The outer edge of the twenty-five-foot launch knocked gently against the jetty with each following wave lapping up against it as Harker secured the mooring line to its post. The time required to rent a boat and then sail the short few miles to Poveglia Island had taken far longer than anticipated, and with only half an hour of sunlight left, the skies were beginning to darken.
The island was tiny – only a few hundred feet wide by three hundred feet long – and split in two by a narrow canal running directly through it. Its small extent, though, was rendered far more mysterious by the overgrown trees and bushes that covered its entire area in jungle-type vegetation.
Harker heaved himself out onto the moss-covered jetty and offered a hand which was grasped keenly by Stefani, who then managed to exit the boat with far more grace than he had.
‘So, this is the island of the dead,’ Stefani remarked, catching a glimpse of the crumbling bell-tower just visible above the treeline. ‘More like the island of the dilapidated.’
If it was meant as a joke Harker didn’t laugh as he proceeded down to the end of the rotting dock to the gap where a clump of thick bushes had been pushed aside, no doubt by curious tourists wanting to add a scary element to their holiday snaps.
‘I think we can get through here,’ he decided, kicking a few fallen branches back from the opening. ‘According to Signora Busetto, the plaque can be found near one of the main buildings.’
‘After you,’ Stefani suggested, gripping tightly the LED torchlight they had bought in view of the approaching twilight. ‘Remind me why we’re doing this again?’ she added as Harker continued to wade through dense foliage.
‘Because we don’t have anywhere else to look,’ he replied, slapping a giant mosquito that had landed on his neck. ‘And, besides, why else would your father leave us a trail of crumbs leading to the orphanage… I mean to the restaurant.’
Stefani said nothing to that, herself now batting away the increasing hordes of flies gathering around them in their eagerness for a feast.
‘I need to take a look at that commemorative plate left here for the lost children, and if it turns out to be a dead end, then we’ll head back and…’
‘And what?’
Harker came to a halt and turned back to face her, his expression blank. Because if this venture went nowhere, and with the prophecy taking place within possibly hours then what else exactly could they do? Who knew as yet where this was all leading? Discovering the existence of the mysterious cult of Mithras, and its worrying ties to the Templars, had been a shock to him and extremely worrying in its own right. And he still needed to work out exactly why this group of zealots sought to bring about such a world-changing catastrophe as the three days of Darkness. Deep in his gut the idea appeared nothing more than a fanciful legend or the foretelling of a disastrous event that, like so many before it, would culminate in absolutely nothing. That is until he took into consideration his own apocalyptic vison. The otherworldly, supernatural events he had witnessed in his head had completely obliterated the normal scepticism and doubt that came naturally to him, and so he couldn’t shake off the nagging feeling that something really big was about to take place.
As Harker pushed ahead along the overgrown path and deeper into the island, something else began to tease at his thoughts. That strange symbol he had noticed on the first blessed candle began to assume heavier significance the more he considered it. Two overlapping circles surrounded by swastikas had suggested, to his mind, a representation of heaven and hell – two kingdoms of the religious realm with Earth shrouded by the presence of both – but with Carter’s subsequent discovery of the Mithras cult they now demanded further examination.
‘Those engravings on the blessed candle we discovered in Athens,’ he began, just avoiding a small branch about to slap across his face as he moved forward, ‘we assumed they represented heaven and hell, right?’
‘Yes, why?’ Stefani recoiled as the same offending branch caught her right across the forehead.
‘But what if they represent the Mithras cult and the Catholic Church… two kingdoms fighting for the mind of humanity.’
She now appeared more concerned with a small scratch the branch had left her with than any philosophical discussion, and merely offered an uninterested murmur. ‘There’s one problem with that,’ she added after a moment, ‘If we take Dr Marceau’s beliefs seriously then that same candle has been around since the dawn of time itself, and well before Mithraism was even dreamed up.’
It was a fair assumption but Harker was now allowing himself to think beyond the rational and practical, again as result of experiencing that vision deep in the foundations of the Eiffel Tower. ‘What if destiny – fate – was a real and tangible thing?’ he asked, somewhat rhetorically. ‘What if there really is a guiding line constant through space and time which humans are unaware of, like a thread determining all events which a select number of people have the ability to tap into at some level.’
‘What, like visions of the future?’
‘Something like that, yes.’
The idea made her chuckle. ‘I’d say that you’d been smoking something you maybe shouldn’t have.’
He shot her a reproving look. ‘I’m being serious here. What if a few people such as Nostradamus, were born with the ability to gain insight into this “thread”? A natural and biological capacity produced through evolution and mutation?’
Harker’s thinking might seem pretty ‘out there’ but with a jolt of understanding, she realised what was causing it. ‘That vision you had really did have an impact on you didn’t it?’ she suggested, and he offered a silent nod of the head.
‘I haven’t mentioned it but, ever since it happened, my head has seemed all over the place,’ he then admitted, and he came to a halt as Stefani placed her palm on his back.
‘You’ve been through a lot over the past few days,’ she said sympathetically, before turning her attention to the clearing up ahead. ‘I don’t know exactly what to think right now, but I would say we found the right place for it.’
Harker gave her a puzzled glance, then he turned and looked forward again to see what had grabbed her attention. What he saw there made him smile.
About ten metres in front of them, and now visible amongst the bushes, stood a large white sign with thick black lettering. Reparto Psichiatria.
‘Psychiatric Department,’ he translated, ‘sounds about right.’ Then he shook his head. ‘I wonder what the food’s like?’
‘Not too good, I’ll bet. Let’s take a look around, shall we?’
Just beyond the sign itself the vegetation fell away and they found themselves staring up at the long crumbling wall of a building whose roof had long since caved in. It ran along for some length and the entire bell tower could now be viewed clearly. Harker poked his head through a gap in the wall to find the interior exactly as one would expect of a place left to rot for decades.
In the room in front of him he could see that all the flooring was missing and a mixture of dirt and dead brown leaves were scattered everywhere. Bolted to the side wall, rusting metal bars extended outwards in racks above a single scuffed metal drain hole, and Harker recognised their use instantly. ‘I’ve seen this set-up in books,’ he said, pointing up to the metal rafters. ‘When an inmate died, they would wash and drape the patient’s mattress over these and then leave it there to dry out for the next occupant.’
‘Very hygienic.’ Stefani turned up her nose up at the thought.
‘When these methods were in operation, health-and-safety wasn’t even in the vernacular,’ Harker responded with a grimace, before he made his way through the scruffy breach in the wall. ‘The commemorative plaque should be somewhere up ahead.’
The building had been large and they had to carefully navigate their way through heaps of fragmented brickwork and past rotting chairs and rusting bedsprings. It wasn’t just through fear of catching themselves on sharp bits of twisted metal but more because this whole place stood as a filthy and terrible memorial to the thousands who had died here. Whether that was from the plague or as a result of the torturous experiments conducted later, there was a genuinely ominous feel to it all that was not just the result of its noxious dereliction, because Harker couldn’t shake off the impression that they were being watched.
‘What a dump,’ Stefani complained, carefully avoiding a partially melted black shower curtain draped across a foully stained mattress. ‘Who owns this place now?’
‘Private owner bought it years ago, I believe, and given its history it’s hard to envisage why. I can’t imagine building some sort of a hotel resort on an island known for nothing else than plague, death and torture.’
The sound of shuffling in the next room brought them both to a standstill and, after glancing at one another anxiously, they stepped forward gingerly and peered inside. Like all the others the room was a wreck, but empty at least. And as they made their way further along the central corridor running the length of the entire building, they began to hear further scraping noises coming from all around them.
‘Just rats.’ Harker suggested confidently, but it didn’t stop him from quickening his pace. He sped on along the corridor with Stefani at his heels, not stopping until they had exited through the main entrance door and came out into a small open area, thankfully devoid of bushes, in the centre of the island.
‘Case of the willies,’ Harker remarked, looking slightly embarrassed at his display of nerves. ‘Let’s just find this plaque, shall we?’
Stefani nodded, herself also looking twitchy, and she was about to take her first step when she noticed something in the bushes up ahead. ‘What’s that?’
With the light around them getting dimmer by the minute, Harker focused in on the dark shape she was pointing towards. The covered object had no defining edges and, whilst craning his head for a better view, he took a few steps closer to the bushy thicket.
‘Pass me the torch, would you?’ he asked with hand outreached and Stefani obliged, clicking it on as she passed it over.
Its intense beam illuminated something solid but it was still impossible to discern exactly what, so Harker moved closer and then, once satisfied it at least was not something alive, he pushed his way further into the thick brush. Within a second he had barrelled his way to the other side, only to find himself in a cavity within the bushes which was covered completely overhead by the sprawling branches of the surrounding trees. This leafy ceiling was over four metres up, allowing Harker to stand upright while the hedge acted as walls for this forest hiding place.
‘Alex,’ Stefani called out from beyond the barrier, sounding concerned. ‘What is it?’
He didn’t reply but instead focused his attention on the structure before him, taking a moment to admire the simple yet effective cover the trees and bushes allowed it. The whole area had been excavated into the soil by a metre or so, over which a trail of thick wooden planks ran directly up to the mouth of an open cave.
‘Come take a look.’ he replied quietly and with the rustling of leaves being pushed aside Stefani joined him and herself stared at the oddity in surprise.
‘What on earth?’ Stefani gasped, appearing just as Harker dropped down into the trench and cautiously made his way towards the gloomy entrance.
‘It’s an entrance,’ he replied, stating the obvious whilst shining his torch beam ahead, ‘and there’s a pathway inside.’
His curiosity was suddenly replaced with a dose of reality given that, for all he knew, a pack of wolves could be living inside this damn place. He came to an abrupt stop as Stefani jumped down the incline to join him. ‘Look at that.’ He aimed the torchlight up at the stone surface towards the symbols that had been carved into the dull, brown rock. ‘Swastikas.’
There were fifteen in all, circling the symbol of two circles overlapping one another which Harker was now becoming all too familiar with. ‘The two kingdoms,’ he declared and gestured to the engraving. ‘This is what your father was directing us to. It has to be.’
‘So what does it mean?’ she asked, eyeing the emblem carefully as Harker took a first step inside the rocky opening.
‘It means we go inside.’
If Stefani had any misgivings about Harker’s proposed course of action, she didn’t have time to voice them, for he was already swiftly moving along the passageway. ‘Alex…’ was all she managed before, with a shrug, she followed his lead and headed in after him.
The interior of the passage was clammy as Harker used the torchlight to illuminate their way down the pitch-dark passage. The stone floor was moist and slippery where condensation had accumulated due to hot evening air against a cold rock surface, and he almost lost his balance whenever his leather-soled brogues fought to maintain their grip.
‘I think I see something,’ he whispered eventually, now slowing his pace as he approached an area where the passage appeared to open up into a larger space. ‘Stay close.’
This last instruction was wholly unnecessary because the eerie atmosphere of this dank interior had her as close to his back as was humanly possible.
‘What do you see?’ she whispered.
‘It’s a room,’ Harker replied after reaching the entrance. He then waved his torch around from side to side before coming to a rest on an object located at the far end of the room – one that provided as much encouragement as it did trepidation. ‘We’re definitely in the right place.’
Looking over his shoulder, Stefani squinted her eyes to inspect the object his torchlight had settled upon, and she was in total agreement, because there was only one thing it could mean.
The sculptured marble image of Mithras stared back at them in his flowing cape, as the bull he straddled succumbed to the dagger jammed deep into its shoulder, while a snake, dog and scorpion attacked the suffering beast’s underbelly. The statue had none of the appearance of being thousands of years old but instead looked like something carved only recently.
As they made their way into the stone-walled room, neither of them said anything, and as Harker shone his torch on the large stone-slab dining table, lined with benches on either side, Stefani produced a lighter from her pocket and flicked it on.
‘Hold it,’ she said, moving over to a small oil lamp attached to the wall by a metal bracket. She lit the wick and soon a good portion of the room was illuminated in flickering light. ‘There’s another,’ she noticed and slid past the benches to another wall lamp, which she also sparked into life.
Another two lamps and the interior of the cavern was bright enough for Harker to assess the area in its entirety, so he now turned off his torch.
The cavern was oblong shaped with curved corners at either end, and its smooth, stone surface curved upwards into a ceiling over five metres high, which was exactly what one would expect from a Mithras temple.
Only a year earlier, Harker had made a visit to the evacuated London Mithraeum in Walbrook, which had been restored and opened to the public. Considered the city’s most important Roman discovery of the twentieth century, it had added greatly to what little knowledge existed on that ancient cult. And, as Harker looked around now, he realised that this supposedly lost historical heritage had never been lost at all.
‘What exactly is this place?’ Stefani asked, dropping the lighter back into her pocket while taking note of an impressive sculpture placed at the far end of the room and directly beyond the head of the table.
‘This is a Mithraeum,’ Harker explained, raising his hand towards a row of tiles running round the base of the ceiling, ‘It’s a Mithras temple and those figures up there show the initiation rites one went through to gain admittance and in order to progress within the cult. And that,’ he was now pointing to the Mithras sculpture itself, ‘that’s their equivalent of the cross.’
Stefani made her way closer, but something else caught her eye. ‘How about that?’ She raised a finger towards a small adjoining room and what looked like a red, stone, person-shaped coffin resting on sturdy wooden supports. At one end of it two horns stuck out, one on either side, and Harker immediately went over to inspect it.
‘It’s not just an ordinary coffin,’ he rubbed a hand across its smooth surface. ‘It’s a sarcophagus.’
Stefani looked puzzled as she joined him to inspect the stone box. ‘I thought they were confined to the Egyptians?’
Harker looked up at her and smiled excitedly as his archaeological instincts sparked. ‘Apparently not,’ he replied – just as a large thud came from inside it, causing him to jump back a pace.
‘There’s someone inside there,’ he said and, without pause, stepped back to the sarcophagus and ran his fingers along the edges until he found the line indicating the cover. ‘Give me a hand,’ he ordered and began to grasp hold of the heavy stone lid.
Stefani on the other hand, was far less enthusiastic and she wavered as he began to struggle against the lid’s weight. ‘Is this such a good idea? We don’t know what’s inside… It could be a rabid dog for all we know.’
The young Templar’s caution was warranted but then there came another thud and now, after a demanding look from Harker, Stefani set about helping him by grasping the opposite side of the lid firmly.
‘Damn, it’s heavy,’ Harker observed as he looked over towards her and began to count down: ‘Three, two, one…’
With some strenuous huffing and puffing, Harker pushed at the lid as Stefani pulled, then in one fluid motion the lid slid back, with a tooth-grating noise as stone ground against stone, eventually revealing a six-inch gap.
With only the wall lamps in the main room for light it was near impossible to make out what was inside, but Harker could detect something moving. In fact there was quite a lot of movement and he could make out small hints of something shiny, so he pulled out his torch. He clicked it on and shone it directly through the gap, and what he saw there had every muscle in his body tensing as he let out a shocked gasp.
Michael Donitz’s swollen blue face and bloodshot eyes stared up at him with a look of panic as a large emperor scorpion scurried across his face and disappeared down one side of his neck and out of sight. The sound of multiple other scuttling insect legs and clicking pincers was also audible and this noise was intensified by an echo due to the tight confines of the sarcophagus. Soon, more of the predatory arachnids appeared on the man’s chest to investigate the source of light permeating their dark nest.
The sight was so hideous that Harker just stood there in shock as Donitz opened his mouth and a bulbous black tongue attempted to form a plea for help through bright-red, enflamed lips but he achieved nothing more than a few saliva-filled gurgles.
‘We have to get him out,’ Stefani cried, pulling desperately at the stone lid as Harker continued to stare motionless at the horrific sight, absolutely stunned by the look of complete pain the man was enduring. ‘Alex, snap out of it!’ she yelled, and this time Harker woke from his traumatised inertia, grabbed hold of the lid and began pushing it aside as the poor fellow continued his attempts to speak. He still couldn’t make out what was emerging from the man’s mouth, though he clearly wanted out of his box of torment. But as the stone cover began to shift further, Harker caught sight of some movement at the corner of his eye.
Two thick arms suddenly wrapped themselves around his chest, like a vice, and he twisted his head around just enough to see a hooded figure clinging to him, but with its face impossible to make out. At the same time Stefani was grabbed by a couple of similarly dressed figures, and one of them raised a small bone-handled blade to her throat.
Though she went rigid as the hunting knife tip was held to her jugular, Harker continued to struggle for a moment further, the thought of those scorpions crawling over his own body making him feel jittery. A few more seconds of resistance, followed by a sharp knee planted in the back, and he finally started calming down. With his composure restored, he turned his attention to the hoodie holding a knife.
‘Don’t harm her,’ he warned angrily as Donitz himself endeavoured to slide the sarcophagus lid back further, but this pathetic attempt was foiled as a two more figures dressed in the same red and black hooded robes entered the small alcove and slammed their hands down on the lid. Harker was now hauled backwards to allow these two newcomers to slide the lid back in place, when a final gurgling squawk from Donitz became nothing more than a muffled yell from within.
‘Look, this has to be some terrible mistake—’ Harker began to protest as the person restraining him now gripped him firmly by the throat and then retrieved his iPhone before slipping it underneath his robe. He was then dragged back forcefully into the main room and hurled against the wall, before his handler stood back to stand alongside the others. It was clearly a useless plea and he was already opening his mouth to try again when the same hooded man who had been holding him waved a finger menacingly, then reached over to take the knife still being held at Stefani’s throat – and threw it over to Harker who managed to catch it in one hand.
It was a perplexing move and he held the weapon out in front of him defensively. It was at this point the knife giver reached over to the wall and on one slab pressed a small tile which then sank back into the wall.
Before he could even guess what was happening, Harker felt the floor give way beneath him and he found himself hurtling downwards into the pitch dark below, coming to a stop as he slammed hard against the floor and almost snapping his ankle in the process. He gazed upwards to the open trap-door just in time to see one of the hooded figures staring down at him drop something in after him before the trap-door shut, plunging him now into complete darkness.
Clasping the knife tightly, Harker could feel his heart beat thumping in his ears even as he felt around in the darkness for whatever had been dropped in after him. He didn’t even know if it was important but, as his escalating fear attempted to get the better of him, he continued to slide his hands all around the floor, feeling only gravel and soil. Eventually, close to losing hope, he chanced upon the object and thanked God for it, as he clasped it in his spare hand and turned it on.
When the torch erupted into light, he found himself staring directly into the face of a bull with thick horns. He yelled in shock and fell backwards, and away from it, only a few moments later to realise he was staring at a painted sculpture of the creature hanging on the opposite wall.
‘Get a grip Harker,’ he urged himself quietly and started mustering some semblance of self-control. He forced himself to his feet and began sweeping the torchlight around him, trying to figure out what this place was.
The first thing he noticed was that the walls were built with red brick and the floor wasn’t rock or soil but rather grey linoleum covered in dust and, although scuffed and worn this space looked relatively modern compared to the rocky cavern above it. He was in a room with tattered bits of wallpaper hanging off its walls. What was more, it looked like old-style flock wallpaper adorned with a flower pattern of some kind. In fact the kind you’d associate with an Indian restaurant back in the Seventies. Apart from that, the room was empty. Harker flashed his torchlight over a small open doorway and, with his breathing now becoming steadier, despite the fact that internally he was close to freaking out, he ventured over and poked his head through the doorway. There was a musty old corridor beyond, with other doors leading off it, and he noticed small wall lamps illuminated further along, which at least gave him a visual sense of his surroundings. With the small hunting knife held out before him in one hand and the torch in his other, he began to slowly make his way towards the nearest open doorway, then on past it.
He peered around the corner and noticed yet more doorways and even a flight of stairs at the far end. It was at this point it dawned on him: this wasn’t a basement or even the foundations of the buildings above. No this was a house. An underground house.
It was a bizarre realisation and as Harker stifled his disgust at the vile smell of something he honestly cared not to know about, a scuffling sound had him spinning around towards one of the open doorways. He flinched again as he found himself staring into the eyes of another bull’s head, although this statue possessed the body of a man. He let out a jittery laugh at his own nervousness. The Mithras cult and their obsession with bull symbolism was just as strong obviously down here as it was above. He glared back at the painted sculpture and shook his head in relief. But no sooner had he done so than he now noticed something else that made every muscle in his body tense up. He gripped the small hunting knife and aimed his torch directly into the doorway, and that was when he spotted it. The bull’s head was still staring forward, but its eyes were now fixed directly upon him.
And this was confirmed as they blinked slowly.
Harker recoiled as the black bull’s head began to slowly turn towards him. Its deep-set eyes began glistening, then it planted one of its legs forwards and gradually it shifted its massive frame to face him directly. He noticed how its muscular hide was covered with scars and sores as its chest began heaving up and down.
‘What the fu…’ was all was all Harker managed as the monster raised its horns and emitted a bellowing growl.
And then he was running for his life.