Angus and I were standing. He asked us whether we didn’t have any requests. I stood there, trying to keep my expression blank, but to my surprise Angus spoke. His father had lost his job that day. The steel plant where most of the local adults worked was laying off a substantial part of the workforce and replacing them with machines that worked longer hours for no pay and didn’t complain. The first people to lose their jobs in this lottery were the more troublesome leaders and Angus’s father seemed to have ticked all the boxes.
‘Angus had five brothers and sisters and his mother was sick, barely able to leave her bed. They all lived together squeezed into a miserable damp house that was falling to pieces. I don’t need to tell you the situation was desperate. In a small voice, Angus made his wish known to Cain: that his father get his job back at the steel works. Cain agreed and then, just as I had been told, we saw him disappear off into the mist. The following day Angus’s father was inexplicably called back to work. Cain had fulfilled his promise.
‘Two weeks later, Angus and I were returning home after a visit to a travelling fair on the outskirts of town. We didn’t want to get back too late, so we took a short cut along an abandoned railway line. It was dark, and we were walking through that eerie moonlit landscape when we saw a figure emerging from the mist and coming towards us. The figure was wrapped in a dark cloak. The Prince of Mist. We were paralysed with fear. Cain approached us and, with his usual smile, he spoke to Angus. He told my friend that the time had come for him to return the favour. Stricken with terror, Angus agreed. Cain said that his request was a simple one: a small settling of scores. In those days, the richest person in the area – in fact, the only rich person – was Skolimoski, a Polish tradesman who owned a food and clothing store where everyone did their shopping. Angus’s mission was to set fire to Skolimoski’s shop. The task was to be completed the following night. Angus tried to protest, but he couldn’t get the words out. There was something in Cain’s eyes that made it clear he was not prepared to accept anything other than total obedience. The magician left the same way he’d come.
‘We ran all the way home, and when I left Angus at his door and saw the horror that filled his eyes, my heart went out to him. The following day I combed the streets looking for my friend, but there was no trace of him. I was beginning to worry that Angus had decided to carry out the criminal act requested by Cain, so I decided to stand guard opposite Skolimoski’s store as soon as it grew dark. Angus never turned up, and the Pole’s shop didn’t go up in flames that night. I felt guilty for having doubted my friend and thought the best thing I could do was try to reassure him. I knew him well; he was bound to be at home, hiding, trembling at the thought of the sinister magician’s revenge. The next morning I went to his house. Angus wasn’t there. With tears in her eyes his mother told me he hadn’t come home that night and begged me to find him and bring him back.
‘Sick with fear, I scoured the whole area from top to bottom, not forgetting a single one of its stinking corners. Nobody had seen him. By the evening, exhausted and not knowing where else I could possibly look, a dark thought took hold of me. I returned to the path by the old railway line and followed the tracks that glowed faintly in the moonlight. I didn’t have to walk for long. I found my friend lying on the rails, in the same place where Cain had appeared out of the mist two nights before. I tried to feel his pulse, but my hands could find no skin on that body. Only ice. The body of my friend had been transformed into a grotesque statue of smoking blue ice that was slowly melting onto the abandoned line. Around his neck was a small medal with the same symbol I remembered seeing on Cain’s cloak – a six-pointed star within a circle. I stayed with Angus until his features vanished forever into the gloom in a pool of cold tears.
‘That same night, while I was discovering my friend’s horrific fate, Skolimoski’s store was destroyed by a ferocious fire. I never told anybody what I had witnessed that day.
‘Two months later, my family moved south, to a place far from our old home. As the months went by I started to believe that the Prince of Mist was only a bitter memory, a fragment of the bleak years spent in the shadows of that poor, dirty, violent town of my childhood… Until I saw him again and realised that what had happened that night had been only the beginning.’
10
‘My next encounter with the Prince of Mist took place a few months later. My father had just been promoted to chief engineer in a textile factory and to celebrate he decided to take us all to a large amusement park built on a wooden pier. I’ll never forget it. The pier stretched out into the sea and the buildings on it shone like a glass palace suspended from the sky. When night fell, the sight of all the multicoloured lights reflected on the water was magnificent. I’d never seen anything so beautiful. My father was over the moon: he’d rescued his family from what promised to be a miserable future and was now a man with a good job, highly regarded, and with enough money in his pocket to be able to let his children enjoy the same amusements as any other child in town. We had an early dinner and then my father gave us each a few coins to spend on whatever we liked while he and my mother strolled about arm in arm, rubbing shoulders with the well-to-do.
‘I was fascinated by the Big Wheel that turned ceaselessly at one end of the pier – its lights could be seen for miles along the coast – and I ran to join the queue. As I waited I became aware of a booth standing only a few metres away. Between lucky dips and shooting galleries, an intense purple light illuminated the mysterious den of Dr Cain, fortune-teller, magician and clairvoyant, as the notice outside proclaimed. A third-rate artist had depicted Cain’s face on the sign, which stared threateningly at any onlookers who walked past the new lair of the Prince of Mist. The portrait, together with the shadows projected by the purple lamp, lent the den a chilling, funereal appearance. A curtain with the six-pointed star embroidered in black cloaked the entrance.
‘As if drawn by an invisible force, I left the queue for the Big Wheel and walked over to the hut. I was trying to peek inside through a narrow gap when the curtain was flung open and a woman dressed in black, with skin as white as milk and dark, piercing eyes, beckoned to me. Inside, sitting behind a table under the glow of an oil lamp, I recognised the man I had met in another place and time: Cain. A large dark cat with golden eyes was grooming itself at his feet.
‘Without thinking twice, I went over to the table where the Prince of Mist was waiting for me, a smile on his face. I still remember his voice, deep and measured, saying my name over the hypnotic sound of the music from a merry-go-round that seemed to be far, far away…’
*
‘Victor, my friend,’ Cain murmured, ‘if I weren’t a fortune-teller I’d say that fate wished our paths to cross again.’
‘Who are you?’ young Victor managed to stammer as he glanced over at the ghostly woman, who had retreated into the shadows.
‘I’m Dr Cain. Surely you saw the sign?’ Cain replied. ‘Having a nice time with your family?’
Victor gulped and nodded.
‘That’s good,’ the magician went on. ‘Amusement is like laudanum: it takes away all the misery and pain, even if only for a short time.’
‘I don’t know what laudanum is,’ replied Victor.
‘A drug, my son, it’s a drug,’ Cain replied wearily, turning to look at a clock resting on a shelf to his right.
The hands seemed to be going backwards.
‘Time does not exist, that’s why we mustn’t lose it. Have you decided on your wish?’
‘I don’t have a wish,’ Victor replied shakily.
Cain burst out laughing.
‘Come, come. None of us has only one wish; we have hundreds. And life doesn’t grant us many chances to make them come true.’ Cain looked over at the mysterious woman with a grimace that was meant to look like pity. ‘Isn’t that true, dearest?’
The woman didn’t reply. It almost seemed as if she was made of wood and was incapable of movement.
‘But some of us are lucky, Victor,’ said Cain, leaning over the table. ‘Like you. Because you can make your dreams come true, Victor. And you know how.’
‘The way Angus did?’ Victor snapped despite himself. He’d noticed something odd that he couldn’t get out of his mind: Cain hadn’t blinked at all, not even once.
‘An accident, dear friend. An unfortunate accident,’ said Cain, adopting a note of concern. ‘It’s a mistake to
