James Becker - The Nosferatu Scroll

Angela shook her head. ‘I’m not a linguist,’ she said. ‘I work with ceramics. And in any case, that book is just a diary.’

‘How do you know that,’ the man asked mildly, ‘if you can’t read Latin?’

‘OK, I’m fairly familiar with Latin, and I did translate some of it. But what I said is true: it’s just a diary.’

The man shook his head. ‘That book is far more than just a diary. The first section is a chronicle of events, yes, but that isn’t the part we’re interested in. It’s the last dozen or so pages — what’s written there is very different.’

‘I didn’t do more than just look at that section,’ Angela pointed out.

‘Well, now you’re going to translate all of it.’

‘Why? What could possibly be so important in a two-hundred-year-old diary? Important enough to justify all this?’ Angela made a sweeping gesture to encompass the entire house and whatever lay outside the building.

‘We’re looking for something.’

‘I guessed that. What?’

‘A source document. A document that’s older, hundreds of years older, than this diary. Twelfth century, in fact.’

Despite her situation, and her worries about Bronson, Angela felt her pulse quicken. Once history grabbed you, it never let go, and ancient texts had always held a special fascination for her.

‘What document?’ she asked.

An expression that could have been a smile flickered across the man’s face. ‘We don’t know what it’s called, but we do know that it exists. Or at least that it existed.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because we’ve seen copies of copies of different parts of it — many of them to some extent contradictory. We believe that this diary might tell us exactly where to look for the original.’

Angela frowned. ‘I don’t understand. This diary — or whatever you want to call it — was written by a woman almost two centuries ago, and has been locked up inside her tomb since she died. How can you possibly know it contains information about this other document?’

‘We’ve always known about the diary. We just didn’t know where it was. The Paganinis were somewhat notorious in Venice, and we’ve studied the family archives. Carmelita Paganini’s tomb was the next place we wanted to search, but we didn’t know where it was.’

‘It looked to me as if somebody had erased her name from the slab covering the grave,’ Angela said.

‘Exactly. Carmelita was an embarrassment while she was alive, and even more so when she was dead, at least to some members of the Paganini dynasty.’

‘The brick in the mouth? They thought she was a vampire?’

‘A primitive attempt to destroy her, but completely pointless. Carmelita Paganini wasn’t a vampire — she just thought she was. She spent her life trying to achieve that nobility, but it’s clear she never managed it. The crumbling bones in her grave are proof enough of that.’

‘ Nobility? ’ Angela asked.

The man smiled again. ‘That seems to us to be an entirely appropriate term to use when referring to a higher form of life, to something superhuman.’

Angela opened her mouth to deliver a sharp retort, but then she glanced around at the other men and thought better of it.

‘So this source document,’ she asked instead. ‘What do you know about it?’

‘We don’t know its name, so we just call it “The Source”. It was written in the early twelfth century, apparently by a lapsed monk who lived in part of the country that’s now called Hungary.’

‘It was called Hungary then as well,’ Angela pointed out. ‘It’s one of the oldest countries in Europe.’

The man shrugged. ‘Whatever. We’ve found several references to it in various archives, and some of them talked about a book written by Carmelita Paganini. According to one contemporary account, she’d not only seen the original text, the source document itself, and incorporated some of the passages into her diary, but also knew where it was hidden. That’s why we’ve been so keen to find it, and why you’ll now assist us by translating Carmelita’s diary.’

‘And why should I help you?’ Angela said. ‘You’ve attacked me on the street and kidnapped me. What makes you think that I’ll do anything to help you?’

‘I’m sure we can persuade you. I think you’re right-handed,’ the man replied, ‘so we’ll start with your left hand.’

Angela stared up at him, her blood turning to ice. ‘What do you mean?’ she demanded.

‘Let me show you,’ the man replied. He turned to one of the other men and issued a crisp instruction in Italian.

After a few moments the second man returned, carrying a jar perhaps six inches high and three or four in diameter, fitted with an airtight lid. It looked to Angela like a small version of one of the old Kilner jars her mother had used years ago for bottling fruit. Inside it was an almost colourless liquid in which several small pale objects were submerged.

‘What’s that?’ Angela demanded.

‘I suppose you could call them souvenirs,’ the man said, moving the jar closer to Angela’s face. ‘You’re not the first person we’ve needed to — what shall we say? — motivate — to assist us with the translations and other matters.’

For a few moments Angela stared at the objects inside the jar uncomprehendingly, then she recoiled with a gasp of disgust. What she had first assumed were some kind of vegetables — carrots, perhaps, or parsnips — were actually the severed joints of human fingers.

‘Every time you refuse to do what we ask, we’ll remove a part of one of the fingers on your left hand,’ the man continued. ‘You won’t bleed to death, because we will cauterize the wound with a soldering iron. One of my men particularly enjoys doing the amputations. He uses a pair of bolt croppers if he’s in a good mood. But if you annoy him, he’ll do it by clamping your finger between a couple of pieces of wood and using a hacksaw. That takes longer, and there’s a lot more blood, but he doesn’t seem to mind that.’

Angela tore her horrified gaze from the revolting contents of the jar and looked up into the man’s face. ‘You utter bastard,’ she muttered.

The man shook his head. ‘Abuse won’t help you,’ he said. ‘In fact, nothing can help you now. You’ve seen our faces, and we simply can’t afford to let you tell anybody else what you’ve seen.’

For a few seconds Angela just sat there, numbly digesting the explicit threat. Because this was the point. She had seen their faces, and she knew with a terrifying sense of certainty that she would never be allowed to leave the island alive.

The man — whoever he was — had just casually delivered her death sentence.

The cellar door rumbled open, the light snapped off and the door closed sharply. Benedetta gave a little cry of shock and surprise.

Marietta shrank back on to the bed. It was the first time the light had been switched off since the morning after her arrival and the action alarmed her.

For a few seconds the only sound in the cellar was the breathing of the two girls, then Benedetta gave a low moan. ‘What’s going to happen to us?’ she murmured, her words barely audible. ‘I’m so frightened. Why has the light gone off?’

‘I don’t know,’ Marietta replied, a tremor in her own voice.

A few minutes later they heard the familiar rumbling sound as the stone door at the top of the spiral staircase was opened again.

‘Somebody’s coming,’ Marietta said. ‘They’ll put the light on before they come down.’

But she was wrong. They heard the sound of footsteps, several footsteps, descending the stairs, and saw a flickering glow that grew brighter with each passing moment. Then a figure walked into the cellar.