Valerio Manfredi - The Ancient Curse

A more familiar glow shone from the open windows on his way and he heard the exclamations of the people inside watching the game on television. A carabiniere cruiser passed in absolute silence, as if it were running with the engine off. An old man rode by on his bicycle with a shoulder-length mane of white hair that fluttered in the breeze like a bride’s veil. A dog poked his nose into a bag of rubbish that he’d managed to get out of the bin. In the distance, Fabrizio could even hear the whirring blades of a helicopter, no doubt patrolling the countryside in search of invisible monsters. Fabrizio’s mobile phone rang loudly in his pocket and he jumped. In the dead calm of that sleepy city, any noise louder than a clock’s ticking sounded like a trumpet blast.

‘Hi, Sonia,’ he said as her name came up on the display panel.

‘Hi there, sweetie. I really am sorry I couldn’t keep you company for dinner. I was so tired I didn’t feel like eating.’

‘Don’t worry about it. Where are you?’

‘At the hotel.’

‘Good girl. Don’t go out on your own or you could get into trouble.’

‘I’ve heard. Two murders. You might have told me yourself.’

‘I didn’t want to frighten you.’

‘Frighten me, my arse. How long did you think it would take before I heard about them? Everyone knows what’s going on and they’re scared shitless. Where are you?’

‘Out.’

‘Do you feel like coming by?’

‘As in do I feel like a fuck?’

‘You jerk.’

‘Sorry. I can be there in ten minutes. Is something wrong?’

‘I’ve rebuilt the animal’s head. You can look him in the face. Virtually, that is.’

‘You’re kidding! Didn’t you say you were worn out and were going straight to bed?’

‘I’ve just got my second wind. I’m using an awesome program that I developed myself. I don’t fool around when it comes to work. And I don’t fuck around either.’

‘Too bad. I was starting to get ideas.’

‘Come on, move your arse. I’ll be waiting downstairs at the bar.’

Fabrizio reached his car and set off in the direction of Sonia’s hotel. She was sitting at a table, smoking and working on the laptop she had open in front of her.

‘Before I show you this I want to ask you something. When I first got here, the lower left canine was missing. I went out to buy a sandwich and when I came back it was in its place in the jaw. Was that someone’s idea of a stupid joke?’

‘No, sorry, no joke. I had it and I had meant to put it back.’

‘OK, one less mystery to explain. Ready, then?’

‘Wait, so how did you do this?’

‘Look,’ she said as the program was loading. ‘You plug in all the points at which the muscles join and then, based on the dimensions, the program recreates the muscle using an anatomy database.’

As Sonia was explaining, the skull of the animal appeared and was filled in with muscles, then veins, then skin.

‘What we cannot determine, obviously, is the colour of the eyes and the fur. But let’s say the fur was black – it seems to fit the situation. And we’ll say the eyes were… yellow, for the same reason.’

The beast’s head was shockingly real. Sonia picked a pose with its lips pulled back to bare gums bristling with pointed fangs, and revolved it. It looked like an enormous wolf but from some angles it shared certain features with a big cat. A terrifying combination, like some sort of bloodthirsty Cerberus.

Fabrizio shook his head incredulously. ‘It’s horrifying…’ he whispered. ‘But how realistic is this reconstruction? You’re not playing games with the program, are you?’

‘Let’s say that there’s a 90 per cent probability he looked like this. Obviously I can’t tell whether it was a male or a female. I’m guessing male. And maybe I have an idea of what it is.’

‘Well?’

‘I have to check out some sources at the library first. I want to be sure. But I do have an idea. So, then, what do you think?’

‘It’s fantastic, Sonia. I knew you were the best.’

They ordered a couple of beers and lingered for a while, chatting, then Fabrizio had her make him a copy and said goodnight.

He went back to his car and headed home. It was past eleven when he let himself in, switched on the light and turned on his computer. He inserted a disk and watched as the image of the young lad of Volterra appeared on the screen. The shade of twilight.

THE THREE-DIMENTIONAL image rotated in the virtual space in front of him and the dark spot that he had noticed in the X-rays became larger in size and took on sharper contours as the resolution increased. It seemed to Fabrizio that there could be no doubt that the shape was that of a blade seemingly embedded in the boy’s side. He printed a paper copy with the intention of showing it to the NAS director the next day and asking permission to micro-drill a specimen for metallographic analysis. He was practically certain that it would confirm that a different alloy was present under the surface of the statue at the point made clear in the X-ray. If Balestra refused, he would ask to explore the statue from the tenons, the pins that anchored the feet to the base – a non-invasive method that would not damage the statue in any way. But it would be costly. And problematic. It would also involve removing the statue from public show for several days for an outcome that might be less than worth the trouble.

The telephone rang. An irritating burst of noise in that silence, at that hour of the night. Could it be Sonia? Reggiani? A thousand thoughts flitted through his head in the brief interval of time before he picked up the receiver and said hello.

‘I told you to leave the boy in peace! I warned you.’ It was the same female voice he had heard on the other two occasions. But harsher this time, commanding, threatening.

‘Listen,’ he hurriedly said, ‘don’t hang up. I- ’

But the mysterious caller had already cut the short. He replaced the receiver as well and remained standing for a few moments, deep in thought. A sudden awareness struck him and he ran over to where the switches were, next to the door, and flipped on all the outside lights. He grabbed a big torch from a drawer and raced through the door. The sound of an engine could be heard: a pickup or van passing on the road and disappearing into the distance.

She had to be very close if she’d seen him working on his computer and had seen the image of the boy on the screen. Fabrizio tore around the house, checking every corner, and kicked open the door to the stables, exploring the room thoroughly with his torch. Nothing, except for a clutch of cockroaches frozen at the centre of the floor, surprised by that sudden, noisy intrusion.

He pulled the door shut behind him and ran towards the bushes that skirted the olive grove to see if there were traces of footsteps on the soft ground. Nothing. He strained to listen for suspicious sounds. Only the flurrying wings of some startled bird interrupted the silence of the night. He slashed through the darkness with his ray of light, unwilling to believe there was nothing there. How could she have been watching him from so close without leaving any trace of her presence? Maybe she wasn’t close by at all; could she be observing him from a distance, through binoculars, and using a mobile phone to call him? What kind of woman would be wandering around these deserted fields in the middle of the night without any fear of the thing everything was terrified of?

Fabrizio suddenly realized that he was almost 200 metres from the house, at the edge of the wood, when he heard a low whining at first, then a deep, rumbling snarl coming from the trees. He switched off his torch at once while a stream of adrenalin coursed through his blood and he took off towards the house, his heart hammering in his chest and pounding at his temples. He tripped in the darkness over a dry branch and pitched forward, skinning his hands, arms and chin. He stumbled frantically to his feet, slipped again, then sprinted back in the direction of the house as the low growl became a long, bloodcurdling howl that spread through the gully between the two hills, as if the voice of hell were exploding in the still night air.