Another ghastly wail cut through the cool night air as Harker watched the second corpse rise up from the grave and steady itself on its two blackened and seemingly charred feet. It was unquestionably a man but, like its counterpart, the features had been distorted through decay. As it gazed into its own bluish and rotting hands, it released a deeply horrified yelp.
‘You see, the judgement is complete,’ Vlad declared, gesturing down at these two abominations. ‘They were not worthy of the rebirth that we ourselves shall enjoy, but that is not surprising given their choice of faith.’
A low, eerie chanting began to fill the cemetery and, as it grew in volume, Harker watched the two wretched figures now do something that displaced any of the disgust he had felt due to their appearance. The pair stared for a long time at one another and then, falling down on their knees, they embraced with their heads hung low, and it suddenly occurred to him that these two creatures were…terrified.
‘They are right to be fearful,’ Vlad yelled, before fetching a shiny black rock no bigger than a golf ball from his trouser pocket. ‘For they shall be the ones to be cast into the lake of fire for all eternity, and we must now show them the disdain they deserve.’
He raised his arm and hurled the stone down into the courtyard, clipping the nearer man on the side of his skull with a painful-sounding thud.
Without need for further incitement, all the torch bearers now produced their own black rocks and, one by one, hurled them down upon their still-cowering victims.
The first couple of blows prompted little reaction, but by the third both men had got to their feet and, with their arms held in front of them for protection, they began to scream wildly, clearly enraged.
To Harker this stone casting was evidently symbolic, but it served its purpose and, by the time the last one had been thrown, the decaying men had reached a fit of rage and began slamming themselves against the nearest wall in a futile attempt to reach their attackers above.
Above their furious screaming, Vlad, with his arms raised skywards, called out to his followers. ‘And so here it is – the beginning of our journey. And now let us feast and celebrate the new path that is laid down before us.’
One by one the torch bearers hurled their flaming torches into the courtyard, then descended some ladders on the opposite side of the wall as the screaming pair below them continued to scrape and claw frantically against the cemetery wall.
‘Awesome, isn’t it?’ Vlad announced triumphantly, turning his attention back to Harker. ‘To see the power of divine intervention.’
‘I don’t know what I’ve just watched but it sure as hell wasn’t divine,’ Harker replied with a sickened expression.
The comment instantly had Vlad grinning his now familiar inane grin. ‘Divinity is in the eye of the beholder, Alex, and you should feel blessed to have witnessed such a sight.’
‘Blessed is the right word,’ Harker replied, gazing down at the two partly decomposed men still scratching at the stone wall till they left bloody finger marks trailing down its surface.
‘Well, how about you?’ Vlad turned to Carter, who looked as white as a sheet. He was sweating profusely, with his eyes darting back and forth manically.
‘What on earth just happened there?’ he stuttered, looking like he was about to throw up.
‘So many questions and so little time, hey?’ Vlad stated ominously before chewing his bottom lip. ‘The power of the Codex is something to behold.’
Both Harker and Carter stayed silent as if encouraging Vlad to explain further, and the man took great pleasure in obliging them.
‘What if I told you that the Codex was indeed written by a hand not of this earth?’
In truth Harker was still reeling from the grotesque display he had just witnessed, and to say that he felt baffled was an understatement of huge proportions.
‘I know the story,’ he said, struggling to maintain his composure. ‘About the monk who called upon the Devil to complete the Codex Gigas for him. It’s quite a legend.’
‘Legend!’ Vlad almost spat the word and pointed down at the two men below, still thrashing ineffectually against the wall. ‘Does that look like legend to you? The Codex was written by the Prince, indeed, but it wasn’t the only thing he wrote.’
‘The missing pages,’ Harker guessed, as Vlad drummed his fingers against his own chest in delight.
‘These missing pages contain far more than you could possibly imagine, and tonight revealed but a small part of the power contained within them. There are only a few who can translate the text, and I am one of them.’
Vlad almost managed to sound magnanimous as he continued with an unabated excitement. ‘Lucifer knew all too well the hypocritical power of the so-called Lord Almighty, and he saw fit to pass on his knowledge to those who would seek it…within the pages of the Codex.’
Harker already had a dozen questions he wanted answered but decided to focus on just one, which in his mind was the most important. ‘If what you’re saying is true then what knowledge could be so important that the Devil felt the need to impart it?’
Still grinning, Vlad took a step closer to Harker, his lips opening as if he were preparing an answer. But then he paused and slowly closed his mouth again, as if pondering his reply. It did not take long. ‘Do you really not know, Alex? Weren’t you the one who stole the page from us in the first place? Perhaps it’s high time you explained to me your involvement in all this?’
As Vlad stood back with folded arms and waited for an answer, Harker mulled over his options. If he told this smiling psycho the truth, then Chloe was certainly dead, and if he remained quiet, then both he and Carter were destined for a night of torture and most likely death. With neither option particularly appealing, he remained silent, still trying to figure out what the hell to say. Finally, Vlad flicked his hand dismissively and turned his attention to the still nervous-looking Carter.
‘How about you then, porky?’ Vlad sneered. ‘Want to live through the night?’
With the desperate look of a man willing to sell his soul for a doughnut, Carter offered a sharp nod. ‘Of course. We both do.’
Vlad clasped his hands briefly and then grabbed Carter’s left cheek and squeezed it between his thumb and forefinger, like a teacher chastising a cheeky schoolboy. ‘Good man,’ he said, turning his attention back to Harker. ‘So we won’t be needing you.’
He grabbed Harker by both lapels and, with surprising strength given his slight build, hurled him off the edge into the courtyard below. The landing was hard but fortunately Harker fell on his side on a soft piece of earth, though within centimetres of a jagged piece of masonry sticking up from the soil that would have killed him instantly had he connected with it. The impact knocked the wind out of him but he instinctively jumped to his feet and waited to recover his breath as the nauseous feeling of asphyxiation clouded his senses.
A few unpleasant seconds followed until Harker felt his lungs released from the grip of paralysis, whereupon he sucked in a deep breath and glared up towards the rooftop, where Vlad was waving down at him.
‘Don’t you even think about hurting my friend,’ Harker gasped, concerned less for himself now and more for Carter.
Such concern received a deep bellow of laughter from Vlad, who dropped down on one knee and craned his head over the edge. ‘Seriously, he’s not the one you should be worried about right now.’
It was just then that Harker realized the screaming and yelling that had been going on in the background had ceased. With a nervous chill gathering in the pit of his stomach, he turned around.
Two sets of dull, grey eyes watched him intently and Harker froze as those two rotting corpses looked him up and down. He couldn’t be sure if his imagination was playing tricks, but he could have sworn that one of them licked his swollen black lips.
Up on the roof, Carter began protesting in a most English manner, bawling words such as ‘outrageous’ and ‘despicable’ as he was bundled down the steps until out of earshot, with the only noises Harker could hear now coming from inside the courtyard.
A deep wheezing emanated from both of the corpses, their chests heaving, as Harker now found himself in his own personal Mexican standoff.
The two corpses appeared to mimic everything he did. If he swayed to the right, then they did likewise; if he turned his head, then so did they in unison, and a surreal kind of amateur ballet now began to take place upon the dusty ground of the cemetery.
The whole performance could have looked comical, but in Harker’s mind there was one thought that kept repeating itself: Keep them as far away as possible.
With only this in mind, and after a further rolling of his head which was copied immediately by the gruesome duo, Harker took a single step backwards and, to his relief, they did the same. It was as if they were both looking for guidance on how to behave, happy to be shown how to act, and Harker found himself becoming morbidly fascinated…so long as they kept their distance.
‘Hello, lovely evening isn’t it?’ he called out, pointing up towards the gloomy, overcast night sky. He felt foolish saying it, but if there was a handbook on verbal etiquette for conversing with the undead, then he hadn’t read it. As the two corpses opposite him took a moment to gaze upwards, Harker realized he was indeed communicating – on some level at least. While the duo continued to stare at the dark clouds overhead, Harker found himself searching around for a point of escape. The perimeter walls were no more than four metres high but therefore frustratingly out of reach without any kind of step up, and worse still the only possible opportunity to do so appeared to be from the mausoleums scattered over on the far side of the cemetery.
Harker was considering making his way slowly back towards the entrance behind him, with the duo inevitably in tow, when a dark object whistled past him and smacked one of the pair right in the forehead with a loud crack. The corpse barely had time to react before his friend was similarly clipped, but this time on his chest.
Harker looked up to see Vlad retrieving another stone from his pocket. Then, with a delighted grin, he pelted it at the nearest corpse with such force that it embedded itself into the creature’s bloated and rotting black thigh with a squelch.
‘This isn’t meant to be a friendly reunion, Alex,’ Vlad shouted out, and Harker winced at this odd use of the word ‘reunion’. If he had ever met these two things before he would have remembered for sure, and he pushed the comment from his mind as, nearby, some high-pitched screaming and yelling started up again.
‘I would wish you good luck but it would be completely insincere,’ Vlad said coldly, and with a wave he disappeared down the rooftop stairwell, leaving Harker alone with his two companions, who were becoming increasingly agitated.
He stretched one arm out in a placating gesture but it was received like a red rag to a bull. The duo immediately began to run towards him, yelling their maddening screams and bringing with them the stench of decay.
Without any need for further encouragement, Harker took off at a sprint through the ruins of the cemetery and towards maze of paths and mausoleums beyond. Leaping onto the nearest path, he caught his shoulder against a sculpture of the Virgin Mary jutting out from the corner of one of the smaller mausoleums. He yelped in pain but continued pushing onwards through a thick and flowerless rose bush whose thorns cut into his face and hands, but thankfully missed his eyes. Harker ignored the burning pain as the sounds of desperate screams echoed around him. Although visually terrifying, the corpses were slow on their feet, which Harker put down to the rotten state of their flesh, but he never looked back and it wasn’t until their groans began to fade behind him that he slowed up.
This area of the cemetery was more like a labyrinth and, with only the emerging moonlight to guide him, Harker struggled to navigate it. This was made far worse by not knowing where he was actually trying to get to, and by the time he reached the cemetery’s rear wall he was in full panic mode. There was no way out so far as he could see, and he slammed his fist against the stones in frustration before turning to face back down the dark passages running through the cemetery, as the distant groans suddenly petered out into silence.
The sound of a strong breeze whistling between the numerous crypts was all Harker could hear now as he quietly and cautiously made his way over to the nearest mausoleum wall and crouched down against it. The only way out of this place was through the entrance building, which Vlad would have surely secured, and the thought of having to make his way back past those creatures was a frankly terrifying prospect, which left just one option open to him.
Harker stared over to the nearest mausoleum and tried to estimate how far it might be from the cemetery walls. In daylight it would have proved an easy task but, given it was nearly impossible from his location to see the wall’s edges, he had to make the best guess he could. Certainly the mausoleum he was next to was too close to the centre of the cemetery to be of any use, but on his frantic dash over here he had passed a couple of smaller tombs with roofs that might prove close enough.
Harker was still figuring out exactly how to get back to them through this maze of monuments when a foul odour began to assault his nose, so he retreated in the opposite direction and around the far side of the mausoleum. He couldn’t hear anything but he knew it was close, maybe only metres away, and he did his best to breathe as quietly as possible.
The idea of finding himself suddenly locked in the arms of either of those monstrosities was too horrifying to contemplate but it was through this numbing fear that he eventually found his nerve and a clarity of purpose. There was no way he was going to end up being ripped to shreds by those creatures, not a chance, and he steadied his shaking hands. Staying at a crouch, Harker began to stealthily make his way back along the darkened pathways.
Much to his relief, the further he went the weaker the foul stench of rotting flesh became, and he felt a tremendous sense of relief that every step he was taking served to put a greater distance between him and those walking corpses.
The mental image of their faces and bodies was disgusting, and every time it popped into his mind he immediately extinguished it with thoughts of more salubrious things. If he entertained for one moment the gruesome reality of his situation, that two hideous and disintegrating corpses were at that very moment nearby and looking to get their blackened fingers into him, he might come close to cracking up. So it was with an assortment of wondrous architecture and famous art that Harker filled his mind as he continued silently along the cobbled path until he finally reached a mausoleum within jumping distance of the enclosing wall.
The small private burial vault was plain, decorated with little more than a sculptured angel with wings spread outwards above the sealed entrance, but which provided the means for someone to pull himself up onto its flat roof.
Harker grasped hold of the angel’s body and, after a firm tug to confirm it would hold his weight, he prepared to haul himself upwards. But something caused him to pause and he found himself frozen, as the unmistakable odour of death suddenly suffused the air all around him.
Off to his right a pair of eyes glistened dully in the moonlight, and Harker turned to see the disfigured and bloated corpse staring towards him only metres away, just before the apparition unleashed a deafening scream and lunged towards him.
Instinctively Harker kicked one leg up to catch the corpse squarely in the centre of the chest and send it flying backwards before it tumbled to the ground in a heap. As it began to drag itself back to its feet, Harker was already heaving himself up onto the mausoleum rooftop. He had only just managed to get one of his knees safely up there before a hearty force tugged at the other leg that was still dangling. Not wanting to glance downwards, he began to kick out wildly. The first two attempts had little effect against the hands clawing at his trouser leg, but the third finally connected with something that gave way under the impact, and felt like stepping into a bowl of jelly. The thud of a body dropping to the ground motivated Harker to pull himself up fully, and he then glanced back down to see the thing lying on its back while clasping its face with both hands in obvious pain.
Harker scrambled to his feet and steadied himself on the short and narrow rooftop, before taking up position directly facing the main perimeter wall. The jump involved was no more than two metres in distance but the edge of the wall stood higher, and about half a metre above Harker’s head, which meant that he not only needed to assess distance but height as well. It would have proved an awkward feat in broad daylight let alone in the almost pitch dark with only shadows as references, but it is remarkable how having a rotting dead guy chasing after you can make one attempt the impossible. It was with this thought that Harker tensed up, took one long stride, and hurled himself towards the outer wall.
His left hand landed too low and slammed painfully against stone, but two fingers of his right hand managed to grip onto the edge and, feeling them beginning to give way under his weight, he lurched upwards and grasped quickly on with his left hand. The weight displacement had without doubt twisted some muscles in his two right-hand fingers but, given the circumstances, it was a price he was happy to pay as he began to pull himself higher up.
As Harker stood upright on the thick stone wall, the clouds overhead dispersed slightly and again the welcome light of the nearly full moon shone through, bathing the cemetery in a silvery glow. ‘About bloody time,’ Harker hissed as he began making his way along the wall towards the entrance building, leaving the groans and stench of the gruesome twosome behind him.
It took no time at all to reach the end point where the wall met the entrance, now giving him a clear view of the access area beyond, where the interior light of a four-wheel-drive BMW X6 M50d revealed a man tied up inside being shouted at by one of the guards wearing a plague doctor’s outfit.
‘I want you to sit there and think very carefully, tubby, because we’re taking you somewhere very special tonight, and if you haven’t told us everything by the time we arrive, then don’t expect to ever leave. Understand?’
David Carter stared up at the beaked mask and, with flared nostrils and eyes wide with fear, replied, ‘I’ve told you everything I know—’
At that point the guard landed an almighty slap across Carter’s face, before he slammed the rear passenger door shut. ‘We’ll see,’ he muttered audibly to himself and then disappeared out of sight into the main entrance building.
Harker quickly lowered himself from the wall onto the ground, needing to drop the last couple of metres and landing with a light thud. He then manoeuvred his way around to the BMW’s driver side and carefully opened the door before sliding inside, keeping his head low.
‘Hello?’ Carter called out nervously as Harker poked his head around one side of the front seat.
‘This is quite a mess were in.’
The look of relief on Carter’s face was priceless, and Harker genuinely thought his friend was about to burst into tears.
‘Oh, thank God,’ he exclaimed, his initial relief now evaporating ‘And where the hell have you been?’
‘Oh, you know, David, being hunted by two killer ghouls around an eerie old cemetery in the pitch black…and you?’
Such sarcasm was totally lost on Carter, who was already shaking his head defiantly. ‘They threatened to torture and kill me, Alex. That man said he was going to ram a cattle prod up my bottom, until I either became “fully charged” or my rectum prolapsed!’ Carter was now visibly shaking in anger. ‘I mean what kind of sickos are these people anyway?’
Harker didn’t reply but instead reached over and was relieved to find the ignition key still in place. Even better, the Codex Gigas page that Vlad had taken back was sitting squarely on the front passenger seat and he almost yelled out loud in relief. ‘We’re leaving,’ he whispered, his voice quivering excitedly, then reached over and turned the key. With a purr, the engine rolled over and, despite requests from Carter to untie him, Harker pressed down on the clutch and was already reaching for the gearstick when the entrance building’s door swung open. A long shadow fell across the ground between them followed by the figure of Vlad, whose attention was now fixed firmly upon the BMW.
Harker jammed the gearstick into first and released the clutch so quickly that, when the reviving engine connected, the wheels spun fast and hard against the loose soil and pebbles underneath, sending gusts of dust in Vlad’s direction. The road was dry but it felt like steering through thick mud until Harker noticed the red handbrake light glowing. A rookie’s mistake to be sure but, given the circumstances, he forgave himself and released it, much to the benefit of the car’s engine as it lurched forward and began to pick up speed.
The BMW had already reached 60 mph and Harker was only just managing to keep the car stable on the narrow dirt road when a bullet hit the wing mirror, which shattered, sending pieces flying everywhere. It had to have been of a large calibre to do so much damage and, considering the distance they had already driven from the cemetery, the gunman was a demon of a shot.
A second bullet slammed through the rear windscreen and turned the passenger headrest into a puffball of shredded nylon and leather. It almost caused Harker to careen off the road and into the thick bushes alongside it.
Mercifully there was no third shot and, with no one appearing in pursuit, Harker headed off the back roads and towards the autostrada SS3 leading into Rome. But it was not until they were securely surrounded by other cars all heading into the city that either one of them finally spoke.
‘Thank you,’ Carter said, having obviously calmed down after the idea of being on the receiving end of a rectal probe.
‘I’m just glad we got out,’ Harker admitted.
‘What the hell did we just witness back there? I don’t know whether to believe what I saw or put it down to something like a weird dream.’
‘A nightmare is more like it,’ Harker replied, still shaking off the thought of those two festering dead men walking. ‘We’re going straight to Vatican City,’ he continued, pausing as he swerved to avoid some idiot in a silver Audi A5, who was jumping lanes without looking. ‘There’s someone I need to speak with. Someone who might be able to help us.’
There was a moment of silence as both men came to terms with the unholy nature of the events back at Cervete, but it was Carter who spoke first as he tugged at his bound hands. ‘I would appreciate it if you could untie me first, Alex,’ he suggested, as the rope began to chafe.
‘Of course,’ Harker replied, having entirely forgotten about his friend’s restraints. ‘We’ll stop at the next service station, OK? Anything else you need?’
‘Yes,’ Carter replied, with a look of renewed determination in his eyes. ‘A stonking big drink!’