The Prince Of Mist

9

By the time they reached the path that led up to the lighthouse, Max felt as if his legs had turned to butter. Before setting off, Alicia had offered to take the other bicycle that lay sleeping among the shadows of the garden shed, but Max had rejected the idea: he would take her on his bike just as Roland had done the day before. A kilometre on, he was already regretting his decision.

As if he’d guessed how painfully difficult the long ride would be, Roland was waiting with his bicycle at the foot of the path. When he saw him, Max stopped pedalling and let his sister off. He took a deep breath and rubbed his muscles, which were in agony.

‘You look like you’ve shrunk a few centimetres, city boy,’ said Roland.

Max decided not to waste his breath responding to the joke. Without saying a word, Alicia climbed onto Roland’s bike and they started up the hill. Max waited a few seconds before pushing off. He knew what he was going to spend his first salary on: a motorbike.

*

The small dining room in the lighthouse cottage smelled of freshly brewed coffee and pipe tobacco. The floor and the walls were lined with dark wood and, apart from a very large bookcase and a few nautical objects that Max was unable to identify, there was barely any other decoration. A wood-burning stove and a table covered with a dark velvet cloth, surrounded by old armchairs of faded leather, were the only luxuries Victor Kray had allowed himself.

Roland asked his friends to sit in the armchairs while he sat on a wooden chair between them. They waited for about five minutes, hardly speaking, listening to the old man’s footsteps on the floor above.

At last, the lighthouse keeper made his appearance. He wasn’t as Max had imagined him. Victor Kray was a man of average height, with pale skin and a generous head of silvery hair crowning a face that did not reflect his real age.

His green, penetrating eyes slowly scanned the faces of the brother and sister, as if he were trying to read their thoughts. Max smiled nervously and Victor Kray smiled back at him, a kind smile that lit up his face.

‘You’re the first visitors I’ve had in years,’ said the lighthouse keeper, taking a seat on one of the armchairs. ‘You’ll have to forgive my manners. Anyhow, when I was a child, I thought all this business about the polite way of doing things was a lot of nonsense. I still do.’

‘We’re not children, Granddad,’ said Roland.

‘Anyone younger than me is a baby,’ replied Victor Kray. ‘You must be Alicia. And you’re Max. You don’t need much of a brain to work that out.’

Alicia smiled warmly. She’d only known the old man for a couple of minutes, but already she was charmed by the way he put them at ease. Max, meanwhile, was studying Victor’s face and trying to imagine him shut away in that lighthouse for decades, guarding the secret of the Orpheus.

‘I know what you must be thinking,’ Victor Kray continued. ‘Is everything we’ve seen or thought we’ve seen during these last couple of days real? Is it true? To be honest, I never imagined the day would come when I’d have to talk about this to anyone, not even Roland. But things often turn out differently from the way we expect. Don’t you agree?’

Nobody replied.

‘Right. Let’s get straight to the point. First of all you must tell me everything you know. And when I say everything, I mean everything. Including details that might seem insignificant to you. Everything. Do you understand?’

Max looked at the others.

‘Shall I go first?’

Alicia and Roland nodded. Victor Kray gestured to him to begin his story.

*

During the next half-hour, Max recounted everything he remembered, without a pause. The eyes of the old man were attentive as he listened to Max’s words without the slightest hint of disbelief or – as Max was expecting – surprise.

When he had finished his story, Victor Kray took out his pipe and began to pack it with tobacco.

‘Not bad,’ he muttered, ‘not bad…’

The lighthouse keeper lit his pipe and a cloud of sweet-smelling smoke enveloped the room. He took a few puffs of his special tobacco and sat back in his armchair. Then, looking the three friends in the eye, he began to speak…

*

‘I’ll be seventy-two this autumn, and although people say I don’t look my age, every year weighs on my back like a tombstone. Age makes you notice certain things. For example, I now know that a man’s life is broadly divided into three periods. During the first, it doesn’t even occur to us that one day we will grow old; we don’t think that time passes or that from the day we are born we’re all walking towards a common end. After the first years of youth comes the second period, in which a person becomes aware of the fragility of life and what begins like a simple niggling doubt rises inside you like a flood of uncertainties that will stay with you for the rest of your days. Finally, towards the end of life, we reach the period of acceptance and, consequently, of resignation – a time of waiting. Throughout my life I’ve known quite a few people who have become trapped in one of these stages and have never managed to get beyond them. It’s a terrible thing.’

Victor Kray noticed they were listening intently, but they seemed to be slightly puzzled, wondering where he was going with all this. He stopped to enjoy another puff of his pipe and beamed at his audience.

‘This is a path we must all learn to follow on our own, praying we won’t lose our way before reaching the end. If, at the beginning of our lives, we were able to understand this apparently simple fact, we would be spared many of the miseries and pains of this world. But – and this is one of the great paradoxes of the universe – we are only granted this knowledge when it is already too late. Here endeth the lesson.

‘You’ll wonder why I’m telling you all this. Let me explain. One time in a million, someone who is still very young understands that life is a one-way journey and decides that the rules of the game don’t agree with him. It’s like when you decide to cheat because you know you can’t win. Usually you’re found out and you can’t cheat any more. But sometimes the cheat gets away with it. And if, instead of playing with dice or cards, the game consists of playing with life and death, then the cheat turns into someone very dangerous indeed.

‘A long time ago, when I was your age, one of the greatest cheats who ever set foot on this earth happened to cross my path. I never discovered his real name. In the poor area where I lived, all the kids on the street knew him as Cain. Others called him the Prince of Mist, because, as rumour had it, he always appeared out of the thick haze that covered the streets and alleyways at night and before dawn he disappeared again into the shadows.

‘Cain was a good-looking young man, but nobody seemed to know where he’d come from. Every night, in one of the many alleyways of our area, he gathered the local youngsters together – all of them ragged and covered in grime and soot from the factories – and he would propose a pact. Each child could make a wish and Cain would make it come true. In exchange, he asked for one thing only: complete loyalty. One night, Angus, my best friend, took me to one of Cain’s meetings. Cain was dressed like a gentleman who’d come straight from the opera, and he never stopped smiling. His eyes seemed to change colour in the dark and his voice was deep and measured. According to the other boys, Cain was a magician. I hadn’t believed a single word of the stories circulating about him, and that night I went along fully intending to have a laugh at this supposed magician. And yet I remember that, in his presence, any desire to make fun of him immediately vanished into thin air. As soon as I saw him, the only emotion I felt was fear and I was careful not to open my mouth. That night a few of the lads from the street made their wishes known to Cain. When they’d finished, Cain turned his icy eyes to the corner where my friend Angus and I were standing. He asked us whether we didn’t have any requests. I stood there, trying to keep my expression blank, but to my surprise Angus spoke. His father had lost his job that day. The steel plant where most of the local adults worked was laying off a substantial part of the workforce and replacing them with machines that worked longer hours for no pay and didn’t complain. The first people to lose their jobs in this lottery were the more troublesome leaders and Angus’s father seemed to have ticked all the boxes.

‘Angus had five brothers and sisters and his mother was sick, barely able to leave her bed. They all lived together squeezed into a miserable damp house that was falling to pieces. I don’t need to tell you the situation was desperate. In a small voice, Angus made his wish known to Cain: that his father get his job back at the steel works. Cain agreed and then, just as I had been told, we saw him disappear off into the mist. The following day Angus’s father was inexplicably called back to work. Cain had fulfilled his promise.

‘Two weeks later, Angus and I were returning home after a visit to a travelling fair on the outskirts of town. We didn’t want to get back too late, so we took a short cut along an abandoned railway line. It was dark, and we were walking through that eerie moonlit landscape when we saw a figure emerging from the mist and coming towards us. The figure was wrapped in a dark cloak. The Prince of Mist. We were paralysed with fear. Cain approached us and, with his usual smile, he spoke to Angus. He told my friend that the time had come for him to return the favour. Stricken with terror, Angus agreed. Cain said that his request was a simple one: a small settling of scores. In those days, the richest person in the area – in fact, the only rich person – was Skolimoski, a Polish tradesman who owned a food and clothing store where everyone did their shopping. Angus’s mission was to set fire to Skolimoski’s shop. The task was to be completed the following night. Angus tried to protest, but he couldn’t get the words out. There was something in Cain’s eyes that made it clear he was not prepared to accept anything other than total obedience. The magician left the same way he’d come.

‘We ran all the way home, and when I left Angus at his door and saw the horror that filled his eyes, my heart went out to him. The following day I combed the streets looking for my friend, but there was no trace of him. I was beginning to worry that Angus had decided to carry out the criminal act requested by Cain, so I decided to stand guard opposite Skolimoski’s store as soon as it grew dark. Angus never turned up, and the Pole’s shop didn’t go up in flames that night. I felt guilty for having doubted my friend and thought the best thing I could do was try to reassure him. I knew him well; he was bound to be at home, hiding, trembling at the thought of the sinister magician’s revenge. The next morning I went to his house. Angus wasn’t there. With tears in her eyes his mother told me he hadn’t come home that night and begged me to find him and bring him back.

‘Sick with fear, I scoured the whole area from top to bottom, not forgetting a single one of its stinking corners. Nobody had seen him. By the evening, exhausted and not knowing where else I could possibly look, a dark thought took hold of me. I returned to the path by the old railway line and followed the tracks that glowed faintly in the moonlight. I didn’t have to walk for long. I found my friend lying on the rails, in the same place where Cain had appeared out of the mist two nights before. I tried to feel his pulse, but my hands could find no skin on that body. Only ice. The body of my friend had been transformed into a grotesque statue of smoking blue ice that was slowly melting onto the abandoned line. Around his neck was a small medal with the same symbol I remembered seeing on Cain’s cloak – a six-pointed star within a circle. I stayed with Angus until his features vanished forever into the gloom in a pool of cold tears.

‘That same night, while I was discovering my friend’s horrific fate, Skolimoski’s store was destroyed by a ferocious fire. I never told anybody what I had witnessed that day.

‘Two months later, my family moved south, to a place far from our old home. As the months went by I started to believe that the Prince of Mist was only a bitter memory, a fragment of the bleak years spent in the shadows of that poor, dirty, violent town of my childhood… Until I saw him again and realised that what had happened that night had been only the beginning.’