The Prince of Mist (Niebla 1)

‘He was the only survivor.’

‘What happened?’ asked Alicia. ‘I’m sorry. Perhaps you don’t want to talk about it.’

Roland shook his head.

‘No, I don’t mind,’ he said. Max was looking at him expectantly. ‘And it’s not that I don’t believe your story, Max. It’s just that it’s not the first time someone has talked to me about that symbol.’

‘Who else has seen it?’ asked Max, open-mouthed. ‘Who’s talked to you about it?’

‘My grandfather. Ever since I was a child.’ Roland pointed towards the inside of the hut. ‘It’s getting chilly. Let’s go in and I’ll tell you the story about this ship.’

*

At first, Irina thought it was her mother’s voice she’d heard downstairs. Andrea Carver often talked to herself while she was busy around the house, and no one was surprised by her habit of voicing her thoughts aloud. An instant later, however, Irina saw her mother through the window, standing in the front yard, saying goodbye to her father. The watchmaker was setting off towards the town with one of the porters who had helped them bring the luggage from the station a few days earlier. Irina realised then that she was alone inside the house and therefore the voice she thought she’d heard must have been imaginary. Until she heard it again, this time in her bedroom, like a whisper filtering through the walls.

The voice seemed to come from far away, the words impossible to decipher. She stood in the centre of the room, motionless. She heard the voice again. Whispering. It was coming from inside the wardrobe. For the first time since she’d arrived at the beach house, Irina was afraid. She stared at the door of the wardrobe and noticed there was a key in the lock. Without thinking twice, she ran over and hurriedly turned the key to make sure it was properly locked. She stepped back and took a deep breath. But then she heard the sound again and realised it wasn’t just one voice but several, all whispering at the same time.

‘Irina?’ her mother called from downstairs. ‘Irina, could you come down and help me for a minute?’

Never had Irina been so willing to help her mother, no matter what the task was that awaited her. She was about to leave the room when, suddenly, she felt an icy breeze on her face. It swept through the bedroom, slamming the door shut. Irina ran towards the door and struggled with the knob, which seemed to be stuck. As she was trying in vain to open it, she heard the key in the wardrobe door slowly turning behind her. Irina stood against the door of her room, too afraid to look. She closed her eyes tight, and her hands were shaking. The voices, which appeared to emanate from the very depths of the house, seemed much closer now. And this time they were laughing.

*

‘When I was a child,’ Roland explained, ‘my grandfather told me the story so many times that over the years I’ve often dreamed about it. It all began when I came to live in this town, many years ago, after my parents died in a car accident.’

‘I’m sorry, Roland,’ Alicia interrupted, guessing that, despite his friendly smile and his willingness to tell them the story about his grandfather and the ship, revisiting these memories was probably harder for him than he cared to show.

‘I was very young. I barely remember them,’ said Roland, avoiding Alicia’s eyes, for he knew she was not going to believe his white lie.

‘So what happened then?’ Max insisted.

Alicia looked daggers at her brother.

‘Granddad took care of me and I moved into the lighthouse cottage with him. He was an engineer and he’d been the lighthouse keeper on this stretch of coast for years. The local council had given him the job for life because he’d practically built the lighthouse with his bare hands, back in 1919. It’s a bizarre story, you’ll see.

‘On 23 June 1918, my grandfather boarded the Orpheus, but he travelled undercover. The Orpheus wasn’t a passenger ship, but a cargo ship with a bad reputation. Her captain was a drunken Dutchman who was corrupt through and through and used to rent the ship out to the highest bidder. The Dutchman’s favourite clients were usually smugglers who wanted to cross the Channel without a lot of questions being asked or any official paperwork being involved. Still, with time business had begun to fall off and the Flying Dutchman, as my grandfather called him, had to find other shady deals to pay off the gambling debts he had accumulated. It seems that on one of the nights when his luck was down – which was most nights – the captain lost his shirt in a card game to someone called Mr Cain. This Mr Cain was the owner of a travelling circus. As payment for his debt he demanded that the Dutchman take his entire company on board his ship and transport them secretly across the Channel. Mr Cain’s so-called circus had more to hide than a few simple sideshows and they needed to disappear as soon as possible. Illegally, of course. The Dutchman agreed. What else could he do? Either he accepted or he lost his ship.’

‘Just a moment,’ Max interrupted. ‘What did your grandfather have to do with all this?’

‘I’m getting there,’ Roland continued. ‘As I said, this Mr Cain – although that wasn’t his real name – had a lot to hide. My grandfather had been following his trail for some time. They had some unfinished business and my grandfather thought that if Mr Cain and his minions crossed the Channel, his chance of catching them would evaporate forever.’

‘Is that why he went on board the Orpheus?’ asked Max. ‘As a stowaway?’

Roland nodded.

‘There’s something else I don’t understand,’ said Alicia. ‘Why didn’t he just call the authorities? He was an engineer, not a detective. What sort of unfinished business did he have with this Mr Cain?’

‘May I finish the story?’ asked Roland.

Max and his sister nodded.

‘Right. The fact is that he did board the ship. The Orpheus set sail at noon and the captain hoped to reach his destination in the dead of night, but things got complicated. A storm broke out just after midnight, sending the ship towards the coast. The Orpheus crashed against the rocks submerged near the cliff and sank in a matter of minutes. My grandfather’s life was saved because he was hiding in a lifeboat. Everybody else on board drowned.’

Max gulped.

‘Do you mean to say the bodies are still down there?’

‘No,’ Roland replied. ‘The following day, at dawn, a fog swept over the coast. The local fishermen found my granddad, unconscious, on this beach. When the fog lifted, a few of them went out in their boats and searched the area around the shipwreck. They never found any bodies.’