At first he could find nothing new, but then he met a man who used to work for Van Kampen and he discovered something amazing. That man seemed pretty sure that Hanna had started the fire at the house when she was a little girl.
He said that Hanna was always a strange child but she became even stranger when her father came back with a mask from Japan.
Van Kampen had laughed when she had first put it on, but then Hanna insisted on wearing it all the time. Her mother was expecting another child and Hanna went berserk when she found out. She followed her mother about, watching everything she did, staring at her through the mask. The mother became terrified of the girl – terrified of her own daughter.
And it seems like she had good reason because there was a fire in the mother’s bedroom one evening when she was resting. Hanna was the only person about and she was burnt by the fire. At first it seemed as though she had heroically tried to save her mother, but her mother said that she had woken to see the girl moving slowly around the room spreading the fire.
Hanna’s father would hear none of it. She could do no wrong in his eyes and he seemed convinced that the mother was mistaken. The mother had a miscarriage and as soon as she recuperated she ran away and was never seen again.
We have been imagining that her father was an evil man, but maybe he was just misguided. Maybe he thought he could keep his daughter safe by locking her away. Or keep her from doing harm. He must have known deep down how troubled she was.
It seems that Hanna was not the poor imprisoned girl we thought she was. Although Hanna was burnt in the fire, the burns were restricted to her hands. She chose to wear the mask all the time and her father told the story of her burns to try to explain it.
Back in Amsterdam, Graaf discovered through a servant of Van Kampen’s that the day before Hanna jumped to her death she had heard the girl taunting her father, telling him how she had started the fire back in Utrecht and how she wished she had killed her mother and the unborn child. Her father flew into a rage and beat her with his cane until finally it broke in two.
That night, Van Kampen died in his sleep. People said that he had died of a broken heart, but Van Kampen’s physician told Graaf of his suspicion that the real reason was probably an overdose of a sleeping draught he had been prescribed.
Perhaps keeping the truth about Hanna from the world just became too much for him. Perhaps he did die of a broken heart after all.
It was Hanna who discovered him dead and jumped from the window. Perhaps she really did love him in her way. Or maybe she just realised that, however much of a half-life she had endured, she had no life without him.
Goodbye, Alex, and sorry. I never meant for you to get hurt. I hope everything works out for you back in England. Don’t hate me.
Angelien
Alex stared out of the window into the darkness. He remembered walking through to Hanna’s father’s room. He remembered how Hanna had poured the sleeping draught into his wine. Van Kampen did not commit suicide. Hanna killed him before she jumped.
Alex was sure that, whatever Angelien thought, there was something evil about that mask and he was glad he was rid of it.
The plane had touched down and was coming to a halt. Alex looked out of the window at the bright lights of the terminal gleaming in the murk. He was returning to Angelien’s letter when his father leaned over.
‘What’s that?’ he asked.
‘Nothing,’ said Alex, folding it up and putting it in his pocket.
His father said nothing more, just closed his book and stood up to get their bags down. All through the plane, all the passengers were doing the same.
They caught the shuttle train to the main terminal and queued up at UK passport control. Alex was tired. All the disturbed nights and stress of the last few days was finally taking its toll. He ached and longed for his own bed.
Alex and his father headed for the exit marked Short Stay Car Park. Alex looked at the dark figure of his father ahead, hunched and somehow smaller. Rain had begun to fall. Arc lights lit up the wet car roofs and windscreens. The roar of aircraft engines rent the sky.
Alex’s father paid for the parking ticket and headed for their car, which was parked a little way off. They seemed to be the only people in the whole car park.
The lights blinked and the locks answered the call of the key with an electronic chirrup. Alex put his bag in the boot and his father slammed it shut. Alex chose to sit in the back of the car and his father started the engine and pulled out of the parking space, following the maze-like route of arrows to the exit barriers.
Once out on to the road they headed for the M11, the traffic building slowly with each junction. Eventually they were on the motorway and heading south to London.
Alex reached into his pocket and took out his iPod, squeezing the ear buds into his ears and switching it on. A long, rhythmic introduction started up – a simple bass line, then drums, then guitars. He tried to place it but couldn’t and didn’t bother to check.
He sank back into his seat as they overtook an articulated lorry, the spray from its tyres washing over them. The headlights of the oncoming cars flickered through the barrier of the central reservation.
Alex happened to glance at the rear-view mirror in passing. Something caught his eye and he looked again. There was something black: something black sitting in the reflection near to where he was sitting. It was like a shadow but a shadow of something that was not there.
He felt as though the car had suddenly crested a hill. His stomach lurched and his heart seemed to falter in its beating and judder like meat slapped down on a butcher’s counter.
Try as he might to insist to himself that there was nothing there, the blackness at the edge of his vision was too real, too potent to ignore or wish away. He leaned sideways and stared into the rear-view mirror.
Instead of his own face looking back, it was the face of Hanna, the pale skin glowing from the shadows. The lights of a passing truck lit up her face for a moment and made her pale eyes sparkle.
Alex wanted to cry out. He wanted to shout to his father, but Hanna placed her fingers to her lips in the mirror and Alex was quiet.
He looked across at his bag lying on the seat next to him and dragged it on to his lap. He pulled it open and there, staring back undamaged, whole once more, was the mask.
Also by Chris Priestley
The Dead of Winter
Mr Creecher
***
The Tales of Terror Collection:
Uncle Montague’s Tales of Terror
Tales of Terror from the Black Ship
Tales of Terror from the Tunnel’s Mouth
Christmas Tales of Terror
Bloomsbury Publishing, London, New Delhi, New York and Sydney
First published in Great Britain in March 2013 by
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP
This electronic edition published in March 2013 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Copyright © Chris Priestley 2013
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may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
eISBN 978 1 4088 2548 8
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Through Dead Eyes Page 13
