F. Paul Wilson - The Keep

Major Kaempffer slammed his fist down on the table. "Damn! What good are you, old man!"

"I'm all you have, Herr Major. But let me go further with this: Three years ago I went so far as to petition the Romanian government—then under King Carol—to declare the keep a national treasure and take over ownership. It was my hope that such de facto nationalization would bring out the owners, if any still live. But the petition was refused. The Dinu Pass was considered too remote and inaccessible. Also, since there is no Romanian history specifically connected with the keep, it could not be officially considered a national treasure. And finally, and most importantly, nationalization would require use of government funds for maintenance of the keep. Why should that be wasted when private money is doing such an excellent job?

"I had no defense against those arguments. And so, gentlemen, I gave up. My failing health confined me to Bucharest. I had to be satisfied with having exhausted all research resources, with being the greatest living authority on the keep, knowing more about it than anyone else. Which amounts to absolutely nothing."

Magda bristled at her father's constant use of "I." She had done most of the work for him. She knew as much about the keep as he. But she said nothing. It was not her place to contradict her father, not in the presence of others.

"What about these?" Captain Woermann said, pointing to a motley collection of scrolls and leather-bound books in the corner of the room.

"Books?" Papa's eyebrows lifted.

"We've started dismantling the keep," Major Kaempffer said. "This thing we're after will soon have no place left to hide. We'll eventually have every stone in the place exposed to the light of day. Then where will it go?"

Papa shrugged. "A good plan ... as long as you don't release something worse." Magda watched him casually turn his head toward the pile of books, but not before taking note of Kaempffer's startled expression—that possibility had never occurred to the major. "But where did you find the books? There was never a library in the keep, and the villagers can barely read their names."

"In a hollow spot in one of the walls being dismantled," the captain said.

Papa turned to her. "Go see what they are."

Magda stepped over to the corner and knelt beside the books, grateful for an opportunity to be off her feet even for a few minutes. Papa's wheelchair was the only seat in the room, and no one had offered to get a chair for her. She looked at the pile, smelled the familiar musty odor of old paper; she loved books and loved that smell. There were perhaps a dozen or so there, some partially rotten, one in scroll form. Magda pushed her way through them slowly, allowing the muscles of her back as much time as possible to stretch before she had to rise again. She picked up a random volume. Its title was in English: The Book of Eibon. It startled her. It couldn't be ... it was a joke! She looked at the others, translating their titles from the various languages in which they were written, the awe and disquiet mounting within her. These were genuine! She rose and backed away, nearly tripping over her own feet in her haste.

"What's wrong?" Papa asked when he saw her face.

"Those books!" she said, unable to hide her shock and revulsion. "They're not even supposed to exist!"

Papa wheeled his chair closer to the table. "Bring them over here!"

Magda stooped and gingerly lifted two of them. One was De Vermis Mysteriis by Ludwig Prinn; the other, Cultes des Goules by Comte d'Erlette. Both were extremely heavy and her skin crawled just to touch them. The curiosity of the two officers had been aroused to such an extent that they, too, bent to the pile and brought the remaining texts to the table.

Trembling with excitement that increased with each article placed on the table, Papa muttered under his breath between calling out the titles as he saw them.

"The Pnakotic Manuscripts, in scroll form! The duNord translation of The Book of Eibon! The Seven Cryptical Books of Hsan! And here— Unaussprechlichen Kulten by von Juntz! These books are priceless! They've been universally suppressed and forbidden through the ages, so many copies burned that only whispers of their titles have remained. In some cases, it has been questioned whether they ever existed at all! But here they are, perhaps the last surviving copies!"

"Perhaps they were forbidden for a good reason, Papa," Magda said, not liking the light that had begun to shine in his eyes. Finding those books had shaken her. They were purported to describe foul rites and contacts with forces beyond reason and sanity. To learn that they were real, that they and their authors were more than sinister rumors, was profoundly unsettling. It warped the texture of everything.

"Perhaps they were," Papa said without looking up. He had pulled off his outer leather gloves with his teeth and was slipping a rubber cap onto his right index fingertip, still gloved in cotton. Adjusting his bifocals, he began leafing through the pages. "But that was in another time. This is the twentieth century. I can't imagine there being anything in these books we couldn't deal with now."

"What could possibly be so awful?" Woermann said, pulling the leatherbound, iron-hasped copy of Unaussprechlichen Kulten toward him. "Look. This one's in German." He opened the cover and flipped through the pages, finally stopping near the middle and reading.

Magda was tempted to warn him but decided against it. She owed these Germans nothing. She saw the captain's face blanch, saw his throat working in spasms as he slammed the book shut.

"What kind of sick, demented mind is responsible for this sort of thing? It's—it's—" He could not seem to find the words to express what he felt.

"What have you got there?" Papa said, looking up from a book whose title he had not yet announced. "Oh, the von Juntz book. That was first published privately in Düsseldorf in 1839. An extremely small edition, perhaps only a dozen copies..." His voice trailed off.

"Something wrong?" Kaempffer said. He had stood apart from the others, showing little curiosity.

"Yes. The keep was built in the fifteenth century ... that much I know for sure. These books were all written before then, all except that von Juntz book. Which means that as late as the middle of the last century, possibly later, someone visited the keep and deposited this book with the others."

"I don't see how that helps us now," Kaempffer said. "It does nothing to prevent another of our men"—he smiled as an idea struck him—"or perhaps even you or your daughter, from being murdered tonight."

"It does cast a new light on the problem, though," Papa said. "These books you see before you have been condemned through the ages as evil. I deny that. I say they are not evil, but are about evil. The one in my hands right now is especially feared—the Al Azif in the original Arabic."

Magda heard herself gasp. "Oh, no!" That one was the worst of all!

"Yes! I don't know much Arabic, but I know enough to translate the title and the name of the poet responsible for it." He looked from Magda back to Kaempffer. "The answer to your problem may well reside within the pages of these books. I'll start on them tonight. But first I wish to see the corpses."

"Why?" It was Captain Woermann speaking. He had composed himself again after his glance into the von Juntz book.

"I wish to see their wounds. To see if there were any ritual aspects about their deaths."

"We'll take you there immediately." The major called in two of his einsatzkommandos as escort.

Magda didn't want to go—she didn't want to have to look at dead soldiers—but she feared waiting alone for everyone's return, so she took the handles of her father's chair and wheeled him toward the cellar stairs. At the top, she was elbowed aside as the two SS soldiers followed the major's orders and carried her father, chair and all, down the steps. It was cold down there. She wished she hadn't come.