“What is going to happen to me?” I asked him.
Mr Fingers peered over at me. “You will grow up here as my son.”
“Why do you want the grandfather clock?”
“It has something inside of it.”
“What?”
“Something I want.”
“How will you find it?”
“I have my spies. My little blackbirds on the Earth with their beady eyes. Now eat your supper.”
And so I ate. I gobbled down what was on my plate. After dinner, Mr Fingers scratched his belly and yawned. He reminded me of a great crocodile. How bright his eyes looked. Like glistening ebony. Like black magic. Like a serial murderer.
After dinner, Mr Fingers took me by the hand and led me down a long black corridor. On the walls were paintings of human bodies piled upon one another in great heaps. They twisted and writhed like worms in a jar. I was sure they were actually moving.
“You are going to meet the other princes, now. Your brothers.” And he opened the door at the end of the corridor.
We stepped into a great circular chamber where a series of glass coffins stood in a row. Each glass coffin had a little boy inside with eyes as black as midnight. Mr Fingers put his finger to his lips. “Shhhhh, they are sleeping. You are number fourteen. My fourteenth prince and my favourite boy.”
“My brothers,” I whispered. I looked at them in their glass cages. Identical dolls. One of them was softly snoring and I could see, yes, I could see his teeth. Little and very pointy, like tiny blades. They were my brothers and they were something horrible. They had black hair and black eyes. My hair was yellow like my mother’s, my eyes pale. I was not one of them. Mr Fingers put his hand on my shoulder.
“My dear boy. Tomorrow you can play with them. Now run off to bed and get some sleep.”
And I ran. I ran into the tower and into my bedroom. I covered myself in star charts. I wanted to dream of the stars. I wanted to escape through my telescope, but I was in the Land of the Dead and my dreams were those of corpses.
In my dream I was in my old family home again. It was a place of charms and punishments. I was having dinner with my father and mother and Aunt Rosebud. We were eating something strange. We were eating an angel. It was still alive and its wings were beating like a heartbeat. I said, “I cannot eat this.”
My father looked cross. “You must eat what you are told.”
My mother said, “It’s good for you. It will make you a strong boy.”
My Aunt Rosebud added, “You have a weak brain. Angel meat will cure you.”
I tried a piece of angel meat. Chewed it and swallowed. It tasted sweet. It tasted wrong. I spat it out and ran out of the room. My dead family watched me leave and continued eating. I ran out of the house and into the garden. I ran to the fields and to an old well at the bottom of the estate near the woods. I sucked my thumb by the well, and stroked the long grasses, touching the daisies. I peered down the well and saw Mr Fingers waving. “Jump down, little boy. Come with me.”
I didn’t want to eat angel meat. I didn’t want to jump down the well. I had nowhere else to go. I saw the lake and started to run to it. It was big and cool and blue like suicide. I jumped in and sank to the bottom. I was safe there with the mermaids. I was drowning and safe.
When I woke up Mr Fingers was standing over me. He wanted me to meet my brothers. He wanted to tell us a story. We sat round our father like choirboys round a priest and he opened a big black book and began:
Once upon a time there were fourteen princes. And they lived in a magical kingdom deep down in the underworld. Their father was a very powerful magician and he was very proud of his boys.
Prince number 1 liked to carve faces in potatoes to make him laugh.
Prince number 2 liked to set fire to butterflies.
Prince number 3 liked girls with big hairy legs.
Prince number 4 liked to eat pancakes with sugar and butter.
Prince number 5 liked to chase ghosts and catch them in jars.
Prince number 6 liked to cut off heads and hang them from trees.
Prince number 7 liked to cut smiles into people’s faces.
Prince number 8 liked to fall in love with mirrors.
Prince number 9 liked to draw strange symbols on doors.
Prince number 10 liked to tell pretty lies.
Prince number 11 liked to sit in graveyards.
Prince number 12 liked to steal love letters.
Prince number 13 liked to collect teeth.
Prince number 14 liked to stare at the stars.
And they were all so happy with their Daddy in the magical underworld. And they would do anything their Daddy would tell them. Anything.
Because if they ever disobeyed him, their Daddy would gobble them up in a heartbeat.
* * *
And he shut the book. I stared at my identical brothers with their black sharp eyes and wondered if it could get any worse.
A stupid question, really.
Prince Number 13