Apocalypsis I

by Mario Giordano

  The Pope lost all track of time. He could not have said whether they had been walking for hours or just minutes, when the staircase came to an abrupt end on sandy ground. They found themselves in a huge hall-like a rock cavern, which was barely illuminated by their lamps, and John Paul III knew immediately what this place was. The place which was supposed to stay closed for all eternity, sealed by an ancient amulet.

  »It is warm in here,« the Pope said, »how deep do you think we are?«

  »Ask me an easier question,« Don Luigi grunted. »What interests me most is where that pestilential smell is coming from!«

  »Do you see this, Padre?« the Pope asked, pointing at the wall of the cavernous hall, which was covered with primeval symbols familiar to the Pope from previous research studies, and with drawings of mysterious beings which did not remind him of any known form of life. Drawings that triggered in him the primordial fear that the creatures pictured there were not figments of the imagination but creatures that had really existed and that had ingrained themselves into the collective subconsciousness of mankind. Between the drawings, again and again, were those eyes with the square pupils. Rough niches were carved into the wall, evenly spaced from one another, and they held plain stone vessels.

  »Stop that, Holy Father!« Don Luigi’s voice was sharp when he saw that the Pope wanted to take a closer look at one of the vessels. »Don’t touch anything!«

  He pointed at something that he had discovered in the middle of the hall. »Look at that!«

  In the light of the lamps, the Pope saw a squat rock with a flat top. It looked like some kind of altar and was covered with these mysterious and hideous symbols. The source of the foul smell. And the Pope knew immediately that IT had waited on this rock for the moment of its release. Its sign was carved into the top of the stone, huge and boasting. The ancient symbol for light. The sign of the lightbringer. The sign of Satan.

  »What do you think this place is, Padre?« The Pope asked this question even though he believed he already knew the answer.

  Don Luigi hesitated. But then he said with the firmness of a plumber who had found the cause of a clogged pipe, »The Gate to Hell, Holy Father.«

  John Paul III simply nodded, because Don Luigi had confirmed his fears.

  »But where are the devils and demons?«

  Don Luigi gave a distinct sigh. »It looks, Holy Father, as though they are out and about in the world!«

  EPISODE 7

  VISION

  Lübbe Webnovel is an imprint of Bastei Lübbe GmbH & Co. KG

  Copyright © 2011 by Bastei Lübbe GmbH & Co. KG, Cologne, Germany

  Written by Mario Giordano, Cologne

  Translated by Diana Beate Hellmann, Los Angeles

  English version edited by Charlotte Ryland, London

  Editors: Friederike Achilles/Jan F. Wielpütz

  Artwork: © Dino Franke, Hajo Müller

  E-Book-Production: Dörlemann Satz, Lemförde

  ISBN 978-3-8387-1457-8

  All rights reserved

  No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole, or in part, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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  LII

  May 15, 2011, Poveglia, Venetian Lagoon

  It took eighteen agonizing months for God’s wrath to subside after claiming almost 50,000 victims. No other European city of the early 17th century was better prepared for the plague than Venice with its strict sanitary restrictions, its efficient Public Health Office, and the first quarantine stations in the world. And yet, disaster struck in 1630. It was the entourage of the Duke of Mantua that brought the plague to Venice and, within a few weeks, the Black Death was raging through the narrow streets and canals of the City in the Lagoon. For months, the air was filled with the smell of putrefaction and the pungent smoke of the crematoria, which could no longer cope with the huge number of corpses that needed to be burnt. Consequently, most of the dead bodies were just covered with lime and earth so that the dogs would not eat them. Doctores with preposterous bird-like beak masks, stuffed with herbs and spices against the deadly »miasmas,« bled the few people who could still afford the procedure. Everyone who was able to fled the city. Every day, more than 500 people lost their lives. Public life came to a standstill and bread and wine prices went through the roof. Gangs of looters roamed the streets of the city, throwing even the living into the wheelbarrows for dead, after robbing them first. Whether beggar or nobleman, the authorities did not hesitate in deporting to one of the Lagoon’s quarantine islands anyone who showed the slightest symptom of the disease or had come into contact with an infected person.

  One of these islands was Poveglia. A place of death; hell on earth. Tens of thousands of people were crowded into an area of three hectares. The air was filled with the smell of burning bodies and festering sores, the screams of the sick and the moans of the dying. Hundreds of boats moored off the island’s coast, forming a barrier, and a flag marked the spot up to which the deported were allowed on the shore. Beyond that spot was the gallows, which was used for the execution of those who defied the authorities’ instructions.

  During the course of the various epidemics that the city of Venice suffered, a total of more than 160,000 plague victims were burnt on the island of Poveglia. Their dark ashes covered the entire surface of the island. In 1922, the former lazzaretto for the plague sufferers was transformed into a mental hospital, but only a few years later, it was closed again after a series of mysterious deaths. Until the present day, Poveglia was off limits – for locals as well as for tourists. Keep out! A haunted place. But exactly the place where Urs Bühler wanted to continue his investigations.

  The little vaporetto chugged towards the island as it emerged from the early morning haze above the Lagoon. Urs Bühler was already able to make out the 14th century octagonal fortifications at the entrance to the island. He had spent the whole of the previous day trying to find someone who could take him to Poveglia, but to no avail. Most of the boatmen had just looked at him with a strange expression in their eyes, before denying his request and explaining to him that the island was uninhabited and that there was nothing to see except for some ruins. It was only this morning that he had been able to find himself someone who was willing to take him over to the island and pick him up again at a predetermined time, in exchange for a horrendous amount of money.

  Bühler was already cursing himself for the crazy idea of leaving Rome during this crisis, just to follow a lead that would probably prove to be another dead end. But Bühler liked to follow through with what he started. The clue that he had not shared with Menendez had to do with his research on Suite 306. A static IP address of the mysterious investment bank »PRIOR« had pointed him to the location of a web server on the island of Poveglia. The server was registered to a hermetic lodge that called itself Temple of Equinox. And the name of the Grand Master of this order was, once again, Aleister Crowley.

  Bühler had discovered that a man of the same name had founded a magical commune called the Temple of Equinox in Poveglia in 1922. Which meant for Bühler that a drug and sex addicted lunatic had been celebrating satanic orgies at the exact same time as the notorious mental hospital was being built. But he would not have been interested in any of this if the location of the web server had not been his only solid and verifiable lead. Where there was a server, there had to be more.

  The vaporetto landed behind the octagon of the fortifications, and as soon as Bühler had jumped to shore, it chugged off again. Not a single sound could be heard, not even birds. The commander of the Swiss Guards stood for a moment to get his bearings. In front of him were the ruins of the mental hospital, hidden behind rusty scaffoldings. To his right was a bell tower. The whole area was overgrown with trees and bushes that grew wildly through doorways and window fram
es, penetrating every crack in the walls, and forming shady roofs over the porches. Narrow, well-beaten trails led through the thicket; proof that Poveglia still had regular visitors. Bühler released the safety catch of his SIG P220 and took one of the narrow paths into the dilapidated building.

  The floors of the rooms were covered with rotten wooden beams and debris from the collapsed ceilings. Scattered in between were decaying remnants of furniture, yellowed and unreadable documents, rusty heaters, pipes and the railings of hospital beds. When Bühler touched one of the walls, clouds of plaster and white mold fell to the ground like dust. He walked through the entrance hall and a corridor with former wards on either side. He entered the former chapel of the psychiatric hospital, where shattered pews were piled up to into what looked like a pyre. Bühler found the former hospital kitchen with its rusty ovens and the huge pivoting soup boilers. Further in the back was the former laundry room with large drum washing machines and electric clothes presses. Junk everywhere. Every now and then, there was a rustling in the foliage that penetrated the walls wherever he looked and, once, Bühler saw a rat scurrying down the corridor. There was not a single person in sight. Yet Bühler could not shake off the feeling that someone was watching him.

  It started to get warm. Bühler put his gun away and took the rickety spiral staircase up into the bell tower to get a view of the entire island. From there, he could see the rooftops of the palaces of Venice as well as the neighboring islands in the Lagoon. It was a beautiful day, the perfect day for an excursion. But this was no excursion.

  Bühler turned around and looked over to the other side of the island, searching for any kind of structure or electrical installation that would hint at a server. A small channel divided the island into two parts. Behind the channel he could see nothing but trees. Bühler looked at his watch. In thirty minutes the vaporetto would be back to pick him up. Just when he was ready to give up and return to the landing stage, he spotted on the other side of the channel, hidden behind trees, the roof of another building complex.

  The path led him past a mass grave that had apparently been excavated by archaeologists. It was a ditch, approximately thirty feet long and less than three feet deep, filled with hundreds of human remains. Plague victims that had not been burnt but hastily buried in a shallow grave. The small excavation site suggested that the entire island was a mass grave with thousands of nameless corpses.

  Bühler did not pay any further attention to the bleached bones and focused instead on the building by the canaletto, which he could now see clearly in front of him. It looked like an extension to the mental hospital, but far less dilapidated. The facades were clean and not overgrown and the roof also seemed intact. Bühler advanced cautiously and used the dense bushes as cover. Still, not a single sound could be heard except for his own breathing. He dared to move closer and began to make his way around the entire building without making a sound. But the window shutters were all closed and it was impossible to see inside. Bühler listened for a long time for any noise coming from inside and, not hearing anything, he finally decided to break open the door. With an iron bar that he found in the ruins of the mental hospital, he jimmied the lock of the heavy wooden door and immediately let out a gasp of shock.

  I AM PAN.

  I AM THY MATE,

  I AM THY MAN,

  GOAT OF THY FLOCK

  I AM GOLD,

  I AM GOD,

  FLESH TO THY BONE,

  FLOWER TO THY ROD.

  He found himself in an elegant Art Deco hall. The floor and the walls were fashioned from shiny black marble and engraved with occult symbols in red marble. On both sides, dark bronze statues of a naked Satan were standing guard over the place. Both statues had breasts as well as penises, monstrously large and erect. One of the statues was smashing a cross with its cleft hooves, the other statue was holding something that looked like a burning lance or a torch. In the middle of the hall was a huge altar fit for a cathedral, hewn from black and glossy wood. Its sides were decorated with depictions of mythical horned creatures. On the empty wall above this altar were the words that had caught Bühler’s eye when he entered the hall, words that were written in golden letters on a blood red background, lascivious and blasphemous words. The yellowed black-and-white photo under the writing on the wall showed Aleister Crowley sitting in an imperious and disdainful pose on a divan, clad in a kaftan and a turban.

  Bühler took a deep breath and looked around. Still no sound. At both sides of the hall, doors led into adjacent rooms. He drew his gun again and began with the room to his left.

  This room was considerably less sophisticated, and minimally furnished in the style of the 1920’s. In the dim daylight that seeped through the open front door, Bühler could see that the walls were lavishly painted with symbols, additional quotes and pornographic scenes. Humans and animals copulating with each other. Or mauling each other. Or both.

  Bühler did not waste much time studying these murals, and swiftly continued to check the other rooms. He found no bedrooms, bathrooms or kitchen, just more halls with furniture from the twenties. Bühler could not imagine that anyone had ever lived here; the whole establishment seemed rather to be some sort of gathering place. The meeting place of an occult lodge, Bühler assumed. The thought did not really faze him. He continued to search for the server room and finally he found it in the back of the building. The metal shelves with the slots for the memory modules were empty. The cables hung down like tattered blood vessels. Only the red diode of a forgotten power supply unit laughed at him. Cursing under his breath, Bühler continued to check the building and when he reached the other side of the structure that looked out over the channel, he discovered a staircase leading down into the basement. He stopped for a moment and listened for sounds coming from outside. But it remained quiet except for the chugging of a boat engine in the distance.

  The steep stairs led down into darkness. Bühler cursed himself for not bringing a flashlight and had to use the display of his cell phone as a source of light. The cellar was very deep underground. He figured that it had originally been part of a substantially older structure, the foundations of which had been used to build this hospital complex.

  When he finally reached the bottom of the stairs, Bühler felt a cool draft of air that suggested the basement had ventilation. The ground consisted of compacted earth and exuded the rank smell of decay. In the pale light of the cell phone display, Bühler checked the basement. He was in a hurry. This was not a good place to stay longer than absolutely necessary. There was not much to see. The walls were covered with simple shelves that were crammed with pots and jars. On closer inspection, Bühler realized that the vessels were urns and that, again, they were adorned with occult and satanic symbols. Bühler refrained from looking inside these urns but decided to pay a brief visit to the Venetian Police Department before returning to Rome, to tip them off about this place, although this had not been his original intention.

  He left the storage area and walked through a passage that finally led him into a room that was dominated by a huge, round rock at the center, as flat as a table and engraved with pentagrams and characters that Bühler had never seen before. Some sort of altar, he thought. This room seemed to have been used for occult rituals until quite recently, because Bühler discovered dark stains on the rock, some of which were still shimmering wet. Urs Bühler had seen enough blood in his life to know right away what this was. He could smell the sweet and musty odor of clotting blood and the next thing he noticed was that the ground he was standing on was soft, almost slushy. Bühler shone the display of his cell phone on the floor and immediately had to fight the urge to vomit. He was standing in a slushy mixture of mud and blood.

  He resisted the impulse to turn on his heel and run back upstairs because he suddenly saw a figure huddled next to the flat rock. Shackled, motionless, with a sack over its head. But alive. Through the darkness, Bühler could hear the muffled sounds of the person’s desperate gasping for air. Büh
ler acted fast and professionally, as he always did when he was in the field. At this point, the adrenaline that was rushing through his body protected him from the shock and the horror of this place. But not for much longer. At some point, the shock always caught up with him, whenever he had been in the field. So Bühler did not hesitate any longer and stepped in front of the figure beside the sacrificial altar, because there was not the slightest doubt in his mind what purpose this rock served, and pulled the sack from the person’s head. And when he took his cell phone and shone the light in the person’s face, a moan escaped from his mouth, a moan that was filled with the despair of this world. In front of him, next to the sacrificial altar, gagged and terribly beaten and abused, lay the only person he loved in this world.

  His sister.

  LIII

  May 15, 2011, Ile de Cuivre, Mediterranean Sea

  Sat and slept, sat and slept… little rabbit, are you ill, why can’t you jump up the hill…?

  The satisfaction of having given it your all.

  The astonishment over the simplicity of everyday life.

  The painful feeling of missing a loved one who has died.

  Peter looked around the room in which he had woken up. It looked like a hospital ward. Whitewashed and rough walls, a sink, a framed art print: Nolde’s Poppies. Above him a window framing a friendly sky.

  How long have you been lying here like this?

  From outside, he could hear waves breaking. Friendly waves. Friendly like everything else in this place. So friendly that one felt like bursting into tears. Friendly and familiar. A place that invited you to stay. Forever.