by Zoe Drake
“Yes, that’s true. Officially they’ve been laughed off as UFO sightings. Also admissions to hospitals are up,” Amato informed them. “Not just psychiatric, but general hospitals as well.”
“People are reporting sleep disorders. Insomnia, bad dreams, night terrors.”
“Tell us more.”
“Last week, an elderly lady was dragged out of the Grand Canal, wearing only a night dress. It seemed that she had been sleepwalking, walked out of her window, and fell. Since Dr. Mendelson’s death we asked our members who work in the media to look for anything that may be related. They found out that the people who were having nightmares kept seeing the same thing in their dreams. A vision of the island of Poveglia.”
Weiss sipped his tea. Strong, a little bitter. “So apart from Mendelson, has anyone been making enquiries about Poveglia? Has anyone tried to go there?”
The Carbonari shook their heads. “Our members in the Polizia di Stato have reported nothing. The only people permitted to land on the island are police and a small number of government officials. There was an attempt to plant vineyards there years ago, but it didn’t work out. The vines grew stunted and sickly, the wine was…undrinkable. Nobody’s tried to land on the island without consent, and as far as we know, nobody’s been making enquiries about it.”
Weiss frowned. “Let’s take another approach. Mendelson thought the second Book of the Veils might be in Venice – George, have you heard anything?”
Cairncross coughed nervously. “I’ve been keeping an eye on the book trade, and there’s been no word among the collectors – nobody’s heard of banned manuscripts coming onto the market, ancient scrolls, papyrus…anything.”
Sinclair leaned forward, his shoulders tensed. “George, can you give us any background on the scroll? Is there something that links the Codex to Fra Mauro?”
“I presume you already know more that I do. The scroll is written in an unknown language. There’s nothing like it found in any other source, so it appears to be either a tongue that died out leaving no trace, or it’s used by…alien visitors.”
Weiss looked around him. “There’s nothing else for it. We’ll have to go there.”
Sinclair blinked in indignant surprise. “Poveglia? But Mendelson was killed on San Michele…”
“That avenue has been shut down, John. I was there, I felt it. Whatever portal had opened up Ayin was able to close it, even though it killed him. Poveglia is another matter. That seems to be the current center of events, so that’s where we’re going. If there are four of us this time, we should be able to defend ourselves.”
The leader of the Carbonari leaned forward. “We’d like to come with you.”
“I appreciate your offer, gentlemen,” Weiss replied, “but under the circumstances, I can’t ask you to put yourselves in danger.”
Schiaffini straightened his back. “If Venice is threatened, if Italy is threatened, we should be there, Professor.”
Weiss leaned over and shook the man’s hand. “I understand. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you.”
“Buon cugino,” the Carbonari leader replied.
“An exorcism?” asked Julia.
Sinclair raised his eyes to Heaven. “Bell, Book and Candle…at your service.”
Julia leaned forward, a Tarot card appearing between her slim fingers. “In all of my readings last night, the card of the Empress kept turning up.”
“Then I’m glad you’re with us, Julia. That means we should be able to come up with a few good ideas.” Weiss smiled grimly at the three Carbonari. “Can we have a boat ready for tomorrow morning?”
Chapter Ten
Charnel House
The Carbonari had called down a fog to give them extra privacy as they worked, and as the team’s runabout sped further into the lagoon, they had their first glimpse of the shunned island; a tall and tapering steeple, looming darkly against a diffuse sky. A landmark and a site of ritual execution; the Carbonari had told Weiss’s party that when the experiment had been destroyed, their predecessors had killed the doctor in charge by throwing him from the window at the top of the steeple.
The island of Poveglia was shaped in the form of a wedge, its apex being a curious octagonal fort-like structure, separated from the main seven-hectare landmass by a narrow canal. Schiaffini steered the boat into the canal and slowed the engines, as they peered over the side into the walled courtyard.
Pulling up at the rotting jetty, they disembarked, carrying two boxes of equipment and Elemanzer’s travelling basket. Cairncross had given them a hand with the more down to earth problems; grey overalls with elasticated sleeves and ankles to protect them from ticks and mosquitoes, face masks to protect them from asbestos dust.
The wall around the hospital was topped with barbed wire and the branches of overgrown poplars, stretching out their limbs as if appealing for help. Shiaffini, in the lead, held his hand over the lock of the wrought iron gate; it sprang open to his touch.
The ruins of the hospital lay before them; seven hundred thousand square feet of floor area, designed to hold more than five hundred patients. Gnarled and curiously misshapen trees surrounded the decaying hulk. The building at the front housed the towering dark steeple they had seen from afar, with two wings to either side extending further back. The main hospital building was a sprawling affair of faux-Gothic façade, arched roofs with green copper valleys and elaborately designed eaves, all in a state of utter ruin. The time-stained brick was overgrown with ivy, and as they got closer they saw the vines invading the windows, creeping inside over splintered glass. Trees grew out of the gutters. Nameless debris was scattered over the withered grass of the lawn.
They reached the hospital’s front entrance, entering by splintered doors standing wide open.
Through the shattered windows a pale light poured into the room, setting the putrid yellow walls aglow. The scene was one of total devastation. Every surface in the reception and hospitality area was smashed, and their footsteps crunched upon broken glass as they advanced. Smooth, round-cornered plastered walls, oak and mahogany woodwork, hardwood flooring, all bore burn marks, deep gouged scratches, unreadable graffiti. At the back they saw the wrought iron gates of an antique elevator, and next to it, an ornate staircase leading upwards.
Julia slipped her arm through Sinclair’s. “John, why don’t you ever take me anywhere nice?”
At the stairs, Weiss turned to the Carbonari. “Gentlemen, as my legs aren’t what they used to be, could I ask you to check the upper floors? John, Julia and Elemanzer will come with me.”
“Aye aye, captain,” Sinclair muttered.
The Carbonari started to unpack the equipment they’d brought with them; torches, amulets, EMF meters, gaussmasters, wireless thermometers, infrared motion sensors, ion detectors, crucifixes, rosaries, Geiger counters and walky-talkies. Sinclair and Julia gently put down Elemanzer’s carry-case and opened the latch.
The cat padded out of the case, sat down gingerly on the rubble-strewn floor and began to wash. After a few moments, it stopped and stared attentively around the room. It peered intently at the stairs, then turned its head and gave a look of unmistakable intelligence towards Julia.
“Elemanzer’s got something,” she said.
Sinclair turned to Amato, who was holding one of the detection meters. “Picking anything up?”
He nodded. “There’s an electrical field, peaking at floor level about a meter away from where I’m standing.” He looked up hesitantly. “I think it knows we’re here.”
“What’s the temperature?”
“Twenty-five degrees.”
“It feels colder,” Weiss muttered. “I think it could be gathering energy for something.”
“For what?”
“For an attack,” Sinclair replied darkly. “The same way it attacked Ayin.”
Weiss held up a hand. “Elemanzer’s on the move,” he said. The cat was prowling, head down, towards the main staircase.
The three Italians went
on their way to the upper floors while Weiss’s group followed the cat to the first floor. They found what looked like an auditorium. There was also a library, which had been ransacked either by panicked staff or invading Carbonari agents; only a few tattered books remained, their torn pages scattered across the dusty floor.
Every step he took, Weiss felt something getting stronger – the palpable sensation of dread. His stomach fluttered and cramped with the nearness of it. There was a dank, wet smell, heavy with organic decay. Pigeon excrement covered some parts of the floor, but so far, Weiss had seen no pigeons. In fact, he had seen or heard no living animals or birds on the island; only insects, fat black bugs that scurried into the shadows whenever they entered a room.
Sinclair unstrapped his camera. “I’m going to make a scan of each floor,” he said. “Normal and infrared.” From a folder in his bag, he took out strips of black and white negatives and pinned them to the wall. Any radiation traces would show up on them.
Julia and Elemanzer took the lead up to the second floor, exchanging glances frequently. As soon as Weiss passed the threshold, the fear morphed into more pain, a sharp, tangible stab that had his hand instinctively clasping at his stomach. “Benjamin?” asked Julia worriedly.
“It’s here,” Weiss declared.
The room seemed to be an operating theater. Skeletal trolleys lined the walls, with the remains of beds, straps dangling from where the patient’s wrists and ankles would have been restrained. At the back, across a large open space littered with shattered glass and broken wood, were ranged over a dozen wheelchairs. In front of them lay a solitary man’s shoe, covered in mold. There was a wide tiled area at the back that made Weiss feel sick when he realized what it was; a giant shower room, with about twenty stalls, a caged area in the center with dials indicating water temperature.
The patients had been hosed down en masse.
Sinclair raised his walkie-talkie. “We’ve found something. I think you’d better come down, we need to set up the circle.”
The light of the afternoon sun was still clear and strong enough to see by as Weiss carefully chalked the three elaborate circles inscribed on the front sheet of the Book of the Veils. The bars across the windows cast shadows that bit deeply into the floor. He couldn’t escape the feeling of being in a cage.
Behind him, the other investigators went through the cabinets near the door. The patient’s files had all vanished, but some of the bottles of drugs had remained intact, along with boxes of respirators, syringes and gauze.
“Curare,” called Julia, translating the labels with the help of the Carbonari. “They must have paralyzed the patients before experimenting on them. And these others…morphine, perphenazine, lithium…”
“All drugs that the Nazis synthesized in bulk,” Sinclair added.
He stopped as something bumped against the door to the room. Everyone jumped. “Sono nella merda,” someone muttered.
Weiss looked up from the circle and stared at the door. It came again – a loud, solid thump.
“Maybe it’s a bird,” muttered Amato. “A pigeon…”
“Maybe something’s hungry,” Weiss muttered.
“That is not funny,” Schiaffini warned, clicking on his flashlight and pointing at the door. Elemanzer began to hiss. The cat’s fur stood up in ridges along its back; its ears flattened, its tail twitched rapidly.
Weiss turned back to his work, beginning to chalk the last few characters in the circle of protection. To his right, the Carbonari took pictures of the door, checking dials on their monitors.
“I suggest we work quickly,” Weiss called after a pause. “Gentlemen, can you get the fire going?”
The three Carbonari knelt down, opened their bags and began to unpack bundles of twigs and thin branches. Julia had her bag open, too, and was busy selecting a number of charms. Nobody used the name of the force that surrounded them. They refused to acknowledge it.
Coming to an end of his inscriptions, Weiss straightened up and accepted a hand from John Sinclair to lift him to his feet. “Benjamin,” the priest hissed in a low voice, “How the hell did it kill Mendelson?”
“I don’t know. It was a sudden burst of energy, like an instant reaction to the spell he was trying.”
“A booby-trap, in other words. Think, Benjamin. Spells written in a language we don’t understand? How do we know this is going to work?”
“We don’t. But it’s too late to back out now.”
The thump on the door returned: powerful, insistent. The door rattled on its hinges with the force of the blows.
“Everyone into the circle,” Weiss ordered.
Within the circle, the Carbonari took up their appointed places. In their bags they carried thin, tubular stands, and on top of each one was a small brazier. They pressed their bundles of herbs and wood into the braziers and lit them. Aromatic, slightly sweet smoke began to fill the room.
Weiss faced the door and began the breathing exercises that would alter his state of consciousness. He stared at the door, removing it from context. It’s just a door, he thought. I shall not fear what’s on the other side…
He opened his mouth and chanted the first letter of the Ineffable Name.
He felt a ripple go through the room, a slow shockwave beneath the building as the Tetragrammaton began its work. Beside him, John Sinclair, eyes closed, reading out in Latin the words of an ancient rite of exorcism known only to perhaps a dozen people in the world. Behind him, Julia, holding up her charms and amulets and singing, in clear falsetto, to the Goddess.
Around them the strong, pungent smoke of the Carbonari drifted, performing its work of purification.
Weiss continued to chant, his heartbeat steady, his breathing following the rhythms of the words. He closed his eyes, opened them again to stare at the door; the pounding had stopped. We’ve stopped it, he told himself.
The thought was immediately replaced by another one, springing from nowhere; no, maybe it’s got inside.
Elemanzer squatted on the floor outside the circle, torso motionless, head flicking rapidly from side to side. Its eyes were large and dilated, legs ready to leap, the hairs on its back bristling upwards.
Ice water surged through the Professor’s veins. His skin prickled; he felt the hairs on his arms bristling, just like Elemanzer’s. Boom, boom, boom went his heart, trying to force the rest of his body to keep up with it. It’s all around us, Weiss thought. It’s blocking our exit. No. I shall not panic.
Elemanzer let out a devilish howl and sprang forward, bared fangs flashing in the smoky gloom.
Something hit the door again, with such force the wood visibly buckled. Weiss continued the incantation, his jaw feeling like it was full of glue. Smoky shapes moved stealthily across the room, dark voices whispered foul things in his ear. He began to lose track of where he was, what he was supposed to be doing.
“It’s a weapon,” he heard Julia say. “It’s trying to control us by making us see things, hear things. The knock on the door – that’s not really happening.”
Weiss felt incredibly fatigued. The smoke lowered visibility, and his eyes were smarting. If only he could close his eyes, if only he could lie down for a moment…
John Sinclair came to the end of the exorcism and paused. “Got to let him in,” he said.
“Who?”
“Mendelson. That’s Mendelson at the door.”
Weiss turned his head. Sinclair, his face slack and unfeeling, stretched out his hands like a sleepwalker. He moved forward, began to take a step over the white chalk hieroglyphics of the circle.
“John – no, don’t!”
Suddenly Elemanzer reared up before them, its sharp face breaking through the smoke, but the cat was now the size of a man. It lunged for Sinclair, its red trap of a mouth open in black fur, green fire flashing from its eyes.
Weiss slumped to his knees. Somewhere, far way, there was the sound of a shrieking, howling wind.
Darkness fell like a sword.
Chapter Eleven
David’s Dilemma
David held both his hands up to signal for attention. “Thank you very much, class,” he said in his firm ‘teacher’ voice.
“Thank you, Mr. Keall,” the thirty-nine teenage girls echoed listlessly from behind their desks.
“See you next week.”
“See you!”
The chimes that officially signaled the end of the day’s lessons sounded from the buzzing loudspeakers above their heads. The girls got up from their seats, pulling rice cakes and potato chip snacks from inside their desks, screeching to each other in voices too loud, too shrill.
David pulled open the sliding door and left the girls to their own gossip. They had already started moving the desks back to the walls ready to start cleaning; students sweeping their own classrooms was a traditional Meiji era practice, the head teacher had told him, and they liked their tradition up here in Tohoku. The uniform was also traditional– the sera-fuku sailor-suit uniform, blue pleated skirt, white blouse with a collar adorned with a red ribbon, modeled after the British Royal Navy in the Edwardian age.
He walked down the long, shadow-striped corridor, shoes echoing on the shiny vinyl floor, past the large windows looking out onto the school grounds. It was mid-July, and the rainy season refused to relax its clammy grip; outside, the empty tennis courts were muddy and bare, bounded by the beds of morning glory that added color to the drab grey concrete. Schoolgirls ran from doorways to the covered walkway, notebooks and bags held over their heads to protect their apparently fragile hair from raindrops.
Two stories down, David entered the English department on the second floor. The cramped room was filled with two rows of desks cluttered with textbooks, folders and cassette/CD players. The only member of staff inside was Wada-sensei, who sat with several biwa – loquat fruit – laid out on a paper tissue on the desk in front of her.
“Ah, David-sensei,” she said in her high, slightly nasal voice. “Thanks for all your hard work. How about some biwa?”
