James Becker - The Nosferatu Scroll

The Browning in his hand, he crouched down behind the collection of old timbers. The only sound he could hear was the wind sighing through the branches of the handful of trees on the island, the branches creaking and groaning faintly as they moved. Even the animal imprisoned in the shed seemed to have fallen silent.

Then there was a click and a faint rumble, and a black oblong shape appeared at the far end of the church. Beyond it he could see electric lights illuminating the top of a staircase that was set into the wall. It was obviously a door which led down to a cellar.

Two figures — the men he’d seen in the stable — stepped out and into the church. Bronson tensed, as he prepared to run towards the hidden door and down the steps. But then he relaxed again. The men had left the cellar door wide open, which meant that they could be going back down again. It would be better to wait until they’d left the church completely, and then make his entrance.

But then he realized there was another possibility. They could have left the door open to allow other people to enter the cellar, and this changed the odds once again.

As the two men reached the main entrance to the church, Bronson heard another noise. From over to his right, from the house itself, he heard the sound of shoes on gravel. It was clear that several people were now approaching the old church.

By now, the two men were still clearly visible at the church doorway, presumably waiting for the arrival of the approaching people. Bronson glanced over at the secret door, but knew that if he left his hiding place, he’d be seen well before he reached it. He would have to wait, and pick his moment.

There was a brief instant of silence, and then the first of the new arrivals stepped into the church. Bronson stared across at the figure, disbelief clouding his mind.

The man — and Bronson knew the figure was male simply by the way he walked — was clad in a dark, possibly black, hooded robe, his face completely hidden. He looked like a caricature of a monk, though without any doubt Christian thoughts and prayers were a long way from his mind. Bronson had guessed from the few clues he had been able to find that the deaths of the girls might well have involved some kind of ritual. What he hadn’t anticipated was that the ritual might involve a quasi-religious ceremony. But this was what seemed to be about to take place, because the hooded man was followed by others, all clad in the same all-enveloping robes.

The figures made their way in single file across the old stone floor, the hems of their robes just brushing the ground. Bronson counted eleven, plus the first man who appeared to be the leader of the group. He seemed to remember that thirteen was supposed to be the number of witches in a coven, and wondered if that was significant, if there was another man already waiting down in the cellar.

Then he heard a faint click, and saw that the lights on the stone staircase had been extinguished. A new light, faint and flickering, had sprung to life just inside the hidden doorway. Obviously the leader of the group had lit a candle.

As the man started to walk slowly down the staircase, Bronson heard something else: a single scream of anguish from deep within the chamber below. Could it have been Angela? One way or another, he was going to find out.

Bronson knew he was heavily outnumbered, and he had no idea if any of the group were carrying weapons under their robes, or if there were firearms stored in the cellar. Whatever the case, he had to get down to that cellar.

And suddenly he saw a way of achieving just that. The men filing down the stairs were walking slowly, but they were too close together for him to tackle one without the person in front seeing what was happening. Each man paused inside the secret doorway to light a candle before descending out of sight, which meant several of them were now clustered outside the doorway, waiting their turn. But then the last man in the group stopped and turned back to the church entrance. One of the two men outside the ruined building had said something — Bronson didn’t catch what — and had attracted his attention.

The man walked swiftly back to the church entrance, muttered something to the men outside, and closed the door. Then he turned and walked back towards the hidden doorway, through which the last of his companions had just disappeared. At that moment Bronson holstered the Browning and made his move.

He ran across the debris-strewn stone floor after his target. The moment he did so, the hooded man turned towards him, obviously having seen some movement in his peripheral vision. When he saw Bronson, a sudden expression of panic clouded his features, and he opened his mouth to shout.

But Bronson didn’t give him the chance, as he dived forward and slammed his left shoulder into the man’s chest. The impact drove every vestige of breath from his target’s body, and he fell backwards, gasping for air.

The two men tumbled to the ground together, Bronson cushioned by the body that had fallen beneath him. The other man caught his breath and started to rise, but Bronson had anticipated his movement. He punched him — hard — in his solar plexus, and followed it up with a vicious short-arm jab to the chin. The man’s head snapped backwards, the rear of his skull crunching on to one of the flagstones. His eyes rolled backwards and his body went limp.

Bronson stood up and looked all round him. He knew he had only seconds to act before somebody in the group noticed that the last man hadn’t appeared.

He seized the man’s right arm and pulled him into a sitting position, then wrapped his arms around his chest and lifted him upright across his body, like a bulky sack. Moving awkwardly across the ground to the pile of debris behind which he’d hidden before, he simply let go. The man’s limp body crashed to the ground, his head again cracking on to the old stones. At best, Bronson guessed that he would have a concussion and a blinding headache for a few days. At worst, he might already be dying from cranial bleeding. Either way, he didn’t care.

With some difficulty, he removed the man’s robe. Underneath it, he was naked apart from a pair of sandals, confirmation, if it was needed, of the sort of ritual that was about to take place. Bronson didn’t bother about the sandals, but swiftly pulled on the robe over his street clothes and then ran across to the door in the church wall.

Pulling the hood down over his features to conceal his face as much as he could, he picked up one of the large yellow candles lying on a shelf just inside the doorway, lit it from the box of matches that was also on the shelf, and began to make his way slowly down the stone spiral staircase.

The moment the light went out, Marietta gave a shriek of terror. She knew what the sudden darkness meant. For them, there was no more time. The ceremony was about to start, and within minutes she and Angela would be dying in agony.

She screamed again as the first hooded figure appeared at the base of the stone staircase, his features fitfully illuminated by the flickering light of his candle.

In almost complete silence, the remainder of the group appeared one by one at the bottom of the staircase and stepped into the cellar, the only noise the faint slapping of their leather sandals against the stone floor. As before, they moved slowly around the stone table, taking up their prearranged positions in what looked like a ghastly parody of a religious service.

Angela watched with mounting horror as the figures, all dressed in identical black robes, strode silently and menacingly across the cellar. Marietta had explained what had happened the night Benedetta had died, and it was obvious that the ritual tonight was going to be almost identical.