The Nosferatu Scroll

by James Becker

  ‘I’m not sure it’s anybody’s property,’ Angela said, more annoyed now than scared. ‘The grave we found it in was about two hundred years old, which means anything in it cannot possibly belong to anyone living today.’

  ‘I’m not going to discuss the legal status of the possessions of a corpse with you,’ the man snapped. ‘We have spent a considerable amount of time and money trying to find this book, only to have you walk off with it.’

  Angela struggled to sit up, then realized it was impossible. The man issued a brief instruction, and two of his companions removed her bonds and helped her to lean against the back of the sofa.

  ‘Why was it so important to you?’ Angela asked. ‘And who are you anyway?’

  ‘You don’t need to know that.’

  Suddenly, Angela realized she had no idea where Chris was or what had happened to him on the street.

  ‘Where’s Chris?’ she asked, the pitch of her voice rising as anxiety swept through her. ‘The man I was with. I’m not going to do what you want until you tell me what happened to him.’

  The man smiled then, but it wasn’t an expression of reassurance, rather a look of mild and disinterested amusement, the kind of look an indulgent parent might bestow on a wayward child.

  ‘I’ve no idea where that man is right now,’ he said. ‘I don’t even know whether he’s alive or dead. When my men left him, he was unconscious – taken a nasty blow to the head. That might have been enough to kill him, or caused brain damage, or perhaps only given him a really bad headache. Frankly, I neither know nor care. It simply doesn’t matter.’

  ‘It matters to me,’ Angela snapped.

  ‘Well, it won’t for much longer. We know that you work for the British Museum in London and—’

  ‘How do you know that? How do you know that I work for the museum?’

  ‘We have our sources. And that’s the only reason you’re here. You must have looked at the book you took from the tomb. If you did, you’ll know why it’s important. Now you’ll supply us with a translation of what it says.’

  Angela shook her head. ‘I’m not a linguist,’ she said. ‘I work with ceramics. And in any case, that book is just a diary.’

  ‘How do you know that,’ the man asked mildly, ‘if you can’t read Latin?’

  ‘OK, I’m fairly familiar with Latin, and I did translate some of it. But what I said is true: it’s just a diary.’

  The man shook his head. ‘That book is far more than just a diary. The first section is a chronicle of events, yes, but that isn’t the part we’re interested in. It’s the last dozen or so pages – what’s written there is very different.’

  ‘I didn’t do more than just look at that section,’ Angela pointed out.

  ‘Well, now you’re going to translate all of it.’

  ‘Why? What could possibly be so important in a two-hundred-year-old diary? Important enough to justify all this?’ Angela made a sweeping gesture to encompass the entire house and whatever lay outside the building.

  ‘We’re looking for something.’

  ‘I guessed that. What?’

  ‘A source document. A document that’s older, hundreds of years older, than this diary. Twelfth century, in fact.’

  Despite her situation, and her worries about Bronson, Angela felt her pulse quicken. Once history grabbed you, it never let go, and ancient texts had always held a special fascination for her.

  ‘What document?’ she asked.

  An expression that could have been a smile flickered across the man’s face. ‘We don’t know what it’s called, but we do know that it exists. Or at least that it existed.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because we’ve seen copies of copies of different parts of it – many of them to some extent contradictory. We believe that this diary might tell us exactly where to look for the original.’

  Angela frowned. ‘I don’t understand. This diary – or whatever you want to call it – was written by a woman almost two centuries ago, and has been locked up inside her tomb since she died. How can you possibly know it contains information about this other document?’

  ‘We’ve always known about the diary. We just didn’t know where it was. The Paganinis were somewhat notorious in Venice, and we’ve studied the family archives. Carmelita Paganini’s tomb was the next place we wanted to search, but we didn’t know where it was.’

  ‘It looked to me as if somebody had erased her name from the slab covering the grave,’ Angela said.

  ‘Exactly. Carmelita was an embarrassment while she was alive, and even more so when she was dead, at least to some members of the Paganini dynasty.’

  ‘The brick in the mouth? They thought she was a vampire?’

  ‘A primitive attempt to destroy her, but completely pointless. Carmelita Paganini wasn’t a vampire – she just thought she was. She spent her life trying to achieve that nobility, but it’s clear she never managed it. The crumbling bones in her grave are proof enough of that.’

  ‘Nobility?’ Angela asked.

  The man smiled again. ‘That seems to us to be an entirely appropriate term to use when referring to a higher form of life, to something superhuman.’

  Angela opened her mouth to deliver a sharp retort, but then she glanced around at the other men and thought better of it.

  ‘So this source document,’ she asked instead. ‘What do you know about it?’

  ‘We don’t know its name, so we just call it “The Source”. It was written in the early twelfth century, apparently by a lapsed monk who lived in part of the country that’s now called Hungary.’

  ‘It was called Hungary then as well,’ Angela pointed out. ‘It’s one of the oldest countries in Europe.’

  The man shrugged. ‘Whatever. We’ve found several references to it in various archives, and some of them talked about a book written by Carmelita Paganini. According to one contemporary account, she’d not only seen the original text, the source document itself, and incorporated some of the passages into her diary, but also knew where it was hidden. That’s why we’ve been so keen to find it, and why you’ll now assist us by translating Carmelita’s diary.’

  ‘And why should I help you?’ Angela said. ‘You’ve attacked me on the street and kidnapped me. What makes you think that I’ll do anything to help you?’

  ‘I’m sure we can persuade you. I think you’re right-handed,’ the man replied, ‘so we’ll start with your left hand.’

  Angela stared up at him, her blood turning to ice. ‘What do you mean?’ she demanded.

  ‘Let me show you,’ the man replied. He turned to one of the other men and issued a crisp instruction in Italian.

  After a few moments the second man returned, carrying a jar perhaps six inches high and three or four in diameter, fitted with an airtight lid. It looked to Angela like a small version of one of the old Kilner jars her mother had used years ago for bottling fruit. Inside it was an almost colourless liquid in which several small pale objects were submerged.

  ‘What’s that?’ Angela demanded.

  ‘I suppose you could call them souvenirs,’ the man said, moving the jar closer to Angela’s face. ‘You’re not the first person we’ve needed to – what shall we say? – motivate – to assist us with the translations and other matters.’

  For a few moments Angela stared at the objects inside the jar uncomprehendingly, then she recoiled with a gasp of disgust. What she had first assumed were some kind of vegetables – carrots, perhaps, or parsnips – were actually the severed joints of human fingers.

  ‘Every time you refuse to do what we ask, we’ll remove a part of one of the fingers on your left hand,’ the man continued. ‘You won’t bleed to death, because we will cauterize the wound with a soldering iron. One of my men particularly enjoys doing the amputations. He uses a pair of bolt croppers if he’s in a good mood. But if you annoy him, he’ll do it by clamping your finger between a couple of pieces of wood and using a hacksaw. That takes longer, and there�
�s a lot more blood, but he doesn’t seem to mind that.’

  Angela tore her horrified gaze from the revolting contents of the jar and looked up into the man’s face. ‘You utter bastard,’ she muttered.

  The man shook his head. ‘Abuse won’t help you,’ he said. ‘In fact, nothing can help you now. You’ve seen our faces, and we simply can’t afford to let you tell anybody else what you’ve seen.’

  For a few seconds Angela just sat there, numbly digesting the explicit threat. Because this was the point. She had seen their faces, and she knew with a terrifying sense of certainty that she would never be allowed to leave the island alive.

  The man – whoever he was – had just casually delivered her death sentence.

  30

  The cellar door rumbled open, the light snapped off and the door closed sharply. Benedetta gave a little cry of shock and surprise.

  Marietta shrank back on to the bed. It was the first time the light had been switched off since the morning after her arrival and the action alarmed her.

  For a few seconds the only sound in the cellar was the breathing of the two girls, then Benedetta gave a low moan. ‘What’s going to happen to us?’ she murmured, her words barely audible. ‘I’m so frightened. Why has the light gone off?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Marietta replied, a tremor in her own voice.

  A few minutes later they heard the familiar rumbling sound as the stone door at the top of the spiral staircase was opened again.

  ‘Somebody’s coming,’ Marietta said. ‘They’ll put the light on before they come down.’

  But she was wrong. They heard the sound of footsteps, several footsteps, descending the stairs, and saw a flickering glow that grew brighter with each passing moment. Then a figure walked into the cellar.

  He was clad in a very dark robe, tied at the waist with a cord, a hood covering his head. It was a foul parody of a monk’s habit, but Marietta had no doubt his thoughts were anything but godly. The man held a lighted candle in his right hand, and the flickering flame cast a fitful light over his features. Staring at him in horrified silence, Marietta made out a large, bulbous nose, a heavy jaw and dark, sunken eyes.

  Then she looked behind the man and saw that he was simply the first in a procession of figures, perhaps a dozen in total, all dressed in the same dark hooded robes, and each carrying a large candle. The tiny, dancing yellow flames – the only illumination in the room – cast an eerie glow over that end of the cellar. The third man in the line was also carrying an ornamented wooden box, about the size of two shoeboxes, and apparently not very heavy.

  From her door-less cell, Marietta had a good view of what they were doing. The line of men – and she was sure that they were all men – filed slowly from the staircase entrance over to one end of the cellar, where they formed a circle around the stone table positioned there. For a few seconds nothing happened, then the figure holding the box took a pace forwards, lowered it carefully on to the table and stepped back again. The other figures stood in silence, waiting expectantly.

  A familiar rumble echoed through the cellar. The door at the top of the stairs was closing. Then Marietta heard another sound, and literally shook with terror. The slithering noise coming from the spiral staircase could only mean one thing: the man who had so frightened both her and Benedetta was coming back into the chamber. Moments later, he appeared in the cellar, and a pungent odour suddenly filled the confined space.

  The figure paused, looked over towards the cells where the two girls were imprisoned, then made his way towards the hooded men, who each bowed low as he passed.

  The man took up his position at one end of the circle, looked around at his companions, then raised his left hand in a casual gesture towards the man who’d been carrying the small box. He, in turn, bowed low again, stepped forward to the table, and carefully lifted off the box’s lid.

  That action seemed to act as a catalyst for another of the men who left the circle and walked behind his companions, lighting another half-dozen or so large candles mounted in freestanding candlesticks, each about five feet tall, illuminating the table, and allowing Marietta to see more clearly. His task completed, the figure returned to his place in the circle. Then four of the other figures moved, each removing what looked like a length of rope from their robes, and stepped forward to thread it through one of the holes driven through the four corners of the table. Then they too moved back into position.

  Marietta found the silence that had accompanied these actions unnerving. Clearly, the men were following a well-rehearsed and predetermined sequence of actions. No orders or instructions needed to be given, because every man knew his place and what his function was.

  The man who had carried the box down the stairs now reached into it and extracted what looked almost like a deep soup bowl, which he placed on the table in front of him. He then took out a short object with a rounded end and placed that inside the bowl. As he did so, Marietta heard the characteristic sound of stone striking stone and, rather to her surprise, realized that what she was looking at was a mortar and pestle.

  The figure closest to the box raised both his arms high above his head, and Marietta could sense the anticipation from the other men around the table.

  Slowly, he lowered his hands, put them inside the box, and took out a small, round object, brownish in colour. This he lifted high above his head, holding it aloft for a few seconds, then replaced it on the table directly in front of him.

  Suddenly Marietta saw exactly what it was. The vacant pits of the eye sockets, the twin vertical lines marking the position of the nose, and the white line of the teeth were unmistakable. The object they appeared to be worshipping was a human skull.

  What happened next was even stranger. The man holding the skull took a pair of pliers from the pocket of his robe and used them to snap off a small piece of bone, which he lifted up and showed to the assembled group. Then he placed it in the mortar and began to grind it up, the noise of the operation echoing around the room.

  After a few minutes he removed the pestle and handed it and the pliers to the man standing beside him. Then he picked up the mortar with both hands and lifted it high above his head, and as he did so the other men around the table bowed their heads. Next, he walked round the circle to the man who’d been the last to arrive, the apparent leader, bowed low and showed him the mortar. The man looked closely at its contents and inclined his head, whereupon the man holding the mortar bowed again, walked slowly back to his original position and placed the object on the small stone table behind him, a table which Marietta had noticed when she’d first entered the cellar.

  Now, the atmosphere changed, and an almost palpable thrill of excitement, of anticipation, seemed to emanate from the silent figures. The hooded ringleader bowed his head briefly and stepped back from his position. All of the other men bowed in their turn, and stepped back, away from the table. Then the hooded man hissed a single instruction, which Marietta heard clearly: ‘Bring the first girl.’

  Two of the men bowed, left the group and walked towards the cells where Marietta and Benedetta were being held. Marietta retreated as far as she could and gripped the wooden head of the bed firmly with both hands, determined not to give up too easily. But the men ignored her and entered Benedetta’s cell.

  The other girl howled in fear, her scream echoing around the cellar. Marietta half expected to hear the crackle of the taser, but the two men simply manhandled the girl out of her cell. As they dragged her, wriggling and screaming, past the open entrance of Marietta’s cell, Benedetta stared with terrified eyes at her fellow captive, begging her to come to her rescue. But Marietta could do nothing for her.

  The two men stopped at the table, holding Benedetta firmly by her wrists and upper arms. Two other men stepped forward, one in front of the girl and the other behind her, and seized hold of the white robe she was wearing. Simultaneously, each man tugged the material, and the two halves of the garment parted, leaving Benedetta completely naked.
<
br />   There was a sudden collective intake of breath from the men surrounding the table as they saw Benedetta’s naked body for the first time. She was, Marietta saw immediately, very beautiful.

  Trembling, Marietta felt the seams of the robe she was wearing. They were thick and bulky, and when she pulled at one, it emitted a characteristic ripping sound. She realized that the seams were made from Velcro, precisely so that the robe could be torn apart in this fashion.

  Marietta looked back at the scene in front of her. Benedetta was screaming even louder now, the sudden shock of being stripped naked adding immeasurably to her terror. But the other participants in the ritual were proceeding in silence, their movements measured and organized, despite the girl’s yells and struggles. Benedetta was forced forward until she was standing at the end of the table. Then the men turned her round until her buttocks were pressing against the stone. Two other men stepped forward and grabbed her ankles, and then she was lifted bodily and deposited in the centre of the table and held there, squirming helplessly.

  Then the reason for the ropes on the table – which Marietta could now see were actually leather belts – became obvious. Working with practised ease, the men holding Benedetta in place swiftly lashed the belts around her ankles and wrists. In seconds, the girl was strapped down on the table, spreadeagled across it, as helplessly as a butterfly pinned to a display board. But still she writhed and screamed, tugging helplessly at her bonds.

  The dark-robed figures standing around the table gave no sign that they could even hear her. They just looked down at her struggling naked body, the flickering light from the candles which they still held giving their features a demonic cast.

  Another two men stepped forward and stopped one on either side of Benedetta’s head, which Marietta suddenly realized was resting on the small stone extension, the extension that she’d noticed when she’d first seen the table. And suddenly the purpose of the table was all too clear. One of the men held Benedetta’s head still while the other strapped a leather belt around both her forehead and the stone, and then cinched it tight to prevent her from moving.