by Sam Christer
It’s trickier to get down than he first thought.
It seems the only safe place to jump is actually on top of Tom. If he does that, then apart from hurting him even more, there’s a risk he will dislodge the pile of rubble and send them both crashing into the depths of the hole.
He sits and tries to work out what to do.
The pit beneath him stinks worse than a sewer.
Tom lets out a weak groan.
He’s coming round.
Tom moves his left arm. His fingers feel rock. He tries to get a grip to turn himself over.
‘Careful!’ shouts Guilio. ‘You’ve fallen into a hole. Don’t turn to your right or you’ll drop even further.’
He’s not sure if Tom’s heard him.
There’s another groan.
No, not a groan.
And it’s not coming from Tom.
Guilio suddenly recognises the awful smell.
Animal dung.
There’s something down there.
Some kind of animal is making its way across the floor of the pit.
‘Tom! Move yourself! There’s something coming for you!’
131
Valentina swings open the heavy iron door and slowly steps into the child’s cell. ‘I’m not going to hurt you. You can trust me. I’m going to take you out of here.’
It’s a gamble the child’s ready to take.
She runs to the policewoman, grabs her waist and presses herself tightly against her.
It breaks Valentina’s heart to see such desperation.
She strokes the youngster’s hair and lets her cling for a moment.
From the grip around her, it’s clearly been a long time since the kid felt safe in someone’s arms.
She stoops a little and puts her hands either side of the child’s dirty and bruised face. ‘My name is Valentina. I’m in the Carabinieri and I’m going to look after you.’ She strokes her cheek tenderly. ‘What’s your name?’
Tears well up in the youngster’s big brown eyes. She shakes her head.
‘It’s okay, you can tell me. What are you called, sweetheart?’
The child opens her mouth, but no words come out.
Valentina is about to ask again when the girl shows her teeth and jabs a finger pointedly to the back of her throat.
‘Oh my God!’ Valentina grabs her and hugs her tight. ‘You poor baby.’
Someone has cut out the child’s tongue.
Valentina tears up.
How could anyone do such a thing?
There’s a noise from the stairwell.
Footsteps coming their way.
The kid bolts from Valentina’s arms and disappears into the shadows.
She thinks about running after her, but instead rushes to where Shooter is laid out. She quickly grabs him under the arms and pulls him back and out of sight behind the stairwell.
The gate buzzes and clicks open.
Valentina listens intently.
The door clicks closed.
No voices.
One set of footsteps.
She draws the Glock from her waistband.
It’s a man.
Valentina recognises his hunched shoulders and thin outline.
Trench Coat.
Shooter’s radio unexpectedly crackles.
Trench Coat turns.
Valentina has no choice.
Her first shot hits him in the face.
The second blows a hole in the centre of his rib cage.
He hits the ground with a thump and Valentina sees something shimmer as it spills from him.
She runs to the body.
Handcuffs.
Her mind is working at warp speed.
She digs for the key in his pocket and runs to the gate at the foot of the stairs.
The cuffs won’t help her bypass the fingerprint scanner, but they will stop Shooter’s friends getting down. She clicks one of them to the gate and the other to the bars of the pillar, near the sensor.
Now she sets off after the kid.
But she’s not in her cell.
She must have run off during the shooting.
Valentina walks past the other cages.
Ahead in the darkness, off to the right, she sees a pool of light. A staircase, leading down.
There are no locked gates, no guards.
The stone steps lead to an open area of marble.
There’s a centrepiece made up of three identical waist-high statues of Cybele. They are arranged with their backs to each other to form a triangle.
Beyond the statues are two huge oak doors. Sitting beside them is the child from the cell, her head buried in her hands.
She looks up as she hears Valentina.
Instead of being comforted, she looks terrified.
Valentina realises she’s still holding the Glock.
She slides the gun into the back of her waistband. ‘Please, sweetheart, let me help you; let me look after you. If you do what I say and stay with me, everything will be all right.’
The kid stares intently into the policewoman’s eyes. She’s learned the hard way – the only way that abused children understand – that lies show in the eyes of adults long before they leave their mouths.
Valentina stretches out her hand and takes hold of the tiny fingers.
They’re icy cold.
She gives them a gentle squeeze, then covers them with both her own hands. ‘I’m going to call you Sweetheart until I learn your name.’ She lifts the chilly hand, kisses it and clasps it between her own palms. ‘We need to get you warmed up. When we get out of here, I promise you the biggest, creamiest hot chocolate drink that’s ever been made.’
The little girl smiles.
Valentina helps her stand.
They walk together to the giant doors and push one open.
The kid clings tight and becomes even more anxious.
Beyond the doors is a vast space.
Uneven in dimensions.
Scalene in proportions.
A temple.
The walls are decorated with rich and intricate woodland scenes from Phrygia, Crete, Turkey, Greece and Italy. All depict Cybele and her prophetesses.
The ceiling is as beautifully painted as that of the Sistine Chapel. The floor is covered in minuscule mosaics.
The whole place is lit by dozens of torches burning in triangular cones fixed on the walls.
Against the longest wall is a huge elevated altar covered in hundreds of multicoloured flower petals. Opposite, three metres off the ground, is what looks like a marble ledge. Valentina presumes it’s a pulpit for priests or priestesses.
In the middle of the temple floor there is a large triangular grid. Valentina doesn’t walk across it, but she peers down and can see that it’s a big drop. She knows enough about ancient religions to guess that this is a sacrificial pit.
A loud, dull thud makes her turn.
The heavy oak door they came through has swung shut.
There’s another sound.
Dull and repetitive.
Muffled.
Valentina thinks it’s coming from beneath her feet rather than outside the temple.
She struggles to place it.
It’s an even, almost rhythmical knocking noise, now so loud she really should be able to see what’s causing it.
But she can’t.
It stops as unexpectedly as it started.
But the peace lasts barely a second.
An even stranger noise starts.
A high-pitched buzz.
Not electronic. Something more natural.
The sound grows quickly.
More bass than treble.
The kind of noise you feel more than hear.
The kind of tone that makes your heart shake.
A black fountain erupts from the triangular pit.
It springs up as though someone has struck oil.
Valentina pulls Sweetheart close to her.
The spray spins high in the air
, swirls like a typhoon and slowly starts to lose its shape.
It’s not oil.
It’s a dense cloud of frenzied flies.
Sarcophagidae.
Flesh flies.
Gruesome insects that feed on the dead. Mannerless little monsters that lay their eggs in corpses.
Valentina’s seen them many times.
But only under a microscope. Only dead and clamped between the metal teeth of a pathologist’s tweezers.
Never like this.
Never loose and wild and in their millions.
132
Tom’s fall isn’t as bad as it looks.
He’s had the wind knocked out of him and his cracked clavicle is screaming like a werewolf.
But he’s sure nothing else is busted.
The main problem is, he can feel the rubble moving beneath him.
Sliding.
Shifting slowly, like brown sugar.
His left hand grips loose rock.
Despite the pain, he manages to work his right elbow between hard chunks of stone.
Up above, Guilio is shouting, but he can’t work out what he’s saying.
He gets some leverage and manages to roll on to his back.
He can see Guilio now, panic on his face, mouthing something.
The rubble pile beneath him drops. It’s like a plane hitting an air pocket. He falls half a metre and almost slips off.
Tom digs his heels in.
Pushes himself back up.
Edges towards the wall.
Glancing down, he sees something strange.
Two shining dots.
Eyes.
They’re moving towards him.
The head of an emaciated lion appears in the half-light.
Its mane is thick with dust and grime.
Its jaws are wide open.
Tom scrabbles for a rock, and instantly realises that because of his shoulder injury, he can’t throw right-handed.
Nor can he lift one-handed the size of boulder necessary to bludgeon to death a hungry lion.
He throws a medium-sized stone.
It whacks the beast on the shoulder but does nothing to stop it.
The animal roars and becomes wary.
It can feel the rubble shifting as it climbs towards its surprise meal.
Tom hurls a chunk of plaster.
It catches the beast on the nose.
Another growl.
Tom’s ears have cleared of the buzzing. He can hear again. Hardly a bonus, given the circumstance.
He pulls his legs up.
The rubble slips some more.
So does the lion.
It slides back and scrambles and scratches to keep its footing.
The bright eyes twinkle.
A blood-curdling roar rolls from its greedy yellow mouth.
It starts to charge.
Tom throws another rock.
It misses.
The lion is inches away.
He draws his knee back and slams the sole of his foot into its face.
It’s a good connection, enough to put a man flat on his back.
But not enough to stop a wild animal.
It rolls its head and comes again.
Tom can’t get enough of an angle to kick out.
The lion is on him.
Growling and biting.
He shifts his leg and the giant jaw crunches into stone.
There’s a loud thump next to him.
Guilio is in the pit.
The animal reacts quicker than Tom.
But not quicker than Guilio.
The nozzle of his nail gun finds the fur of the beast. He pumps a five-inch nail into its head.
The lion is dead before it even starts to roll away.
But Guilio is trapped beneath it. The pile of rubble shifts again.
Tom reaches out for him.
The pile collapses.
Guilio and the lion disappear into the darkness.
There’s a crash of rock and a cloud of dust.
Tom clings to a section of still crumbling rubble.
He looks up.
The edge of the floor is within touching distance.
If the pile he’s standing on slips any more, he won’t make it.
But if he jumps, Guilio will be stranded.
The dust blows away.
The beast’s body is wedged between boulders halfway down the pile.
There’s no sign of Guilio.
Tom cups a hand around his mouth. ‘Are you okay – can you hear me down there?’
The answer is faint. ‘I’m stuck. My leg’s jammed.’
‘Hang on.’
Tom can’t see further than the dead animal.
The pile starts to shift again.
He looks up at the edge of the floor above.
He jumps.
There’s no point them both being stranded.
If he can get out, he can get help.
Tom dangles by his fingers.
His right shoulder is a ball of pain. He knows he has to ignore it.
If he doesn’t, he won’t survive.
Nor will Guilio.
He fumbles for a better grip, and manages to pull himself up a little.
His left leg bangs against the wall.
He explores it with his foot.
It’s worn and jagged.
Uneven enough for him to get a toehold.
The precious leverage enables him to get up on to his elbows.
He can hear shouting below as he swings his right leg up and rolls to safety.
There’s shouting – and something else.
Growling.
Across the ground, he notices again the statue of Cybele.
The goddess is flanked by two lions, not one.
He peers back into the pit.
The growls come from way beyond the body of the dead lion.
Guilio’s agonising screams rise from the bottom of the black hole.
There’s nothing Tom can do.
Except listen to him being eaten alive.
133
The flesh flies are everywhere.
They swarm around Valentina and Sweetheart, settling on their skin and crawling into their ears.
Valentina remembers her mortuary lessons.
And wishes she hadn’t.
Sarcophaga nodosa is more than just an unpleasant-looking insect with revolting feeding habits.
It’s also a carrier of leprosy.
A fatally loaded disease bomb.
A fly hits Sweetheart in the eye and makes her do a panic jig.
Valentina holds her and tries to comfort her. The insects are crawling into her long hair and down her shabby nightdress. Valentina beats them off but they’re instantly replaced by hundreds more.
They have to keep moving.
They must get out of here.
She pulls Sweetheart’s hand up to shield as much of her face as possible. ‘Keep your mouth covered; don’t let these horrid bugs get in there or up your nose.’ The youngster looks terrified as she leads her towards the doors.
The sooner they get out of here, the better.
They reach the doors and Valentina flips the handle.
Locked.
She tries again to see if she’s mistaken.
Maybe it’s just sticking.
Definitely locked.
She lets go of Sweetheart’s hand and takes a hefty kick at the weak point where the doors meet.
They don’t budge.
She looks up and sees ten feet of solid oak.
The flies will have picked her bones clean by the time she’s forced them open.
‘Stand back!’ She moves Sweetheart away. ‘Stay over here and don’t move.’
She pulls the gun and takes aim at the heavy brass lock, careful to make sure that she’s at an angle, so if there’s any freak rebound she doesn’t catch shrapnel.
The Glock kicks in her palm.
It’s not a clean shot.
&nb
sp; She’s nicked the lock, but the oak is so thick, the bullet hasn’t even gone all the way through.
Valentina lets off three more rounds.
The brass mangles up but the edge of the door shows no sign of splintering as she hoped.
Her temper flares.
She steps close to the door and fires off five shots in a circle around the lock.
She may as well have saved the ammunition.
She jams the Glock back in her waistband.
She has an idea.
A crazy, desperate idea, but it might just work.
Valentina runs through the thick cloud of flies to the flower-covered altar and climbs it.
She’s after one of the flaming torches.
The flies are so thick, it’s like working beneath a blanket.
It takes several minutes, but Valentina finally frees a torch from the wall.
She jumps from the altar and looks across to the opposite wall.
High on the pulpit ledge, behind a wall of glass, she sees an old woman in a long red robe is staring at her.
She looks like Cybele.
Alongside her are other old women, their faces all turned down towards the temple floor.
Valentina’s eyes flash hatred as she carries the torch away.
Flies sizzle in the wafting orange flames.
She pulls Sweetheart even further away from the giant doors, then kneels down with the torch and holds it to the oak.
She’s going to burn a way out.
Then she’s going to find those cruel old crones and make them wish they’d died decades ago.
134
Guilio’s final screams are already haunting Tom as he picks up the rucksack and walks away from the pit.
He knows there’s nothing he could have done.
There was no way he could have stopped the second lion.
But he still feels awful.
If Guilio hadn’t jumped in the pit, Tom would be dead.
It seems wrong that he lost his life in such a way.
Tom shines his torch into the darkness and walks slowly towards the end of the gallery, staying as close to the centre as he can.
He hopes there are no more traps.
After fifty metres the tunnel comes to a dead end, just as the others have done.
Only there’s a difference.
A big difference.
There’s no hatch on the floor. No marble disc through which to pass to another level.
Instead, there’s a huge felled tree.
It’s either set into the wall or the wall has been built around it.
Tom touches it.
