of the Fleischmanns. Soon the doctor and his wife began to make friends among the townspeople and they became popular with their neighbours during the happy years they spent in their house by the sea. That is, until the tragedy of 1932. In June of that year, early one morning, Jacob drowned while playing on the beach near his home.

  All the joy the couple had discovered through their beloved son was gone forever. During the winter of 1932, Fleischmann’s health deteriorated and soon his doctors knew he would not live to see the next summer. A year later, the widow’s lawyers put the house up for sale. It remained empty and without a buyer, forgotten at the end of the beach.

  This was how, quite by chance, Maximilian Carver had come to hear of its existence. The watchmaker was on his way back from a trip to buy equipment and tools for his workshop when he spent the night in the town. While he was dining in the small local hotel he struck up a conversation with the owner and told him that he’d always longed to live in a small town like that one. The hotel owner told him about the house and Maximilian decided to delay his return so that he could have a look at it the following day. On the way back to the city, he chewed over figures and the possibility of opening a watchmaker’s shop in the town. It took him eight months to announce the move to his family, but at the bottom of his heart he had made up his mind the moment he saw the house by the beach.

  *

  In time, the memories of that first day would come back to Max as a peculiar collection of random images. To begin with, as soon as the vans stopped outside the house and Robin and Philip had started to unload the luggage, Mr Carver managed to trip over an old bucket, propelling himself at dizzying speed onto the white fence and knocking down at least four metres of it.

  ‘Are you all right, dear?’ asked his wife.

  ‘Never better,’ he replied, his right foot still trapped in the bucket. ‘It’s a sign of good luck.’

  ‘I knew he was going to say that,’ muttered Alicia.

  Mrs Carver shot her a warning look.

  The two porters carried the luggage as far as the front porch and, apparently considering their mission accomplished, vanished in an instant, leaving the family to do the honours of dragging the trunks up the stairs.

  ‘Another good omen,’ Alicia commented dryly.

  When Maximilian Carver solemnly opened the front door, a musty smell wafted out through the opening like a ghost that had been trapped between the walls for many years. Inside, a thin haze of dust hovered in the faint light that filtered through the blinds in slanting razors of gold.

  ‘My God,’ Max’s mother muttered to herself, as she estimated the tons of dust that would have to be removed.

  ‘Isn’t it marvellous?’ Maximilian Carver said hurriedly. ‘I told you so.’

  Max exchanged a look with his sister Alicia, while Irina gazed open-mouthed at the interior of the house. Before anyone could utter another word, Irina’s cat jumped out of her arms and charged inside with a loud meow.

  ‘At least somebody likes it,’ Max heard Alicia grumble.

  A second later, following the cat’s example, Maximilian Carver stepped into the family’s new home.

  The first thing Mrs Carver instructed them to do was open all the doors and windows to air the house. When that had been done, the whole family spent a few hours making their new home habitable. With the precision of a specialised task force, each member attacked a specific job. Alicia was in charge of bedrooms and beds. Irina, duster in hand, knocked down castles of dust, and Max, following her trail, was in charge of sweeping them up. Their mother busied herself distributing the suitcases and made a mental note of all the jobs that would have to be done. Mr Carver devoted all his efforts to ensuring that water pipes, electricity and other mechanical devices were back in working order after years of neglect – which did not turn out to be an easy undertaking.

  At last, the whole family gathered on the porch and sat on the steps of their new home for a well-deserved rest, gazing at the silver hue that was settling over the sea as the afternoon came to an end.

  ‘That’s enough for one day,’ Maximilian Carver announced. He was covered in soot and other mysterious residues.

  ‘It will take us a couple of weeks to get the house in shape,’ Mrs Carver added. ‘At the very least.’

  ‘There are spiders upstairs,’ Alicia said. ‘They’re enormous.’

  ‘Spiders? Wow!’ cried Irina. ‘What did they look like?’

  ‘They looked just like you,’ replied Alicia.

  ‘Let’s have a peaceful evening, please,’ their mother interrupted them, rubbing the bridge of her nose. ‘Don’t worry about the spiders, Alicia. Max will kill them.’

  ‘There’s no need to kill them; they can be collected and put outside in the garden,’ said the watchmaker. ‘They’re nature’s creatures and deserve their day in the sun like the rest of us.’

  ‘I always end up with the heroic missions,’ murmured Max. ‘Can the extermination, I mean, relocation, wait until tomorrow?’

  ‘Alicia?’ his mother pleaded.

  ‘I’m not sleeping in a room full of spiders and goodness knows what else,’ Alicia declared. ‘No matter how deserving they are.’

  ‘Oh, you’re so dainty,’ said Irina.

  ‘And you’re a monster,’ replied Alicia.

  ‘Max, before this escalates into a war, will you get rid of the damned spiders,’ said Maximilian Carver in a tired voice.

  ‘So, shall I kill them, or just threaten them a little? I could twist their legs and hand them an eviction notice …’ suggested Max.

  ‘Don’t start,’ his mother cut in.

  ‘Do as your mother says,’ his father warned.

  Max stood and gave a military salute, then went inside the house, ready to wipe out its previous lodgers by all means possible. As he climbed the stairs to the upper floor, he saw the glittering eyes of Irina’s cat watching him steadily from the top step. It seemed to be guarding the upper floor like a sentinel. He stopped for a second, then resumed his climb. He was not going to be afraid of a stray cat; he would not give it the satisfaction. As soon as Max went into one of the bedrooms, the cat followed him.

  *

  The wooden flooring creaked softly under his feet. Max began his spider hunt in the rooms facing south-west. From the windows he could see the beach and the sun descending towards the horizon. He examined the floor carefully in search of small, hairy, fast-moving creatures. After the cleaning session, the room was reasonably dirt free and it took Max only a couple of minutes to locate the first member of the arachnid family – a fat spider marching from one of the corners in a straight line towards him, as if it were a thuggish ambassador sent on behalf of its species to negotiate a truce. The creature must have been about three centimetres long and had eight black, bristly legs, with a golden mark on its body.
No wonder Alicia had panicked. There was no way in the world he was going to pick up that thing and provide it safe passage to the garden. So much for his father’s humanistic view of mother nature.

  Max reached out his hand to grab a broom that was leaning against the wall and got ready to catapult the arachnid into kingdom come. This is ridiculous, he thought as he brandished the broom like a deadly weapon. He was steadying himself for the mortal blow when, all of a sudden, Irina’s cat pounced on the bug, opened its jaws and devoured it, chewing vigorously on the spider’s body as Max let go of the broom and looked at the cat in astonishment. It threw him a malicious look.

  ‘That’s some kitten,’ he whispered.

  The animal swallowed the spider and left the room, presumably in search of its next course. Max walked over to the window. His family were still sitting on the porch. Alicia gave him an enquiring look.

  ‘I wouldn’t worry, if I were you, Alicia. I don’t think you’ll be seeing any more spiders.’

  ‘Just make sure,’ Maximilian Carver insisted.

  Max nodded and went to the rooms facing north-east at the back of the house.

  He heard the cat prowling nearby and assumed another spider had fallen prey to its lethal claws. The rooms here were smaller than those at the front. Max looked at the view from one of the windows and saw a small backyard with a large garden shed that could be used for storing furniture or as a garage. In the middle of the yard stood a mighty tree, its top reaching high above the attic windows. Max imagined it must be at least two hundred years old.

  Beyond the yard, behind the fence that surrounded the house, was a field of wild grass, and about a hundred metres further on was what looked like a small enclosure bordered by a wall of pale stone. The vegetation had invaded the grounds, transforming the enclosure into a jungle from which emerged what seemed to be figures: human figures. In the twilight, Max had to strain his eyes to make out what he was seeing. It appeared to be an abandoned garden. A garden of statues. Max was hypnotised by the strange vision of the figures trapped in the undergrowth, locked inside a walled garden that reminded him of a village graveyard. A gate of metal bars capped with spearheads and locked with chains secured the entrance. Above the spearheads Max could distinguish a shield with a six-pointed star. In the distance, beyond the enclosure, was a thick forest that seemed to extend for miles.