A surge of freezing water soaked their ankles. The sea level had risen at least twenty centimetres since they’d hauled themselves onto the rock. They exchanged a look of desperation. The sea roared again and a gush of water thundered through the entrance to the cave.
Midnight had left a wreath of fog over the cliffs that rose from the jetty to Seaview. The oil lamp was still swinging in the porch, its flame almost out. Apart from the rumour of the sea and the whisper of leaves in the forest, the silence was almost complete. Dorian was lying on his bed, holding a small glass with a lighted candle inside it. He didn’t want his mother to see that his light was still on, and besides, he didn’t trust the bedside lamp after what had happened before. The flame danced under his breath like some fiery spirit, revealing strange shapes and shadows in every corner. Dorian sighed. He wouldn’t be able to sleep a wink that night, not for all the gold in the world.
Shortly after saying goodbye to Lazarus, Simone had put her head round his bedroom door to make sure Dorian was all right. He had curled up under the sheets, fully dressed, pretending to sleep, and his mother had retired to her room to follow his example. That was hours ago now. In the seemingly endless wait for dawn to arrive, every glimmer of light, every creak, every shadow, threatened to set his heart racing.
Slowly, the flame died down until it was a tiny blue bubble, so faint it made barely any difference to the gloom. A moment later, darkness regained the room, little by little. Dorian could feel the drips of hot candle wax hardening in the glass. Only a few centimetres away, on the bedside table, the small angel Lazarus had given him was watching him in silence.
Dorian threw the bedclothes aside and got up. He decided not to put on any shoes, to avoid the tumult of creaking his feet seemed to make whenever he tried to move about quietly in Seaview. Then, gathering all the courage he could muster, he tiptoed across his bedroom to the door. Turning the doorknob and opening the door without the usual concert of rusty hinges took him ten long seconds, but was worth it. Dorian closed the door behind him and crept to the top of the staircase, past the entrance to Irene’s bedroom.
His sister had gone to bed hours ago, feigning a terrible headache, although Dorian suspected she was probably intending to read or write syrupy love letters to that sailor boyfriend of hers. She seemed to be spending more than twenty-four hours a day with him. Ever since he’d seen her wearing that dress of his mother’s, he’d known there was trouble ahead.
When he reached the ground floor, Dorian noticed that the house was encircled by a ring of fog. Coils of mist seemed to slither over it, searching for a way in. ‘Condensed water vapour,’ he told himself. ‘It’s only condensed vapour moving about. Basic chemistry.’ Having reassured himself with this scientific explanation, he ignored the wisps of fog filtering through the gaps in the windows and went into the kitchen. When he got there, he realised that the romance between Irene and Captain Fantastic had its positive side: since she’d started going out with him, his sister hadn’t touched the box of delicious Swiss chocolates Simone kept on the second shelf of the food cupboard. Dorian remembered his mother once joking that chocolate had all of the chemical benefits of love and none of its noxious side effects.
Licking his lips, Dorian attacked the first chocolate. An exquisite burst of truffle, almonds and cocoa numbed his senses. This was what Greta Garbo’s kisses must taste like. As far as he was concerned, after maps, chocolate was probably the finest invention the human race had come up with. Especially whole boxes of chocolates. ‘Clever people, the Swiss,’ thought Dorian. ‘Clocks and chocolates: the essential things in life.’ A sudden noise startled him away from such comforting thoughts. Dorian heard the noise again: paralysed with fear, he let the second chocolate slip through his fingers. Somebody was knocking on the door.
He tried to swallow, but his mouth was too dry. Two more sharp knocks. Dorian entered the living room, his eyes glued to the front door. Fog was seeping in under the door frame. Two more knocks. Dorian stopped, facing the door, hesitating for a moment.
‘Who is it?’ he asked, his voice faltering.
Two further knocks were his only reply. He went over to the window, but the blanket of fog blocked the view completely. He couldn’t hear any footsteps on the porch. Perhaps the stranger had left. ‘Probably someone who is lost,’ thought Dorian. He was about to return to the kitchen when the two knocks came again, but this time they were on the windowpane, ten centimetres away from his face. His heart missed a beat. Slowly, Dorian walked backwards, moving into the centre of the living room until he bumped into a chair. Instinctively, he grabbed hold of a metal candlestick and brandished it in front him.
‘Go away,’ he whispered.
For a split second, a face seemed to form in the mist on the other side of the glass. Moments later, the window was flung open by a gale-force wind that sent icy shock waves through Dorian’s body. Horrified, he watched as a black stain spread across the floor.
A shadow.
The shape halted in front of him and slowly coalesced, rising from the floor like a puppet pulled by invisible strings. The boy tried to hit the intruder with the candlestick, but the metal passed straight through it. Dorian took another step back as the shadow floated towards him. Two misty black hands gripped his throat; he felt their icy touch on his skin. A face appeared. Dorian shivered from head to toe when he saw his father’s features materialise only centimetres from his face. Armand Sauvelle smiled, but it was a cruel smile, full of hatred.
‘Hello, Dorian,’ the shadow whispered. ‘I’ve come to fetch your mother. Will you take me to her?’
The sound of the voice froze Dorian’s soul. It was not his father’s voice. Those demonic eyes were not his father’s eyes. And those long, pointed teeth were not those of Armand Sauvelle.
‘You’re not my father . . .’
The wolfish smile vanished and the features melted away. A furious cry, like the howl of an animal, pierced Dorian’s ears and an invisible force hurled him to the other side of the room. Dorian crashed into one of the armchairs, knocking it over.
Still dazed, the boy managed to get to his feet again, just in time to see the shadow sliding up the stairs like a moving pool of tar.
‘Mother!’ Dorian shouted, rushing towards the staircase.
The shadow paused for a moment and fixed Dorian with its stare. Shiny black lips formed a soundless word. His name. Suddenly all the windowpanes in the house shattered and the fog engulfed Seaview with a roar as the shadow continued its ascent to the next floor. Dorian rushed after it, pursuing the ghostly shape as it advanced towards his mother’s bedroom.
‘No!’ he yelled. ‘Don’t you touch my mother.’
The shadow grinned at him and a moment later the black mass turned into a whirlwind that spun through the bedroom keyhole. A deathly silence followed.
Dorian ran towards the door, but before he could reach it, the wooden panel burst outward with such force that the door was yanked off its hinges and dashed against the opposite wall. Dorian threw himself to one side, managing to dodge it by just a few millimetres.
When he got to his feet again, the scene that met his eyes was like something out of a nightmare. The shadow was crawling along the walls of his mother’s room while she lay unconscious on her bed, her own shadow projected onto the wall. Dorian watched the black figure creep up to her shadow and brush the shape of her lips with its own. Simone stirred in her sleep, as if trapped in a bad dream. Two invisible hands seized her and lifted her from the sheets. Dorian stood in the way. Once more, an invisible force struck him and sent him flying out of the room. Carrying Simone in its arms, the shadow rushed down the stairs. Dorian stood up again, trying hard not to faint, and followed it to the ground floor. The spectre turned around and, for a moment, they stared at one another.
‘I know who you are . . .’ whispered the boy.
A new face, unfamiliar to him, made its appearance: the features were those of a handsome young man with luminous eyes.
‘You don’t know anything,’ hissed the shadow.
Dorian noticed the spectre’s eyes sweeping the room, then pausing at the old wooden door that lead to the cellar. All of a sudden, the door burst open and the boy felt a powerful energy propelling him towards it. He tumbled down the dark staircase. Then the door slammed shut, booming like a slab of stone.
The last thing he heard before he lost consciousness was the shadow’s howling laughter as it carried his mother towards the wood.
As the tide advanced inside the cave, Irene and Ismael felt the deathly trap tightening around them. Irene had already forgotten the moment when the water swamped their temporary refuge on the rock. Now there was nowhere left for them to stand and they were at the mercy of the sea. The cold tore at their muscles, like the pricking of hundreds of tiny pins, and they were losing all sensation in their hands. Exhaustion tugged at their legs, pulling them down. A voice inside them told them to let go, to surrender to the peaceful sleep that awaited them beneath the water. Ismael helped Irene to stay afloat. He could feel her body shivering in his arms. How long he’d be able to hang on, he didn’t know. How long it would take for dawn to break and the water level to start going down, he knew even less.
‘Don’t let your arms drop. Move about. Keep moving,’ he groaned.
Irene nodded.
‘I’m sleepy . . .’ she mumbled. She was almost delirious with exhaustion.
‘No. You can’t fall asleep now,’ Ismael ordered her.
Irene gazed at him, her eyes half open. Ismael reached up and touched the rocky ceiling towards which the tide was carrying them. The current was moving them away from the hole in the roof, sending them into the very bowels of the cave and far from the only possible escape route. Despite all their efforts to remain beneath the entrance hole, there was no way they could keep close to it and fight the unstoppable force of the current. There was barely enough room for them to breathe. And the tide kept rising.
For a moment, Irene’s face dropped into the water. Ismael grabbed her and pulled her head out. The girl was in a complete daze. He knew of stronger and much more experienced seamen who had died in this way, abandoned to their fate in the ocean. The cold could do this to anyone. First it numbed your muscles and dulled your mind, then it waited patiently for you to fall into its arms and pulled you under a shroud of cold and darkness.
Ismael shook Irene and turned her towards him. She mumbled something unintelligible. Without flinching, Ismael slapped her hard. Irene opened her eyes and screamed. For a few seconds she didn’t know where she was. In the dark, surrounded by icy water, with some stranger’s arms around her; she thought she was in the middle of her worst nightmare. Then everything came back to her. Cravenmoore. The angel. The cave. As Ismael hugged her, she could not stop her tears and she whimpered like a frightened child.
‘Don’t let me die here,’ she whispered.
‘You’re not going to die here. I promise. I won’t allow it. The tide will soon start to ebb and perhaps the cave won’t fill up completely . . . We must hang on a little longer. Only a little while and then we’ll be able to get out of here.’
Irene nodded and hugged him even tighter. If only Ismael could believe his words as much as she did.
Lazarus Jann slowly climbed Cravenmoore’s main staircase. A presence floated in the halo projected by the glass turret. He could sense it, smell it in the air, see it in the way the specks of dust seemed to mesh together in the light. When he reached the second floor his eyes rested on the door at the end of the corridor. It was open. His hands began to shake.
‘Alexandra?’
The cold breath of the wind lifted the gauze curtain hanging in the corridor. A dark foreboding came over him. Lazarus closed his eyes and put his hand to his side. A sharp pain which had started in his chest was spreading like wildfire down his left arm.
‘Alexandra?’ he cried again.
Lazarus ran to the bedroom door, but stopped when he saw the signs of the struggle and the cold mist drifting in from the forest through the broken windows. He clenched his fists until he felt his nails digging into his palms.
‘Damn you . . .’
Mopping the cold sweat from his forehead, he walked over to the bed and, with infinite care, pulled aside the curtains.
‘I’m sorry, dearest . . .’ he said, sitting on the edge of the bed. ‘I’m sorry . . .’
A strange sound caught his attention. The bedroom door was swinging from side to side. Lazarus stood up and cautiously walked towards it.
‘Who’s there?’ he said.
There was no reply, but the door stopped moving. Lazarus took a few steps into the corridor and scanned the darkness. By the time he heard the hissing above him, it was too late. A sharp blow to the back of his neck knocked him down, rendering him half unconscious. He could feel a pair of hands grabbing him by the shoulders and dragging him down the passage. He managed to get a glimpse of what was happening: Christian, the automaton he kept by the main door. The face turned towards him. A cruel glow lit up its eyes.
Moments later, Lazarus lost consciousness altogether.
Ismael sensed the arrival of dawn when the currents that had been pushing them towards the deepest part of the cave began to recede. The ocean’s invisible hands decided to let go of their prey, allowing him to drag Irene towards the highest point of the ceiling, where the water level afforded them a larger pocket of air. When the first shaft of daylight glinted on the sandy seabed, tracing a path towards the exit of the cave, Ismael let out a scream of joy that nobody, not even his friend, could hear. The boy knew that once the sea level began to fall, the cave would reveal the way out to the lagoon and the open air.
For the last couple of hours Irene had only kept afloat with Ismael’s help. She could barely stay awake and her body swayed in the current like a lifeless object. While he waited for the tide to allow them a passageway out of there, Ismael realised that, had he not been there, Irene would have died hours ago.
As he whispered words of encouragement she could not understand, Ismael recalled tales he’d heard from old sailors about their encounters with death. They said that when a person saved another at sea, their souls were for ever tied by an invisible thread.
Bit by bit, the current ebbed and Ismael managed to drag Irene towards the lagoon, leaving the mouth of the cave behind them. As the first light of day spilled over the horizon, the boy guided Irene to the shore. When she opened her eyes, she saw Ismael’s smiling face gazing down at her.
‘We’re alive,’ he said.
Irene let her eyelids drop in exhaustion.
Ismael took one last look at the colours of dawn illuminating the forest and the cliffs. It was the most marvellous sight he had ever witnessed. Then he lay down on the white sand and yielded to sleep. Nothing could have roused them from that slumber. Nothing.
11
THE FACE BENEATH THE MASK
The first thing Irene saw when she awoke was a pair of black eyes calmly observing her. She jerked backwards and the frightened seagull flew off. Her lips felt dry and sore, her skin so tight it ached. Her muscles were as limp as rags and her brain pure jelly. She felt a wave of nausea rising from the pit of her stomach. When she tried to sit up, she realised that the strange fire gnawing at her skin was in fact the sun. There was a bitter taste on her lips. What seemed to be a small beach surrounded by rocks floated about her like a merry-go-round. She had never felt so ill in her life.
She lay down again and became aware of Ismael’s presence next to her. If it hadn’t been for his fitful breathing, Irene would have sworn he was dead. She rubbed her eyes and placed one of her hands on his neck. A pulse. Irene stroked Ismael’s face and, after a while, he opened his eyes. The sun blinded him for a moment.
‘You look dreadful . . .’ he mumbled, trying to smile.
‘You haven’t seen yourself,’ replied Irene.
Like two castaways swept ashore by a storm, they stumbled to their feet and sear
ched for shade to protect them. They found it beneath the remains of a tree trunk that had fallen among the rocks. The seagull that had been watching them sleep alighted on the sand again, still curious.
‘What time could it be?’ asked Irene, fighting the hammering in her temples that accompanied every word.
Ismael showed her his watch. The face was full of water, and the second hand, which had come loose, looked like a petrified eel. He shaded his eyes with both hands and looked up at the sun.
‘It’s after midday.’
‘How long have we been asleep?’
‘Not long enough,’ replied Ismael. ‘I could sleep for a week.’
‘We can’t sleep now,’ Irene urged him.
He nodded and scanned the cliffs for a possible way out.
‘It won’t be easy. I only know how to get to the lagoon by sea . . .’
‘What is behind the cliffs?
‘The forest we went through yesterday.’
‘So what are we waiting for?’
Ismael examined the jumble of sharp rocks that rose before them. To scale the cliffs would take some time, and considerable effort. The image of an egg cracking open as it hit the ground ran through his mind. ‘A perfect ending,’ he thought.
‘Can you climb?’ asked Ismael.
Irene shrugged. He noticed her bare feet, covered in sand. Pale-skinned arms and legs, totally unprotected.
‘I used to do gym at school and I was one of the best at climbing up a rope,’ she added. ‘I suppose it’s the same thing.’
Ismael sighed. Their problems were certainly not at an end.
For a few moments Simone Sauvelle was eight years old again. Again she smelled the intense aroma of molten wax, heard voices whispering in the dark, saw the dance of hundreds of burning candles. She was back in that enchanted place that had captivated her as a child: the old cathedral of Saint-Étienne. But the magic only lasted a few seconds.