Dr Gavin Wheatley trod carefully along the Governorate basement corridor as he approached the secured makeshift holding cell with the key already raised in front of him.
The past night had seen his patient, Bishop Alfonse Esposito, howling continuously and banging ceaselessly against the walls, but then for the past four hours there had been total silence. Since the ‘thing’s’ arrival it had not been uncommon for an hour of eerie quiet before the screaming began once again, but never for quite this long.
Wheatley pressed an ear against the metal door to listen but all he heard was a light humming from one of the air-conditioning units positioned further along the corridor. He nevertheless kept his ear glued to it for over a minute, even closing his eyes in an effort to concentrate, but still nothing.
Wheatley pulled away from the door, then very slowly pressed the key into the lock. With his other hand he held the key’s shaft firm as he slid it in further, wanting to make as little noise as possible. Then, centimetre by centimetre, he turned it until he heard a click.
The door slowly swung open under its own weight, the light outside illuminating a small portion of the room beyond through the grilled inner door, and he cautiously peered inside to scan its dark interior for the now massive and distorted shape of Bishop Alfonse Esposito. He couldn’t see anything at first but, as his eyes became accustomed to the gloom, he eventually made out a large, huddled shape in one corner.
‘Bishop Esposito,’ he called out, still using the inmate’s name even if he now resembled nothing of the man he once was.
No response.
‘Bishop Esposito,’ Wheatley called out again, this time louder, but still there was nothing, not even a groan. As he eyed the motionless, shadowy mass, he considered turning the lights on even though, since the bishop’s transformation, he had kept the lights off continuously; to turn them on instantly generated the most violent of outbursts from the poor man but, given such a long period of silence, Wheatley could now see little other choice. He placed his finger on the light switch next to the doorway, then he moved back a step and prepared for the uproar he had come to expect. Wheatley flicked it on, the room lit up brightly as the mesh-covered strip lights above burst into life, and he found himself staring at the bishop’s disfigured body as it lay in a heap in the corner. It was the first time in days he had been able to see properly the changes that had taken place in the man, and he winced as he took in their full extent.
Esposito’s body had turned a blackened colour and the bony plates protruding from his shoulders had grown significantly. They appeared to now be attached to his spine as a single entity, with bulging back muscles that had caused tears in the skin. The face was hidden as the body hunched over in a kneeling position, facing the corner, with its thick bulky arms thrust behind to reveal open palms and sharp fingers. The digits looked claw-like, as if the individual finger bones had outgrown the enveloping skin and broken through at the tips, and they now lay against Esposito’s thick swollen thighs, which terminated in little more than stumps where his feet had once been.
Wheatley reached down and picked up a billiards cue off the floor which he had used previously to prod the man in order to have him angrily rush the door, allowing him to examine the prisoner more closely. This was not how he would ever normally treat his patients of course, for he was a doctor not a sadistic baiter, but this was no ordinary patient and so far any attempts to actually converse with the bishop had proved futile.
Wheatley reached through the bars with the cue and gave a gentle prod to the man’s buttocks. With no obvious reaction he followed this up with a far more forceful jab to Esposito’s thigh – but still nothing. Undeterred, and needing to be sure, Wheatley raised the cue upwards with both hands and slammed the tip down hard against Esposito’s lower back, which was as far as he could reach. Despite feeling as if he were striking it against concrete, the mass of deformed muscle and bone did not move a millimetre.
Wheatley drew the rod back towards him and placed it on the floor nearby, then did something that, during his whole career in medicine, he never for a moment had thought he might ever do. From his white lab coat pocket he pulled out a black 9mm Glock handgun and cocked its slide to chamber the first bullet. The guards outside had given him the gun at his request, even though they had no idea what it was intended for. Still, this seemed insane; he was a physician not a soldier, for God’s sake, but this was his patient, ergo his responsibility, and it genuinely looked as if the physical changes Esposito was experiencing might have proved fatal.
Wheatley pushed his key into the lock of the inner door and turned it. Then, as the barred door opened, he slowly took his first step inside with the Glock held up in front of him.
The two armed guards stood at the locked entrance leading into the Governorate basement, chatting away casually as they always did. With little else to do except stand there, the two men continued their usual routine of swapping bad jokes and stories of conflict until the next change of shift. At age thirty-two, Richard Dice was already a seasoned veteran, having served one tour in Iraq and a further two in Afghanistan, but although his was an impressive résumé it did not compare to that of his counterpart. Fifty-year-old Kyle Evans had served in the first Gulf War before making it into the Navy Seals, where he had a distinguished, if not publicly reported, career serving in some of the worst hotspots the planet had to offer. Both men had since left the military and found work in the private sector, but without doubt this assignment had to be the most boring. Contracted directly by the Vatican to act as little more than doormen, the two of them had taken the job because it meant good pay for almost no work, but after days of doing nothing except letting in a few bishops and Dr Wheatley, their routine had become tedious. Whatever was going on down there was unknown to them, but so long as the pay was good, then fair enough.
‘C’mon, that’s a funny joke,’ Dice moaned, giving his colleague a dirty look. ‘Don’t you get it?’
‘I get it,’ Evans replied, without even a hint of a smile. ‘But you told me the same joke last week, and it wasn’t even funny the first time.’
Dice went silent as he racked his brain trying to remember when but, amid the mountain of gags he had been delivering in recent days, he honestly couldn’t recall the occasion. ‘Then that’s the last joke you get out of me, pal.’
‘My days just keep getting better and better,’ Evans replied, smiling. ‘Now that’s funny.’
A reply from Dice was cut short when the sound of tapping began on the other side of the security door. Evans immediately approached it and tapped in response.
‘Dr Wheatley?’ Evans called out, but there was no answer except for another couple of taps.
‘Must be his break time,’ Evans decided and, with a nod from Dice, he unlocked the door and began to open it slowly – when something on the other side hit it with such force that Evans was sent hurtling backwards across the room, slamming into the far wall.
Dice already had drawn his gun but a thick, muscular and discoloured arm flew out through the doorway and landed a blow across his face, sending him to the ground in a crumpled heap. As blood trickled into his eyes, he stared up to watch as something lumbered out from behind the security door.
The huge frame of the erstwhile Bishop Esposito plodded out into the centre of the room and glanced over at the unconscious Evans and then at Dice, who was reeling from the blow. With a screeching howl, Esposito took off at a run in the direction of the exit, as best his seriously deformed feet would allow.
Dice instinctively pulled himself upright and rushed to Evans’s side. He pressed a couple of fingers against the man’s throat and, satisfied he could feel a pulse, he about-turned and began sprinting after the howling sound in the distance.
Within seconds he reached the exit, having already wiped the blood from his eyes. As he burst out through the half-open door, gun at the ready, he spotted the bulky frame of Esposito lumbering down the steps leading to the courtyard. Dice aimed his gun and let off a single shot into Esposito’s back, but it penetrated the solid muscle with a thud and did nothing to slow him down. Dice lowered his aim and shot three times at the creature’s thighs, and this time he got a reaction. Esposito stopped in his tracks and then slowly turned around to face his attacker, who had now approached to within metres, and without pause lunged towards Dice, who managed to get off a couple more shots before the bishop’s bulky frame had pinned him to the ground.
The stench of decomposition was nauseating and, as Esposito’s long, scaly tongue slid down and slapped against Dice’s cheek, the guard wrestled free his gun which had become trapped between them. He then jammed the barrel hard into what was left of the bishop’s mouth and pulled the trigger, sending a thick spattering of blood down onto his own face. Then, with a deafening ringing in his ears, he shot twice more.
Esposito’s tongue suddenly went limp and, as his single eye dulled, he let out one final deep, husky breath before collapsing right on top of Dice. After a few tries at going back and forth, Dice finally managed to roll the dead brute off to one side, then he slid out from underneath and scrambled backwards on his rear end. Still reeling from the shock of what had just occurred, he began wiping the thick clotted blood from his face and, unable to hold it in any longer, he vomited all over the stone slabs of the courtyard.
Vatican staff now began approaching him with looks of astonishment and circled the bloody scene as if not wanting to get too close to the disfigured, motionless corpse of what had once been Bishop Esposito.
The emergency services would not arrive for another five minutes, and it would be another twenty before the broken and battered body of Dr Wheatley was discovered deep within the bowels of the Governorate basement.