The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 17

by Stephen Jones

  I stood. “Pane Hastrman?”

  “Ano,” he replied, bowing stiffly. “I am he.” His voice was low, and his English was thickly accented.

  I have our conversation now before me, recorded in my little notebook. Though its pages are water-logged, most of the words are legible.

  I introduced myself.

  With the formality suggestive of a military man (so I wrote, adding “an acolyte of former President Masaryk?”), he thanked me for meeting him, bowed once more, then gestured that I should sit down. He sat beside me, folding his long hands on his lap, and after a few more introductory remarks, said, “I represent . . . group, Pane. Group of Old Praha. We wish . . . communication.” His pale blue eyes peered at me sidelong. “To meet one . . . from your kind.”

  My kind?

  “Someone from the Institute, you mean?” I asked, coyly. “A scholar?”

  A spy?

  “Yes. We will say . . . scholar. Of America.” He smiled, baring yellow teeth.

  I remember an odor like ginger and shorn wood.

  “You chose an interesting method of summoning me, Pane Hastrman.” I lifted the note.

  “It seemed . . . safe, Sir. Many years, now, and Strelecky Ostrov is place most favorite of ours.”

  How old was he? Deep lines marked his forehead, and accented the base of his nose. One moment I might have said eighty, and the next, sixty.

  “How can I help you, Pane?”

  He seemed to meditate for at least half a minute.

  I surveyed the nearby park, looking over my shoulder at the stairs.

  “There are . . . change happen, Sir.” He paused, breathing deeply. “Change to our. . . land. To Praha.” The English seemed difficult for him, drawn out of the depths of his chest, articulated curtly.

  “Changes? To the status quo, you mean?”

  He slowly nodded.

  I ventured, “Your government, Pane – it doesn’t follow all the Perestroika ideals. Premier Husak, I mean. Does your group disagree with him?”

  A distracted smile. Affable, then sharp, as he gazed at Prague across the river, and a seagull wheeling over the water.

  “We . . . not washed by sea.”

  Confused, I asked him to repeat himself. He did so, adding, “The great sea. They miss.” His eyes followed the bird’s calligraphic flight. I noted the sleekness of his grey hair. “Even more, those . . . stranded . . . here.”

  “I afraid, Mister Hastrman, I don’t understand you.” I added, “Nerozum’m.”

  The smile. Briefly, his eyes shone with some of the vanishing sunlight. “All of us, Pane. Praha. Prague. Ceske. Our country. Land is locked, and surrounded. A country . . . must to touch the sea, Sir.”

  Unbidden, the thought came to me of Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale, where the Bard has a Sicilian ship landing on a Bohemian shore. “It has made difficulties for your people,” I said. “What was it, sir, the Battle of the White Mountain, in your history? Ever since that sad defeat . . .”

  “The sea . . . it cleanses.” He might not have heard me. Breathing through his open mouth, he was silent for a moment, then said, “Energies do not . . . leave. We grow ancient. Lakes, rivers, are . . . dusit . . . are choked. And we forced . . . underground. We need . . . union with . . . new worlds.” He shook his head, and fell silent, breathing through his open mouth.

  “Let us speak of changes, then, Pane,” I said, awkwardly trying to draw the conversation back to earth. “Your government, under Husak, will continue what they call normalization, and grow more harsh, no matter what the Soviets desire. Do you agree?”

  With his left hand, he stroked the silvery collar at his throat; the gesture, though casual, seemed anything but. “Ano. Country . . . it must change, and . . . embrace West. Even that is no . . . not solution.”

  His eyes took measure of me, as he drew another deep breath through open mouth, and exhaled.

  “Pane Hastrman, I wish to know more of the group you represent.”

  His voice was low, almost inaudible. “I bring . . . proposal. For . . . meeting.”

  I was taken aback. “Another meeting?”

  He shook his head. “I . . . I am only messenger.”

  He reached into his coat, and came out with dim gold between his index finger and thumb.

  A ring.

  Glancing at me sidelong, he offered it.

  And dropped it on my palm.

  A heavy ring of greenish-gold – as though it was catching the verdant hue of his coat. It was ornately carved with tiny star-like patterns, entwined with comets and wave-like filigree. It gleamed.

  “By this she . . . know you.”

  “Who, Pane?”

  He looked upwards, moments before the gull screamed past our heads and soared out over the water.

  Clutching the ring in my right hand, I watched it circling. Then I noticed the bridge, the bustling pedestrians, and a single figure among them, walking more slowly. Silhouetted against the clouds were what seemed familiar details, a rumpled suit, and messy dark hair. He seemed to be staring in our direction.

  The StB agent. I knew it to be him.

  Hastrman was peering at the gull.

  I said, “Shall we walk, Pane?”

  He seemed to understand. Taking another deep breath, he rose to his feet. A moment later, he began following me along the shore.

  But only a dozen paces later he slowed, and stopped.

  “Do you need to sit?”

  “Are we . . . followed?”

  I dared to glance back, and saw nobody on the nearby bridge, nor on the stairs, or the island.

  “I’m not sure.”

  Hastrman was staring at my hand, and the ring. “There is monastery, Pane, in Nova Mesto. Emauzy.” He spoke the word sharply, and gestured south of the Narodni Divadlo. “Its kostel – church – sits over meeting place.”

  “Emauzy Church.”

  Straightening, he seemed to gather strength in his shoulders. “There is . . . entrance. In rectory, at northeast corner. A stairwell down. One of us meet you there, Pane. And lead you to . . . meeting place, below.”

  Thinking of my research, I asked, “Katakomby?”

  He nodded. “Safe, from . . . occupiers, of this city.” His voice was nearly lost under the river.

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow. Vecer. Night. Twenty-one hodin.”

  “My superiors at the Institute, Pane – they might have more questions. They might refuse to allow me to such a meeting.”

  “Yet she will wait. Tomorrow. Below. Twenty-one hours.”

  “Her name, Pane?”

  He smiled, memorably. “Milovana.”

  I repeated it to myself, noting, in the cold air, the scent of ginger and shorn wood. “If my superiors agree, I’ll be there. If not, then I will have to make other arrangements.”

  Nodding, Hastrman briefly closed his eyes.

  “Dobry den, Pane Hastrman.”

  “Dobry vecer, Pane.”

  He gestured, as though to indicate we should walk separately back to the bridge. He remained there in the dusk, visible by the green of his coat and the grey of his hair, bowing to me.

  As I walked, I put my hands into my coat pockets. The ring’s carved details were as beguiling to touch as they were to see. Quite casually, I caressed the tiny stars and comets, then, using index finger and thumb, I slipped the ring on my fourth finger. When I had climbed the stairs, I found the bridge crowded with cars and pedestrians.

  My StB agent was nowhere to be seen.

  I spent the next day – Sunday – at the Institute.

  Dawson was out, as were most of the scholars.

  Jakob was busily cleaning the first floor offices.

  In the third-floor stacks, I was able to confirm the outline of Hastrman’s story. Catacombs existed beneath Emauzy Monastery Complex, or at least they had eighty years earlier: a 1906 survey by the Habsburgs mentioned a “Romanesque tunnel and the remains of an ancient sellaria, beneath the Church of St Jo
hn on the Rock,” which was the actual name of the church on the complex.

  A photograph showed the church’s striking baroque-era profile – twin steeples swooping inward like white thorns.

  According to the map, the tunnels continued southward, under Charles Square. A similar survey from 1962 made no mention of sellaria or tunnels, but the Soviets had been more concerned with the structures farther north, closer to the subway lines they were building. This discrepancy helped bolster Hastrman’s argument that the catacombs served as a perfect meeting place.

  Yet troublingly, the account also mentioned that the church, which had been bombed by the Allies in World War II, had never been reopened. The monastery was currently being used by the Academy of Sciences, while the church itself remained gutted.

  In the notebook, I dutifully copied down the map. It’s nearly illegible now, the ink blurred, the page stained and wrinkled; likewise the notes I made in the hours afterward, regarding the ring.

  I should say, Lev, that I had been unable to remove it.

  After returning from the island the night before, I had tried tugging it off, and then, using hotel soap and shampoo as lubricant, had tried to finesse it over my second knuckle, but only managed to make my finger raw. By the next morning my knuckle was swollen; ice would not reduce it enough to pull the ring free.

  I had resolved to try again later that afternoon.

  In the notebook, beneath a description of its patterns, I added a guess as to its origin: “Holy Roman Empire? Rudolfine?”

  The star-and-comet patterns were key, I felt certain, and so I focused on an encyclopedia dealing with Holy Roman-era jewelry, paging through hundreds upon hundreds of images of gaudy necklaces, bracelets, broaches, rings until, startlingly, I came upon its likeness. A color etching.

  I held my hand beside it: identical.

  According to the entry, the ring dated from 1590.

  Lev, my Czech is adequate to communicate with hotel clerks and taxi drivers. I’m able to parse out the meaning of a sentence when I know the source material in translation, such as the poetry of Jaroslav Seifert. But I wasn’t entirely confident with my translation here.

  The entry seemed to discuss those star and comet patterns – vzor – implying they were symbolic of Rudolf’s mania for astrology, while the wave-like crenellations stood for the Vltava. A further mention was perhaps made of “water-based metals.”

  And there was mention of an inscription – or napis – engraved on the inside of the ring.

  Z TB znovu a priliv Deceru Temnoty a Zeme.

  With the help of a dictionary, I eventually translated: To TB in time after time Daughter of Earth and Darkness.

  Doubting, I reread the entry, then noticed the small footnote reference.

  In the back of the book, I read the note, slowly, unbelieving of what it seemed to say.

  The ring, known as the 1590 TB, had apparently been part of the Emperor Rudolf II’s sackomora.

  My mouth went dry. A chill crept down my neck. I clenched and unclenched my right hand.

  The sackomora was the Emperor’s fabled horde of objets d’art, symptomatic of his increasingly unhinged mind. It encompassed gems, paintings, clocks, astronomical instruments, as well as stuffed animals, reptiles, freaks of nature, even the lump of soil said to be that from which Yahweh formed Adam.

  Z TB znovu a priliv Deceru Temnoty a Zeme.

  Daughter of Earth and Darkness.

  And Z TB. For TB.

  I rose, and went in search of a book specifically detailing the sackomora. I found three in Czech, then one in English, from the late 1960s. I brought it back to the carrel.

  I quickly found the listing: 1590 TB.

  Even before I read the entry, I had made the connection – though I refused to believe it.

  “1590 TB: This item was a gold and tourmaline ring, exquisitely detailed (see etching). It supposedly belonged to the Danish astronomer Tycho Brake. Upon Brake’s death in 1601 the ring was added to the Emperor’s collection.

  “Like most of these other treasures in the sackomora, 1590 TB was presumed lost in the chaos that followed Rudolf’s reign.

  “Brahe, in contemporary accounts, was vague as to its origin, though the ring was rumored to be a gift. The astronomer’s first biographer, Jaroslav Firkusny, notes that Brake seemed more protective of it than of his most famous accoutrement – the large silver and gold nose he wore to replace his own, which was sliced off, supposedly, in a duel.”

  I held my hand close to the library lamp.

  Within the tiny swirls of stars, I recognized a familiar pattern – the belt of Orion, and then the rest of the hunter, poised above the gold and silver ripples that represented the Vltava’s waves.

  She will know you by this, Hastrman had said.

  I remember tracing the patterns with my index finger.

  What had once been Tycho Brahe’s was now in my possession.

  This fragment of history – seemingly connected to the tomb at Tyn cathedral.

  That evening, in a strange contrary mood, I set out through Smichov in a downpour.

  I had decided to walk partway, mostly to clear the fantastic thoughts from my mind.

  I carried an umbrella, and was clad in boots, gloves, and heavy coat, notebook in the side pocket. My finger throbbed. With renewed effort – perhaps desperation – I had tried earlier to remove the ring, unsuccessfully.

  The snow was melting. The stink of soot and sulfur were more prominent in the cold air. Lamps were haloed by the rain, while the bells of Stare Mesto were muted, evasive, as they echoed up the narrow streets, along the empty sidewalks.

  There was no sign of my StB agent.

  Only the stone faces peering down.

  I tried to maintain a brisk pace, but the rain was making slush, and the cobblestones were dangerously slick.

  At Zborovska street, along the Vltava, I hailed a taxi.

  “Emauzy Kostel, prosim,” I told the young driver, glancing back at the empty sidewalk.

  “Emauzy. Ano.”

  We accelerated sharply.

  In the warmth of the back seat (one always remembers the strange detail: the radio was blaring The Tennessee Waltz, sung in Czech) I reiterated the rational. That I was meeting a representative of Prague’s dissident community, this “Milovana”. That I would record our conversation in my notebook. That I was not being followed. That I could cancel the trip at any moment, and would do so if necessary.

  Most dangerous, surely, would be the walk through the monastery complex. Here a paranoid thought cropped up again: that if this meeting were a set-up by the StB, meant to entrap a visiting “scholar”, to catch him in possession of a priceless Czech artifact – that if the StB truly had been following me (I remember looking out the rear window at the rain-swept street) then certainly they would spring the trap as I walked across the monastery complex, or entered the church.

  Once below, once in the catacombs, I told myself, the danger would pass.

  Rational thoughts, Lev, drawn up from the watery depths, where my thoughts had been circling those last few hours.

  I had left a note addressed to Dawson in my hotel room, explaining where I was, and why I’d gone to the meeting. Extra insurance, in case I was in custody by tomorrow morning. (Though the niggling thought returned: what hadn’t I called Dawson? Didn’t a part of me believe in less rational thoughts, in the mystery of the ring, this fragment of history given to me, to me?)

  In Nove Mesto, lamplight streamed with the rain onto cobblestone streets. A few hardy pedestrians huddled under umbrellas, coming and going from the local taverns.

  Soon, the driver made a gesture, drawing my attention ahead of us.

  Coalescing out of the rainy dark were those incurving thorn-like steeples of Emauzy church, grey and misty against the bulk of the church below.

  And I felt a twinge of panic, entirely unreasonable, triggered, I knew, by the crookedness of the streets, by the shimmering cobblestones, by the lamp post
s seeming to duck against the rain, and by my sudden acute awareness of the Old Town to the North, of the Old Town Square, and of Tyn cathedral.

  A sense that these two steeples – witches’ hats and thorns, Emauzy and Tyn – were somehow in colloquy in the sky, among the thousand spires of Prague.

  The driver began braking.

  “No, keep going,” I said, in Czech.

  The Emauzy grounds seemed empty, but for statues; the only motion that of falling rain.

  I told myself: If Milovana wants to meet me, we’ll do it on Sharpshooter Island. Didn’t he say that was a favorite haunt of his group?

  By tomorrow, I’ll have the ring off my finger. And I’ll inform Dawson, according to procedures. Tonight, I’ll head back to the hotel. Or the hotel’s tavern.

  The driver looked back over his shoulder. “Kde?” he asked. Where?

  Again, my mood changed.

  I had come this far into Nove Mesto.

  To meet with a representative of Prague’s dissident community. A job I willingly accepted. The work of a good academic spy. Perhaps contributing something to the great democratic changes coming to this part of the world.

  Why not risk it?

  The only danger is crossing the Emauzy complex.

  Then I realized: there is another option. Another means of entry, unseen by any possible agents.

  I remembered the map I had copied down. And felt another twinge of panic that somehow pleased me.

  Patting my coat pocket and the notebook, I told the driver where to take me.

  For all the ominous fables it had collected over the centuries, Faustuv Dum, that day, was an unlikely palace of grey and orange rococo, with rounded windows and a beveled, playful façade. It sat at one end of the long grassy field that had once been the Cattle Market.

  Faust House – or the school it had become – appeared closed. Behind the decorative leaded glass of the foyer was a dim hall, sporadically lit. I reached for the swan-wing handle, telling myself that if it were locked, I would return to hotel or tavern. I would drink a toast to rational thoughts and wake the next morning with a slight headache, and a familiar reality.

  But it was unlocked.