فصل بیستم

20

The Pale Man

In Ofelia’s attic room, there was no need to hide the Faun’s book. She kept it on her nightstand where only its size made it stand out among the other books. The maids pitied her for being banished to the attic—Ofelia saw it in their faces when they brought her meals. But Ofelia actually didn’t mind. It had gotten harder and harder to sleep next to her mother, whose labored breathing and distress made her so angry at her unborn brother that at times when she tried to imagine what he’d look like she gave him his father’s face.

She first could barely make her fingers open the book. The memory of the blood dripping off its pages haunted her, but her wish to know about her next task was stronger than her fear. The Faun had taught her his first lesson: she knew about her courage since she’d crawled through the Toad’s endless tunnels. And this time she’d put on the coat to make sure for the next task she wore something that kept her warm and wouldn’t be ruined in case it got dirty.

The book revealed its secrets more quickly than before. The left-hand page filled first, fine lines revealing the skeletal figure of a pale man, noseless and bald, with holes instead of eyes above a gaping mouth. The brown ink drew a Fairy, then a door. The image took shape in more and more detail while Ofelia read the words appearing on the right-hand page: Use the chalk to trace a door anywhere in your room.

Chalk. Ofelia reached into her coat pocket for the piece of chalk the Faun had given her. For a moment she was afraid she’d lost it, but finally her fingers found it. The image in the book was still unfolding. The girl in the green dress and white apron appeared beneath the Pale Man, in clothes as clean as if Ofelia had never ruined them in the woods. The three Fairies were by her side. The girl smiled out at Ofelia. Then she knelt with the chalk in her hand and drew the outline of a door onto the wall. And more words appeared: Once the door is open, start the hourglass and let the Fairy guide you. . . .

The open door now framed by a stone arch was held by two columns that took shape beneath the Pale Man’s right arm.

Don’t eat or drink anything during your stay,

the words on the right page warned,

and come back before the last grain of sand falls.

More images were forming, but Ofelia found it by now all far too much to remember, so she closed the book and knelt with the chalk as the girl in the illustration had done. The attic wall was covered in spiderwebs and quite uneven, but the chalk left a clear line on the plaster. It turned into white foam and, hissing softly, etched a door into the wall that gave way like the gate to an ancient tomb, when Ofelia pressed her hand against it. The opening behind it was so narrow that she had to bend her back to gaze through. She looked down into a wide corridor, its ceiling high above her head and the floor at least seven feet below her. Columns lined it with walls as dark red as dried blood. Shafts of light fell through small windows onto the white-and-brownish-red-checkered tile floor.

As it was too far down to jump, Ofelia got a chair from the attic and lowered it through the opening. Then she slung the Faun’s satchel over her shoulder and placed the hourglass on the floor next to her bed. As soon as Ofelia turned it over, a small amount of pale red sand began to fill worryingly fast into the lower glass.

The chair served her well as a ladder. When Ofelia jumped from it onto the checkered floor she heard a wheezing sound in the distance . . . as if someone were breathing heavily in sleep. The sound mingled with the echoing of her footsteps as she followed the corridor, which seemed to wind on and on like a river, the columns casting shadows onto the tiles like an endless row of petrified trees. Ofelia felt as if she had been walking for hours when the corridor suddenly opened up into a dark, windowless room.

For a moment Ofelia wondered whether she’d been lost in time and was back in a long-forgotten past. The room looked so ancient under its painted ceiling, but Ofelia didn’t look at the faded images above her head. All she saw was the long table at the center of the room. It was covered with golden bowls and plates filled to the brim with fruits, cakes, and roasted meats, but only the chair at the very end of the table was taken. The Pale Man sat on it, illuminated by the flames dancing in the fireplace behind him.

He didn’t move when Ofelia approached the table. In fact, he looked as if he hadn’t moved for centuries, whereas the food looked as fresh as if it had just been prepared. Ofelia couldn’t take her eyes off all the cakes, puddings, and roasts decorated with fruit and edible flowers, the golden plates reflecting in crystal goblets filled with red wine. Red and gold . . . the whole room was filled with those colors, even the flames echoed them. And the heavenly aromas! They made Ofelia forget everything, even the frightening creature sitting so silently just a few feet away from her in front of his plate.

Only when she reached his end of the table did she remember him. Seeing him up close made her gasp. He was naked, just as the book had shown, his pale skin loosely covering his bones like an ill-fitting shroud. It was a horrible sight, but the worst was his face. Or the lack of one.

The creature’s face was an obscene blank, marred only by two nostrils and a razor-thin mouth—a bloodstained slit framed by heavy folds of sagging skin—and his clawed hands, lying motionless beside his golden plate, ended in pointed black fingertips, the flesh above them reddened by blood.

The fact the monster didn’t move made Ofelia bold. She peered over his plate between the terrible hands, curious why it held two marbles, and withdrew hastily when she discovered the marbles to be eyeballs. Only then did she give the images on the ceiling a closer look. What they revealed made Ofelia back away from the table despite all the delicacies it held: the images above her showed the Pale Man’s profession.

Some images depicted children raising their hands and pleading for mercy. Others showed the monster piercing them with knives and swords, or tearing off their limbs or feeding his insatiable hunger with their flesh. The scenes were painted so vividly Ofelia believed she could hear the victims scream. Too much! But when she lowered her eyes to escape the grueling images all she saw were hundreds of small shoes piled against the walls.

Ofelia could barely make herself face the truth, but there it was. The Pale Man was a Child Eater.

Yes, he was.

But if he eats children . . . why all the food? Ofelia wondered. Why the luxurious feast?

She could find the answer neither in the terrible images above her nor among the golden plates. All she had to do, she reminded herself of the book’s advice, was to stay away from the table and let the Fairies help her. The three Fairies greeted her with a pleased twitter when she opened the satchel. Ignoring the grueling host at the table, they fluttered to the left side of the room, where high up in the wall a set of three small doors was surrounded by carvings of gaping mouths, staring eyes, and flames, above an image of a labyrinth.

The doors were barely larger than Ofelia’s hand and each one looked slightly different—but all three Fairies pointed to the door in the middle. It was beautiful—shiny and covered in gold.

Ofelia took the Toad’s key out of her pocket, but suddenly she remembered what the stories in her fairy-tale books had taught her: When faced with three choices, always choose the least obvious choice. The humble one.

“Oh, you’re wrong!” she whispered to the Fairy. “This is not the right door!”

And paying no heed to their irritated chatter, Ofelia tried the key in the lock on the humblest door made from rustic wood and iron nails. The key slipped in effortlessly. Ofelia gave her winged companions a triumphant look before she opened the tiny door. The Fairies, though, hearing the red sand running through the hourglass, swarmed around her, urging her to make haste.

The compartment behind the door was deep, almost too deep for Ofelia to reach what was hidden inside. Finally, she touched soft fabrics and cool metal. The object she pulled out was wrapped in red velvet, and Ofelia almost dropped it when she realized what she held in her hands.

It was a dagger, its long blade as silvery as the moonlight, its golden handle embossed with the image of a faun.

And a baby.

The Fairies once again swarmed around Ofelia, urging her to hurry, but it was so hard for her to remember the running sand in this ancient room where everything seemed frozen in time, including the pale-skinned Child Eater. One of the Fairies, making sure the monster was still not moving, came so close to the terrible face her wings almost brushed his skin, but the Child Eater remained motionless, as if he were only his own monument, a memorial of all his horrible deeds.

Ofelia put the dagger into the Faun’s satchel and tried to keep her eyes on the Pale Man while she walked back to the table. All the food looked so delicious. She couldn’t remember when she’d last seen such a cake or such fresh fruit. Never! And she was hungry. Truly hungry, her heart whispered as she raised her hand. Don’t eat or drink anything! But Ofelia saw the grapes and pomegranates and foods she didn’t even know by name. They all promised such delicious sweetness she didn’t want to hear the panicked warnings being chirped by the Fairies.

No. Ofelia waved them away. One grape—just one. Surely nobody would notice in this abundant feast. Who would miss a single little grape?

Ofelia gingerly plucked one grape and put it into her mouth. The Fairy who’d met her in the woods covered her face in despair.

They were doomed.

The Pale Man came to life. His black fingertips, pointy like thorns, cracked into motion with a spasm. His gaping mouth drew a tortured breath, and his right hand grabbed one of the eyeballs from his plate in his right hand, as his left turned, spreading its fingers like a terrible flower. The eyeball fit perfectly into the hole gaping in his left palm, and when his right hand had received the second eyeball, with a pupil as red as the grape Ofelia had eaten, the Pale Man raised both hands to his eyeless face to find out who had woken him.

Ofelia hadn’t noticed what she’d done. The enchantment the table offered was too strong and the Fairy that had brought her to the labyrinth couldn’t stop her from plucking another of the treacherous grapes.

Oh, that girl!

Why did she make it so difficult to help her? Their horned master would be so angry. The Fairy fluttered right in front of the girl’s face to break the spell, even managing to pull the grape from her fingers. But was the child grateful? Oh no. Ofelia was angry. Don’t they understand? she thought, yanking the grape back from the Fairy. All she wished was to drown herself in sweetness, to have the fruit make her forget everything—all the bitterness, all the pain, and all the fear that filled her life.

The Pale Man had risen from his chair. He stepped out from behind the table, his legs moving as stiffly as if they’d forgotten how to carry his skeletal body. He kept his hands raised to his face, the eyes in his palms searching for the thief who’d woken him and stolen from his table.

First those eyes found the Fairies.

And then Ofelia.

Who still didn’t notice what she had done.

Oh, how the Fairies were screaming now. But their voices were barely louder than the chirping of crickets and Ofelia bit into another grape while the Pale Man came closer, his skin hanging from his bony limbs like clothes sewn from flesh. The Fairies swarmed around the Child Eater’s terrible head, desperate to distract him from the girl. Their fear made their voices so shrill they finally pierced through the enchantment.

Ofelia turned, but it was too late. The Child Eater was grasping for the Fairies with his bloodstained fingers. First, they managed to escape, but the Pale Man was an experienced hunter. The two he caught fought desperately for their lives, but their captor wouldn’t let go and Ofelia had to watch the monster stuff the first Fairy between his toothless gums. He tore off her head as effortlessly as plucking a flower from its stem, her blood running down his pale chin. The second Fairy, struggling helplessly against his cruel grip, met the same fate as her sister, her wings and limbs crushed between the colorless lips. The Pale Man was licking her blood off his fingers when Ofelia finally managed to make her feet move.

She ran out into the corridor but soon heard the Pale Man’s unsteady steps behind her. When she looked back, she saw his terrible figure between the columns, his eyes darting restlessly in his raised hands. Run! Ofelia told her feet. Run! But her knees were trembling and she slipped and fell onto the checkered floor.

The last Fairy, the one who had survived, fluttered to Ofelia’s side. Your sisters are dead because of me! Ofelia thought, stumbling on. No. She couldn’t think about that now. She still couldn’t see the end of the corridor and up in the attic room the sand was running through the Faun’s hourglass.

Maybe it was good Ofelia couldn’t see how little sand was left. Her heart was racing when she reached the last bend in the corridor. There was the chair and above it the door the chalk had cut.

But the Fairy heard the sand running.

Ofelia was just two steps away from the chair when the door above it slowly began to close.

“No!” Ofelia screamed. “No!”

Gasping, she scrambled onto the chair, but when she reached up, the door was gone and it wouldn’t come back, although she beat her fists against the wall. What made her feverish mind remember the chalk? Maybe the Fairy reminded her with a whisper?

Ofelia searched the Faun’s satchel.

Nothing.

Searching her coat pocket, she was more successful.

The Pale Man’s steps echoed louder and louder through the corridor, and Ofelia’s fingers were so tense with fear she broke the chalk in two. She could barely keep a grip on the small piece left in her hand.

Behind her the Pale Man stepped around the corner. He lifted his right hand to stare at Ofelia. There she was. Oh, he loved when they tried to escape. It was as much about the hunt as it was about the kill.

The Fairy twittered in terror, but she didn’t leave Ofelia’s side when Ofelia climbed onto the back of the chair to reach the ceiling.

Closer. The Pale Man staggered closer and closer, stalking on his skeleton legs, his eyes glinting in his palms.

Ofelia finally managed to draw a square onto the mosaics covering the ceiling. She pushed against the door with all the strength she had left and finally the chalk outline gave way, but when Ofelia pulled herself up, hoping this door would also lead back to her room, her feet lost hold of the chair. The Fairy flitted past her as Ofelia struggled to drag her body up and away from the terrible hands. The Pale Man’s fingernails brushed her legs, but as he used his hands to catch Ofelia he was blind and she finally managed to drag herself onto the dusty floor of the attic room. She pushed the trapdoor the chalk had cut back into place until only a fine line of light gave away the opening that had saved her.

Ofelia got to her feet.

A groan echoed through the floor, the moaning of a hungry bloodstained mouth, and when she stepped back, she felt the Pale Man pushing against the floorboards. The worst fears are always underneath us, hidden, shaking the ground we wish to be firm and safe.

Trembling, Ofelia sat down on her bed to get her feet off the floor, and listened. When the Fairy landed on her shoulder, the warmth of her small body was both comfort and accusation. After all, Ofelia’s failings had killed her sisters.

A last brutal blow came from below.

And then . . . finally . . . silence.