Tales from the Vatican Vaults: 28 extraordinary stories by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Garry Kilworth, Mary Gentle, KJ Parker, Storm Constantine and many more

by David V. Barrett

  ‘And this isn’t a crypt anyway. The Chamber of the Vates was a temple. This is the last time I take you down here, breaking all the rules. You’re not an assigned watcher. You’re not even a ghost. If another watcher turns up it will be me who’ll get it in the neck from Felici. I’ll probably have to say a hundred rosaries.’

  Dieter’s brow furrowed. ‘Hey, all this theatrical fury, it is an act . . .’ His tone became more tentative. ‘Isn’t it?’

  She angled her chin with a haughty air, then burst into laughter. ‘Of course it is, you idiot.’ Catching his piqued expression, she shrugged. ‘All right, all right, I overplayed it. Mea culpa. Truth is, I’m dying for a cigarette. I couldn’t sneak a smoke all day, what with Pope Paul passing from the world.’

  ‘A cigarette-smoking nun,’ he snorted. ‘I don’t know how you get away with it.’

  ‘Because I’m young and beautiful and a cool secret agent.’

  ‘And a favourite of Monsignor Felici,’ he added.

  ‘That too.’ She turned on her heel and strode towards a limestone wall whose expanse was covered in a vast mural, an extravaganza of the divine and diabolic so intricately intertwined that it appeared that the one was forever turning into the other. No clear images could be discerned. Everything was suggestion: protofaces, rudimentary horns or haloes, embryonic limbs, constantly disconcerting. Since her initial sighting of the first-century mural, five days ago, she didn’t care to study it for too long.

  Reaching a relatively unadorned patch on the wall she stretched out her arm and pointed at a circular carving some five feet in span, its base two feet from the ground. ‘Voila! Look upon it and weep. But not too long in case another watcher turns up.’

  He leaned forward and viewed the carving. It was the face of a bearded god, mouth agape. Moments later, he stepped back. ‘It’s a copy of the Bocca della Verità. The Mouth of Truth. Pretty exact copy, from what I remember. You put your hand in its mouth and, if you’re a liar, it bites it off. This is what you brought me here for, a Roman Holiday?’

  ‘Well, this is no movie and I’m no Audrey Hepburn and you’re definitely no Gregory Peck.’ She angled her head. ‘Put your hand in the mouth.’

  He studied her expression. ‘Is this a joke?’

  ‘No joke. Look – I’m wearing my serious face. Go ahead and stick your hand in.’

  ‘I think I’ll just go.’

  ‘Try it. You’re the one who pleaded to see the great mystery in the secret chamber. Come on, it’ll take only a second.’

  ‘Okay, okay, just to keep you happy.’ He expelled a sharp breath and thrust his hand into the mouth.

  And missed. His fingertips pressed on the stony lips. With a self-conscious attempt at laughter, he darted a look at Sister Yi. ‘Well, that was pretty clumsy.’

  Slowly, she shook her head. ‘No, it wasn’t.’

  ‘It certainly was,’ he said, aiming his fingers at the mouth. Only to miss again.

  He tried again. And again.

  And again.

  He lowered his arm. ‘What the hell?’

  She folded her arms, tucking her hands inside the wide sleeves of her black habit. ‘It’s the same for everyone. I can’t touch it. Nobody can touch it. It doesn’t seem to exist. Look inside that mouth and you’ll see nothing but blackness. We tried ultrasonographic readings but they showed nothing. Absolute vacuum. That’s why the facial image was carved around it, in the first century, a ring around a mystery.’

  He stepped back from the wall. ‘First century? How was its age established so soon after finding it?’

  ‘We already knew its age before we found it. The exact year, in fact. The first year of the reign of the emperor Claudius. AD 41. By the way, it’s not a copy, it’s the original. The Bocca della Verità is the copy, fashioned soon after and installed in the Temple of Hercules.’

  ‘You knew its age before you found it? How, exactly?’

  She indicated one of four tunnels that radiated from the chamber. ‘You’ll have to leave in a couple of minutes but I’ll be stuck in here all night. I fancy a stroll though the tunnels. Let’s walk as I talk.’ She moved away. ‘You probably won’t believe what I have to tell you.’

  He kept pace with her long strides. ‘Whatever you have to say, it can’t be any more astounding than that – that thing back there.’

  She stayed silent for a few moments as she strode down the tunnel. Then, barely above a murmur: ‘You have no idea what’s back there.’

  *

  ‘My God!’

  Jerome pulled to an abrupt halt a second after entering the chamber. The sight of the vast mural on the right-hand wall froze him to the spot. What was that? And what inspired lunatic painted it, a first-century soothsayer? His vision was compelled to trace a convoluted path up, down, across and even into the interweaving cavalcade of saint and sinner, angel and demon. And, with a sudden shift of perspective, he saw sinner saints and angel demons, interchangeable. Then he recalled what Felici had told him of this mural: it operated in a similar manner to a Rorschach test. You saw what you wanted to see in it. Equally, you saw what you didn’t want to see.

  He forced his gaze from the perplexing sight and studied the remainder of the Chamber of the Vates. In severe contrast to the painted expanse, the other walls were coated in plain, unadorned plaster. And the vault contained nothing but two canvas chairs. It looked as if Sister Yi Zhenmei was going to arrive late.

  Well, if he was a watcher for tonight (and please God let Sister Yi join him soon) he was turning one of those chairs to face away from the demented spectacle. But first . . .

  Keeping his eyes lowered, he approached the giant mural. His steps slowed as he reached the Mouth, as Felici had described it. Not Mouth of Truth, but simply, the Mouth, and the main reason for the hasty creation of a watcher class. The monsignor had calmly described the negative properties of the gaping aperture as if it were no more than an interesting novelty. Jerome had listened with blank-faced incredulity.

  Now that he stood before it, he was less incredulous. He had, like so many others, placed his hand in the Bocca della Verità in Santa Maria in Cosmedin, and this image, its prototype, looked no different. But it felt different. He bent down and peered into the mouth. It must be imagination, but he felt that through the yawning aperture he saw the emptiness between the stars.

  He straightened up and studied the face. Like the face in Santa Maria in Cosmedin it evoked, for him, a simple, one-word description – mindless.

  As for what Felici had claimed about the nature of what lay inside that mouth . . .

  ‘It’s not possible,’ he muttered, directing his shaky hand to the vast face. ‘It can’t exist.’ He pushed a tentative finger at the mouth, and gasped as it landed on the surrounding stone. He tried again. Same result.

  There followed a minute’s experimentation, including throwing coins at the mouth, each of which was diverted from the target.

  Finally he relented. It was impossible, but it was real. He smiled the thinnest of smiles as he grasped why Felici had sent him here: to undermine his empirical world view, confront the sceptic with the supernatural. He had always had faith in the divine spark in the human spirit, but not in miracles, and now he faced a dark miracle.

  He closed his eyes, lips moving in silent prayer.

  Father, you give us grace through sacramental signs,

  Which tell us of the wonders of your unseen power.

  Then he heard a voice, faint, distant, oddly familiar.

  ‘My God . . .’ it sighed.

  His eyes sprang open. It was surely an auditory illusion, but the voice had seemed to come from the mouth. If not an illusion, then what? Quirky acoustics?

  The voice sounded again, nearer, more distinct:

  ‘Deliver us from evil.’

  He stepped back, the tempo of his pulse accelerating. ‘I know that voice.’

  It was his own.

  And then came something that had no voice, or face, or shape.<
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  *

  ‘It all started,’ said Sister Yi, ‘at Nag Hammadi.’ She slowed her pace in the curved, tomb-lined corridor and glanced at Dieter. ‘I presume you’re familiar with the Nag Hammadi discovery?’

  He grimaced. ‘I have a sketchy idea. Truth to tell . . . very sketchy. It’s a long time since my student days at the Gregorian.’

  She shook her head in reproach. ‘And you a Jesuit . . . Oh well, here goes: in December of 1945 a group of farmers led by Muhammad Ali Samman unearthed a sealed jar at Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt. Hidden inside the jar were leather-bound papyrus codices containing no fewer than fifty-two Gnostic texts dating from the fourth century. The Arabs who discovered the jar kept its contents quiet, as Muhammad and his brothers became involved in a blood feud. Their father had been killed, and they avenged his death by hacking to pieces his alleged killer, Ahmed Ismail, and devouring his heart between them. As you can imagine, they had good reason to lie low from the Egyptian police until they could dispose of the literary treasure on the black market. Muhammad later showed the Gnostic texts to a local Coptic priest who, over the following years, helped secrete them to Cairo where they were revealed to a fascinated world.’

  Dieter nodded. ‘Yes, it’s all coming back to me, although I didn’t know about the blood feud.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Another fact you won’t know is that Pius XII personally oversaw the formation of an archaeological team – all Crypt members – in February 1949. Their mission was secret, hypersecret. Pius had personally located a codex in the Secret Archives that indicated a literary trove underneath the ruins of St Pachomius monastery, within walking distance of the 1945 Nag Hammadi discovery. Long story short, after five months the Crypt team unearthed similar Gnostic texts to the earlier find – with one addition, an exquisitely preserved papyrus scroll inside an ebony cylinder. The author had dated the scroll as the second year of the reign of the emperor Claudius. He also put his name to the document: Simon of Gitta.’

  ‘Simon of Gitta? Isn’t that—’

  ‘Simon Magus, who followed Christ in Galilee – at a distance, and who was a thorn in St Peter’s side after Christ’s crucifixion. Yes, Simon Magus, the heresiarch himself. Quite a find. But the authorship is dwarfed by the content of the work, the Apocryphon of Simon Magus.’ She halted at the juncture of two tunnels and took a deep breath. ‘Prepare to hear the greatest story ever untold. It transpires that Simon had spent many years studying in the Library of Alexandria, which we learn from him was not accidentally burned by Julius Caesar, merely a few harbourside book depositories. The Library – in fact a combination of a library of half a million books, a university and several temples – was a source of wisdom from the time of Ptolemy, companion of Alexander the Great. It was also an inspiration for the future. Centuries before Simon’s era, Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the earth and Aristarchus proposed a heliocentric model of the solar system as well as providing a close approximation of the size of the moon. However, Simon’s prime interest lay in theories of a multiverse. An infinity of universes in which everything that can happen, does happen.’

  Dieter’s tilted head and pursed lips were the soul of scepticism. ‘Surely not. Wasn’t the many worlds theory first posited in the 1950s?’

  ‘A little out in your chronology there. The multiverse concept was familiar to such ancient scholars as Parmenides, Democritus, Epicurus and Lucretius. Cicero, in his Academica, discussing the topic of innumerable worlds, puts it this way: “Just as we are at this moment close to Bauli and are looking towards Puteoli, so there are countless persons in exactly similar spots with our names, our honours, our achievements, our minds, our shapes, our ages, discussing the very same subject.”’

  Dieter raised his hands in surrender. ‘I stand corrected. So, the Apocryphon of Simon Magus contains, what, proof of numerous worlds?’

  ‘Not theoretical proof. But an indication of where to find such proof . . . in the Temple of the Vates, which gave Vatican Hill its very name. The menace that the temple presented was sufficient cause to keep further exploration of the necropolis secret, from 1950 to the present. The year before he composed the apocryphon, Simon Magus hired a stonemason to carve a face around an – absence – on a wall of that temple. The face was intended as a warning.’

  ‘Ah! It was carved around a pre-existing mouth . . .’

  She nodded. ‘A mouth in which, according to Simon, you can hear voices.’

  ‘Echoes, you mean?’

  ‘Not echoes.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘And there’s something else. At the end of the apocryphon there’s a warning: “Take care lest you invite the Creator into his creation.”’

  He chuckled. ‘Too big for us?’

  ‘That’s the least of it.’ She tapped her watch. ‘You’ve overstayed your welcome. Twenty minutes, remember? That was the agreement. Now make your own way back. I have watcher duties to resume. Oh, and take one of the tunnels that go around the Chamber of the Vates. If another watcher sees you in there I’ll have a lot of explaining to do.’

  He frowned as he extracted a folded paper from his jacket pocket. ‘Are you sure this map won’t get me lost in this maze?’

  ‘Oh, you’ll be fine. Go on, vamoose.’

  ‘See you for coffee tomorrow?’

  She shrugged. ‘If you’re paying.’

  She watched him trudge down a side-tunnel, then leaned against a wall and expelled a gradual breath. Bringing Dieter into the necropolis had been a bad idea. Why did she give in and indulge his curiosity? She really should have grown out of kicking against the rules by now.

  She straightened up and headed back down the passage. A couple of minutes and she’d be where she ought to be, keeping watch on the Mouth. As she threaded her way though the labyrinth, her thoughts returned to the teasing half-hints she had given Dieter. She had, she admitted to herself, been a bit of a minx. But then, what was she supposed to do, blab everything she knew for an unauthorised visitor’s entertainment?

  The Creator, for example: she had allowed her friend to assume that Simon was referring to Jehovah or the Trinity. He wasn’t. In Simon’s apocryphon, the Creator was given a name: Ialdabaoth. The name was Hebrew. And translated into English: son of chaos.

  ‘I’ve a feeling it’s going to be one of those nights.’

  *

  Jerome sat on the stone floor of the chamber in a far corner from the stony mouth, his shoulders slumped, his gaze averted from both mouth and mural. He shouldn’t have lost his nerve. What kind of priest was he, panicking at the sound of his own voice? No matter how bizarre the circumstances, he should have held his ground.

  ‘But it wasn’t just the voice,’ he murmured.

  There had been something else, something the human mind wasn’t meant to contain. It had enveloped . . . smothered . . . the voice he’d heard. It could be called the soul of nightmare. But that didn’t begin to describe it. It could never be described.

  He leaned back and rested his head against the wall, gradually clearing his thoughts. It took a while, but eventually he was sufficiently composed to formulate a plan. First option, retrace his steps through the necropolis and report his experience to Felici. Second option, stay and see his mission through to the end, in which case he’d need Crypt support. Despite the upheaval following the Pope’s death there was a chance that a Crypt agent was working somewhere in this underworld. And, with luck, Sister Yi might be on her way through the maze right now.

  He detached the transceiver from his belt and pressed the com button. ‘Father Jerome here, requesting assistance. Location, necropolis. Please respond.’

  He almost laughed in relief as a cheery voice answered moments later.

  ‘Hi! Sister Yi here, Double-O-VII, Licensed to Excommunicate.’

  ‘Sister Yi! Thank God! You’re in the necropolis . . .’

  ‘For my sins. You’re that Crypt newbie, right?’

  He found himself nodding. As they had met several times it was deflating t
o be dismissed as a Crypt newbie, but apparently he was small potatoes in the world she worked in. ‘Yes, but I was assigned as a watcher, and, well, I think I’m in this over my head.’

  ‘I was assigned as a watcher too. Felici wouldn’t drop you into this without an experienced partner. So, what’s the catastrophe?’

  *

  Sister Yi slowly circled the Chamber of the Vates as she listened to Jerome’s somewhat breathless account.

  ‘Uh-huh, uh-huh.’ She frowned in concentration. ‘And you’re sure this voice sounded like your own?’

  ‘I think so. I believe so.’ To her ears, Jerome’s voice on the transceiver had a curious, distorted tone, making it difficult to catch every word.

  ‘Uh-huh. And that “presence” you mentioned, the one that followed the voice, how would you describe it?’

  A brief silence. ‘It was a nameless horror.’

  ‘Right. Right. Um, do you think you could improve on “nameless horror”? It’s a bit, you know, H. P. Lovecraft. No, scrub that – Lovecraft would do better . . . No, I’m kidding. Seriously, Felici shouldn’t have assigned you. And no I don’t blame you for running away. Good move. Go straight back and report to Felici in the Apostolic Palace. Tell him I sent you.’

  ‘I’m going to see this through to the end.’

  ‘No, you’re not. Get out of here, reach safe ground, pronto.’

  ‘I was taught to face my fear. A while ago I failed. I won’t fail a second time.’

  She groaned inwardly. Why were novices so damn gung ho? ‘You don’t get it, do you? I’m not asking, I’m giving you an order. Get out of here! No more discussion.’

  She terminated the connection and ceased pacing. If Jerome hadn’t the sense to leave the necropolis, he would almost certainly return to the Chamber of the Vates. She would deal with him then. On entering the chamber a few minutes ago she’d glimpsed his fleeing figure an instant before he disappeared into the farther tunnel. Now the source of his panic was revealed, she earnestly wished that he’d kept on running.

  She stepped over to one of the canvas chairs, angled it to face the Mouth directly, and sat down. Whatever Jerome had sensed in the chamber, she caught no hint of it. Either it had gone or she wasn’t attuned to its presence.