The Prince of Mist

The Prince of Mist () is a 1993 mystery and horror young adult novel by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. It was initially published in Spanish by Editorial Planeta and later in an English translation by Lucia Graves by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers in 2010. The Prince of Mist was Zafón's first novel.Spooky story for young and old Herald Sun

Plot summary It is June 1943, and 13-year-old Max Carver, son of a watchmaker, has moved with his family from the city to get away from World War II. Max's new house was formerly owned by Richard Fleischman. Max experiences mysterious events which have to do with his son, Jacob Fleischman, who had drowned. Over time, Max discovers a sculpture garden near his house, where strange things happen. Max finally makes a friend, Roland, who is older than Max, around the age of his sister, Alicia, who is 15. After diving near the wreck, the Orpheus, Max has more and more questions, which will be answered by Victor Kray, grandfather of Roland.

Chapter 1

The story opens in 1943 in an unnamed city. It is mid-June, the day of the protagonist, Max Carver's, thirteenth birthday. Maximilian Carver, Max's father, and an eccentric watchmaker, tells Max and his family that they are leaving their lives in the city, which is suffering a war, to live in a town on the coast. We meet the family: Andrea Carver, Max's mother, and Max's sisters: Alicia, the elder, and Irina the younger. They reluctantly accept their fate, although Max is especially unhappy about having to leave his friends in the city. Before retiring to bed, Mr. Carver gives Max his birthday present: a watch made by his father, with an engraving on the back that says, Max's time machine. They arrive at the train station, and Max sees that the station clock is slow. His father jokes that he has work already. Mr. Carver finds, and then employs two men, Robin and Philip, to help the family carry and transport their luggage. Max feels someone watching him, and turns to see a large cat with luminous yellow eyes watching him. The cat befriends Irina, who takes an immediate liking to the creature; she begs her parents to let her bring it with them, and they eventually concede. Before they leave the station, Max notices that the clock is even further behind than he had thought, but as he watches it for a moment, he realizes it is actually turning backwards.

Chapter 2

As they drive through the town, the family begins to warm up to the sights, noticeably calmed by tranquil coastal setting. Maximilian Carver is delighted by his family's reactions, and visibly enthused about their new lives on the coast. Max gazes at the ocean, which is covered by a light mist, and thinks he sees the silhouette of a ship sailing on the horizon. But it quickly disappears. On the way to their new home, Mr. Carver tells them the history of the house. It was built in 1923 by Dr. Richard Fleischmann, and he lived there with his wife, Eva. They had a son, Jacob, on June 23, 1925. The family lived happily until the tragedy of 1932, when Jacob drowned playing on the beach near his home. After that, Dr. Fleischmann's health deteriorated, and after he had died, his widow, Eva, left the house to her lawyers to sell, and fled elsewhere. When they arrive, the porters leave quickly, and before they have even taken their first steps into the house, the cat leaps from Irina's arms, letting out a satisfied meow as it is the first to touch down in the foyer. The home is musty and dusty, so the family sets out cleaning it up. The girls are horrified to find huge spiders in their rooms, so Max is charged with disposing of them. Before he can terminate a terrible-looking one, the cat aggressively devours it. Max looks out the window, and beyond the yard, and can vaguely make out a small clearing enclosed by a wall of stone. Inside, there appears to be an overgrown garden, with a circle of stone figures – statues. The wall enclosure is secured with spearhead points along its edge, each embossed with a symbol of a six-pointed star enclosed in a circle.

Chapter 3

Max awakes with a start from a bad dream the next morning. Outside, dawn is breaking, and the air is clouded with a hazy mist. No one else is awake, and he decides to go outside and explore the mysterious garden he had observed through the window the night before. He must break a lock to access the garden, and he is overcome with a foreboding feeling as he enters. Inside, he discovers the statues depict ominous-looking circus characters, including a lion tamer, a contortionist, a fakir, a strong man, and some other ghostly characters, all are arranged in a star pattern around one central figure on a pedestal: a terrible clown, with arms outstretched and hands in a fist. At the clown's feet, Max sees another small paving stone with the same six-pointed star inside of a circle inscribed on its surface. Max looks up again, and sees the hand of the clown is now open to the sky. Afraid, he flees back to the house, not looking back. Finding his family now awake and preparing breakfast, Max decides not to tell them what he has seen because he knows they will be skeptical, and he doesn’t want to crush his father's excitement about their new home. Maximilian Carver eagerly tells the family about his own discovery in the shed outside: an old projector and a box of old films, as well as two bicycles.

Chapter 4

Max helps his father restore the old bicycles and they discover they have barely been used. He asks his father casually about the garden out back, but his father doesn’t give much of a response. Max takes his bike for a ride, and begins to explore the town. Soon, he meets a boy a few years older than he is, named Roland, who is also out riding his bike. Roland offers to show him around, and Max takes him up on the offer. The two pedal around town for hours, and Max is barely able to keep up with the older boy, but enjoys the tour nonetheless. They rest, and Roland tells him about a ship that sunk off the coast in 1918; the wreckage remains underwater. The sole survivor of the shipwreck was an engineer who, as a way of thanking providence for saving his life, settled in the town and built a lighthouse on the cliffs overlooking where the ship had sunk. That man is Roland's adoptive grandfather, Victor Kray; Roland's own parents were killed in a car accident when he was a baby, and they had entrusted Roland to Victor's care in their will. Before the boys part ways, Roland invites Max to go diving with him and explore the shipwreck the next day. Max accepts the offer, and Roland promises to pick him up the next morning. At home, Max finds a note from his mother and a plate of sandwiches awaiting him. His parents have gone into town with Irina, and Alicia is nowhere in sight. Outside, rain begins to fall, and Max retires to his room for a nap.

Chapter 5

Max awakes to the sound of his family downstairs, and he goes down to join them for dinner. He tells them about the friend he’d made that day, and even invites his older sister, Alicia, to join him and Roland in their dive the next day. To his surprise, Alicia accepts the invitation. After dinner, Maximilian sets up the old projector he had salvaged that morning, and the family settles in to watch one of the unmarked films from the box. As the movie begins, they see it is a homemade movie, and the scene begins in a forest. The scene takes them through the trees, and a silhouette begins to appear, as the camera approaches an enclosed garden – the very garden Max had visited that morning. The camera operator enters the garden, revealing the mysterious statues, which look new, unlike the weathered state Max had observed them in. When the scene moves to the clown, Max feels something is different from the way he had observed it that morning, but he can’t decide what it is, and the film ends suddenly. Disappointed with their cinematic experience, the family retires to bed. Max decides to stay up and watch another film. Alicia waits for the rest of the family to leave, and she looks distraught. She tells Max she has seen the clown from the movie before – which she dreamed of that exact clown the night before they had moved to their new home. Max assures her she is probably just imagining the similarity and encourages her to forget about it. Alicia agrees he is probably right, and she goes to bed. Feeling unsettled by what Alicia told him, Max suddenly feels a presence behind him. He turns suddenly, and sees Irina's cat looking at him with its yellow eyes. He shoos it away, but before leaving, it seems to smile at him. Max decides to put the projector and films back into the box and then go to bed.

Chapter 6

Alicia wakes before sunrise with two golden feline eyes staring at her. She ignores the animal and thinks about her friends in the city, as she gets dressed. Max knocks on the door to tell her Roland has arrived. She joins the boys outside and there is an instant connection between Roland and Alicia, who are the same age. Knowing there is an extra bike in the garage, Max enjoys the flirtatious scene, and tells Alicia she will have to balance on Roland's handlebars down to the beach. At the beach, Roland shows them his shack, where he sleeps during the summers. The inside is filled with trinkets and treasures that Roland has recovered from his dives down to the shipwreck just off shore. The boys prepare for their dive and Alicia waits on shore. Max is mesmerized by the experience of the cool water, and the serene silence beneath the surface of the ocean, but he leaves the deep diving to his friend. Roland discovers some new treasures, while Max observes from a distance, noticing the ship's name inscribed on the bow, the Orpheus. Through the water, he dimly sees an old, tattered flag ebbing with the current. As it unfurls, horror seizes Max as he recognizes the symbol he had seen in the garden of a six-pointed star enclosed in a circle. He immediately swims back to the beach. When Roland joins the Carver children on the beach, Alicia begins collecting seashells, and once she is out of earshot, Max tells Roland about the symbol and the circus figures. Alicia returns to the boys and begins to ask Roland about his grandfather and the ship. Roland invites them into the cabin and promises to tell them the full story there. Meanwhile, back at the Carver home, we learn that Irina has been hearing voices in the house, and now hears them in her room, much like a whisper in the walls. It seems to be coming from her wardrobe, and as she approaches it, she sees there is a key in the lock. She hurriedly turns it to the locked position, and steps back. The sound continues, and hearing her mother calling her, Irina turns to run from the room. An icy breeze sweeps past her and slams the door shut, and she struggles with the handle, looking over her shoulder. She sees the key slowly turning; the voices become louder, and she hears laughter... Back in Roland's shack, Roland tells Alicia and Max more about the Orpheus, retelling all that his grandfather, Victor Kray, has told him about the accident, and the events leading up to it. The Orpheus began as a cargo ship with a bad reputation, operated by a corrupt Dutchman who rented the ship out to anyone who would pay, including smugglers and criminals. The Dutchman was also a gambler, and he had accumulated a lot of debt, which made him desperate to gamble more. He lost a big card game to a man named Mr. Cain, who owned a travelling circus, known for employing shady criminals. Knowing the police were closing in on he and his group's criminal activities, Mr. Cain charged The Dutchman with transporting his evil posse across the Channel on his ship, and the man agreed.