Irene put the box in her cardigan pocket then looked up at Ismael. He leaned forward and kissed her gently on the lips.
‘Good luck,’ he murmured.
Before she’d had a chance to reply, Ismael had set off towards his end of the corridor. ‘Good luck,’ thought Irene.
As the sound of his footsteps faded behind her, Irene took a deep breath and headed off in the opposite direction. Her part of the corridor split into two at the mansion’s central point, the main staircase. Irene peeped over the edge into the abyss. A beam of fractured light plunged vertically from the turret above the dome, piercing the darkness.
From the main staircase, the corridor branched out towards the south and west. The west wing was the only one with a view over the bay, so Irene set off down the long passage, leaving behind her the comforting brightness that fell from the dome. Suddenly, she noticed a semi-transparent veil stretched across the passage, a gauze curtain beyond which the corridor took on a very different aspect. She couldn’t see the shapes of any more mechanical figures lying in wait in the shadows, but there was a single letter embroidered on the crown-shaped panel from which the curtain hung. An initial: A.
Irene parted the curtain with her fingertips. A cold breath of air caressed her face and, for the first time, she noticed that the walls were covered by a complex series of images carved into the wood. From where she stood she could see only three doors: one on either side of the corridor and a third, the largest of the three, at the end, marked with the same initial she’d seen above the gauze curtain.
Irene advanced slowly towards that door. Around her, the wooden reliefs depicted bizarre creatures, an ocean of hieroglyphics she could not decipher. By the time she reached the door at the end, it seemed obvious that Hannah would not have occupied a room there. Yet the enchantment of the place outweighed its sinister atmosphere. She felt as if some invisible presence were floating in the air . . . something almost palpable.
Irene’s pulse quickened as she placed a trembling hand on the doorknob. Then something stopped her. A premonition. She could still turn back, find Ismael and run away from the house before Lazarus noticed they’d broken in. The knob turned gently beneath her fingers, sliding against her skin. Irene closed her eyes. She didn’t need to go in there. She could retrace her steps. She didn’t have to give in to the dream-like spell that seemed to be telling her to open the door and cross the threshold. Irene opened her eyes.
The corridor offered her a way back through the darkness. Irene sighed and, for a moment, her gaze was lost in the shimmering gauze. Just then, the outline of a figure appeared behind the curtain.
‘Ismael
?’ murmured Irene.
The figure stood there for a few moments and then, without a sound, moved back into the shadows.
‘Ismael, is that you?’
The slow poison of panic started to pump through her veins. Without taking her eyes off the curtain, Irene opened the door and stepped inside the room. For a split second she was startled by the sapphire-coloured light filtering through the tall, narrow windows. Then, as her pupils grew used to the strange twilight, her hands shaking, she managed to strike one of the matches Ismael had given her. She found herself standing in a palatial room that seemed to be like something straight out of a fairy tale.
An intricate coffered ceiling was inscribed with a whirlwind of fantastical shapes. At one end stood a luxurious four-poster bed with fine golden curtains, and in the middle of the room a marble table held a large chessboard, its pieces made of glass. At the far end Irene spied the cavernous jaws of a fireplace in which red-hot logs were burning. Above the fireplace hung a portrait: a pale face, with the most delicate features imaginable, and the deep, sad eyes of a woman whose beauty was astounding. The woman in the portrait was dressed in a long white robe, and behind her stood the lighthouse on its island in the bay.
Holding the lighted match up high, Irene walked over to the portrait and stood beneath it until the flame burned her fingers. As she licked her wound, the girl noticed a candlestick on a desk. Although she didn’t really need it, she lit the candle with another match and was surrounded by a hazy glow. On the desk there was also a leather-bound book, which was open.
Irene recognised the handwriting on the parchment-like paper, although a layer of dust made it difficult to read the words. The girl blew lightly and a cloud of silvery particles spread across the table. She picked up the book and turned to the title page. Holding the book closer to the candle, she read the words inscribed there. Slowly, as her mind began to understand what it all meant, she felt an intense shiver run like an icy needle down her neck.
Alexandra Alma Maltisse
Lazarus Joseph Jann
1915
A splinter of wood crackled in the fire, spewing out small sparks that vanished as they hit the floor. Irene closed the book and put it back on the desk. It was then that she noticed someone watching her from behind the gauzy curtains. A slender figure lay on the bed. A woman. Irene took a few steps towards her. The woman raised a hand.
‘Alma?’ whispered Irene, terrified by the sound of her own voice.
She crossed the few metres that separated her from the bed and then paused. Her heart was beating fast and her breathing was ragged. Slowly, she started to lift the curtain aside. At that moment a gust of cold air blew through the room, stirring the gossamer veils. Irene turned towards the door. A shadow fell across the floor, like a large pool of ink seeping beneath the door. Then a ghostly sound, full of hatred, seemed to whisper from the dark.
A second later the door was flung open and sent crashing against the wall, almost torn off its hinges. A claw with long, sharp talons like steel blades emerged from the shadows and Irene began to scream.
Ismael was beginning to think he’d made a mistake in working out where Hannah’s room was. When she had described the house to him, he’d devised his own mental map of Cravenmoore, but once inside he was totally disconcerted by the mansion’s complicated structure. All the rooms in the wing he’d decided to explore were firmly locked and not one had yielded to his cunning. Time was not looking kindly on his lack of success.
The agreed quarter of an hour had evaporated, and the thought of abandoning the search for the night seemed increasingly tempting. A quick glance at his gloomy surroundings gave Ismael one thousand excuses to leave. He’d already decided it was time to go when he heard Irene’s scream echoing through the shadows of Cravenmoore from some remote corner. Ismael felt a shot of adrenaline course through his veins and ran as fast as his legs would carry him towards the other end of the enormous gallery.
Ismael barely noticed the dark shapes sliding past him. He ran through the eerie shaft of light beneath the dome and past the junction of the corridors by the central staircase. The chessboard of floor tiles seemed to stretch as he rushed over it, the passage lengthening before his eyes as if the corridor were galloping towards infinity.
He heard Irene scream again, this time closer. Ismael slipped through the curtain in the hallway and spotted the entrance to the room at the far end of the west wing. Without hesitating, he hurled himself inside, unaware of what awaited him.
The features of a cavernous room unfolded before his eyes in the glow of the crackling fire. He was briefly comforted by the sight of Irene, standing against a large window bathed in blue light, until he read the fear in her eyes. Ismael turned round instinctively and what he saw turned him to stone, paralysing him like the hypnotic dance of a serpent.
From the shadows rose a colossal figure with two large black wings, like the wings of a bat. Or a demon. The angel thrust out its long arms, its dark fingers curled into claws. The steely nails shone like blades before the creature’s face, which was hidden beneath a hood.