The Essence of Darkness Read online

  “Probably a relative of the young woman,” commented the French agent. “We’ll have to look into that. Who is this Hermann? Who is he to her? And if they’re relatives, what’s their relationship?”

  The van embarked on a series of narrow curves. The two men looked apprehensively at the dizzying ravine that opened just below the wheels of the four-wheel-drive vehicle. The German policeman looked at the map on his tablet.

  “We’ll be there soon.”

  The vehicle made one last perilous turn and plunged back into the dense foliage of the forest. It reached a vast clearing and stopped in a roughly flat area. The entire team of agents got out and prepared to walk to their destination almost two kilometers higher. The men were soon able to see the house taking shape between the trees.

  “Holy hell! Are you kidding?” exclaimed Fournier.

  “What did you expect to find?” asked the German officer, standing in front of the ancient building erected on a rocky promontory.

  “I don’t know—something less stark,” Fournier replied.

  The fortress was partly in ruins, but most of it was still clearly habitable. Three of the four guard towers stood more than sixty feet above the trees. They still rose proudly toward the sky, which was filled with dark clouds. The last tower had collapsed. Covered with moss, the huge stone blocks that formed the ramparts and dungeons were still in perfect shape. Climbing plants had colonized the bleak walls. Through the clumps of wild ivy, they could see large, colorful stained-glass windows. The construction still radiated all the power of the medieval castles—those built in the time of the knights and the Crusades.

  “It’s unbelievable,” Fournier muttered again.

  “Guys, no need to look for a doorbell,” joked Officer Norbert as he crossed the wooden bridge over the moat. “We’ll just go right in.”

  One by one, the five men crossed the bridge, which creaked and trembled with their every step. They gathered at the foot of the ramparts. A strong smell of mildew floated in the air. Loud, croaking crows had landed on the passageways to observe them with curiosity and greet their arrival. The drawbridge gate, blackened by centuries, was open. The team of agents passed under the entrance arch and stepped into the castle’s inner courtyard. Here, the forecourt of gray stone slabs and the corridors seemed maintained, though summarily. Wild grasses poked up here and there between the stones. Four clusters of exotic plants in large granite pots adorned the corners of the elegant courtyard. The late property owner’s old Mercedes sat parked under a canopy, covered with a thick layer of dust. The agents climbed the stairs leading to the huge entrance door carved with military frescoes. It was ajar. It took several of them working together to push it far enough open to go in. The loud screech it made echoed through the large rooms. Multicolored rugs covered the floor, and antique draperies decorated the walls. Icy drafts crept in between the old stones, rustling the draperies. The woodwork on the stairs leading to the upper floors still seemed to be in good condition, though there was still a lingering smell of decay.

  “Interpol Police—is anybody here?” one of the officers shouted.

  The five agents split up, each searching a room, weapon in hand.

  “Hey, anybody here?” shouted Fournier as he entered a corridor plunged in darkness.

  Only a dripping sound interrupted the frigid silence that prevailed. He lit the tactical light attached to his gun. The corridor was so damp that the beam of light began to flicker. He shook his revolver, which had always worked perfectly until then, but the light was showing signs of weakness. Yet he had charged it before he left. He came to a room where the daylight took on reddish tones as it passed through the stained-glass windows. The place was surely a bedroom. A high canopy bed sat in the middle, covered with ragged white silk sheets whose tatters floated like airy ghosts. Cut into the wall across from it was a large stone fireplace. A pile of cold ashes lay at the bottom of the hearth. Apart from the bed, the only furniture was a brown wooden wardrobe, six feet high, made in the Renaissance style. Maybe it dated from that period, Fournier thought. He didn’t dwell on the question because a large object in a corner of the room caught his attention, over where the darkness was the densest. He grabbed a candelabrum on the floor near the bed, lit a match, and brought the seven white wax candles to life. He walked toward the thing; it must have been ten feet long and three feet wide. He held the candelabrum over the unknown object.

  It was some kind of huge sarcophagus with irregular, angular contours. The material forming it was very strange: rough and extremely dark. Although the candlelight was bright enough to reveal the object’s shape, it didn’t allow him to distinguish its edges clearly. Incredibly, the seven small flames wavered, twisted, and then died without being able to project their light onto the thing. It was a truly amazing sight. Their glow seemed to dissolve into the black void that appeared before his eyes. The coffin, if it was one, was open. And it was empty.

  He slipped on his earpiece connecting him to the rest of the team. “Norbert, I found something.”

  After a moment, the German agent’s voice crackled in the earpiece:

  “So did we. You should come see.”

  Norbert’s voice sounded strange. Fournier sensed he was controlling himself against a strong emotion. He went back through the corridor and down the steps to the large entrance nave. Nobody was there.

  “Where are you?”

  A few seconds passed; then Norbert responded, “In the basement. The service stairs are next to the kitchen door. Take the corridor to the right of the entrance; you can’t miss them.”

  Fournier found the kitchens and took the cramped spiral staircase. Torches sat unlit on a worm-eaten pedestal table. Apparently, the other agents had used some to light their way, judging by the soot marks on the ground. So he took one too and lit it with a match. He brandished the torch in front of him and headed for the depths of the fortress. At the bottom, he saw rippling patches of light at the end of a long, damp corridor. It had to be the agents. The irregular floor was nothing more than muddy dirt. Rats appeared in front of him and immediately disappeared with shrill squeaks. As Fournier approached the entrance, a violent stench assaulted him. He took out a handkerchief and pressed it against his nose. Then he entered a vaulted room supported by rows of pillars. It was a huge cellar, immersed in darkness. The pestilential smell, so repugnant and intense it was unspeakable, reminded him of a contaminated slaughterhouse. The officers were lighting the area with other torches on the walls. Little by little, they light on the most atrocious sight he had ever seen during his career as an agent. On the black ground, the lines of a pentagram drawn with lime covered the entire surface of the cellar. In the center stood an amorphous abomination consisting of a pile of human remains: bleached bones, scattered, amputated limbs, and bodies still covered with flesh. Lacerated, their intestines gushed from opened stomachs. Bloodless heads had severed throats and bluish tongues hanging out of their toothless mouths. Swollen faces disfigured with grimaces of agony had bulging eyeballs with deathly expressions etched on withered corneas. The scene caused Fournier such absolute repulsion that he could only bear it by emptying all the contents of his stomach in a corner. Feeling compassion for the unfortunate victims who had perished here was impossible; it was instantly lost in the horror of this nightmarish vision. The arrangement of the contents seemed to have a morbidly calculated layout. The base of the vaguely pyramidal structure consisted of dry, yellow bones. The higher up one looked, the more the human remains retained flesh, tendons, and other attributes preserved from decomposition. There must have been about thirty human beings there, all more or less dismembered and arranged following the outlines of the pentagram. Each lay in a particular position, sometimes evoking adoration with their hands joined (when they still had their hands), sometimes bowed in a position of submission. What tortured mind could devote itself to such a task? The crazy artist was also a cannibal. Most of the bloodless bodies had traces of gaping bites taken out of them
, or what seemed to be bites. It was hard to imagine a creature capable of making such wounds. Some of the faces, throats, and chests, appeared to have been torn away with a single bite.

  Agent Fournier sagged against a pillar.

  “Shit . . . What are we going to do with this?” he spit out, on the verge of throwing up whatever remained in his stomach.

  He slid to the ground, where he sat motionless for at least a minute. Norbert stared at the heap of bodies, standing stiff on his legs, gripped by incomprehension. He tried not to let any of his feelings show, but Fournier could see the scene also affected him. The other three agents were motionless, caught up in inextricable inner reflections. They were vaguely mumbling notes into their voice recorders while walking around the mass grave.

  “Okay . . . Let’s go back upstairs,” Norbert decided. “We have to move. Klaus, do you have the satellite phone with you?”

  Klaus pulled himself together and signaled that he did.

  “Notify the forensics team. They’ll be busy for a while.”

  The five agents went back up to ground level where they could breathe again. The stench from the cellars clung to their clothes.

  “What do you think of all of this?” the German agent asked his French colleague.

  “I’ve never seen a monstrosity like this,” Fournier replied. “There are at least thirty bodies down there. It looked like an occult ritual. Did you see the symbols painted on the walls?”

  “That was the first thing I noticed. I’ve never seen symbols like that anywhere.”

  “Black magic,” said an agent with a thick Bavarian accent.

  “Shit!” Another swore.

  After a long silence, the five men looked at each other questioningly and then returned inside to get back to work.

  Fournier headed back up to the bedroom he had inspected, but he turned left just before the entrance to a smaller, adjoining room. It was an office. The daylight was brighter in here because it was natural. A round window high up the wall made it possible to see very clearly. He opened the wooden secretary desk. There was a computer there. It was an old Apple that still seemed to work perfectly, he realized when he turned it on. He was able to access Isolde Hohenwald’s files quickly, as she didn’t use any passwords. Most of them were old invoices, paid to towing companies, electricity, masonry, and maintenance. Some went back more than sixty years. She seemed to have digitized all her documents. When he began to search the drawers one by one, the agent eventually found an envelope full of printed documents. Inside, he found a black folder on which appeared an acronym embossed in gold letters: OTO.

  “Ordo Templi Orientis,”[2] Fournier mumbled under his breath.

  He quickly reviewed the printed documents, all written in German. These were obviously OTO communications to its insiders. This order was one of the most influential secret societies known, alleged to have dark intentions. Some of its former leaders had been notorious for their ethical misdeeds.

  There was no doubt that Isolde Hohenwald had been a member of this order during her lifetime. She had also been an expert priestess in black magic and, considering the human inventory she kept in her cellar, a cannibal. It was becoming a bit much for Agent Fournier.

  “Norbert.”

  Interference distorted the German officer’s voice. “I’m here.”

  “We’re in deep shit. I’ve just found documents marked with the initials of the Ordo Templi Orientis. Does that mean anything to you?” asked Fournier.

  There was silence for a few seconds. “You think the OTO is involved?”

  “In my opinion, what we just discovered looks like the tip of the iceberg. I’ll catch up with you later. I’ll keep going.”

  Fournier returned to the bedroom where the sarcophagus lay. On the way past, he grabbed a candelabrum whose candles were still burning. He went to the back of the room and illuminated, or tried to illuminate, the strange sarcophagus by holding the dying flames above it. He stayed like that for a good five minutes, examining the massive object, his mind just as absorbed by the sight as the candlelight was by the rough, black stone.

  “Yo, Fournier! Are you okay?”

  The officer spun around and pointed his gun at the shadow in the doorframe. He recognized his German colleague and immediately lowered his revolver.

  “I’ve been calling you for twenty minutes,” Norbert told him. “Did you unplug your earpiece?”

  “I didn’t unplug anything. It’s that thing back there . . . it causes interference with the equipment. Come see.”

  The two men returned to the back of the room, and Fournier slowly passed the candlelight over the sarcophagus.

  “What is this thing?” exclaimed the German agent, scratching his head.

  “I have no fucking clue,” Fournier replied, “but it doesn’t seem normal to me.”

  “Klaus,” Norbert said into his microphone, “call headquarters back right away. Tell them to send the specialists from the technical lab with the forensics team. Apparently, we have something . . . strange here. They need to come do a detailed analysis with the right equipment. It’s some kind of ore. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  15

  Lauren left Ravenwood’s home as night fell on Rochester. The paleographer had scanned all the pages of the book. They had agreed to meet again when he’d finished translating everything he could translate. She had taken care to place the book in an airtight case and carried it carefully against her, inside her jacket.

  As she was walking toward the Jeep, she thought she saw a movement in the shadows. It came from a bush at the far end of the garden. She pulled out her weapon, and with all senses on alert, she advanced toward the place where she had seen the leaves stir. Ready to open fire, she switched on her flashlight and swept the beam of light over the vegetation rustling softly. Surely it was the wind, she thought. It had risen with the night and was now blowing away the few clouds that clung to the crescent moon. She was sorry to have left the paleographer alone. Although he was armed—he had a collection of weapons still in working order—she had an uneasy feeling. But then the thought of Eliott drove the feeling away. He must be writhing in pain out there in the hills, awaiting her return like an injured animal.

  She got behind the wheel and turned the ignition key, fearing that the four-wheel-drive vehicle might have engine damage. But it started to purr without any sign of problems. She turned around in the driveway and pointed the Jeep’s headlights in the direction of Ravenwood’s yard to make sure no threat lurked there. Apparently, the area was safe. All the dogs in the neighborhood also significantly limited an intrusion on the premises. Relatively reassured, she left the residential neighborhood.

  When she reached the highway, she dialed Eliott’s number on her cell phone.

  No response. She left a message.

  “I just left Ravenwood’s house; I’m on my way to your position. Call me back to let me know that everything’s okay.”

  Eliott opened his eyes to see the stars shining in the clear night. He was lying down, naked and covered with blood. His feet lay immersed in the icy water of a stream. He stayed like that for a few minutes, looking for some kind of sensation in the void. Then he became aware of the cold, which gradually seized him, until he started shivering and then shook with convulsions. He was actually very close to hypothermia. He could hardly feel his body, just a mass that was too heavy to move. He struggled to his feet and walked as well as he could to loosen his muscles and warm himself up. He turned around to find that he was close to the first homes in the small town of Olean—very close. Flashes from his metamorphosis hadn’t yet come back to him. He suddenly saw flashing lights coming in his direction. The screaming sirens pounded his eardrums. He threw himself to the ground to hide in the tall grass. Now, with his nose pressed to the ground, the organic and mineral smells hit him with a brutal intensity. He found it so unbearable that he had to lift his head from the ground. He then heard the police car doors open and close with a bang. T
he armed police officers’ steps crunched on the gravel driveway of the house they were surrounding. He could feel all of this so acutely that he understood that something in him had changed. Strangely, he didn’t feel the nausea coming after the transformation. Other vehicles approached in the distance. He held his ears the best he could to avoid the pain the sounds caused. These were emergency rescue vehicles. He could now see the men in white uniforms entering and leaving the house where the tragedy—or more accurately, the carnage—had taken place.

  He had no doubt caused the massacre.

  One thing suddenly came to mind. A terrifying vibration had risen within him and turned into a voice from beyond the grave:

  “You belong to us now.”

  The unbelievable dialogue slowly came together. The words, random at first, arranged themselves in complete, coherent sentences.

  What meaning could he give to that voice that had awoken within him last night? It could have been a hallucination.

  “That you accomplish our mission.”

  Had he become the devil’s puppet—Lucifer’s incarnation, his toy?

  “God won’t help you either.”

  In the most cruel and paradoxical way, Cooper feared the moment when the evil voice would stir inside him again. But on the other hand, he wanted to know, to go back to the source of this dark energy flowing through his veins.

  “Come on . . . Think about it . . . Who do you think we could be?”

  He suddenly returned to the present. Behind the grass that waved in the night breeze, the ballet of the emergency services and police forces still danced in the night against a backdrop of flashing lights. He felt none of the usual signs of metamorphosis. And the images of what had happened during that time hadn’t come back to him.

  He realized he hadn’t actually transformed.

  The bodies he saw carried out on emergency stretchers, one by one, this entire family . . . He had kept his human form when he had devoured them. That’s why he wasn’t rejecting what he himself, Eliott Cooper, had ingested.