James Becker - The Nosferatu Scroll

‘Why?’ Angela was already putting on her boots, Bronson noted, and had selected a heavier coat for the journey across the water.

‘It’s your talk about a vampire cult that’s got me interested. I was wondering if all the graves were from the nineteenth century, and if their occupants were all female. I’d also like to know if the tombs were opened, or if the vandals had sprayed graffiti on them, for instance. Was it genuine vandalism, or were the people involved trying to open the graves because they were looking for something?’

Angela smiled. ‘Oddly enough, I want to go back to the Isola di San Michele as well, but for a completely different reason. While you were out, I translated some more of the Latin text in that book, and there’s a reference in it that I’d like to look at.’ She pointed at the black leather-bound book. ‘In fact, there are several references to the same thing. According to that diary, somewhere in the graveyard, in the “tomb of the twin angels”, as the writer calls it, is the “answer”. Now, I haven’t got the slightest idea what she means, but I’d be very interested in finding out.’

‘Right then,’ Bronson said, zipping up his leather jacket. ‘Let’s go.’

A few minutes later they walked out of the hotel and turned north, towards the vaporetto stop. Angela had her handbag slung over her shoulder, while Bronson was carrying her laptop bag. She had insisted on taking her computer and the diary with them while they explored the cemetery, just in case she needed to refer back to the Latin text.

Ten minutes after they’d left, a man appeared at the reception desk, produced identification that showed he was a senior carabinieri officer, and demanded to see the hotel register. He explained that it was just a routine check, as part of a confidential statistical analysis that the Venetian authorities were carrying out into hotel occupancy by non-Italian guests.

The receptionist handed over the register without comment.

The carabinieri officer made some notes, thanked the receptionist, and then left the building.

A little over half an hour after that, two middle-aged Italian men, both wearing business suits and carrying briefcases, marched straight into the hotel lobby, deep in conversation, and climbed the stairs to the upper levels. The receptionist didn’t recognize them, but there were a number of new guests at the hotel, and he assumed that the men were new arrivals.

Once they were out of earshot of the reception desk, the two men fell silent. At the top of the stairs, they walked down a corridor and stopped outside one particular room. While one of them watched for any sign of movement, the other man removed a small jemmy from his briefcase, slid the point between the door and jamb, and gave a hard shove. Moments later, they were both inside.

They left the hotel about fifteen minutes later, still talking together and still carrying their briefcases. Again the receptionist ignored them.

Without a watch, Marietta had no idea of the time, or even if it was day or night. She’d been given another tray of food about three or four hours ago, just bread, ham and cheese and a cup of coffee, which she presumed was her lunch. Since then she’d neither heard nor seen anyone or anything. Despite being terrified about her predicament, she was also thoroughly bored.

Her other problem was the cold. The cellar was obviously damp, the walls moist to the touch, and the very air chilled her bones. The only way she could keep warm was by sitting on the bed and wrapping the blanket around her.

Hours later, she heard the rumble of the cellar door opening again, and the guard reappeared with another tray, which he placed on the floor near her bed. A waft of even colder air seemed to swoop down the staircase, reducing the temperature in the cellar still further. Marietta guessed that it was already late afternoon, and the temperature was dropping.

She didn’t move, didn’t speak, just watched as he swapped the trays round and turned to leave. Then, as he started walking away towards the spiral staircase, Marietta heard a sound that chilled her even more than the cold of her surroundings. Through the open door to the ruined church above the cellar, she suddenly heard a loud and mournful howl.

Somehow she knew it wasn’t a dog, an Alsatian or anything like that. There was something different about that noise, something that caused the hairs on the back of her neck to rise. It sounded almost primeval, an ancient human nightmare come terrifyingly to life.

And it was close — really close. Definitely somewhere on the island.

‘What’s that?’ she demanded, as the guard continued to walk away from her.

He stopped, turned round and looked back at her, a malicious grin working its way across his face. ‘Just one of our little pets,’ he said. ‘A playmate for you, perhaps, a bit later on.’

‘But what is it?’ she asked again. ‘A wolf?’

‘You’ll find out,’ the guard said. ‘But if I were you, I wouldn’t be in too much of a hurry to meet it.’

A few seconds later, the cellar door rumbled closed and Marietta was alone once more with her thoughts and fears.

At first, she ignored her meal and just sat on the bed, looking across the cellar to the base of the spiral staircase. Over and over again, in her mind, she replayed the sound she’d heard, and the guard’s thinly veiled threat.

She was never going to escape from this island. She knew that with a kind of dull certainty that settled in her mind like a cold and heavy weight. There was no hope for her.

Marietta toppled onto her side, pulled the filthy blanket over her head, and let the tears flow.

It was late afternoon, and once again the Island of the Dead was shrouded in shadows as the sun sank slowly towards the western horizon.

‘Let’s start with your vandalized graves, Chris,’ Angela suggested as they walked away from the vaporetto stop. ‘What do the newspapers say about them?’

Bronson shrugged. ‘Like most newspaper stories, they’re heavy on sensation and light on details. According to the best report, two graves were interfered with on one night, and they were very close to each other, down at the southern end of the cemetery.’

‘So let’s make a start there, then.’

They walked between the ranks of tombs down to the south of the island, looking at the names on the graves as they passed them. Bronson spotted an area where most of the tombs appeared somewhat older than the majority.

‘This report also says that one of the graves was over four hundred years old,’ he said. ‘Those graves over there look pretty old to me.’

Despite the enormous number of tombs, it didn’t take them that long to find the first of the two graves the newspaper claimed had been attacked by vandals. It was a similar structure to the one Angela had taken to calling the ‘vampire’s grave’ — another stone box topped with a flat stone slab that bore the name and dates of the deceased entombed within.

‘Here it is,’ Bronson said. ‘That’s the name that they give in the paper.’

For a few moments they both stared at the structure in front of them.

‘I don’t know about you, Chris,’ Angela said, ‘but I don’t see much evidence of damage. In fact, it looks untouched.’

‘You’re right.’ Then Bronson noticed something, and pointed at the base of the slab covering the top of the grave. ‘I think somebody lifted off that slab,’ he said. ‘Look, the cement holding it in place is fresh. You can see that clean line running all the way around it.’

Once he’d pointed it out, the new cement was very obvious. And when they found the second tomb, it was precisely the same story, except that on this grave the slab had obviously cracked when it had been levered off, and the repair work on the damaged slab also included a couple of metal pins to hold the two sections of it together.