Through Dead Eyes

by Chris Priestley

  Saskia ordered a host of small dishes from the menu and when the food arrived Alex liked most of what he tried, though he found it hard to predict what flavour anything was going to have. Many of the flavours were ones he had never experienced before.

  Alex hadn’t realised how tired he had become after the flight and the meal helped to revive him. He wondered if tiredness was the source of his earlier jitters. It seemed a comforting explanation.

  ‘You seem to like the food, Alex,’ said Saskia with a wide smile.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Alex. ‘It’s delicious. Weird though.’

  Saskia laughed. Alex smiled back. She had a nice laugh.

  ‘So your teachers don’t mind you not being at school?’ asked Saskia, as the waitress poured her another glass of wine. ‘They don’t mind you missing lessons while you’re here?’

  Alex and his father exchanged a quick glance and Alex could see from the panic in his face that he thought Alex was going to tell them about the business with Molly Ryman, but why would he do that?

  ‘The head teacher gave him a special leave of absence,’ said his father, ‘provided that he writes an essay about his visit.’

  Saskia nodded and smiled.

  ‘What are you going to write about?’ asked Saskia.

  Alex shifted in his chair. He had given this no thought whatsoever.

  ‘Mother!’ said Angelien. ‘How can he know what he’s going to write about? He’s only been here a day.’

  ‘I just thought –’ began Saskia.

  ‘So, you’ve been studying the townhouses on our hotel’s stretch of the canal,’ said Alex’s father, turning to Angelien. ‘Have you learned anything about our hotel?’

  Alex noticed the look on Saskia’s face as she was interrupted. He’d seen that look on his mother’s face many times. His father just didn’t seem to listen sometimes.

  ‘A little, yes,’ said Angelien. ‘A lot actually. I may be using it as the centre of my study.’

  ‘Really?’ said Saskia. ‘You never told me that.’

  ‘You never asked,’ said Angelien with a shrug.

  ‘It was a merchant’s house in the 1650s,’ continued Angelien. ‘All the houses along there were merchant’s houses. They are very typical actually.’

  ‘Do you know who owned that particular one?’ asked Alex’s father. ‘The hotel?’

  ‘It was a man called Johannes Van Kampen. He was rich, staunchly Protestant. He made his money trading with the Dutch East India Company – with Japan mainly.’

  Alex’s father nodded and looked at Alex.

  ‘It’s amazing to think that old Van Kampen and his family were wandering around in our bedrooms three hundred and fifty years ago, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Alex.

  And it was amazing, he thought. The house had stood there for centuries and who knew how many people had lived and died in it. Somehow it made the hotel seem different. That dimly lit street and those dark houses with their big blank windows. There were new buildings among the old in that part of Amsterdam, but somehow the old buildings won through, despite the cars and the trams. The past seemed closer there.

  ‘It’s good that you made up with Angelien,’ said Alex’s father as he stood in the doorway that connected their two rooms.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Alex matter-of-factly.

  ‘You’ll be OK with her again tomorrow?’ said his father with a raised eyebrow.

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Alex with a yawn. ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘Less drama this time.’

  Alex nodded.

  ‘Well OK then. Goodnight, champ.’

  ‘Night, Dad,’ said Alex.

  Alex’s father switched off the main light and went through to his room, closing the door behind him. Alex switched off the bedside light, yawned and pulled the duvet up around him, sinking into the pillows, and almost immediately slid into a deep sleep, filled with tangled dreams, where Amsterdam and England were one impossible place filled with a confusion of faces old and new.

  But he hadn’t been asleep long when he was dragged back from these dreaming depths and into a wary consciousness. He had the strongest sensation that something was in the room with him. He sat up, peering suspiciously into the gloom around him. There was nothing there, he was sure. That is, he was sure and yet not sure.

  He turned on the bedside light. Alex was startled to see that the mask he had bought was now on top of the chest of drawers. He hadn’t noticed it there before he got into bed. He looked around the room for any other sign of disturbance but everything was just as he had left it: everything apart from the mask.

  Someone must have been in his room. Maybe the maid had been going through his stuff? But why? And in any case the maids worked in the morning, not the evening.

  Alex heard his father walking round the room next door. Had his father come in and looked through the drawers?

  Alex looked towards the connecting door, scowling. What was his father doing going through his stuff? He looked down at the mask, opened the drawer and slid it inside once again.

  Alex got back into bed and turned out the light. He shivered, pulling the duvet tight about his face and body so that he was wrapped up like a mummy. Still he felt cold, as though the temperature had dropped ten degrees. He wondered if the air conditioning was to blame but didn’t want to get out of bed to check.

  Alex closed his eyes. He was tired, so very tired. If he could just distract himself from whatever was unnerving him for long enough, he knew that he would fall asleep.

  And Angelien’s face appeared in his mind’s eye, like sunshine in a dark well. There was something about her that warmed him, relaxed him. He relived their walk together, a walk that now seemed bathed in sunshine rather than threatened by rain. In no time at all he was drifting away with her down the canal in a white boat and off into a peaceful sleep.

  Chapter 6

  A barge sounded its horn on the canal outside and Alex woke suddenly, fully alert, with a disturbing sensation that something had woken him.

  A milky morning light was seeping lazily through the floral curtains and making the room glow.

  The barge sounded its horn again and Alex realised that this must be what had woken him.

  He pushed the duvet away and got out of bed. He opened a drawer in the chest and there was the mask staring back at him with its dark, empty eyes. He took out a pair of socks and hurriedly closed the drawer, but seeing the mask reminded him of his suspicion that his father had been going through his things.

  ‘Dad,’ he said, when his silence over breakfast had been ignored. ‘Have you been in my room?’

  ‘Course I have,’ he said, slurping his coffee. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘When I was asleep. Have you been going through my stuff?’

  ‘Going through your stuff?’ repeated his dad, putting down the newspaper he was reading. ‘You haven’t got much stuff to go through, have you?’

  ‘I’m serious, Dad,’ said Alex, finding his father’s joking annoying. ‘There’s no point in us having our own rooms if you –’

  His father reached out and put his hand on Alex’s sleeve.

  ‘I promise you,’ he said. ‘I have not been going through your things. OK?’

  Alex scanned his father’s face for any sign that this was not the complete truth, and found none. His father was a terrible liar anyway. But if he hadn’t been in his room, then who had?

  After breakfast they found Saskia and Angelien once more waiting for them in the lobby downstairs. As soon as Saskia and Alex’s father had gone, Angelien grabbed Alex by the arm.

  ‘Before we go, can I take another look at the mask, Alex?’ she said.

  ‘I . . . suppose so,’ said Alex, unsure of whether he ought to be agreeing to this. He could see his father and Saskia through the hotel window, crossing the canal. ‘It’s in my room.’

  ‘OK,’ said Angelien, patting him on the back. ‘Let’s go.’

  After a moment’s hesita
tion, Alex went back to reception and asked for his key and then took Angelien to the lifts, ignoring the arched eyebrows of the receptionist. While they were in the lift, Angelien noticed Alex’s key and the brooch attached to it.

  ‘The manager’s wife found loads of different things to use as key rings,’ said Alex.

  ‘It’s old,’ said Angelien. ‘It’s a bit battered about but it was probably a pretty brooch once.’

  Alex unlocked the door and showed Angelien in. She whistled appreciatively as they stepped inside.

  ‘Hey – nice room,’ she said, walking across to the window. ‘And nice view too.’

  As Alex let Angelien into his room, he was suddenly aware of how untidy it was and tried hurriedly to kick his clothes into a neat pile on the floor.

  ‘Don’t bother,’ said Angelien, turning away from the window. ‘You should see my room. I am the messiest person alive, believe me.’

  Angelien sat down on the bed and tested the springs. Then she flopped backwards, looking up at the ceiling. Her jacket fell open to reveal a white T-shirt with a red-and-blue target design across the chest. A sliver of pale flesh showed between the T-shirt and her faded blue jeans. Alex stood staring at her until she sat up, grinning at him.

  ‘Well?’ she said.

  ‘W . . . What?’ said Alex.

  ‘The mask? Remember?’

  ‘Yeah . . . right,’ mumbled Alex, turning and banging his arm against the chest of drawers and wincing.

  Alex opened the drawer, picked up the mask and handed it to her. She held it in her left hand, running the fingers of her right hand lightly over its cracked surface. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly with a puzzled look on her face.

  ‘What is it?’ said Alex.

  ‘It will sound crazy enough,’ said Angelien, ‘so I think the best way is for me to show you.’

  ‘Show me what?’

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s go now. I’m probably wrong anyway.’

  ‘Wrong about what?’ said Alex.

  ‘There is something I want to show you,’ she said.

  Alex had no idea what Angelien was talking about but was curious enough to want to find out. He locked up the room and they left the hotel.

  Angelien set off across a nearby bridge and down a narrow alleyway that opened up on to a wide street criss-crossed with tramlines.

  ‘If we’re quick, we can catch that one,’ said Angelien as a tram rounded the corner, its wheels whistling and grating on the rails.

  Alex ran to keep up with Angelien and they reached the tram stop just as the doors opened and a small queue of people began to step aboard. Angelien paid the driver.

  They sat down, the doors shut and the tram moved away with a hum and a faint clanking. It stopped at a set of lights before setting off up a long straight and very wide avenue.

  ‘So where are we going?’ asked Alex.

  ‘To the Rijksmuseum,’ she answered.

  ‘The what?’ said Alex.

  ‘Rijksmuseum,’ said Angelien, over the whining of a tram as it rounded a bend.

  ‘And there’s something there to do with my mask?’ he asked. ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Wait and see,’ said Angelien.

  They both looked out of the window as the tram continued on its way crossing bridge after bridge, canal after canal, until Angelien signalled it was time to get off.

  They walked along the Singel canal for a while. The sky was filthy grey and a murky twilight had descended.

  Another glass-roofed tour boat went by, filled with passengers. Alex could hear the voice of the guide on board but couldn’t recognise the language. It started to spit with rain as they reached a large, rather grim-looking building partially obscured by construction hoardings. A steady stream of people were crossing the road ahead of them.

  ‘So is this the place?’ said Alex.

  ‘The Rijksmuseum,’ said Angelien.

  ‘It looks like a building site,’ said Alex. ‘Is it open?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Well – not all of it. It is an art museum – like your National Gallery in London. It is very well known. It has paintings by Vermeer, Frans Hals and Rembrandt and lots of other famous painters. You’ve never heard of it?’

  Alex shook his head. They crossed the road and followed the painted arrows that led round the side of the building.

  ‘Do you like paintings?’ Angelien asked Alex, as she handed her bag to the security guard.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Alex. ‘Some paintings.’

  Alex passed his bag over as well and they waited for them to emerge from the scanner. Then they checked them into the cloakroom, along with their jackets, and Angelien went to buy their tickets.

  ‘Are you ever going to tell me why we’ve come here?’ asked Alex.

  Angelien smiled.

  ‘Don’t you like surprises?’ she said.

  ‘Depends,’ said Alex. ‘Some surprises are OK.’

  Angelien turned and put her hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Trust me. I think there is a painting here that you will want to see,’ she said. ‘Come on.’

  They walked into a large room. The walls were high and wide. Above them was a kind of walkway. It was all much more modern inside than Alex had expected.

  There was a massive wooden model of a sailing ship with a huge cannon laid out horizontally. There seemed to be a military theme to the room, with armour and flintlock pistols and a cabinet of swords.

  ‘They look like samurai swords,’ said Alex.

  ‘They are,’ said Angelien. ‘The Dutch were a superpower in those days. Before you had the British Empire we had colonies all over the world. New York was New Amsterdam first you know.’

  ‘Really?’ said Alex.

  ‘Sure,’ said Angelien. ‘Don’t they teach you anything in England? The Dutch were especially big in the Far East – hence all the Indonesian restaurants. Van Kampen – who owned the house that became your hotel – made a lot of his money trading with Japan.’

  And the next few paintings seemed to illustrate this, with scenes of exotic places. Not that anyone looked happy. There was a gloomy portrait where the whole family looked thoroughly miserable at finding themselves in whatever tropical paradise it depicted.

  ‘This way,’ said Angelien, and they climbed a wooden staircase to the upstairs galleries. They walked past still lifes and paintings of tulips. Alex stopped to look at a winter landscape with lots of black-clad figures like beetles on a frozen lake. He spent a long time studying all the little figures and grinned at the bare bottom sticking out of one of the buildings, the comical effect of some kind of primitive toilet.

  They passed a painting of figures outside a church, all in black with wide-brimmed hats. The Dutch seemed to be in love with black in those days; practically everyone in these pictures was wearing it.

  Alex was beginning to feel that his interest in painting was being pushed to the limits. But he didn’t want to show that to Angelien and so he followed and said nothing.

  Angelien had moved ahead to stand beside a painting and was beckoning to him to come over. Alex walked slowly towards her. An elderly couple stepped in front of him and blocked his view. The woman turned and saw him coming and there was something about the look on Alex’s face that made her tug her husband’s arm and pull him away.

  Alex stood in front of the painting, mesmerised. It was not large but it had a wide and ornate golden frame around it. In the centre of the painting was a figure standing in a window, the face a pale and smiling mask.

  ‘That mask,’ said Alex quietly. ‘It looks just like my mask.’

  Angelien nodded, clearly waiting for Alex to notice something else.

  ‘And that looks just like the hotel.’

  ‘It is your hotel,’ said Angelien. ‘The part that you are staying in. Spooky, huh?’

  Suddenly it was as though the floor was tilting towards the painting ahead of him, and he would stumble and fall into it. It seemed to take an effort of
will to stay upright as he struggled against the dizziness.

  He felt himself drawn into the painting, leaning forward, his eyes and attention pulled towards the window of the room he knew was his hotel room, and to the strange masked face that looked out at him through the grimy varnish and cracked paint.

  The masked figure was a girl, he could now see. The painting showed a night scene, but age had darkened it further. Much of the painting was impenetrable blackness, out of which loomed various figures – figures of children running and playing – illuminated by a full moon that shone overhead. Alex turned to look at Angelien.

  ‘I know,’ said Angelien in response to Alex’s baffled expression. ‘You can see why I was so surprised when I saw the mask. I had been looking at the painting only two days before.’

  Alex looked back at the painting. It was so dark, so gloomy. It seemed to carry the night with it and, just as though he were looking at a real night scene, Alex’s eyes strained to adjust to the low light.

  ‘I don’t . . .’ he began. ‘How? How can that be?’

  Angelien shrugged and looked back at the picture.

  ‘Honestly, I don’t have any explanation,’ she said with a shake of her head. ‘It’s crazy.’

  Alex looked at the girl in the painting and it felt as though he was being pulled towards her. He could see her so vividly – every crease in her clothes, every pore on the flesh of her pale arms. He could see her eyes glistening in the shadows in the dark sockets of the mask.

  The strange feeling of dread he had experienced in his hotel room returned and gripped his body. His breathing was becoming shorter and his throat seemed to be tightening up as though he was being choked by a powerful hand.

  ‘Alex?’ said Angelien. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Alex with a weak smile, rubbing his forehead with the tips of his fingers.

  ‘Sure?’ said Angelien.

  ‘I’m OK – really,’ said Alex, pulling his eyes from the masked girl with some difficulty and moving across the picture, taking in the full strangeness of it. ‘It’s so weird.’

  ‘Come,’ said Angelien, putting her arm round him. ‘Let’s go and sit.’