I REACH THE SIXTH FLOOR and the doors of the lift clack open. The carpet here is deep and aqua-blue, and the walls are a faded coral pink. The ceiling is so far above, I can’t see it against the icy gleam of the chandeliers that float there. There are paintings of the Kraken family all along the corridor – admirals and captains from many ages. They stare down at me from decks and staterooms, painted waves crashing against painted rocks behind them.
At the other end of the hallway are the high double doors of the Jules Verne suite – Lady Kraken’s private quarters. I begin the long walk to my doom, passing the narrow bronze spiral staircase that leads to the tower in the exact centre of the roof. I’ve always wondered what’s up there. Now I suppose I’ll never know.
Lady Kraken is almost a recluse. All her orders and requests come down via a private elevator, and all her meals go up the same way. In all my years here, I’ve only seen her a handful of times. She’s famously bad-tempered about having to get involved with the day-to-day running of her hotel.
By now I’m at the door. I reach out a trembly hand and pull the silken rope. I hear a chime like a ship’s bell from somewhere. Then, just as I’m wondering if I can sneak off and pretend no one is in, a light bulb on a brass panel beside the door fizzes on. On the bulb, in tiny curly letters, it says:
COME IN
And the door swings slowly open.
The immense room beyond is shrouded in dusty curtains that cover the windows and tumble across the floor like waves. A conical beam of cold light, swirling with dust motes, descends from the ceiling to a circular table in the middle of the room. Sitting beside the table, in a gleaming bronze and wicker wheelchair, is an old lady wearing a turban. The way her wrinkly head emerges from her sumptuous silky gown reminds me of a turtle. She beckons me in with a motion of her claw-like hand, and the doors swing shut behind me.
“Ah, Mr Lemon,” Lady Kraken says, as I hesitate by the door. “Don’t just stand there like a question mark, boy. Come closer!”
As I approach, I pull my Lost-and-Founder’s cap from my head. The elastic pings and nearly takes my eye out.
“Mrs, er, Lady Madam,” I say, rubbing my eye and trying a bow.
She lets out a hoot of laughter. “No need for all that! Come to the table, Mr Lemon. Tell me what you see here.”
I reach the table, which is bathed in the strange shaft of light. It reminds me of a cinema projector, only the light is coming straight down from above. I’m about to ask what it all means when I gasp.
“That’s the pier!”
And sure enough, projected on the table in front of me is a moving image of the pier at Eerie-on-Sea, seen from above. But it’s not merely a flat picture – the image is three-dimensional, raised up off the tabletop in a structure of sparkling dust motes. It’s a perfect model of the pier, with the black sea heaving beneath it.
“Of course it’s the pier,” Lady Kraken cackles. “And there, look – Mr Seegol is just closing up for the night.”
And it’s true. As I watch, I see a tiny model of round Mr Seegol emerge from his fish and chip shop in the middle of the pier, carrying a bucket. He leans out over the water, which swirls dark and silver. He stands there a while, braced against the wind as if listening for something. Then he places the bucket down in the shadows, before going back inside. In a moment, the cheery light from Seegol’s Diner snaps out.
“Poor man,” says Lady Kraken. “Still waiting, I see.”
“But what is this?” I say, marvelling at the magical diorama. “How can we see this here, on the table?”
Lady Kraken raises one bony finger and points upwards.
“It’s my cameraluna,” she explains. “In the tower. It lets me keep up with the doings of our strange little town.”
I blink and don’t know what to say. What’s a cameraluna?
“Let us pay close attention for a moment,” says Lady Kraken, turning a brass wheel on a black control box attached to the arm of her chair. The model of Seegol’s Diner grows larger as we zoom in, almost filling the tabletop. But with that it grows fainter, too, and it’s hard to see anything clearly now. Lady Kraken leans in closer.
“Now what, Mr Lemon, do you suppose that is?” She points her crooked finger at a patch of darkness to one side of the pier.
I lean in closer too, wondering what I’ll see, and what’s expected of me. The image starts to fade in and out, but then I see it: something darker than the shadows, crouching on the pier. Something big. It begins walking – no, creeping – towards the diner. It seems human, until…
“Is that a tail?” I gasp.
Two lamp-like orbs blink in the darkness.
“Are those eyes?”
“Then you do see it?” Lady Kraken grabs my arm. “Mr Lemon, tell me we’re not dreaming!”
The shape rears up, and I see rows of what could be quivering spines, and something that might be a grasping claw. But before I can be sure, the image on the table flickers, fades one last time and then winks out. The shaft of light from the ceiling is extinguished and the dust motes collapse.
“Curse the clouds!” shrieks the old lady, frantically twisting the brass wheel in both directions. But nothing happens. The table is just an ordinary table again, with a thick layer of dust on its surface.
It’s very dark in the room now, but there is a paraffin lamp near by, turned low. I give a polite little cough and turn it up, filling the room with warm light. Lady Kraken is still staring at the table.
“Did you see it, Mr Lemon?” she says again. “Did we?”
I scratch my head, making my cap go all wonky. “I saw something,” I say. “But I still don’t know how I could see anything at all. What’s a cam— a cameraluna?”
Lady Kraken lets go of the control wheel and narrows her eyes, as if seeing me properly for the first time.
“There are lenses in the tower on the roof. Special lenses. They collect the light of the moon, and project it down here. From the tower I can see the whole town. Well, almost the whole town…”
The old lady grasps the paraffin lamp and holds it up. I sense the shadows stretch up behind me as she wheels closer.
“Remind me, Mr Lemon,” says Lady Kraken. “How long have you been here?”
“Um. About five minutes?”
“No!” Lady Kraken rolls one wizened eye (but only one). “Don’t be a dunderbrain, boy! I mean, how long have you been with us at the hotel?”
“Well…” I get my fingers out, and tot up the seasons. “Five years. Almost to the day.”
“Five years!” Lady K blinks, lowering the lantern. “Is it really five years already? I recall it as if it were yesterday. You were found on the beach, were you not? Washed up in a crate of grapefruits.”
“Um, lemons, Your Ladyness,” I correct her. “It was a crate of lemons.”
“Ah, yes, of course. And you refused to tell anyone your name.”
“I couldn’t remember my name!” I blurt out. “I still can’t.”
“Yes, indeed.” Lady Kraken nods. “So we gave you one.”
I say nothing. Even I have to admit that the name Herbert Lemon suits me somehow.
“And since no one knew what to do with you,” Lady Kraken continues, “and since our last Lost-and-Founder had gone missing, we gave you a job, too. I’ve always felt the post of Lost-and-Founder at the Grand Nautilus Hotel is best fulfilled by a child. And you were our youngest ever.”
Here comes the chop, I can’t help thinking.
“But I wonder, Mr Lemon,” says Lady K, her eyes narrowing till they are almost shut, “are you really happy here?”
I open my mouth to reply yes, but nothing comes out.
Am I happy here?
I mean, happy?
My mind dances with images from the last few years – the kind faces of the hotel staff who’ve watched over me, the regular guests who treat me with affection, the way old Mollusc’s moustache twitches in outrage when he sees all this but can do nothing about it. What’s not to be happy about? And yet there’s that crate of lemons. And the mysterious blank in my memory that leads up to my strange arrival in Eerie-on-Sea.
“I can honestly say, Lady Kraken,” I say eventually, “that the day you made me Lost-and-Founder was the best day of my life.”
That I can remember, I add, but only in my head.
Lady Kraken breaks into a slow smile – one that spreads up both sides of her face and makes her look more like a turtle than ever.
“Ah, good. Then you won’t mind if I add a few little extra tasks to your duties, will you, Mr Lemon?”
And of course I have no choice but to nod in agreement.
“Because, you see,” Lady K continues, leaning in closer still and lowering her voice, “there is one place in this town I can’t see with my cameraluna, and that’s inside my own hotel. But you, Mr Lemon – you could be my eyes and ears, could you not? My eyes and ears, both inside the hotel and beyond. You could be my spy!”
I nod again, and manage to suppress a squeak.
“And you would tell me – wouldn’t you, Mr Lemon? – if something strange were to happen in the Grand Nautilus Hotel? You wouldn’t keep secrets from me, would you, boy?”
Lady Kraken gives me a long, wrinkly stare that I swear I can feel at the back of my skull.
“You would tell me about any strange visitors you might have had down in your Lost-and-Foundery. A man, for example, with a boathook for a hand?”
“As it happens, there was someone like that…”
“Then it’s true!” Lady K gasps. “He has returned!”
“He … he said he’d lost something.”
“Something?” Lady Kraken’s voice is a hoarse whisper of excitement, and she grabs my arm again. “What sort of something?”
“Well, more of a someone, actually,” I say. “A girl, he said. So I said I don’t do people, just things, he said—”
“A girl?” Lady Kraken leans back in surprise, letting go of me. “What sort of girl?”
“Well, a lost one, I suppose.”
“Herbert Lemon.” Lady Kraken raises one crooked finger to silence me. “This is important now. Did he find the girl?”
I look back at her. A small voice in the corner of my mind tells me to be very careful what I say next. And that makes my actual reply all the more surprising.
“No,” I say. “There was no girl.”
