The Cairo Diary

by Maxim Chattam

  Marion stopped reading.

  The door of the raised passage had just opened.

  A hooded silhouette appeared up above.

  Its gaze began to roam the hall; then it halted. It swung round to face Marion, and the hood slid back.

  Brother Gilles laid his withered hands on the metal balustrade and stared at her. Eventually he spoke. “Ah, it’s you,” he said cheerlessly.

  “Hello.”

  “You shouldn’t be here, there’s a storm. You’d be better off in your room.”

  Marion gave her coat the most discreet tug possible, just enough to cover up the black book. She didn’t know if he had spotted it.

  “I wanted to take advantage of the atmosphere,” she replied.

  “You chose a bad time, and in future it would be better if you had someone with you when you came up to the abbey.”

  Marion displayed the impressive bunch of keys with which Brother Serge had entrusted her.

  “I have the best possible guides,” she replied with a hint of jaunty insolence. “A little patience, keys to open every door, and all the time I need.”

  Marion was jubilant. This man who liked nothing better than to control everything on the Mount was visibly furious.

  Brother Gilles’s glittering eyes pierced right through her. “Well, don’t come to me complaining if you get lost or catch your death…”

  He added something else between his teeth that Marion couldn’t catch, and continued on his way out, leaving the door open behind him.

  * * *

  She picked up the diary again, hoping that the monk had not noticed anything.

  Marion had forgotten where she was up to.

  Azim.

  The signal.

  The ghoul.

  Yes, that was it. The ghoul …

  33

  Azim hurtled down the narrow streets at full speed, his leather soles echoing on the paving stones or thudding against the beaten earth.

  He changed tack and lowered his center of gravity at each hairpin bend, compensating for his mistakes at the last moment by steadying himself with a hand or an arm against the wall of a house, and headed swiftly down the next street. The darkness did not make his task any easier; he could not make out the holes, detritus, and other objects littered across his path as he ran, and several times he almost fell.

  As he neared the building where the signal had originated, Azim slowed down. He must not allow himself to make a sound. The advantages of his plan also resulted in weaknesses. From down below, the signal was not visible.

  There was no quick way for Azim to find out if the lookout was still in position, waving his lantern, or if he had stopped.

  There was just the crossroads left and then he would be there.

  The little Egyptian slid along the wall, trying to get his breath back. The street he needed to go down was ten yards farther on, gaping wide and sinister. Azim mopped the sweat from his face with his sleeve and ran the tips of his fingers over his revolver. There was no longer anything magical or reassuring about the touch.

  It was a ghul he was tracking.

  He entered the dark street. Rectangles of fabric were stretched out at intervals between the fronts of the houses, to protect them from the sun. But at this time of night, they made the place even darker than a moonless night.

  Azim briefly considered the top of the building where the lookout must be standing. How had he managed to see the monster passing below with all these draperies? True, they didn’t cover the whole street, but all the same they did limit the field of vision.…

  Perhaps he didn’t really see it! thought Azim. Perhaps it’s another false alarm.

  Immediately he remembered the panicky way the lantern had moved. No, the man who had given the signal had been really terrified, to the point that he no longer realized he was shaking the lantern too hard, reducing the strength of its flame and rendering his actions almost pointless.

  He had seen something.

  Azim continued on his way, all his senses on the alert. He moved one step at a time, searching the shadows, his concentration mingled with the beginnings of panic.

  He could hardly make out anything.

  Caution told him to stop right there and then, and retrace his steps. But he did nothing. What if he was right? What if the child-killer was within his reach? Azim had no right not to continue. If another boy was slaughtered, how would he feel?

  He was moving forward slowly when he caught the sound of breathing.

  Slow and deep.

  The beast must be lurking in some kind of recess a little farther on, on the right-hand side.

  Azim unfastened the buckle of his holster and withdrew his revolver. He knew it was useless, but the feel of it in his hand gave him the strength he needed to approach.

  It is not a ghul.… It is a man.…

  Azim was no longer sure of anything.

  Three more feet.

  His heart was pounding beneath his shirt, urging him to run away, each muffled blow hammering home the fact that it had no desire to stop beating. Azim carried on, and gained another foot.

  His revolver was weightless now.

  Azim noticed that he was letting his weapon slip out of his fingers. He swiftly tightened his grip, trying to refocus his attention. Fear hampered him.

  He was almost there.

  The breathing grew harsher; a rasping sound.

  Azim raised his weapon.

  The recess was close enough to see now.

  The shadowy corner became more clearly defined.

  Azim began to make out a rectangular shape.

  A shutter.

  Then he saw.

  A man was asleep there, snoring in the shade of his shutter.

  All the tension that had overtaken him left the Egyptian’s body. It flowed all the way down to his heels and then trickled away, to be replaced by a single fear that left his legs too light, in danger of giving way beneath his weight.

  He must go on.

  A cat began to yowl furiously from an alleyway a little farther on. Then there was the clatter of wooden boxes being knocked over, and hurried footsteps.

  Silence immediately regained possession of el-Gamaliya.

  Azim holstered his gun and covered the rest of the distance separating him from the thoroughfare.

  He flattened himself against the corner, with just the very edge of his face showing.

  All was calm and deserted.

  Then the cat appeared.

  It halted in the middle of a crossroads, its ears flattened back. From where he stood, Azim noticed that the animal was probably feral. But the cat shouldn’t be afraid of humans, just wary of them.

  Azim crept out of his hiding place and approached the animal, all senses on the alert.

  The cat let out a meow as shrill as if it had caught its paw in a painful trap and rushed off into the night.

  Azim did not move.

  He was totally visible, in the middle of the street.

  A long shape unfolded from a dark corner of the crossroads.

  Its torso rose, followed by the rest of its body, and then finally its head.

  It was enveloped in a shapeless robe of coarse fabric, concealing its body, and its face was masked by a voluminous hood.

  Azim could not breathe.

  The shape climbed onto a dilapidated chest, and crouched down.

  It seemed to the detective then that it tilted its head back slightly to … sniff the air.

  Suddenly, it leaped forward, soundlessly but with surprising speed.

  It was running after the cat.

  Azim was petrified; he dared not follow.

  He had seen it.

  The ghul.

  It existed.

  The wild cat began to yowl again, and spit ferociously. In a second, the hoarse cry turned into a shriek of pain.

  And then nothing. Not a sound.

  Azim must act. If he remained there, the ghul could run away, or it might see him if it
reemerged and retraced its steps.

  He gulped in oxygen and returned to the crossroads as silently as possible, before slipping into the corner where the creature had disappeared.

  Scarcely was his back against the wall when he detected movement out of the corner of his left eye.

  It was reemerging.

  Azim flattened himself as much as he could in the darkness.

  The monster was less than nine feet from him. Motionless.

  It was holding the cat in one hand. The poor beast was hanging completely limp, a dark liquid trickling onto the ground. Soon, there was enough blood on the ground to produce the damp, liquid sound of a continual flow.

  The ghul lifted its prey up to its mouth and Azim heard it sniffing. Successive, short, whistling breaths. As if it was attempting to recognize the smell, thought the detective, as fascinated as he was terrified.

  The demon’s face was still invisible beneath its immense hood.

  Still carrying its trophy, it set off again.

  And entered a blind alley.

  Azim closed his eyes very briefly, trying to recall the place.

  It was the same dead end the old hashish smoker had pointed out to him.

  Azim scoured the darkness, determined not to lose sight of the tall silhouette.

  A good six two, at least, he noted. It was good to know that his police instinct for morphology hadn’t left him yet.

  The ghul paused in front of a door at the far end before pushing it open and disappearing inside.

  Thirty seconds later, Azim was outside the door.

  From inside the abandoned house, he could hear the heavy scraping of someone pushing a massive object against the wall.

  Azim waited another minute. Still no sign of life.

  Then he too pushed open the door and entered the wolf’s lair.

  Throwing caution to the wind, he flicked on his cigarette lighter.

  Timidly, the flame rose and cast an orange halo over a small downstairs room littered with rubble. A partially collapsed staircase led upstairs.

  In the corner opposite the entrance, a large rotting chest had been used to collect stagnant water.

  The water was rippling as if someone had just thrown in a sizable object.

  Or as if someone had moved the chest!

  Azim knelt down beside it and tried to get a handhold on the sides. The ghul couldn’t have gone upstairs; that way was impracticable.

  He must be losing his mind. If there was one thing he must do it was run far away from here. Alert the imam, so that he could come and put an end to this abomination.

  But Azim was incapable of turning tail. He wanted to know the truth. To stick to the monster until there could be no further doubt. To discover its lair; to know.

  There were no handholds on the chest.

  Azim seized it in both hands and pulled it with all his strength.

  It made a shrill grating sound as it slid aside.

  And a staircase leading down to the cellar opened up beneath it.

  Azim spotted a sticky stain on one of the stone steps. The cat’s blood.

  The detective held his lighter in front of him, cutting an amber-colored swath through the darkness. He descended the staircase, almost trembling, and emerged in a cramped, musty-smelling room. The only furniture consisted of two barrels, eaten away by the damp.

  Azim raised his flame a little higher above him.

  An immense eye was trained on him.

  As dark as Joseph’s Well at night.

  The black eye was weeping in the detective’s flickering light.

  It was a hole knocked through the wall, about three feet high.

  A way through, wide enough to enable a person to enter on his knees. A few roots protruded from it. The earth was clammy, opening itself to the cellar in an almost obscene manner, with its brown, sweaty flesh, its pendulous white veins, and its sickening odor of decay. Azim turned around to check that there was no other way out.

  If he wanted to follow the ghul, he must plunge into these sinister entrails.

  Azim crouched down and stuck the hand holding the lighter into the opening.

  The monster had hollowed out his lair like a snake burrowing into the ground to enjoy its prey.

  The detective bowed his shoulders and entered the house’s interior.

  Instantly the air became thicker, the light more confined.

  Azim began to move forward on all fours, using his right elbow to pull himself along so as not to let go of his only source of light.

  Within three movements he was covered in soil.

  The roots rumpled his hair with their hooked tendrils, while the points of stones scraped his knees.

  He could no longer see any more than twenty inches in front of him.

  All that awaited him farther on was a circle of darkness. Movement after movement, he crawled farther into this nothingness, leaving the world of the living for that of the demons.

  He had difficulty breathing; the narrowness of the passageway was oppressive.

  The flame started to falter.

  Then the passage in front of him opened up its maw, liberating dark shadows that crawled convulsively toward Azim.

  The flame guttered, and then died.

  Azim just had time to see the black hole before him forming its round mouth into a greedy smile.

  And the eternal night of the lair put out its tongue and engulfed his entire being.

  34

  While she was reading in the timid daylight, inside a building buffeted by extreme weather conditions, Marion saw the reflection of a massive shadow moving behind her, a shadow that spread itself right across the room before disappearing almost as swiftly.

  This made Marion forget the Egyptian tale. She was fifteen yards above the pathway and there was no balcony.

  She kneeled on the bench and leaned toward the window.

  Outside, the storm was shaking the trees and bushes.

  Suddenly, the wind gusted violently beneath a branch, tearing it off and hurling it toward the heavens. The enormous section of tree cracked and spun around in the air, then suddenly rose up toward Marion.

  She threw herself backward, letting out a cry of surprise.

  She saw the branch graze the wall of the Merveille as it flew up, casting a broad shadow on the ground as it passed the window. The elements were being unleashed; maybe it was time to get a little more worried, to join the brotherhood at the abbot’s residence, or go back home.

  You’re safer here, in the heart of this stone fortress, than in your ridiculous little house! And in any case, you can’t go outside in this weather, you’d end up getting hit on the head by a roof tile.

  It was just a bit of wind, that was all.

  The storm produced strange sounds in the Merveille, whistling, banging, grating, sometimes down below, sometimes up above.

  Marion sat down again to eat the sandwich she’d made that morning before she came. She unwrapped it from its tinfoil and started eating, munching on it rather halfheartedly.

  The Salle des Chevaliers now resembled an ancient crypt in Marion’s imagination. There, she saw a procession of people in red robes and gowns, walking along with candles in their hands, preparing for an odious sacrifice to the glory of the Devil.

  Marion began laughing softly.

  All she had to do was let her thoughts wander, and she could see anything and everything here; she had the imagination of a child.

  She lifted her sandwich to her mouth.

  Her eyes wandered up again to the raised passageway.

  A shape was hidden in the darkness of the door left open by Brother Gilles.

  It was impossible to make out properly from where Marion was.

  All she could see was dark fabric, and a voluminous hood pulled down over the face. An allegory of death.

  Marion stood up.

  Whoever was standing in the doorway took a sudden step back.

  “Hey!” Marion called.

  The si
lhouette disappeared into the darkness.

  “Hey!” she shouted again, much more loudly.

  And she ran across the hall, up the steps and through the doorway. She had a choice of several exits from the adjoining room.

  The corridor bore right, then bent at a sharper angle.

  Marion rushed around this corner and just had time to grab hold of the wall so as not to crash into the tall, robed presence in front of her.

  Marion sidestepped and made a grab for another jutting edge on the wall beside her.

  “Well, well! Whatever’s the matter with you?” asked the presence unhurriedly, with that dismantling of sentences into distinct words that was a trademark of Brother Christophe.

  Marion looked him up and down as she got her breath back. He didn’t seem at all tired, barely even surprised.

  “I … I was looking for someone,” explained Marion.

  “By running? It’s dangerous here, you could split your head open on a sharp corner, or by falling down one of our many staircases.”

  “You didn’t come across someone just now, did you?”

  Brother Christophe—Brother Anemia—shook his head without bothering to think. “No, nobody at all. Who are you looking for in such a hurry?”

  “Er”—Marion took the time to breathe in before going any further—“someone who played a … prank on me.”

  “Who would that be?”

  Marion opened her hand wide, signaling her confusion. “I don’t know. Someone wearing a robe like yours, but with their head covered. I was reading in my corner and whoever it was was watching me—there you are, you know everything. And I really think he—or she—went that way.”

  “Well, no. This place is vast, you know; you can soon get the passageways mixed up when you don’t know it, and the sounds all echo in every direction, particularly today with the wind. Anyway, I hope you haven’t hurt yourself?”