The Ancient Curse (7 page)

Fabrizio’s voice became apprehensive. ‘A monster? What do you mean by that?’

‘Only that I’ve never seen such a thing. Even now, say, a Caucasian Molosser, which is gigantic, is not that size.’

‘Well, then, what the hell is it? I mean, you’re the expert, so how do you explain it?’

‘Hey, what’s wrong with you? Why are you so edgy? Are you sure I didn’t wake you up? Or did I . . . interrupt something?’

‘No. Listen, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. You’re saying that you don’t know what it is.’

‘It looks like a canid, but I’ve never seen one so enormous. An expert is only an expert on what he’s seen and studied, Fabrizio. You know that better than I do. All I can tell you is that I’ve never heard of such an animal, and neither has anyone else that I know of. I’d hazard a guess that it’s a breed that’s gone extinct and that we have no knowledge of or . . . a genetic mutation, something of the sort.’

‘Right. That’s a possibility, sure. Listen, try to make it here as soon as you can, and I’ll talk to the director in the meantime.’

‘I can leave tomorrow,’ said Sonia resolutely.

‘No, maybe not tomorrow. Give me a couple of days. I’ll call you as soon as anything comes up.’

There was a moment of silence and in that very instant the howl that Fabrizio had heard the first night rang out loudly. A long, desperate lament that grew in force and intensity, exploding into the blood-curdling scream of a wounded beast. An atrocious wheezing that sounded nearly human.

Fabrizio stiffened as a feeling of sheer terror surged through his body.

Sonia’s voice on the phone was full of anguish. ‘My God . . . what was that?’

She’d heard it.

‘I don’t know,’ replied Fabrizio mechanically. He then replaced the receiver and picked up the shotgun. It was locked and loaded.

5

D
R LA BELLA
put out his cigarette in the ashtray, took his glasses off with a slow, studied gesture and began to clean the lenses with an immaculate handkerchief.

‘Well?’ asked Lieutenant Reggiani in an almost impatient tone.

‘It’s just as I said, my dear Lieutenant, isn’t it? Remember? “If you don’t find the animal I’ll have more maimed bodies on my autopsy table.” And here we are.’

‘I want to know whether you’re sure this death can be attributed to the same cause,’ said Reggiani.

‘I have no doubts about that,’ answered La Bella, ‘although that statement cannot be made with absolute certainty. Would you care to take a look yourself?’

He got up and walked towards the cooler.

Reggiani wanted to say no, he would not care to take a look, but he obediently followed the doctor. It was his job, after all.

La Bella grasped the handle of one of the drawers and pulled it towards him until the top half of the corpse, covered by a sheet, was out. He lifted the sheet.

‘Dear Christ,’ murmured Reggiani, looking away in disgust. ‘It’s worse than the last one.’

La Bella closed the drawer and locked it.

‘Have you spoken to the public prosecutor?’

‘You bet I have. He’s been calling me every two or three hours to get an update on our investigation.’

‘And what might that be?’ asked La Bella mechanically.

‘We don’t know shit, Dr La Bella. That is the update. I have two corpses that have been ripped to shreds and not a single clue to go on. The story’s bound to break, which means that in the wink of an eye this town will be besieged by a horde of reporters and TV cameras dying for a slice of the blood and mystery. Until now, I’ve managed to convince the prosecutor that it’s best to keep this quiet to prevent the spread of panic. As luck would have it, the guy who found the second body has agreed not to spill the beans and I know I can trust my men. But I also know this can’t last for long. It’s bound to leak out. At the same time, I have to put maximum security measures into effect to protect local people. It’s not been easy.’

As the two men neared the exit, La Bella stared into the officer’s eyes with a discouraged expression and said, ‘I know it’s stupid to ask, but have you sent dogs out?’

‘It’s the first thing we did. But we didn’t get anywhere. We used our best trackers, but it was crazy. They’d run off in every direction, double back, take off like wild things through the bushes and then come back again. Absurd.’

‘I understand,’ said La Bella. ‘But you can’t not warn the residents. They have a right to know, to take precautions, to protect themselves . . .’

‘You don’t think that’s on my mind! Listen, at the start I was hoping that the first case would remain an isolated occurrence. That animal, or whatever it is, might have run off or ended up elsewhere, or have been caught or killed off, damn it. I’m about to go to the public prosecutor and submit my plan of action.’

‘If I’m not being indiscreet, can you tell me what that plan is?’

‘It’s not that I don’t trust you, Doctor, but I have to consult with the prosecutor first. Basically, we have to strive to achieve the impossible: inform the townspeople, ask the press to keep a low profile, solve the case by giving it all we’ve got.’

Dr La Bella patted him on the shoulder. ‘I don’t envy you, Lieutenant. Good luck. I’ve never met anyone in all my life who needed it more.’

R
EGGIANI
got into his car with Sergeant Massaro and drove to the public prosecutor’s office. The official was exceedingly agitated and didn’t even ask Reggiani to sit down.

‘Maybe you don’t realize this, Lieutenant,’ he began, ‘but from one moment to the next this situation could slip totally out of our control. The government authorities may step in and take it out of our hands completely.’

Reggiani instantly lost his temper. ‘That, God willing, is the least of my problems! They’re not in harm’s way and have plenty of their own headaches to worry about. As far as this situation is concerned, it has already slipped out of our control! We have two cadavers at the mortuary that have been clawed to pieces and no reason to think there may not be more coming.’

‘That’s impossible!’ shouted the public prosecutor. ‘It’s only an animal, for Christ’s sake. You’ve got dogs, vehicles, helicopters, scores of men.’

Reggiani lowered his head to hide his anger and took a deep breath before he answered. ‘You see, sir, all of the means that you’ve just mentioned have been used without achieving the slightest result. I’ve put my best men out in the field and on investigations. This is not just any old case. There are other matters that concern me as well and I need your help.’

The public prosecutor nodded, with an air of condescension.

‘I would like you to make a personal call to the directors of all the local papers and ask for a news blackout. I’m sure you can convince them that this is necessary due to the unique, extremely serious nature of the matter. I will arrange to inform local residents regarding the nature of the threat and the precautions to be taken. A lot of unverified stories are already going around. I’ll tell them the truth. Luckily, this isn’t a big city. There are a given number of families that must be informed. At the same time I will reorganize my investigation, starting from another angle.’

‘What angle might that be?’ asked the public prosecutor.

‘I want to start from the tomb,’ replied Reggiani. ‘From the man who opened it and excavated it. I think that’s where all this began.’

F
ABRIZIO
took a bunch of keys from the hook and went down into the storeroom. Sonia had been so excited at seeing the pictures that she was eager to start immediately. He wanted to make sure that all the material would be ready for her to begin her work. If he got this out of the way, he’d be free to return to his own studies and forget about the rest. If that was an option.

He descended a couple of floors from street level and realized he was in the middle of the ancient city: tufa walls, old substructures in ruins, foundations made of huge blocks, surely from the Etruscan age. He switched on the light and walked down a long corridor covered by a barrel vault ceiling. On either side lay the dusty odds and ends typical of the cellars of the museums and NAS facilities all over Italy: chunks of marble and stone, column segments, fragmented sculptures waiting patiently to be restored, handles and necks of vases, floor tiles and boxes. Hundreds of boxes. Yellow and red plastic stacks, each with its own label reporting the name of the excavation, the sector and the layer where the finds contained inside had been found.

The materials from the Rovaio dig, except for the alabaster sarcophagus, which had been taken to another warehouse outside the city, were at the end of the hall, sitting on top of a shelf carved of stone which created a niche in the wall. Fabrizio laid a plastic sheet on the floor and started first of all to pick out the more scattered and splintered pieces of the human skeleton. He taped to the wall an enlargement of the digital shot he had taken inside the tomb, then switched on a portable mechanic’s light and began to gather the fragments, one after another, piecing them together with difficulty, seeking the lines of recomposition of a body almost disintegrated by a ravaging fury.

He patiently reconstructed shoulder and collar bones, lined up the phalanges of the fingers which were strewn in every direction. Every now and then he would glance at the blown-up photo on the wall and that awful image, that horrible tangle of bones and fangs, created a mounting sense of anxiety in him that he tried in vain to overcome. His fingers seemed to move on their own, brushing the man’s skull, part of the temporal bone still bearing a strip of the sack in which his head was enclosed during the cruel ordeal. The emotion that had been simmering inside of him exploded with uncontrollable force. Those bare bones electrified him, filled him with a clear, distinct vision of those atrocious moments: suffocated, breathless panting, the crazed beating of a heart gripped with terror. Fangs sinking into live flesh as the man screamed in pain, writhing about blindly, futilely wielding the sword tight in his fist. Blood that with every bite spurted out more copiously, soaking the ground, blood that made the animal more and more excited and aggressive, feeding its thirst for slaughter. He heard the sinister crunching of bones, yielding abruptly to those steel fangs, smelt the nauseating odour of intestines ripped from the man’s belly and devoured still throbbing, while he was alive and screaming, shaking violently in the throes of agony.

Dripping with sweat, Fabrizio could not control the furious beating of his own heart, nor the tears that were pouring from his eyes and running down his cheeks, nor the convulsive fluttering of his eyelids, which were fragmenting that tragedy into thousands of bloody shards that were pricking every centimetre of his body and soul.

He cried out in a hoarse, suffocated voice, the scream of a man dreaming, and he had the impression that his cry had snuffed out the bulb, abruptly plunging him into the gloom of the underground chambers. But soon that silent darkness was pierced by a mournful dirge and became animated by shadowy, sinister presences: ghosts cloaked in black carrying a litter which bore the bloody tatters of a large dismembered body. Behind them growled the beast, its eyes phosphorescent in the dim light and its mouth foaming, held tight by ropes and tethers, yanking its keepers this way and that with immense strength. They were dragging it to its final destiny: to be buried alive with the human meal that would have to satiate it for all eternity.

Fabrizio screamed again and then, tired of fighting it off, let himself sink into a well of silence.

H
E WAS
unaware of how much time had passed before a light stung his eyes and a voice shook him fully awake: ‘Professor! Professor! Good Lord, what has happened? Are you ill? Shall I call a doctor?’

Fabrizio got to his feet and wiped his forehead. The confused image peering out at him slowly took on the familiar features of a person he knew well: Mario, the security guard.

‘No, no,’ he replied. ‘There’s no need. I must have fainted. There’s nothing wrong, I feel fine, I promise you.’

Mario looked sceptical. ‘Are you sure? You look pretty awful.’

‘Perfectly sure. I was working down here, but it’s so damp and there’s no air . . .’

‘You’re right. This is no place for you to be working.’ The security guard lifted his eyes to the blown-up photo on the wall. ‘Good heavens! What on earth is that?’

‘It’s nothing, Mario,’ said Fabrizio, swiftly rolling up the enlargement. ‘Just bones. Lord knows how many you’ve seen.’

Mario got the hint and changed the subject. ‘Listen, they’re looking for you upstairs.’

‘Who’s looking for me?’

‘That carabiniere lieutenant. His name’s Reggiani.’

‘Do you know what he wants?’

‘He says it’s just to talk with you . . . I’ll bet you anything it’s about that second bloke they found murdered. He’s already asked me not to breathe a word about it. I don’t know how he knew that I know.’

‘That’s his job, Mario.’

‘Anyway, I haven’t spoken to a soul, but people know about it. Word gets around. People are scared.’

‘That’s understandable.’

‘You said it. So should I show him to your office?’

‘Yes, do that. Tell him I’ll be right there.’

Mario walked back up the stairs and Fabrizio turned to look at what he’d accomplished. Only the upper part of the human skeleton was reassembled, and only partially. He realized he might have to ask for help from a technician with expertise in osteology or he’d never manage to finish the job. There was still a lot of work to do, especially on the small fragments that were difficult to identify, and he hadn’t even started on the animal, whose entire skeleton seemed to be present and was in near-perfect condition, except for some cracking and splintering probably due to exposure to freezing temperatures through the millennia. Fabrizio bent over the bones and saw that one of the four huge canine teeth had become detached from the top jaw, most likely jolted loose during transport. He picked it up and slipped it into his pocket, with the intention of observing it carefully and measuring it. He then walked up the stairs, switched off the light and closed the door behind him.