The Prince of Mist by Zafon Carlos Ruiz

Author:Zafon, Carlos Ruiz [Zafon, Carlos Ruiz]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Juvenile Fiction / Horror & Ghost Stories
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: 2010-04-15T16:00:00+00:00

Max turned on the projector and the beam of light flooded the wall with the blurred image of what looked like a collection of symbols. Slowly, the picture came into focus, and Max realized that what he’d thought were symbols were numbers placed in a circle and that he was looking at the face of a clock. The hands of the clock were still, and the shadows they projected onto the face were clear and defined, from which Max inferred that the shot was filmed in full sunlight or at least under an intense source of light. The film continued to show the clock face until, slowly at first and then progressively gathering speed, the hands began to turn counterclockwise. The person operating the camera took a step back, and it became clear that the clock was hanging from a chain. A further backward movement of a meter or so revealed that this chain was suspended from a white hand. The hand of a statue.

Max immediately recognized the walled garden that had already appeared in the first of Jacob Fleischmann’s films that he’d viewed a couple of days ago. As before, the position of the statues was different from how Max remembered it. Now the camera began to move through the figures again, with no cuts or pauses, just as it had in the first film. Every two meters or so the lens closed in on the face of one of the statues. One by one, Max examined the frozen expressions of the circus troupe. He pictured them fighting in vain to escape their horrific deaths in the pitch dark and icy waters of the Orpheus’s hold.

Finally, almost in slow motion, the camera approached the figure marking the center of the six-pointed star. The clown. Dr. Cain. The Prince of Mist. At his feet, Max noticed the motionless shape of a cat stretching a sharp claw in the air. Max, who didn’t recall having seen it when he visited the walled garden, would have bet his life that the uncanny likeness between this stone cat and the creature Irina had adopted at the station was no coincidence. As he stared at the images, with the rain pounding against the windowpanes as the storm moved inland, it was easy to believe the story the lighthouse keeper had told them that afternoon. The malevolent presence of the stone figures was enough to remove any doubt, however reasonable that doubt might have seemed in the light of day.

The camera now closed in on the clown’s face, pausing only half a meter away and remaining there for a few seconds. Max checked the reel: The film was coming to an end. Suddenly, a movement on the screen caught his attention. The stone face was moving, almost imperceptibly. Max stood up and walked over to the wall on which the film was being projected. The pupils of those stone eyes dilated, and the lips arched slowly into a cruel smile, laying bare a row of long, sharp teeth, like the fangs of a wolf.

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