alise that he was the one who was speaking. In a firm tone, and without a trace of fear.
‘Get out of here,’ he ordered, addressing the shadow. ‘I said out!’
A spine-chilling sound reached his ears, like the echo of distant laughter, cruel and malevolent. The shadow’s features surfaced like a mirage through the jet-black waters of the gloom. Black and demonic.
‘Get out of here,’ Dorian heard himself repeating.
The hazy face melted before his eyes and the shadow rushed across the room at great speed, like a cloud of hot gas. As it reached the door, it twisted into a phantom-like spiral that spun through the keyhole, a tornado of darkness sucked out by an invisible force.
Only then did the light bulb go on again, bathing the room in a warm glow. The sudden brightness almost made Dorian scream in panic. He searched every corner of the room, but there was no sign of the apparition he thought he’d seen a few seconds earlier.
Taking a deep breath, Dorian walked over to the door. He placed his hand on the doorknob. The metal was as cold as ice. Arming himself with courage, he opened it and scanned the corridor outside. Nothing.
Gently, he closed the door and returned to the window. Below, Lazarus was saying goodbye to his mother. Just before leaving, the toymaker leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. A brief kiss, just a light brush. Dorian felt his stomach shrink to the size of a pea. A second later, the man looked up from the shadows and smiled at him. Dorian’s blood froze.
Lazarus ambled away beneath the moonlight, heading towards the wood, but however hard he tried, Dorian couldn’t make out Lazarus’s shadow. Moments later, darkness had engulfed him.
After walking down a long passageway that linked the toy factory with the mansion, Ismael and Irene headed deep into the heart of Cravenmoore. In the dead of night Lazarus’s residence seemed like a haunted palace, with galleries stretching in all directions and hallways inhabited by dozens of eerie mechanical creatures. From the turret in the centre of the mansion, high above the spiral staircase, came a shower of purple, gold and blue reflections that shimmered like the shifting colours of a kaleidoscope.
To Irene, the motionless figures of the automata and the lifeless faces on the walls made it seem as if a strange spell had once been cast, trapping the souls of Cravenmoore’s previous inhabitants. Ismael, whose imagination was more prosaic, saw in them only the reflection of the twisted mind of their creator. Which didn’t comfort him in the least; on the contrary, the more they ventured into Lazarus Jann’s private domain, the more intense the toymaker’s presence seemed to become. His personality was stamped on every obscure detail of the building: from the ceiling, a dome with frescoes depicting scenes from famous stories, down to the floor they were treading on, an endless chessboard that deceived the eye with strange optical illusions. To walk though Cravenmoore was like entering a dream that was both fascinating and terrifying.
Ismael stopped at the foot of a staircase and inspected the circular steps that seemed to vanish into the ether. While he was looking up, Irene noticed that the face of one of Lazarus’s clocks, in the shape of a sun, had opened its eyes and was smiling at them. As the hour hand reached midnight, the sphere swivelled round and the sun gave way to a moon that shone with a ghostly light. Its dark, glistening eyes moved slowly from side to side.
‘Let’s go upstairs,’ whispered Ismael. ‘Hannah’s room was on the second floor.’
‘There are dozens of rooms there, Ismael. How will we know which was hers?’
‘Hannah told me her room was at the end of a corridor, facing the bay.’
Irene didn’t think this was very helpful, but she nodded all the same. Ismael seemed as overwhelmed by the place as she was, although he would never have admitted it in a hundred years. They both took one last look at the clock.
‘It’s midnight. Lazarus will be back soon,’ said Irene.
‘Let’s go.’
The stairs rose in a byzantine spiral that seemed to defy gravity, progressively twisting round on itself like the access route to the dome of a large cathedral. After a dizzying climb, they passed the entrance to the first floor. Ismael grabbed Irene’s hand as they continued up the second flight of stairs. The curvature of the staircase became more pronounced now, and the route slowly narrowed into a claustrophobic passage cut in stone.
‘Just a bit further,’ said Ismael, reading Irene’s anguished silence.
What seemed like an eternity later, they escaped the oppressive tunnel and reached the door leading to the second floor of Cravenmoore. They were now in the main corridor of the east wing. A throng of petrified figures lurked in the dark.
‘We’d better separate,’ said Ismael.
‘What? Are you mad?’
‘The good news is you get to decide which end you want to explore,’ he offered.
Irene looked to either side. To the east she could see three hooded figures standing round a huge cooking pot: witches. She pointed to the other end.
‘They’re only machines, Irene,’ said Ismael. ‘They’re not alive.’
‘Tell me that in the morning.’
‘All right, I’ll explore this side. We’ll meet back here in a quarter of an hour. If we haven’t found anything, we’ll leave,’ he promised.
She nodded. Ismael handed her his matchbox.
‘Just in case.’