The Nosferatu Scroll

by James Becker

  Her other problem was the cold. The cellar was obviously damp, the walls moist to the touch, and the very air chilled her bones. The only way she could keep warm was by sitting on the bed and wrapping the blanket around her.

  Hours later, she heard the rumble of the cellar door opening again, and the guard reappeared with another tray, which he placed on the floor near her bed. A waft of even colder air seemed to swoop down the staircase, reducing the temperature in the cellar still further. Marietta guessed that it was already late afternoon, and the temperature was dropping.

  She didn’t move, didn’t speak, just watched as he swapped the trays round and turned to leave. Then, as he started walking away towards the spiral staircase, Marietta heard a sound that chilled her even more than the cold of her surroundings. Through the open door to the ruined church above the cellar, she suddenly heard a loud and mournful howl.

  Somehow she knew it wasn’t a dog, an Alsatian or anything like that. There was something different about that noise, something that caused the hairs on the back of her neck to rise. It sounded almost primeval, an ancient human nightmare come terrifyingly to life.

  And it was close – really close. Definitely somewhere on the island.

  ‘What’s that?’ she demanded, as the guard continued to walk away from her.

  He stopped, turned round and looked back at her, a malicious grin working its way across his face. ‘Just one of our little pets,’ he said. ‘A playmate for you, perhaps, a bit later on.’

  ‘But what is it?’ she asked again. ‘A wolf?’

  ‘You’ll find out,’ the guard said. ‘But if I were you, I wouldn’t be in too much of a hurry to meet it.’

  A few seconds later, the cellar door rumbled closed and Marietta was alone once more with her thoughts and fears.

  At first, she ignored her meal and just sat on the bed, looking across the cellar to the base of the spiral staircase. Over and over again, in her mind, she replayed the sound she’d heard, and the guard’s thinly veiled threat.

  She was never going to escape from this island. She knew that with a kind of dull certainty that settled in her mind like a cold and heavy weight. There was no hope for her.

  Marietta toppled onto her side, pulled the filthy blanket over her head, and let the tears flow.

  18

  It was late afternoon, and once again the Island of the Dead was shrouded in shadows as the sun sank slowly towards the western horizon.

  ‘Let’s start with your vandalized graves, Chris,’ Angela suggested as they walked away from the vaporetto stop. ‘What do the newspapers say about them?’

  Bronson shrugged. ‘Like most newspaper stories, they’re heavy on sensation and light on details. According to the best report, two graves were interfered with on one night, and they were very close to each other, down at the southern end of the cemetery.’

  ‘So let’s make a start there, then.’

  They walked between the ranks of tombs down to the south of the island, looking at the names on the graves as they passed them. Bronson spotted an area where most of the tombs appeared somewhat older than the majority.

  ‘This report also says that one of the graves was over four hundred years old,’ he said. ‘Those graves over there look pretty old to me.’

  Despite the enormous number of tombs, it didn’t take them that long to find the first of the two graves the newspaper claimed had been attacked by vandals. It was a similar structure to the one Angela had taken to calling the ‘vampire’s grave’ – another stone box topped with a flat stone slab that bore the name and dates of the deceased entombed within.

  ‘Here it is,’ Bronson said. ‘That’s the name that they give in the paper.’

  For a few moments they both stared at the structure in front of them.

  ‘I don’t know about you, Chris,’ Angela said, ‘but I don’t see much evidence of damage. In fact, it looks untouched.’

  ‘You’re right.’ Then Bronson noticed something, and pointed at the base of the slab covering the top of the grave. ‘I think somebody lifted off that slab,’ he said. ‘Look, the cement holding it in place is fresh. You can see that clean line running all the way around it.’

  Once he’d pointed it out, the new cement was very obvious. And when they found the second tomb, it was precisely the same story, except that on this grave the slab had obviously cracked when it had been levered off, and the repair work on the damaged slab also included a couple of metal pins to hold the two sections of it together.

  ‘Well,’ Bronson said, ‘I think it’s obvious that we’re not looking at the work of your average vandal here. Both of these graves were opened by people who were clearly searching for something, and I’ll bet that if we located all the other tombs that have been attacked, we’d find the same thing. The other point that strikes me is that both of these graves date from the early nineteenth century, so they’re about the same age as your vampire’s tomb.’

  ‘Which does make you wonder what, exactly, they were looking for,’ Angela said. ‘There’s not likely to be a hell of a lot left inside a two-hundred-year-old tomb, unless the grave was sealed completely, or they used a lead coffin. Do you want to try to find any of the other graves mentioned in the newspaper stories, or are you satisfied with what you’ve seen here?’

  ‘No, I’m happy that we know what happened, even if we don’t know why. These graves were opened by people who were looking for something specific. Let’s try to find the twin angels tomb you’re interested in.’

  ‘The book describes it as the “tomb of the twin angels”, so presumably we’re looking for a grave that’s marked by a couple of carved stone angels,’ Angela said, looking around at the mass of tombs that surrounded them. ‘The problem is that the two most common symbols on all these graves are the crucifix and angels, single or multiple. I suppose we just have to hope that there’s something very obvious about the one we’re looking for.’

  ‘And if we find it?’ Bronson asked. ‘Are you planning another session of grave robbing?’

  ‘I’d just like to find the tomb to prove that my translation of the Latin is accurate. I mean, this is just an intellectual exercise, not a treasure hunt or anything like that.’

  ‘Why don’t we split up? That way we can cover more ground. Just make sure we don’t get too far apart. We don’t want to have to spend hours tramping around here looking for each other.’

  ‘It’s not that big a place, Chris,’ Angela pointed out. ‘And what we’re looking for is quite specific. Because of the date of the diary, the tomb has to be dated no later than about eighteen hundred, maybe eighteen ten, and because the diary uses the expression “twin angels” every time the topic is mentioned, I think the carving will be of two identical angel figures, not just two different stone angels on the same grave.’

  ‘OK,’ Bronson said, and turned to his right. ‘I’ll head over this way.’

  For the next hour or so, they both looked at a wide variety of graves, all of which exhibited some of the characteristics they were searching for. In all, they found over a dozen tombs that were about the right date, and which were decorated with the stone figures of angels.

  But it wasn’t until they looked in a section of the graveyard that appeared to be the most neglected, that Angela thought they might have found the one referred to in the diary.

  In one corner of this area she spotted a sarcophagus-type tomb. Unlike most of the others they’d looked at, which had carved stone figures surmounting them, either as part of a heavily ornamented top slab or as a separate piece of monumental stone, this grave had a fairly plain slab covering the top of the sarcophagus, and there was no immediate sign of any angelic carvings. But then she looked at the foot and saw an incised carving that depicted two angels side by side, their limbs entwined, one virtually a mirror image of the other.

  ‘Is this it?’ Bronson asked, walking over in response to her wave.

  ‘It’s the most likely, I think. The two angels are id
entical, and it’s obviously a really old grave.’

  Angela stepped forward and looked at the letters and numbers on the top of the slab. The stone was quite badly weathered, but most of the inscription was just about legible.

  ‘The date of the burial was July seventeen eighty-three,’ she said. ‘The name is a bit more difficult to read, but I think the surname is Delaca. I can’t make out the first name at all, except that it begins with the letter “N”.’

  Angela took a notebook out of her handbag and recorded the information she’d found on the slab.

  ‘I’ll do a bit of research on the web,’ she said, ‘and maybe check one or two genealogy sites. I might be able to find out something about him or her.’ She looked closely at the tomb, at the joints between the stones, and shook her head. ‘It doesn’t look to me as if anybody’s touched this grave for decades, maybe even centuries. Perhaps the “answer” – or whatever Carmelita Paganini was referring to – isn’t actually in the grave, but visible outside it.’

  ‘You mean there might be something in the inscriptions themselves?’ Bronson asked.

  Angela nodded, took out her digital camera and took pictures of the tomb from every angle, trying to ensure that the images showed the inscriptions and symbols carved into the stone as clearly as possible.

  ‘Are we finished here?’ Bronson asked finally. It was being to get chilly and he didn’t like the way the shadows were starting to lengthen between the graves.

  ‘Yes. Let’s go back to the hotel,’ Angela replied. ‘I’ll do a bit more work on the translation when I have time, and see if I can find out anything else about this “answer” our diarist talks about.’

  ‘And I suppose you can do that once we get back to England, so tomorrow we can start our holiday again?’

  Angela nodded in agreement and laced her arm through his as they walked back towards the entrance to the cemetery.

  They’d gone about fifty or sixty yards when Bronson suddenly stopped and looked around.

  Angela looked at him enquiringly. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Can you smell something?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘It’s foul and unpleasant – and I have a horrible feeling I know what it is.’

  For a second or two, Angela looked at him. ‘We are standing in the middle of a graveyard,’ she reminded him.

  ‘I know. But even in a cemetery you shouldn’t be able to smell a decomposing corpse. That’s why bodies are buried in coffins – to keep everything inside.’ Bronson glanced around. ‘I think it’s coming from over there,’ he said, gesturing over to the right of the path they were following.

  He stepped off the path and walked slowly through the graves. ‘It’s definitely stronger over here,’ he called out.

  ‘I can smell it now,’ Angela confirmed, joining him.

  The odour faded slightly as they passed a line of tombs, and they turned round to retrace their steps.

  ‘That might be it,’ Bronson suggested, pointing at an old grave. ‘You see the corner of it? A section of the slab has broken off.’

  They walked over to the sarcophagus-type structure that Bronson had indicated, and with every step they took, the smell grew stronger and more offensive. Angela took a handkerchief from her bag and pressed it against her nose, but it made little difference.

  The stone box that comprised the grave was about eight or nine feet long, about four feet wide and roughly the same high. The slab covering the top had obviously cracked in one corner and that section of the stone had fallen on to the ground beside the tomb. Bronson stepped closer to the opening that had been created, then retreated.

  He coughed a couple of times, trying to rid his lungs of the stench of decay, then turned back to Angela.

  ‘I left my camera back at the hotel,’ he said. ‘Can I borrow yours?’

  ‘You’re going to photograph a rotting body?’ Angela looked shocked.

  ‘Don’t you see? This is an old grave, so the body should have decayed into nothing years and years ago. Whatever is causing that smell is very recent. We’ve got two choices. Either we slide the slab off the top of the grave, which is something I really don’t want to do, or I point your camera into the tomb through that hole in the corner and take a picture of the interior. If it’s just a cat or some animal that’s crawled in there to die, we can forget all about it. But if it’s something else, we’ll be able to tell exactly what it is from the image, and then, if we have to, we can make a call.’

  ‘You think there’s a fresh corpse in there, don’t you?’ Angela asked, and Bronson nodded. ‘Right, here’s my camera.’

  Bronson took it from her, walked back to the tomb, aimed the lens through the hole, and pressed the shutter release. There was a sudden explosion of light as the flash was triggered. It took the camera a couple of seconds to process the image, and then a picture of the interior of the tomb appeared in full colour on the small LCD screen.

  Bronson turned away from the tomb, and handed the camera back to Angela.

  ‘Oh my God, Chris,’ she whispered, her face turning pale.

  Bronson nodded grimly, took his mobile phone from his pocket and dialled 112. They needed the emergency services, fast.

  19

  ‘Signor Bronson, we meet again.’ The carabinieri sergeant looked at Bronson appraisingly. ‘You seem to be making something of a habit of being at the scene of desecrated tombs.’

  ‘It’s only happened twice,’ Bronson objected.

  ‘Apart from some simple vandalism over the past few years, there have only been two cases that I know of where graves in this cemetery have been desecrated. The first one was yesterday, just over there’ – the sergeant pointed – ‘and when two police officers arrived on the scene, the first person they spoke to was you. And now you’ve called us to report this one as well. That’s two in two days, and the only common factor, Signor Bronson, seems to be you. That’s what I call a habit.’

  Behind the sergeant, about half a dozen police officers were in attendance, as well as numerous other people wearing civilian clothes – Bronson presumed they were scene-of-crime technicians, the pathologist and staff from the mortuary.

  ‘In your call,’ the sergeant referred to his notebook, ‘you said there was a dead girl in the tomb.’

  Bronson shook his head. ‘No, I didn’t,’ he said. ‘I actually told the operator there were three dead girls.’

  ‘Three?’

  Bronson nodded.

  ‘So you looked into the grave?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I didn’t. I haven’t got a torch and I wouldn’t have been able to see anything inside the tomb without one. Instead, I used a digital camera with an automatic flash.’

  Bronson reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out Angela’s camera, switched it on and found the photograph he had taken through the crack in the lid of the tomb.

  The sergeant muttered something under his breath. The image was pin-sharp, and the flash had driven away the darkness inside the grave, and recorded for ever the appalling scene inside it.

  Clearly visible in the picture were the stone base and sides of the tomb, and the remains of a very old coffin, most of the wood disintegrated and rotten. Mixed in with the wooden fragments were a few tattered scraps of cloth and, at one end of the grave, the leg bones of a human skeleton. But it wasn’t this evidence of an ancient burial that had transfixed the sergeant. It was the three naked female bodies that were lying on top of the disintegrated coffin, one on top of the other, their corpses already bloated and discoloured as the disintegration of their tissues accelerated.

  The sergeant looked at the picture on the LCD screen for a few moments longer, then handed the camera back to Bronson. He turned away and addressed the men who’d arrived in response to Bronson’s call, issuing orders and instructions.

  Temporarily dismissed, Bronson walked a few paces to where Angela sat on the ground, her back resting against a gravestone. He sat down beside her and took her hand. She looked
pale and shaken by what she’d seen.

  ‘Why did whoever killed those girls dump their bodies here?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s easy. Where’s the best place to hide a body?’

  ‘In a graveyard?’

  ‘Exactly. And that’s what happened here. If the corner of that slab hadn’t cracked and fallen off, they might never have been discovered.’

  ‘So can we go home? Back to the hotel, I mean?’ Angela asked.

  Bronson shook his head. ‘Not yet. We’ll have to make statements, obviously, and my guess is that the investigating officers will want to speak to us before they’ll let us leave.’

  He looked across at the tomb, which was now isolated behind a perimeter of tape to prevent anyone approaching it. Several tripod-mounted floodlights had been positioned around the scene, illuminating the grave in the evening darkness. A technician, wearing white coveralls, latex gloves and with slip-on bootees covering his shoes, was standing just outside the tape, carrying a powerful digital camera. As Bronson watched, he shot at least a couple of dozen pictures of the grave from various angles, moving around the perimeter to do so. Then he ducked under the tape, took several close-up shots of the tomb from all sides, then finally stepped closer still and took several more shots of the interior through the gap in the slab.

  ‘Why don’t they just take the slab off the top?’ Angela asked.

  ‘They will do, of course, but first they’ll want to gather as much information as they can about the scene. There might be footprints around the grave, though that’s a bit unlikely on this surface. They’ll want to dust the slab for fingerprints, and thoroughly examine the immediate vicinity of the tomb for any possible clues – objects the perpetrators might have dropped, fibres from their clothing, tool marks on the slab, all that kind of thing. They’ll probably just be wasting their time, in my opinion, because they’ve no idea how many other people might have passed this way since the bodies were dumped here, and of course last night was the Festival of the Dead, when the number of living on the island probably outnumbered the dead.’