James Becker - The Nosferatu Scroll

One way or another, the island and its ancient graveyard were inextricably linked to the events of the present day. Maybe, Bronson thought, he should go back there, take another look at that tomb of the twin angels, and see if he could work out anything useful from the inscriptions on the old stone. It wasn’t much of a plan, and he wasn’t sure it was even worth doing, but it was, he reflected, probably better than sitting in the hotel room trying to translate an old Latin text.

He shut down the computer, checked he had his camera and his binoculars, took his leather jacket out of the wardrobe, and walked down to the reception desk.

Half an hour later he was again sitting at the controls of his small red boat, and steering the small vessel north-east across the choppy waters of the Venetian lagoon.

Apart from a few visits to the loo, each time accompanied by one of her silent and unsmiling guards to the door of a ground-floor lavatory — which had a barred window and no internal lock or bolt — Angela hadn’t left the elegant room in the house since she’d arrived. Early in the evening, a tray of food had been put in front of her, and around midnight she’d eventually tried to get some sleep on the wide sofa in front of the fireplace.

But she hadn’t been idle that evening. The suave but indescribably menacing man had seen to that. He had finally introduced himself as ‘Marco’, but she had no idea if that was what he was actually called or just a convenient name he’d pulled out of the air.

As soon as he’d shown her the appalling collection of ‘souvenirs’, Angela had realized that cooperation with her captors was hardly a choice: it was an absolute necessity if she was to avoid the agonizing mutilation that the group was so obviously capable of inflicting. So when Marco had asked if she was prepared to complete the translations, she’d simply nodded her agreement.

She’d been led across to a large oak desk set in one corner, and been told to sit on a leather swivel chair right in front of it, an incongruously modern piece of furniture in the elegant and old-fashioned room. Even those few steps across the polished wooden floor left her feeling as weak as a kitten: presumably she’d been pumped full of a cocktail of drugs to keep her quiet while they transported her to the house — wherever it was — and her body was still feeling the after effects. She knew that trying to fight her captors or run out of the room would be completely futile. Before she could do anything to try to escape, she would have to wait until she’d regained her strength. And she also needed to find out a lot more about the house in which she was being held prisoner, and its location. And especially what lay outside the windows.

On the desk was a selection of reference books of various types, the majority clearly written in English, about half a dozen pencils, roughly half a ream of white paper, the battered leather-bound diary itself, and two separate piles of pages which she saw immediately were photocopies of the diary entries.

Marco had pointed to those two sets of pages. ‘Ignore the one on the left,’ he said. ‘Those are just records of Carmelita’s life: interesting but not important for us. The other section is the one we’re interested in. You can start translating that right now.’

Angela shook her head. ‘I’ll need a Latin dictionary,’ she said. ‘I don’t have the vocabulary to translate this. Can you find one on the Internet for me?’

Marco laughed shortly. ‘We’re not going to let you anywhere near a computer,’ he said. Then he searched quickly through the pile of books at the back of the desk and selected a Latin-Italian dictionary.

Angela opened her mouth to point out that she didn’t speak Italian, but before she could say anything, he had found another dictionary, this time a Latin-English version, and the words of protest died in her throat.

‘And when I’ve finished?’ Angela had asked. ‘What then? You’ll shoot me? Is that it?’

Marco had shaken his head. ‘I think we can find a more interesting way to usher you into the next life,’ he’d said. ‘But I do have some good news for you.’

‘What?’

‘If you do a good job, you’ll still be alive tomorrow. But after that, I can’t promise you anything. And before you start work, let me point out that we’ve already translated some of the text ourselves, so we’ll know if your version is accurate.’

‘If you’ve done that, then why do you need me at all?’ Angela had asked.

‘You English have an expression about a gift horse. If we don’t need you to do the translation, then we don’t need you at all, so just be grateful. But it’s not just translating the Latin. There are some unusual aspects of the text that we haven’t been able to make sense of. That’s the real reason why we want you to work on it.’

Without another word Angela had pulled the dictionary across in front of her, picked up a pencil and looked at the first sentence.

Sometime that morning — Marietta had no idea exactly when — the upper door to the cellar rumbled open and the light snapped on.

A few moments later, the guard appeared in the room, carrying a tray of food exactly as he’d done on previous occasions, and a plastic bag that contained her clothes. He walked across to Marietta, tossed the bag on to the mattress, placed the tray on the floor in front of her, and turned to leave.

‘Please,’ Marietta pleaded with him. ‘Please leave the lights on. And what happened to Benedetta? Where is she? And who was that man — the one with those horrible teeth?’

‘So many questions,’ the guard said mockingly. ‘But you needn’t worry about Benedetta. We got what we wanted from her.’

‘So where is she now? Did you let her go?’

‘In a manner of speaking, I suppose we did. We sent her to San Michele,’ he added.

For a moment, Marietta didn’t understand the expression. Then it dawned on her that he meant the ‘Island of the Dead’, and the confirmation of what she’d feared hit her hard.

‘You killed her,’ she said flatly. ‘That foul ritual last night. You raped her and bled her to death. You bastards.’

‘You catch on quick,’ the guard said. ‘But at least she died for a good reason. There was a point to her death, just as there’ll be a point to yours.’

‘What point could there possibly be in snatching girls like me off the streets of Venice and then killing us?’

The guard looked at her carefully for a few moments. ‘You’re not just any girl,’ he said. ‘You and Benedetta were both special. That’s why you were chosen. We’ve traced your bloodline.’

‘My bloodline?’

‘You and Benedetta are descended from someone who is vitally important to our society.’

‘And you’re going to kill me because of one of my ancestors? That makes no sense at all.’

‘It does to us,’ the guard said simply. ‘You’ll have company soon.’

‘Who?’ Marietta asked, though she dreaded hearing the answer.

‘Another girl. We’ve got her in the house at the moment, but she’ll be brought down here soon enough. But she won’t be able to talk to you. No girly chatter with that one.’

‘Why?’ Marietta demanded. ‘What have you done to her?’

The guard smiled slightly. ‘Nothing at all,’ he said. ‘It’s just that she doesn’t speak a word of Italian. But don’t worry. You won’t be on your own for too long. Soon you’ll be reunited with your friend.’

For a moment Marietta sat in silence, eyes downcast, guessing what he meant but hardly daring to ask the question that would confirm her fears. Then she looked at him directly.

‘What do you mean?’ she asked.