The Watcher in the Shadows by Carlos Ruiz Zafón Read Free Book Online Page B

not to look, Hannah couldn’t help glancing at the gypsy’s terrifying effigy. Suddenly the fortune-teller’s eyes opened and she extended a card towards Hannah. The card showed the figure of a red demon wreathed in flames.
    A few metres on, the torso of the masked man swung back and forth. The automaton would peel off one mask after another, never revealing his invisible face. Hannah looked away and hurried on. She’d been down this corridor hundreds of times during the day. They were all just lifeless machines that didn’t deserve her attention, let alone her fear.
    With this reassuring thought in mind she came to the end of the corridor and turned the corner into the west wing. On one side of the passage stood Maestro Firetti’s miniature orchestra. If you put a coin in, the figures in the band would play their own peculiar version of Mozart’s ‘Turkish March’.
    Finally, Hannah stopped in front of a huge oak panel. Every door in Cravenmoore had been carved with a different pattern, depicting a famous tale: the Grimm brothers immortalised in the most intricate woodwork. To Hannah’s eyes, however, they were, quite simply, sinister. This last room in the corridor was one she had never set foot in. And she wouldn’t have gone in now, unless she had to.
    She could hear the shutters banging on the other side of the door. Cold night air filtered through the gap between the door and the frame, whispering over her skin. Hannah took one last look down the corridor behind her. The faces in the orchestra stared back through the shadows. She could hear the sound of the rain, like thousands of small spiders scuttling over the roof of Cravenmoore. She took a deep breath and stepped into the room.
    An icy gust of wind enveloped her, slamming the door behind her and snuffing out the candles. The sodden net curtains flapped about in the wind like tattered shrouds. Hannah rushed over to close the window, securing the latch the wind had unfastened. She searched her dressing-gown pocket with trembling fingers, pulled out a matchbox and lit the candles once more. The flickering flames lit up the gloom, revealing what looked to be a child’s room. A small bed stood next to a desk. Books and a child’s clothes laid out on a chair. A pair of shoes neatly lined up under the bed. A minute crucifix hanging from one of the bedposts.
    Hannah took a few steps forward. There was something disconcerting about these objects and this furniture, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Once more she scanned the room. There were no children at Cravenmoore. There never had been. What was the point of this room?
    Suddenly, it all became clear. Now she understood what she found so disconcerting. It wasn’t the room’s tidiness. It wasn’t because it was so clean. It was something so simple, so obvious, you wouldn’t even notice it. This was a child’s room, but there was something missing . . . Toys. There wasn’t a single toy.
    Hannah raised the candlestick and discovered something else, on one of the walls. Small bits of paper. Clippings. She put the candlestick on the desk and took a closer look. A mosaic of old cuttings and photographs covered the wall. In one of the images was the pale face of a woman. Her features were dark and angular, and her black eyes held an air of menace. The same face appeared in other pictures. Hannah concentrated on a portrait of the mysterious woman holding a baby in her arms.
    Hannah’s eyes moved along the wall, examining the fragments of old newspapers. There were items about a terrible fire in a Paris factory and the disappearance of someone called Hoffmann during the tragedy. The entire collection, spread out like a row of tombstones, seemed to be imbued with this character’s presence. And in the middle of the wall, surrounded by dozens of illegible scraps, was the front page of a newspaper dating back to 1890. On it was the face of a child, his eyes filled with panic, like the eyes of a