Through Dead Eyes (16 page)

What was for sure was that things would never be the same again back home. Alex felt as though he saw things more clearly now.

Alex picked up his mobile and sent a message to his mother. It read simply,
Sorry
. He knew now how much he must have hurt her. He hoped she would understand.

Alex vowed that when he got back to England he would go and see his mother and talk about everything. He would tell her about Molly and Angelien and Hanna and the mask.

Alex switched on the television and flicked through the channels, failing to find anything he wanted to watch. He picked up his book and began to read, but he just didn’t feel able to concentrate. He lay back on his bed and stared at the ceiling. The muffled sound of the outside world and his father’s tapping faded away and he closed his eyes and fell asleep.

It felt like only seconds later when he woke with a start, but when he looked at the clock by his bed he could see it was over an hour later. The day was drifting slowly towards twilight. He stretched and sat up.

Alex went to the bathroom and poured himself a glass of water and drank it in one go. His mouth still felt dry. He looked in the bathroom mirror and he almost didn’t recognise himself. The trials of the last couple of days seemed etched on to his face.

What a mess it all was. He had come to Amsterdam hoping to put the troubles at home and at school behind him, but he had simply swapped those troubles for new ones.

One thing was for sure, the mask was staying in Amsterdam. He might not be able to solve everything, but at least he could leave Hanna and Van Kampen behind. He had enough troubles of his own to deal with without getting caught up in things that happened centuries ago.

Walking back into the bedroom, Alex went over to the chest of drawers. He would put the mask in the bin and that would be that. But on opening the top drawer he was surprised that the mask wasn’t there.

Then he remembered that it was still under the bed. Alex dropped to his knees and looked and bent forward, pressing his face to the carpet and peering into the gloom. There, like a skull in a grave pit, was the mask, smiling, deathly pale.

Alex froze. Tears sprang to his eyes. He knew now that he looked at it, that he shouldn’t touch it – that he would pack his clothes and leave it be for the cleaners to find. But he also knew in that instant that he couldn’t stop himself.

Alex stretched out his arm and grabbed the mask. As always, the surface felt cold, and its chill had seeped into his flesh.

Alex tied the mask on and looked around the room. The change was expected now. Even the fact that daylight was extinguished didn’t surprise him any more.

Alex again had the feeling that there were two people inside his head. Or was it that he had invaded the head of the girl? Did she have the same strange sensation as him?

Some time had elapsed since the beating. He could still feel the pain that Hanna carried from it, but it was an ache now. But her anger was still raw. Alex could feel it burning cold, like ice.

He walked over to the window and, pulling aside the curtain, looked out at the canal. It was that more-than-night of Hanna’s world. The plague children were already gathered in the street outside.

They moved into a huddle below the window. They had their heads bowed, as though deep in thought, but they seemed to know that Hanna was at the window because they all, as one, raised their pale-blue faces and stared up.

Then, one by one, the ghostly children raised their thin blue-white arms and beckoned, their skinny fingers curling and uncurling as though they were trying to coax a bird from a tree.

They were beckoning to Hanna. They were willing her to come and play with them; to free herself from her father’s captivity and run in the streets with them.

Death was the price to be paid for this freedom and Alex could already feel the part of him that was Hanna agreeing that this price was worth paying. She would join them soon enough.

Hanna turned and walked across to the connecting door to her fathers’ room. Alex felt his own arm reach out but it was Hanna’s hand that appeared in his field of sight, edging towards the latch of the door to the adjoining room. It was not the white-painted door of his hotel room, but the dull, dark one of Hanna’s world.

He felt his hand – her hand – close around the latch. He felt the smooth chill of its touch on the palm. He heard the faintest click of the latch and the whisper of the door brushing slowly open.

Through the widening crack he saw that the room was not the room his father slept in. There was instead a much darker, gloomier chamber, sparsely furnished and dominated by a tall four-poster bed, hung all about with heavy curtains.

Van Kampen was in that bed, behind those curtains. He could hear his sleeping breaths, rasping rhythmically like the clock in his room.

His terror of Van Kampen waking was almost unbearable. Alex desperately wanted to go back to his room and to his own time, but Hanna’s will was stronger.

Their tread was soundless and the girl’s bare feet walked ever so gently across the wooden floor. She had a lightness he could never have achieved.

Alex could sense her wariness and his own fear returned as he realised she was worried that her father might wake up. She walked past the end of the bed and towards a table near the window on which stood a glass and a wine decanter and a smaller, dark-green bottle.

Alex knew that she would reach for that small bottle. He knew too that she would remove the stopper from the wine decanter. He felt the glass stopper and the weight of it as she pulled it out and set it noiselessly down on the table top.

The small green bottle contained a fine white powder and he watched as the girl’s hand carefully lifted it, tipping some of the contents into the wine with practised precision. She had done this before and more than once.

She looked at the powder dissolving in the wine for a moment and then carefully put the bottles back exactly as she had found them. Alex wondered if it was poison but knew Van Kampen would hardly leave poison sitting next to his wine. More likely it was some kind of medicine. Whatever it was, he knew that Hanna meant him harm.

Why should he care? He hated his father. No. It was Hanna who hated her father. Her mind was melting into his. He struggled to keep track of his own thoughts.

Van Kampen moved in his sleep but did not wake. But it was a sign to get moving. As noiselessly as they had entered the room, they now left, closing the door silently behind them. Hanna’s power over him seemed momentarily weakened by her fear that her father would wake and Alex reached up and took the mask off.

He threw it on the bed and adjusted his eyes to the light. Even though it was a gloomy afternoon, it seemed dazzlingly bright after the darkness of Hanna’s world.

Alex looked round to face the connecting doors. He could hear his father still tapping at his laptop. A few minutes later he opened the door and asked Alex what he wanted to eat.

They ordered food and ate it in Alex’s father’s room in near silence. His father said that Alex could watch a movie if he wanted to but that he was going to get some work done and then turn in.

Hanna had been trying to kill her father, Alex was sure of it. Maybe she succeeded. Alex couldn’t imagine that he could ever be angry enough with his father that he would want him dead, let alone be the cause of his death. But then his father had not beaten him the way Van Kampen had beaten Hanna.

Alex felt complicit somehow. Even though he hadn’t willed it, he still felt as though his hand had poured that powder into Van Kampen’s glass. Could he have resisted? Could he have stopped Hanna?

Chapter 17

When Alex woke, he was standing at the window wearing the mask. For a moment he thought he was dreaming, but only for a moment.

He tried to put his hands to his face to remove the mask, but they would not obey him. He was back in Hanna’s world and it was she who was in control here.

The canal outside was once more as it was in the painting. Hanna looked straight ahead into the darkness and again Alex could see her eyes twinkle in the curved eyeholes in the reflected mask. He felt her face form a hidden smile that mirrored the frozen smile of the mask and Alex felt his face compelled to do the same.

Hanna’s scarred hand reached up to the window latch and opened it. The chill night air rushed in.

Alex knew what she was doing and yet was powerless to stop himself mirroring her actions as she stepped up on to the windowsill and leaned out to look at the ghost children way below.

Hanna teetered there on the sill, between standing and falling, between life and death. The moment seemed to go on for ever. Alex tried to resist. If he jumped with Hanna, was he jumping in his own time? If he died here, would he join Hanna and those ghostly children? He summoned up every last ounce of his dwindling will and yelled.

‘No!’

As the sound of his voice died away, Alex felt his will fade along with it. He looked down with Hanna at the spectral faces below.

‘Alex!’

Alex’s grip on the window frame loosened. He was already falling when his father grabbed his arm and pulled him inside, falling as he did so and dragging his son on top of him. They lay together on the floor, Alex’s father holding him tightly.

His father got up and went to the window and closed it. He pulled the mask from Alex’s face, tossed it to the ground and stamped on it, splitting it into pieces.

Alex’s father looked at Alex with an expression of bewilderment.

‘Alex,’ he said breathlessly. ‘What . . . Why were you . . .’

‘I’m sorry, Dad,’ said Alex, sobbing. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘You looked like you were going to . . .’ began his father.

Alex’s father hugged him and they sat together on the bed. Alex looked down at the broken mask and knew that the spell that went with it was broken too. He did not know whether Hanna was now free of this place or whether Alex was simply free of her influence, but something had changed, he could feel it.

‘Alex,’ said his father. ‘Why? I don’t understand . . . Is this about Molly Ryman?’

Alex shook his head.

‘About your mum and me?’

‘I can’t explain it, Dad,’ said Alex.

‘Try.’

‘You wouldn’t believe me,’ said Alex. ‘I wanted to tell you about the mask before . . .’

His father shook his head and groaned.

‘Please tell me this isn’t about that damned mask?’ said his father. ‘For God’s sake, Alex. You were about to . . .’

Alex struggled to concentrate. Noises seemed to rush forward like angry bees, buzzing around his head before disappearing in a background hum. His head hurt and he sat on his bed while his father fetched him a glass of water.

‘Talk to me,’ said his father. ‘Please.’

‘You won’t believe me,’ said Alex.

‘Alex,’ said his father with a sigh. ‘Just tell me.’

So Alex told him some of what had happened over the last few days. He told him about the mask and about the painting. He told him about Angelien’s research into the house and the painter’s journal. He told him about seeing Hanna’s reflection when they first arrived and how he had felt haunted by a presence in the room the whole time they had been there.

Alex’s father listened attentively and without once interrupting. At first Alex was pleased that he was being allowed to get his words out, but the more it went on, the more self-conscious he became and the less sure of what his father was thinking.

When he had reached the end of his story, his father lowered his head, closed his eyes and rubbed them with his finger and thumb, as he always did when he was searching for the right words. When he raised his head, Alex was shocked to see tears in his eyes.

‘Dad?’ said Alex.

‘Alex,’ said his father. ‘I’m so sorry. This is all my fault. I haven’t appreciated how stressed you have been by everything that has gone on,’ continued his father. ‘Your mother leaving was a big blow, I know that.’

‘What’s that got to do with this?’ said Alex, frowning.

‘Look, Alex,’ said his father reaching out and putting a hand on his knee. ‘You’re a very intelligent boy. But you’re also a . . . sensitive boy.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ he said.

‘Alex,’ said his father gently. ‘The business at school? You aren’t coping very well, are you? The business with the Ryman girl and now . . .’

‘This has got nothing to do with what happened at school!’ said Alex.

‘Do you remember the nightmares you had when Mum left?’

Alex took a deep breath before answering.

‘This wasn’t like that,’ said Alex.

‘Wasn’t it?’ said his father.

‘You haven’t listened to anything I’ve said. You never listen.’

Alex’s father put his hands to his face and rubbed his eyebrows.

‘Alex,’ he said quietly. ‘I have listened to you. That’s why I’m concerned. That’s why –’

‘I shouldn’t have told you,’ said Alex.

‘Of course you should,’ said his father. ‘Please try and –’

‘I’m tired, Dad,’ said Alex. ‘I’m going to get to sleep.’