James Becker - The Nosferatu Scroll

‘You and me both,’ Angela said. ‘You really think there are people who are that deluded?’

‘Well, somebody’s certainly collecting relics, and they’re doing it now. That’s unarguable.’

Angela shivered. ‘I’m beginning to think that coming to Venice for a holiday was a really bad idea. We might have had a quieter time in Transylvania, the way things are going.’

Half an hour later, they left the hotel together, and made their way through the streets towards the city centre. They’d decided to walk first over to the Piazza San Marco, and then explore the Castello district, before picking up a vaporetto from the Celestia stop that would take them back to their hotel.

Bronson was very aware of their surroundings as they walked through the narrow streets of the Cannaregio area, but he saw nobody who concerned him.

They crossed over the Grand Canal into the Santa Croce district on the Ponte degli Scalzi, which literally translated as the ‘bridge of the barefoot monks’ and was one of only four bridges which spanned the Canal Grande . Suddenly, the door of one of the tall houses that lined the street was pushed open directly in front of them and a man stepped out. He was so close that Bronson and Angela had to step quickly over to the left to avoid walking into him. The man turned towards them, his face and voice full of apology.

But even as Bronson tried to wave aside the man’s explanation, he was suddenly aware of two other figures emerging through the open doorway behind them. He reached out to try to protect Angela, but before he could pull her to him, something crashed into the side of his head, and he fell senseless to the ground.

Marietta Perini stared in horror at the cockroach climbing up the wooden leg of her bed. It was almost the size of a rat, easily the biggest insect she had ever seen. She lay still, clutching the filthy blanket in both hands, paralysed with terror, because that was just the vanguard of the attack. From the other side of the bed, by the stained concrete wall, dozens of enormous insects were climbing up towards her. She could see their probing antennae above the edge of the mattress, could hear their feet scratching as they drew closer to her.

Then the first cockroach reached her feet and, with a sudden spurt, ran straight under the blanket, heading for her bare legs. She felt the insect’s horny carapace rubbing along the side of her calf, felt the movements of its legs as it moved up her body, but she simply couldn’t move an inch. Then a tidal wave of cockroaches swept across the edge of the mattress, heading straight towards her, and finally she found her voice.

She screamed, the noise echoing off the walls of the cellar, and suddenly found she could move. She threw the blanket from her body and jumped off the mattress on to the floor, the chain attached to her left wrist wrenching her arm back as she did so.

And then she woke up. For a few seconds she stood stock still, panting with terror, eyes wide as she stared around her, looking at the nightmare that had become her reality. There were no giant cockroaches, of course, but there were three or four of the insects scuttling about on her bed.

With an expression of disgust, Marietta flicked them off with the blanket, and checked the mattress and her clothing carefully before she got back on to the bed. She hadn’t expected to sleep at all, her mind whirling with images of insects and rats, and whatever that nameless creature was that she’d heard howling the previous night, and what sleep she’d got had been restless and disturbed, punctuated by vivid and disturbing images.

Then her thoughts shifted, changing direction, and an image of her boyfriend’s face swam into her mind. He would be worried sick about her. He had always been possessive, perhaps too possessive, forever wanting to know where she was, where she was going and who she was with. In the past she’d found it slightly irksome — she was, after all, a liberated Venetian woman — but right then she thanked her stars for Augusto’s personality. He would, she knew, have tried to contact her, to call her mobile, when she hadn’t arrived at his apartment that evening as they’d arranged. Then he would have called her parents, and after that he would have raised the alarm.

Somewhere out there, beyond the island, the search would already have begun. People — a lot of people — would be out looking for her by now, of that she was certain.

She thought of her parents, sitting in their small apartment at the north-western end of Venice, near the railway station, worrying about her, wondering where she was and — knowing them as she did — probably fearing the worst. More than anything else, she wished she could see them again, or at least talk to her mother one last time. But that, she knew, wasn’t going to happen.

Tears sprang to her eyes, and she wiped them away angrily, because she’d just heard the cellar door rumble open. She didn’t want to show any sign of weakness, of emotion, to her captors. It wouldn’t make any difference to her fate, but keeping up her calm facade gave her something — some tiny bit of pride and strength — to hang on to.

One of the guards stepped into the cellar and walked across to her, a plastic tray in his hands.

‘Why are you keeping me here?’ Marietta asked, as the man lowered the tray to the floor and turned to walk away.

‘You’ll find out,’ the guard snapped, as he’d done on every previous occasion. But this time, as he turned to leave the cellar, he looked back towards her for the briefest of instants with something like pity in his eyes, and added a single bleak sentence that drove all other thoughts from her mind. ‘You’ll find out tonight, because we’ve just found the second one.’

Bronson opened his eyes, and immediately closed them again against the glare of the sun. For a few seconds he had no idea where he was or why the side of his head ached so appallingly. When he lifted his arm to touch his skull, his hand came away red with blood. He levered himself up on to one elbow and opened his eyes again. For the first time, he became aware of a small group of people surrounding him, their faces grave with concern. Two men were kneeling on the ground beside him. One was repeatedly asking him something, while the other was trying to help him up into a sitting position.

Bronson reached again towards the injury on his head, then suddenly realized that he couldn’t see Angela. This drove all other thoughts from his mind, and he staggered clumsily to his feet, staring around him.

‘Gently, signor,’ one of the men said. ‘You’ve had a bad fall. We’ve called for an ambulance.’

But Bronson wasn’t listening. Angela was nowhere in sight, and a sickening realization dawned on him: the men who had attacked him had taken her. He quickly took stock of his situation. He didn’t know exactly how long he’d been unconscious, but it could only have been a matter of minutes.

‘There were some men with me,’ he said to the man standing closest to him, ‘and a woman. Did you see where they went?’

‘No. I only saw you lying on the street.’

Bronson stared at the building from which he’d seen the man emerge, seconds before he’d been attacked. Shaking off the restraining hands of one of the men, he walked somewhat shakily across to the door, and tried the handle, but it was locked. That, too, was unsurprising.

For a few seconds, Bronson tugged at the handle in impotent fury, and then his rational mind reasserted itself. The one place in Venice where Angela certainly wouldn’t be was inside that building. He had no doubt his attackers had dragged her inside as soon as the assault had taken place, but she’d have been within its walls only long enough for them to subdue her, and then they’d have taken her to some other secure location. Both the streets and buildings in that part of Venice were narrow, and many of the houses ran from one street to another. By now, she could be in any building or even on a boat, heading for another part of the city or out to one of the islands.