The Ancient Curse

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  Pina came to take his order and brought him some bruschette and a glass of white wine to start. A group of teenage boys were already sitting in front of the TV, waiting for the whistle that would signal the start of the game, and there was a party of Germans at a long table downing one carafe after another while they waited for their food.

  Pina got everyone served and came to sit at his table, seeing he was the only guest she’d be able to talk to now the game had begun and the Germans were already tipsy as well as impossible to understand.

  ‘Want to hear the latest, Doctor?’ she asked him with a mysterious air.

  ‘I most certainly do, Signora Pina,’ replied Fabrizio, imitating her tone.

  ‘The other night I saw a light filtering out from the cellar of the Caretti-Riccardi palace.’

  ‘Someone had gone down to get a bottle of wine,’ suggested Fabrizio.

  ‘Nothing to joke about, Doctor. A living soul has not crossed that threshold,’ she said, pointing at the front door, ‘since the late Count Ghirardini left, and he only lived there two or three years in all.’

  ‘So what was it, then, ghosts?’

  ‘Well, I certainly don’t know about that, but you tell me, you who are a man of letters and have an education. Who could have been down there at one o’clock in the morning, wandering around that cellar? Just thinking about it gives me goosebumps.’

  ‘Someone, somewhere must still own the place. Maybe he came by to pick up something he needed . . .’ His voice trailed off as he realized how lame his reply sounded.

  Pina shrugged. ‘They say that you’re studying the statue of the thin young boy at the museum.’

  ‘That’s the truth, but I’d like to know who told you that.’

  ‘Oh, this is a small place, people talk. You’re a stranger and everyone’s wondering what’s so special about that statue. It’s been there forever and no one has ever noticed it before now.’

  ‘You’re right, there’s nothing special about it. There’s a publisher coming out with a book about the Etruscans and they’re paying me to study a few statues at the Volterra museum. That’s all, Signora Pina. If you wouldn’t mind bringing my bill, I’ll be off towards home, then.’

  ‘You go right ahead, Doctor. Goodnight. Well, will you look at that?’ she added, glancing out the window.

  ‘What?’ asked Fabrizio.

  ‘Oh, nothing. It’s just the fire chief, who sleeps with attorney Anselmi’s wife. Oh, that’s right, it’s the weekend. The lawyer will have been at his other office in Grosseto yesterday and he’s probably still there.’

  Fabrizio shook his head and got up. Joyful shouts exploded from the group clustered around the TV, leading Fabrizio to conclude that Fiorentina had scored. He paid his bill, tossed his jacket over his shoulders and walked out towards the Caretti-Riccardi palace instead of retracing his steps. He walked along the pavement that flanked the building down the whole block and noticed that every so often there was a heavy iron grating covering the cellar’s ventilation ducts.

  The doors and windows were all closed and the paint was peeling. He’d walked practically all the way around the building and was approaching the facade when he heard the squeak of a door opening.

  He ran around to the front and caught a fleeting glimpse of a child letting himself in from a smaller entrance next to the main door. Fabrizio saw him quite well in the lamplight: a slight, slender boy with short hair and big dark eyes. But it all happened very quickly. The child disappeared inside and the door clicked shut behind him.

  Fabrizio ran to the door and knocked repeatedly but got no answer. The main door was covered with rust; it looked like no one had opened it for ages. The side door seemed firmly locked but evidently someone still had the key.

  He walked off, perplexed. Who could that child be? If he’d had time, he would have been curious to go to the land registry office to find out who the current owners were. Maybe some well-heeled family from Milan living on Via Montenapoleone who had so many properties they’d forgotten about this one. Before turning on to Via di Porta dell’Arco, he glanced back impulsively at the dark mansion and saw a reddish reflection flashing briefly from behind one of the ventilation ducts on the rusticated base. He started and began to feel as if he were seeing things. He fought the urge to go back and take a closer look and turned instead towards the music that was coming from one of the little cafes in the centre, which sounded appealingly normal and real.

  A more familiar glow shone from the open windows on his way and he heard the exclamations of the people inside watching the game on television. A carabiniere cruiser passed in absolute silence, as if it were running with the engine off. An old man rode by on his bicycle with a shoulder-length mane of white hair that fluttered in the breeze like a bride’s veil. A dog poked his nose into a bag of rubbish that he’d managed to get out of the bin. In the distance, Fabrizio could even hear the whirring blades of a helicopter, no doubt patrolling the countryside in search of invisible monsters. Fabrizio’s mobile phone rang loudly in his pocket and he jumped. In the dead calm of that sleepy city, any noise louder than a clock’s ticking sounded like a trumpet blast.

  ‘Hi, Sonia,’ he said as her name came up on the display panel.

  ‘Hi there, sweetie. I really am sorry I couldn’t keep you company for dinner. I was so tired I didn’t feel like eating.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. Where are you?’

  ‘At the hotel.’

  ‘Good girl. Don’t go out on your own or you could get into trouble.’

  ‘I’ve heard. Two murders. You might have told me yourself.’

  ‘I didn’t want to frighten you.’

  ‘Frighten me, my arse. How long did you think it would take before I heard about them? Everyone knows what’s going on and they’re scared shitless. Where are you?’

  ‘Out.’

  ‘Do you feel like coming by?’

  ‘As in do I feel like a fuck?’

  ‘You jerk.’

  ‘Sorry. I can be there in ten minutes. Is something wrong?’

  ‘I’ve rebuilt the animal’s head. You can look him in the face. Virtually, that is.’

  ‘You’re kidding! Didn’t you say you were worn out and were going straight to bed?’

  ‘I’ve just got my second wind. I’m using an awesome program that I developed myself. I don’t fool around when it comes to work. And I don’t fuck around either.’

  ‘Too bad. I was starting to get ideas.’

  ‘Come on, move your arse. I’ll be waiting downstairs at the bar.’

  Fabrizio reached his car and set off in the direction of Sonia’s hotel. She was sitting at a table, smoking and working on the laptop she had open in front of her.

  ‘Before I show you this I want to ask you something. When I first got here, the lower left canine was missing. I went out to buy a sandwich and when I came back it was in its place in the jaw. Was that someone’s idea of a stupid joke?’

  ‘No, sorry, no joke. I had it and I had meant to put it back.’

  ‘OK, one less mystery to explain. Ready, then?’

  ‘Wait, so how did you do this?’

  ‘Look,’ she said as the program was loading. ‘You plug in all the points at which the muscles join and then, based on the dimensions, the program recreates the muscle using an anatomy database.’

  As Sonia was explaining, the skull of the animal appeared and was filled in with muscles, then veins, then skin.

  ‘What we cannot determine, obviously, is the colour of the eyes and the fur. But let’s say the fur was black – it seems to fit the situation. And we’ll say the eyes were . . . yellow, for the same reason.’

  The beast’s head was shockingly real. Sonia picked a pose with its lips pulled back to bare gums bristling with pointed fangs, and revolved it. It looked like an enormous wolf but from some angles it shared certain features with a big cat. A terrifying combination, like some sort of bloodthirsty Cerberus.

  Fabrizio shook his
head incredulously. ‘It’s horrifying . . .’ he whispered. ‘But how realistic is this reconstruction? You’re not playing games with the program, are you?’

  ‘Let’s say that there’s a 90 per cent probability he looked like this. Obviously I can’t tell whether it was a male or a female. I’m guessing male. And maybe I have an idea of what it is.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I have to check out some sources at the library first. I want to be sure. But I do have an idea. So, then, what do you think?’

  ‘It’s fantastic, Sonia. I knew you were the best.’

  They ordered a couple of beers and lingered for a while, chatting, then Fabrizio had her make him a copy and said goodnight.

  He went back to his car and headed home. It was past eleven when he let himself in, switched on the light and turned on his computer. He inserted a disk and watched as the image of the young lad of Volterra appeared on the screen. The shade of twilight.

  8

  THE THREE-DIMENTIONAL image rotated in the virtual space in front of him and the dark spot that he had noticed in the X-rays became larger in size and took on sharper contours as the resolution increased. It seemed to Fabrizio that there could be no doubt that the shape was that of a blade seemingly embedded in the boy’s side. He printed a paper copy with the intention of showing it to the NAS director the next day and asking permission to micro-drill a specimen for metallographic analysis. He was practically certain that it would confirm that a different alloy was present under the surface of the statue at the point made clear in the X-ray. If Balestra refused, he would ask to explore the statue from the tenons, the pins that anchored the feet to the base – a non-invasive method that would not damage the statue in any way. But it would be costly. And problematic. It would also involve removing the statue from public show for several days for an outcome that might be less than worth the trouble.

  The telephone rang. An irritating burst of noise in that silence, at that hour of the night. Could it be Sonia? Reggiani? A thousand thoughts flitted through his head in the brief interval of time before he picked up the receiver and said hello.

  ‘I told you to leave the boy in peace! I warned you.’ It was the same female voice he had heard on the other two occasions. But harsher this time, commanding, threatening.

  ‘Listen,’ he hurriedly said, ‘don’t hang up. I—’

  But the mysterious caller had already cut the short. He replaced the receiver as well and remained standing for a few moments, deep in thought. A sudden awareness struck him and he ran over to where the switches were, next to the door, and flipped on all the outside lights. He grabbed a big torch from a drawer and raced through the door. The sound of an engine could be heard: a pickup or van passing on the road and disappearing into the distance.

  She had to be very close if she’d seen him working on his computer and had seen the image of the boy on the screen. Fabrizio tore around the house, checking every corner, and kicked open the door to the stables, exploring the room thoroughly with his torch. Nothing, except for a clutch of cockroaches frozen at the centre of the floor, surprised by that sudden, noisy intrusion.

  He pulled the door shut behind him and ran towards the bushes that skirted the olive grove to see if there were traces of footsteps on the soft ground. Nothing. He strained to listen for suspicious sounds. Only the flurrying wings of some startled bird interrupted the silence of the night. He slashed through the darkness with his ray of light, unwilling to believe there was nothing there. How could she have been watching him from so close without leaving any trace of her presence? Maybe she wasn’t close by at all; could she be observing him from a distance, through binoculars, and using a mobile phone to call him? What kind of woman would be wandering around these deserted fields in the middle of the night without any fear of the thing everything was terrified of?

  Fabrizio suddenly realized that he was almost 200 metres from the house, at the edge of the wood, when he heard a low whining at first, then a deep, rumbling snarl coming from the trees. He switched off his torch at once while a stream of adrenalin coursed through his blood and he took off towards the house, his heart hammering in his chest and pounding at his temples. He tripped in the darkness over a dry branch and pitched forward, skinning his hands, arms and chin. He stumbled frantically to his feet, slipped again, then sprinted back in the direction of the house as the low growl became a long, bloodcurdling howl that spread through the gully between the two hills, as if the voice of hell were exploding in the still night air.

  He flew past the edge of the wood and started down the path that led to his house, but the howl was filling his ears and he could sense the raging pace of the beast catching up on him. The door was less than thirty metres away. He’d left it half open and he could see the lights on inside the room.

  He darted in, closed all the doors and windows as quickly as he could and ran over to the gun rack, but he stopped in his tracks as he suddenly heard the growl echoing inside the house. The sound was coming from the central hall, to his right. Fabrizio felt the blood freeze in his veins. ‘Oh, my God. It’s inside,’ he said out loud, remembering the half-open door.

  He took the rifle from the rack, feverishly attached the shining torch to the barrel with some tape he’d left on the table, locked and loaded the gun and headed towards the hall. He pushed open the door and moved fast to flatten himself against it. The hall was deserted and, as the torch beam took in the two doors that led to the second floor, he could see that both were shut. He switched on the light and drew a long sigh. He could plainly see the wrought-iron grating at the end of the hall which gave on to the outdoor courtyard. What he’d heard had been an echo reverberating over the curved vault of the ceiling.

  He closed the door behind him and went through the house to check that the other door was bolted shut. As he passed in front of the window he noticed the headlight of a bicycle travelling down the hillside and could even hear the tinkling of its bell. ‘Oh, shit,’ he swore, his teeth clenched tight. He realized that another victim was about to be added to the death toll, his throat ripped out.

  He ran back out into the courtyard as he jabbed Reggiani’s number into his mobile phone. As soon as he heard Reggiani pick up, he screamed, ‘This is Fabrizio. Hurry, for the love of God. It’s here!’

  ‘What’s there?’ shouted Reggiani’s voice on the other end, but Fabrizio had already thrust the phone away and was advancing with his rifle levelled. He shone the beam of torch light in the direction of the bicycle and shouted as loudly as he could, ‘Watch out! Get out of here!’ But the man was still too far away to hear and continued at the same steady pace.

  Fabrizio shouted again, but at that same moment he heard the snarl of the beast lying in wait and then the ferocious howl that had curdled his blood just a few minutes before. A huge dark mass sprang out of the woods towards the road as Fabrizio tried unsuccessfully to take aim. He heard a terrified scream, a confused clattering and then only the muffled growl of the animal as he sank his snout into blood.

  Fabrizio jumped from the embankment to the middle of the road and for an instant he saw it plainly: the bristly fur, the bared fangs covered with blood, the yellow eyes. He aimed his gun and fired, but the animal was gone. It had bounded back into the woods with a spectacular leap, as light as if it were made of air.

  A hail of shots exploded behind him in the same direction and Fabrizio threw himself to the ground, terrified, as the scene of the massacre was illuminated all at once by powerful beams of light. A loud screeching of tyres and Reggiani’s Alfa Romeo pulled up sharply, a few centimetres from his feet. The officer burst out, pistol in hand, rapidly emptying the entire magazine of his Beretta into the woods.

  Thirty or more men wearing combat gear and carrying assault rifles arrived ten minutes later and charged into the woods with a pack of Alsatian dogs. Before long a helicopter was hovering overhead, scanning the forest with its headlight.

  Lieutenant Reggiani approached the body and couldn�
�t hold back a shudder of disgust. It was practically decapitated. The neck vertebrae were crushed and the head was attached to the torso by only a few shreds of flesh. Fabrizio got to his feet, still holding the smoking rifle in his hands, and approached as well.

  ‘I botched it,’ he said, his voice cracking with emotion. ‘It was so fast. I had it in front of me, in my sights . . . I fired . . . I was sure I’d hit it.’

  ‘You saw it, then?’ asked Reggiani. ‘I mean, up close?’

  Fabrizio nodded. ‘The torch on the rifle barrel was on and I saw it for an instant in full light. This thing is monstrous . . . It’s a beast out of hell . . . It’s . . .’

  Reggiani looked at him. Fabrizio was shaking convulsively, his face was drained of colour, his eyes were bloodshot and his breath was coming in short gasps.

  The officer put a hand on his shoulder. ‘You’re in shock,’ he said. ‘An ambulance is on the way. It’s best they take you to hospital.’

  Fabrizio straightened up. ‘I’m fine. There’s nothing wrong with me,’ he replied. ‘I’ll be fine.’

  The ambulance arrived and waited as the police finished examining the scene of the crime.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want them to give you a quick check-over?’

  ‘No, trust me, I’m OK. But I think I’ll go home. I just need to sit down. My legs are shaking.’

  ‘I can believe it,’ said Reggiani. ‘After what you’ve been through, face to face with that monster . . . Too bad you didn’t nail him. We would have been finished with this once and for all.’ He turned to the sergeant standing behind him. ‘Massaro, I’m going with Dr Castellani. If you need me, I’ll be in the house.’

  ‘Don’t worry, sir. We have everything under control here,’ replied Massaro.

  Reggiani shook his head as they walked off. ‘Under control my arse,’ he muttered. ‘As soon as the public prosecutor gets wind of this, there’ll be hell to pay.’

  Massaro’s suddenly agitated voice called them back. ‘Sir! Over this way, quick! The helicopter has found it!’