Valerio Manfredi - The Ancient Curse

The man covered his mouth with his hand in a gesture of despair. ‘He killed my dog,’ he said softly. ‘He’s already here.’ Then, with a sudden flash of conscience, he pushed Fabrizio towards a door at the back of the kitchen. ‘You can get out this way. The regional road is just 100 metres away. There’s always a car passing. Run.’ He searched Fabrizio’s face fleetingly, but then his eyes turned blank. He walked mechanically to the door that led to the courtyard and was outside before Fabrizio could stop him.

Fabrizio heard a shriek of terror, followed by the same growl he’d heard a few nights before, suffocated as the animal sank his snout into flesh and blood. He ran through the kitchen, down the hall and out the back door. He could see his car out of the corner of his eye; he knew he could make it. But as he was about to make a dash for it, he saw two headlights flare at the far end the courtyard and Francesca’s little Jeep pulled up. He heard her voice calling, ‘Fabrizio! Fabrizio, are you there?’

Fabrizio felt his blood turn to water and, gripped by panic, he shouted out at the top of his voice, ‘Francesca! Francesca, no! Lock yourself in! Don’t move!’

And he sprinted towards his own car, partially illuminated now by Francesca’s headlights. But the beast instantly looked up from its victim and lunged after him. Fabrizio could feel its hot panting at his back, but he was sure he could make it. The car was there and Francesca was alive, though he could hear her terrified screaming. He opened the door, grabbed the gun, spun around and pulled the trigger. In the beam of the Jeep’s headlights he saw the creature’s terrifying bulk, its hackles raised, its bared bloodied fangs, and he understood he had failed in the same instant in which horror nailed him fast to the ground, slowed, almost paralysed his movements but left his mind free to race at an insane speed towards his own death.

He had no idea what was happening when the courtyard was swept by the blinding glare of another set of headlights. The dilated space of that unreal event was ripped through with agitated shouting and a burst of deafening explosions. He finally separated a voice he could recognize. It was Lieutenant Reggiani, yelling, ‘Fire! Fire! Shoot to kill, damn it. Don’t let it get away!’

Fabrizio heard bullets whistling in every direction, saw the dark sky streaked by vermilion tracers. White-hot stones scattered about him, filling the air with the sharp odour of burnt flint. A black mass made an impossible leap, cleared the squad-car blockade and disappeared into nowhere. Without noise, weightless, shape without substance, it seemed, until you saw the trail of blood it left behind. The man with his throat torn out was still bleeding in the glow of the headlights, his corpse jumbled up with the body of a dog, a brave little creature killed in the line of duty.

Fabrizio thought his head would explode. He called out, ‘Francesca!’ and the girl ran to him, threw herself into his arms and clung to him, crying the whole time.

Fabrizio touched her hair, caressed her cheek. ‘Do you believe me now?’

‘Looks like we got here just in time,’ rang out Reggiani’s voice to his right.

Fabrizio turned to face him. He was wearing combat fatigues and held two smoking pistols, one in each hand. The officer turned to the corpse on the ground.

‘To save you, that is. It’s over for this poor devil… Christ, what a horrifying death!’

Exhausted by so much emotion, Fabrizio put an arm around Francesca’s shoulders and walked her back to her Jeep, trying to calm her. He turned to Reggiani. ‘Could someone take my car home? Francesca can’t drive,’ he said, adding, ‘She’s in shock.’ As if he were fine and in complete control of all his faculties.

Reggiani didn’t miss a beat. ‘Right. You go and take care of her. We’ll take care of the car. Tonight or tomorrow morning.’

Fabrizio got into the Jeep and drove off at a slow pace, keeping one hand on the steering wheel and the other around Francesca’s shoulders and saying, every so often, ‘There, there. It’s all over now. You’ll be OK.’

‘Stay with me tonight, please,’ said Francesca as soon as she had calmed down.

‘Yes, I’ll stay with you. That’s why I asked Reggiani to have my car taken care of.’

He crossed the regional road and turned off on to the local road that led to Francesca’s house.

Once inside, she prepared some herbal tea, poured it into two cups and sat at the table opposite him. Her cheeks were still streaked with tears, her hair was messy and her eyes were red and yet she was beautiful, with a quiet, unselfconscious beauty she seemed totally unaware of.

He drank small sips of the tea until it was gone, then got up and said, ‘Come on. Let’s go to bed.’

THE NEXT MORNING Fabrizio woke up early and feeling fairly normal, surprisingly so. Perhaps he had Francesca’s herbal tea to thank. She was already in the kitchen, making breakfast. He could tell that last night’s ordeal had affected her but not prostrated her. She was not the type to let her emotions run wild. Fabrizio was sure she was already rationalizing what had happened and searching for plausible explanations.

‘Why did you follow me last night?’ he asked her suddenly.

‘I tried to call you, half an hour after you left, and you didn’t answer.’

‘That’s impossible. My mobile phone never rang.’

‘I’m sure you never heard it ring. You left it here!’ she said, opening a drawer. ‘I turned it off and put it away for safe keeping.’

Fabrizio shook his head, took the phone, turned it on and put it into his pocket.

‘When I realized your mobile phone was here, I wanted to let you know and I called your home number. It rang and rang. You forgot to turn on the answering machine.’

‘That’s likely.’

‘I tried ten minutes later, thinking you’d got held up somewhere or had a flat. Still no answer… so I put two and two together. I drove by your house anyway to make sure. The lights were on inside but your car was missing. I realized you’d gone in and out in such a hurry that you’d forgotten to switch off the lights. At that point I had no doubt – I figured you’d gone looking for Montanari.’

‘Right. And the carabinieri got on your tail.’

‘I think they were already on yours. I’m sure Reggiani’s keeping an eye on you.’

‘Hmm. They’re good at it. I hadn’t even noticed. But why were you trying to call me in the first place?’

‘Because I’d discovered something.’

‘After I’d left your house? Are you kidding me?’

‘No, not in the least. Hold on tight: Balestra’s inscription is opisthographic.’

‘What do you mean? That there’s writing on both sides?’

Francesca was all calm and composed. She took the coffee pot off the stove and poured out two cups, then proceeded to scramble three eggs while a couple of pieces of thick Tuscan bread were toasting in the oven.

‘How can you say that?’ insisted Fabrizio, trying not to appear impatient.

‘I have a copy of the tape I gave you and after you left I got curious. I couldn’t resist taking a look. I was fast-forwarding it when the cat starting miaowing from behind the door. I got up to let him in and opened a can of cat food. As I was putting it in his dish, I realized I’d forgotten to pause the VCR. When I got back, the tape had gone beyond the point at which you could see Balestra’s transcription of the Etruscan text, which was the only thing I had considered, and it picked up other images.’

‘What images?’ urged Fabrizio. ‘Francesca, don’t make me drag the words out of your mouth!’

‘My camera kept filming for five minutes longer and captured a sequence of images that look like they were created by a scanner. Balestra has one that recognizes sixteen million tones of grey. For some reason that I couldn’t fathom at first, he had photographed the back side of the inscription and then scanned the photo.’