The Watcher in the Shadows (22 page)

‘You’re not Hannah,’ said Irene, her voice tiny.

The shadow struck her, gashing her cheek. Instantly, the drops of blood from the wound were absorbed by it, as if it were drinking them in. Irene felt a wave of nausea. Brandishing two long, pointed fingers in front of her eyes, the shadow drew closer still.

As Ismael was getting back on his feet, still dazed by the blow, he saw that the shadow was holding Irene captive in the middle of the room and was about to kill her. Ismael yelled and threw himself against the black mass. His body went straight through it and the shadow split into thousands of tiny droplets that fell to the floor like liquid coal. Ismael lifted Irene and pulled her away from the shadow’s reach. On the floor, the pieces came together, forming a whirlwind that hurled the furniture towards the walls and windows.

Ismael and Irene flung themselves to the ground as the desk crashed through one of the windowpanes, shattering it completely. Ismael rolled over Irene, protecting her from the impact. When he looked up again, the whirlwind was solidifying. Two great black wings unfolded and the shadow emerged, larger and more powerful than before.

Ismael pulled out his knife again and wielded it in front of the shadow. The spectre grasped the blade with its icy claw. Ismael could feel the freezing current rising up his fingers and through his hand, paralyzing his arm.

The weapon fell and the shadow wrapped itself around the boy. Irene tried in vain to pull him away. The shadow started dragging Ismael towards the fire.

At that very moment the door burst open and Lazarus appeared on the threshold.

The ghostly light emerging from the forest reflected off the windscreen of the police car at the head of the convoy. Behind it were Doctor Giraud’s vehicle and an ambulance sent by the clinic at La Rochelle.

Dorian, sitting next to the superintendent, Henri Faure, was the first to notice the golden glow filtering through the trees. The top of Cravenmoore could be glimpsed above the forest. It looked like an apparition, a gigantic merry-go-round, in the mist. The superintendent frowned – he’d never seen such a sight in the fifty-two years he’d been living in the village.

‘Faster!’ Dorian urged him.

As he accelerated, the superintendent glanced at the boy, wondering whether the story of the supposed accident contained a single grain of truth.

‘Is there something you haven’t told us?’

Dorian didn’t reply but kept staring straight ahead.

The superintendent pressed the accelerator to the floor.

The shadow whirled round and, when it saw Lazarus, it dropped Ismael suddenly. The boy hit the ground hard and screamed out in pain. Irene ran to his aid.

‘Get him out of here,’ said Lazarus, as he advanced towards the shadow, which was retreating.

Ismael groaned. There was a sharp pain in his shoulder.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Irene.

Ismael mumbled something, but then he got to his feet and nodded. Lazarus gave them an inscrutable look.

‘Take your mother and leave,’ he said.

The shadow was hissing in front of him like a snake ready to strike. Suddenly it jumped onto the wall and melted into the painting once more.

‘I said go!’ Lazarus shouted.

Ismael and Irene grabbed hold of Simone and hauled her towards the door. As they were about to leave, Irene turned to look at Lazarus. She watched as the toymaker walked over to the four-poster bed and, with infinite tenderness, drew aside the veils that covered it. The figure of a woman could be seen through the curtains.

‘Wait . . .’ whispered Irene, her heart in her mouth.

The woman
had
to be Alma. Irene trembled as she noticed the tears on Lazarus’s face. The toymaker hugged his wife. Never in her life had Irene seen anyone hug another person so tenderly. Every gesture, every movement conveyed a love and a tenderness that could only result from a life of complete devotion. Alma’s arms closed around him too and, for a magical moment, they were united in the darkness, far from this world. Without knowing why, Irene felt like crying, but then a new vision, terrible and menacing, startled her from her reverie.

The stain was sliding, sinuously, from the portrait towards the bed. Irene felt a wave of panic.

‘Lazarus, be careful!’

The toymaker turned and watched as the shadow rose in front of him with a furious roar. For a second, he held the infernal creature’s gaze. Then he turned to Irene and Ismael; he seemed to be trying to say something with his eyes, but they couldn’t quite understand. Suddenly, Irene realised what Lazarus was about to do.

‘No!’ she shouted, but Ismael held her back.

The toymaker approached the shadow.

‘You won’t take her away again . . .’

The shadow raised a claw, ready to attack its owner. Lazarus put his hand in his jacket pocket and pulled out a shiny object. A revolver. The shadow’s laughter echoed through the room.

Lazarus pulled the trigger. Ismael stared in bewilderment. Then the toymaker gave a weak smile and the revolver fell from his hands. A dark stain was spreading over his chest. Blood.

The shadow’s cry shook the entire mansion. It was a cry of terror.

‘No, no . . .’ Irene wailed.

Ismael ran over to help the toymaker, but Lazarus raised a hand.

‘No. Leave me here with her. And get out of this place,’ he whispered, a trickle of blood running from the corner of his mouth.

Ismael took Lazarus in his arms and moved him closer to the bed. As he did so, he was struck by the heart-rending sight of a sad, pale face. Ismael was gazing at Alma Maltisse. Her tearful eyes stared straight back at him, lost in a slumber from which she would never awake.

She was a machine.

All these years, Lazarus had lived with an automaton he had created to preserve the memory of his wife, the memory that the shadow had taken from him.

Thunderstruck, Ismael took a step back. Lazarus looked at him with pleading eyes.

‘Leave me alone with her . . . please.’

‘But . . . it’s only . . .’ Ismael began.

‘She’s all I’ve got.’

Ismael then realised why the body of the woman who had drowned off the island had never been found. Lazarus had pulled her out of the sea and brought her back to life – not a real existence, but life as a machine. Unable to face the loneliness and the loss of his wife, he’d created a phantom using her body, a sad reflection with which he had lived for twenty years. As he looked into Lazarus’s dying eyes, Ismael also knew that, somehow, in the toymaker’s heart, Alexandra Alma Maltisse was still alive.

The toymaker gave him one last look, full of pain. The boy nodded his head slowly and returned to Irene’s side.

‘What . . . ?’

‘Let’s get out of here. Quick,’ Ismael urged her.

‘But . . .’

‘I said let’s get out of here!’

Together, they dragged Simone into the corridor. The door slammed shut behind them, sealing Lazarus inside the room. Irene and Ismael then hurried down the corridor as fast as they could, heading for the main staircase and trying to ignore the unearthly howls coming from the other side of the door.

Staggering to his feet, Lazarus Jann confronted the shadow. The spectre threw him a desperate look. The tiny hole made by the bullet was getting larger and consuming the shadow second by second. Trying to hide, it leaped towards the portrait again, but this time Lazarus took a blazing log and set fire to the painting.

The fire spread over the canvas like waves on a pond. The shadow howled. In the darkness of the library, the pages of the black book also began to smoulder until they too went up in flames.

Lazarus crawled back towards the bed, but the shadow pursued him, now devoured by the flames and leaving a trail of fire behind it. The curtains of the four-poster bed caught fire and the flames spread over the ceiling and the floor, angrily consuming everything in their path. In a matter of seconds the room was an inferno.

The flames burst through one of the windows, scorching the few remaining bits of glass and sucking in the night air. The door of the room collapsed, blazing, into the corridor. Then, slowly but relentlessly, the fire took possession of the entire house.

Walking through the flames, Lazarus pulled out the glass bottle that had held the shadow for so many years and raised it in his hands. With a cry of despair, the shadow entered the bottle. A spider web of frost spread across its glass sides. Then Lazarus sealed the bottle and, gazing at it one last time, he cast it into the fire. The flask burst into a thousand pieces; like the dying breath of a curse the shadow was extinguished for ever. And with it, the toymaker felt his own life slowly slipping away.

When Irene and Ismael emerged through the front door, carrying the unconscious Simone, the flames were already blazing through the second-floor windows. In just a few seconds the windowpanes burst, one after another, ejecting a storm of molten glass over the garden. They hurried to the entrance of the wood and only when they reached the shelter of the trees did they stop to look back.

Cravenmoore was burning.

One by one, the wonderful creatures that had populated Lazarus Jann’s universe were destroyed by the flames that night in 1937. Speaking clocks saw their hands melt into red-hot filaments. Ballerinas and orchestras, magicians, witches and chess players, wonders that would never again see the light of day . . . there was no mercy for any of them. Floor by floor, room by room, all the contents of that magical and terrible place were destroyed, leaving only a trail of ashes behind.

Somewhere in that inferno the photographs and cuttings Lazarus Jann had treasured were consumed. And, as the police cars arrived at the ghostly pyre that small, tormented boy were sealed for ever.

As long as he lived, Ismael would never forget the final moments of Lazarus and his companion. The last thing he’d glimpsed was Lazarus kissing his wife on the forehead, and he swore to himself that he would keep this secret to the end of his days.

The break of dawn revealed a cloud of ash rolling towards the horizon over the bay. And as the day chased away the sea mist from the Englishman’s Beach, the ruins of Cravenmoore emerged above the treetops. Columns of black smoke rose skywards, forming velvet-black trails that reached towards the clouds.

Gradually, the haze concealing the lighthouse island broke up into wings of mist that fluttered away in the early-morning breeze.

Sitting on a blanket of white sand, Irene and Ismael witnessed the last minutes of that long summer’s night in 1937. Without a word, they joined hands and watched as the first rays of sun broke through the clouds. The lighthouse stood before them, dark and solitary. A faint smile appeared on Irene’s lips as she realised that, somehow, the lights the villagers had seen glowing through the mist would now be extinguished for ever.

‘They are at peace now,’ she whispered.

Ismael embraced her. ‘Let’s go home,’ he said.

Together they retraced their steps along the shore, heading towards Seaview. And as they walked, a single thought occupied Irene’s mind. In a world of lights and shadows, every person, every one of us, needs to find their own way.

Days later, when Irene’s mother disclosed what the shadow had told her – the real story of Lazarus Jann and Alma Maltisse – the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle began to fit together. And yet, being able to shed light on what had really happened could not have changed the course of events. A curse had pursued Lazarus Jann from his tragic childhood to his death. A death that he himself, in his final moments, had realised was his only way out.

Paris, 26 May 1947

Dear Ismael
,

I haven’t written to you in a very long time. Too long, I’m afraid. But finally, only about a week ago, a miracle occurred. All the letters you’ve been sending over the years to my old address reached me, thanks to the kindness of a neighbour, an old woman who is almost ninety but has the sharpest memory of anybody I’ve ever met. She’d kept them all this time, hoping that one day someone would come by and collect them.

Since then I’ve been reading and rereading your letters, over and over again. They are my most treasured possession. The reasons for my silence, and for this long absence, are difficult for me to explain. Especially to you, Ismael.

Little did those two young people on the beach imagine that, on the morning Lazarus Jann’s shadow disappeared for ever, a far more terrible shadow was looming over the world. The shadow of war.

When I lost touch with you during these terrible years, I sent you hundreds of letters that never reached you. I still wonder where they are, where all those words, the many things I had to tell you, ended up. I want you to know that, during those dark times, the memory of you, and of that summer in Blue Bay, was what kept me alive, what gave me the strength to survive another day.

Dorian enlisted and served for two years in North Africa. He returned with a pile of useless medals and a wound that will leave him with a limp for the rest of his life. He was one of the lucky ones. He came back. You’ll be pleased to hear that he finally managed to get a job in the cartography department of the Merchant Navy and that, whenever his girlfriend Michelle allows him a free moment (you should see her . . .), he travels the world with his compass.