A dark foreboding took hold of him.
‘Put down that book . . .’
‘Why?’ asked Irene, puzzled.
‘Put it down.’
Irene closed the book and did as her friend asked. The gold letters on the cover shone in the light of the blaze from the fireplace: ‘Doppelgänger’.
Irene had only just left the desk when she felt a strong vibration under her feet. The fire in the hearth flickered and some of the tomes on the bookshelves began to shake. The girl ran to Ismael.
‘What the hell . . . ?’ said Ismael. The intense rumbling seemed to be coming from the very depths of the house.
At that moment, the book Irene had left on the desk burst open and the flames in the fireplace were extinguished by a blast of icy air. Ismael put his arms around Irene and drew her close. Books started to tumble down from on high, pushed by invisible hands.
‘There’s someone here,’ Irene whispered. ‘I can feel it . . .’
The pages of the book slowly began to turn over, one by one. Ismael gazed at the ancient volume. He noticed, for the first time, that the letters on its pages appeared to be evaporating, forming a gaseous black cloud above the book. The shapeless mass was absorbing word after word, sentence after sentence, a phantom of black ink suspended in mid-air.
Suddenly, the dark cloud expanded and the shapes of hands, arms and a trunk appeared, together with a sphinx-like face.
Petrified with fear, Ismael and Irene watched as the electrifying apparition, and other shapes around it, came to life from the pages of the fallen books. Slowly, an entire army of shadows formed before their incredulous eyes. Shadows of children, of old men, of women dressed in strange costumes . . . trapped spirits, too weak to acquire consistency and volume. Their anguished faces were weary and listless. As she looked at them, Irene felt she was standing before lost souls, beings enslaved by some terrible curse. They stretched out their hands towards her, begging for help, but their fingers faded, becoming nothing more than a nebulous mass. She could feel the horror of the darkness that gripped them.
Irene wondered who these spirits were and how they’d got there. Had they once been unsuspecting visitors to Cravenmoore, just as she was? For a moment she thought she might spot her mother among them, but at a simple gesture from the shadow, their forms melted into a dark whirlwind that swept across the room.
The shadow opened its jaws and swallowed each and every one of them, consuming what little strength they had left. A deathly silence followed. Then the shadow opened its eyes. They shone blood-red in the gloom.
Irene wanted to scream, but her voice was lost in the sudden roar that shook Cravenmoore. One by one, all the windows and doors of the house were being sealed up, like tombstones closing. Ismael heard a cavernous echo rumble through the corridors of Cravenmoore and sensed that their hopes of getting out of there alive were quickly evaporating.
Now only a thin line of brightness remained, a tightrope of light high up on the vaulted ceiling. Without waiting another second, Ismael grabbed Irene’s hand and felt his way towards to the other end of the room.
‘Perhaps the other exit is up there,’ he whispered.
Irene looked up in the direction Ismael was pointing, at the thread of light which seemed to be coming through a keyhole. The library was constructed in a series of concentric ovals, connected by a narrow passageway that rose in a spiral up the walls and led to the different galleries that branched out from it. Simone had told her about this architectural quirk: if you followed the passageway to the end you were almost level with the third floor of the house. It was a sort of indoor Tower of Babel, Irene thought. This time she led the way.
‘Do you know where you’re going?’ asked Ismael.
‘Trust me.’
He hurried after her, the ground slowly rising underfoot as they went further into the passageway. A cold draught caressed the back of his neck and he noticed that there was a thick black stain spreading across the floor behind him. The shadow’s texture was viscous now, and it moved like a sheet of oil, thick and shiny.
After a few seconds, it reached Ismael’s feet. The boy felt a cold spasm, as if he were walking on ice.
‘Hurry!’ he cried.
As they had suspected, the thread of light was coming from a door which was now only half a dozen metres away from them. Ismael ran towards it, managing to get ahead of the shadow for a few moments. He doubted the door would be unlocked.
Irene’s hands were already on the lock, searching for some way of opening it. Ismael turned to check where the shadow was and discovered the jet-black mantle rising before him. A tar-like face materialised. A familiar face. Ismael thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. He blinked. The face was still there. It was his own.
Ismael’s dark reflection gave him an evil smile, a reptilian tongue flickering out of its mouth. Instinctively, Ismael pulled out the knife he’d taken from the butler Christian and brandished it in front of the shadow. The figure blew on the weapon and a sheen of frost spread from the point of the blade to the hilt. The frozen metal sent an intense burning sensation through the palm of his hand. Ismael almost let go of the weapon, but he ignored the spasm gripping his forearm and tried to plunge the knife into the shadow’s face. When the shadow’s tongue touched the blade it dropped off, falling by Ismael’s feet. Instantly, the small mass wrapped itself around his ankle like a second skin and then began to creep up his leg. The contact with its slimy matter made him feel nauseous.
Just then, he heard the lock give a click and a tunnel of light opened up before them. Irene ran through the door, followed by Ismael, who slammed it shut, leaving his pursuer on the other side. The shadow’s tongue that had become detached had now reached Ismael’s thigh and it took on the shape of a giant spider. A painful cramp shot up his leg. Irene tried to brush off the monstrous creature, but the spider turned towards her and jumped on her. Irene let out a terrified scream.
‘Get it off me!’
By now Ismael had discovered the source of the light that had been guiding them. A row of candles extended into the gloom. The boy grabbed one of them and held the flame next to the spider, which was heading towards Irene’s throat. The contact with the fire made the creature hiss in anger and pain, then it disintegrated into black droplets that rained down on the floor. Ismael put down the candle and pulled Irene away from the fragments. The drops slithered like jelly over the floor, then joined into a single body that slid back under the door.
‘Fire! It’s afraid of fire,’ said Irene.