F. Paul Wilson: The Keep

"Wait," Lutz panted. "This thing is a foot deep. It'll take all night like this. We'll never finish before the next watch. Let's see if we can bend the center of the cross out a little more. I've got an idea."

Using both bayonets, they managed to bulge the gold upright out of its groove at a point just below the silver crosspiece, leaving enough space behind it to slip Lutz's belt through between the metal and the stone.

"Now we can pull straight out!"

Grunstadt returned the smile, but weakly. He seemed uneasy about being away from his post for so long. "Then let's get to it".

They put their feet on the wall above and beside the block, each with both hands on the belt, then threw their aching backs, legs, and arms into extracting the stubborn stone. With a high-pitched scrape of protest, it began to move, shimmying, shuddering, sliding. Then it was out. They pushed it to the side and Lutz fumbled for a match.

"Ready to be rich?" He lit the kerosene lamp and held it to the opening. Nothing but darkness within.

"Always," Grunstadt replied. "When do I start counting?"

"Soon as I get back." He adjusted the flame, then began to belly-crawl through the opening, pushing the lamp ahead of him. He found himself in a narrow stone shaft, angled slightly downward ... and only four feet long. The shaft ended at another stone block, identical to the one they had just struggled so long and so hard to move. Lutz held the lamp close to it. This cross looked like gold and silver, too.

"Give me the bayonet," he said, reaching his hand back to Grunstadt.

Grunstadt placed the handle of the bayonet into the waiting palm. "What's the matter?"

"Roadblock."

For a moment, Lutz felt defeated. With barely room for one man in the narrow shaft, it would be impossible to remove the second stone that faced him. The whole wall would have to be broken through, and that was more than he and Grunstadt could hope to accomplish on their own, no matter how many nights they worked at it. He didn't know what to do next, but he had to satisfy his curiosity as to the metals in the inlaid cross before him. If the upright was gold, he would at least be sure that he was on the right track.

Grunting as he twisted within the confinement of the shaft, Lutz dug the point of the bayonet into the cross. It sank easily. But more, the stone began to swing backward, as if hinged on its left side. Ecstatic, Lutz pushed at it with his free hand and found that it was only a facade no more than an inch thick. It moved easily at his touch, releasing a waft of cold, fetid air from the darkness beyond it. Something in that air caused the hair on his arms and at the base of his neck to stand on end.

Cold, he thought, as he felt himself shiver involuntarily, but not that cold.

He stifled a growing unease and crawled forward, sliding the lamp ahead of him along the stone floor of the shaft. As he passed it through the new opening, the flame began to die. It neither flickered nor sputtered within its glass chimney, so the blame could not be laid on any turbulence in the cold air that continued to drift past him. The flame merely began to waste away, to wither on its wick. The possibility of a noxious gas crossed his mind, but Lutz could smell nothing and felt no shortness of breath, no eye or nasal irritation.

Perhaps the kerosene was low. As he pulled the lamp back to him to check, the flame returned to its former size and brightness. He shook the base and felt the liquid slosh around within. Plenty of kerosene. Puzzled, he pushed the lamp forward again, and again the flame began to shrink. The farther into the chamber he pushed it, the smaller it became, illuminating absolutely nothing. Something was wrong here.

"Otto!" he called over his shoulder. "Tie the belt around one of my ankles and hold on. I'm going further down."

"Why don't we wait until tomorrow ... when it's light?"

"Are you mad? The whole detail will know then! They'll all want a share—and the captain will probably take most of it! We'll have done all the work and we'll wind up with nothing!"

Grunstadt's voice wavered. "I don't like this anymore."

"Something wrong, Otto?"

"I'm not sure. I just don't want to be down here anymore."

"Stop talking like an old woman!" Lutz snapped. He didn't need Grunstadt going soft on him now. He felt uneasy himself, but there was a fortune just inches away and he wasn't going to let anything stop him from claiming it. "Tie that belt and hold on! If this shaft gets any steeper, I don't want to slip down."

"All right," came the reluctant reply from behind him. "But hurry."

Lutz waited until he felt the belt cinch tight around his left ankle, then began to crawl forward into the dark chamber, the lamp ahead of him. He was seized by a sense of urgency. He moved as quickly as the confined space would allow. By the time his head and shoulders were through the opening, the lamp's flame had dimmed to a tiny blue-white flicker ... as if the light were unwelcome, as if the darkness had sent the flame back into its wick.

As Lutz advanced the lamp a few more inches, the flame died. With its passing he realized he was not alone.

Something as dark and as cold as the chamber he had entered was awake and hungry and beside him. He began to shake uncontrollably. Terror ripped through his bowels. He tried to retreat, to pull his shoulders and head back but he was caught. It was as if the shaft had closed upon him, holding him helpless in a darkness so complete there was no up or down. Cold engulfed him, and so did fear—a combined embrace that threatened to drive him mad. He opened his mouth to call for Otto to pull him back. The cold entered him as his voice rose in an agony of terror.

Outside, the belt Grunstadt held in his hands began to whip back and forth as Lutz's legs writhed and kicked and thrashed about in the shaft. There was a sound like a human voice, but so full of horror and despair, and sounding so far away, that Grunstadt could not believe it came from his friend. The sound came to an abrupt gurgling halt that was awful to hear. And as it ceased, so did Lutz's frantic movements.

"Hans?"

No answer.

Thoroughly frightened, Grunstadt hauled back on the belt until Lutz's feet were within reach. He then gripped both boots and pulled Lutz back into the corridor.

When he saw what he had delivered from the shaft, Grunstadt began to scream. The sound echoed up and down the cellar corridor, reverberating and growing in volume until the very walls began to shake.

Cowed by the amplified sound of his own terror, Grunstadt stood transfixed as the wall into which his friend had crawled bulged outward, minute cracks appearing along the edges of the heavy granite blocks. A wide crevice jagged up from the space left by the stone they had removed. The few puny lights strung along the corridor began to dim, and when they were nearly out, the wall burst open with a final convulsive tremor, showering Grunstadt with shards of shattered stone and releasing something inconceivably black that leaped out and enveloped him with a single smooth swift flowing motion.

The horror had begun.

THREE

Tavira, Portugal

Wednesday, 23 April

0235 hours (Greenwich Mean Time)

The red-haired man suddenly found himself awake. Sleep had dropped away like a loosened cloak and at first he did not know why. It had been a hard day of fouled nets and rough seas; after turning in at his usual hour, he should have slept through until first light. Yet now, after only a few hours, he was awake and alert. Why?

And then he knew.

Grim faced, he pounded his fist once, twice, into the cool sand around the low wooden frame of his bed. There was anger in his movements, and a certain resignation. He had hoped this moment would never come, had told himself time and again that it never would. But now that it was here, he realized it had been inevitable all along.