The Essence of Darkness Read online

  The thing had converted him.

  Now his submission to this force was almost complete.

  “There’s no point in trying to escape.”

  He tried to calm down. His heart started pounding furiously. His emotions passed through him like crazy horses galloping toward the abyss. He waited, lying on his back, for the blue and red lights to stop spinning in the trees. And when he no longer heard or saw anything beyond the wall of wild grass, when nothing remained but the rustling of tree leaves shaking in the wind, he stood up and dragged himself up the hill to his makeshift camp.

  Lauren’s cell phone began to vibrate on the dashboard. Eliott.

  She picked up right away.

  “Lauren. Where are you?”

  “I’m almost to the town of Avon. How’s it going?”

  From the sound of his voice, she already knew the answer.

  “Not so great. I’m at the end of my rope.”

  “Talk to me. Tell me what I can do.”

  “Listen, I only see one solution,” he responded. “You have to go back to a pharmacy and get some powerful anesthetics and sedatives. Were you able to get the syringes for the samples?”

  “Eliott, you’re losing it, damn it!” she yelled.

  “Listen to me! I don’t have any choice, do you understand?”

  “I won’t do that! I won’t do it! Do you hear me? If you want to off yourself, it’ll have to be without me!”

  “It’s the only way, Lauren,” he said firmly. “I’m going to inject myself with a dose of medication strong enough to put myself out of service, but only temporarily. It’ll neutralize the metamorphosis.”

  “It’s suicide, Eliott.”

  “No! Listen, I’ve thought this through. The transformation always requires an enormous amount of energy to work inside me. If I’m totally lethargic, the evil won’t be able to act. I’m sure of it. Trust me. I don’t plan on staying like this. We have a story to write together.”

  “How can you be sure of the doses you’re going to inject? You’re not a doctor.”

  “I’m going to look online, do research on specialized sites to find the right dosage. Trust me; I’m not trying to kill myself. I’m not completely crazy yet.”

  His words and intonation reassured her.

  “Okay. I’m going to stop at a pharmacy. What do you need exactly?”

  “Pentobarbital, diazepam, and propofol. But Lauren . . .”

  “What?”

  “You’re gonna have to get them through the back door, if you know what I mean.”

  “You need a prescription to get these drugs?”

  “That’s what I mean. We don’t have time to negotiate this legally with a doctor. You’re going to have to steal them. That shouldn’t be a problem for you, right?”

  “No, that’s not what’s bothering me, Eliott.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “I don’t want you to make a mistake with the dosage. Let me check it out with a doctor, okay?”

  “Lauren, I can’t take it anymore. This thing is invading me. Can you picture me eating people, Lauren? I’m feeding on them!”

  She was unable to answer. She felt he was very close to being mentally unhinged.

  “Listen,” he continued, “it’s simple. You’ve got training for this. I taught you this kind of practical exercise myself. All you have to do is disable the security system. The electrical panel has to be accessible from the outside. You just have to find it. Pharmacies generally have simple volumetric alarms.”

  “Okay, I’ll do it, Eliott. I’ll do it.”

  There was a pause of at least ten seconds.

  “Eliott?”

  “I’m here. You know, I was just thinking about something. Even if I’m very weak, we’ll be able to get close to each other safely. It’s been such a long time since I’ve held you in my arms.”

  “Will you be strong enough for that?”

  “I think so.”

  “I can’t wait for you to do it.”

  “I can’t wait either.”

  There was another silence.

  He suddenly felt the evil acting on him in his gut, gradually raising the pain scale. The thing twisted his intestines and stirred his belly like a wizard waving his wand.

  “Lauren,” he said, hiding his pain, “I’m going to try to rest now. I’m exhausted.”

  “Okay. I’m going to stash the Jeep on a dirt road near Avon. When I find the pharmacy, I’ll wait until late at night. And I’ll bring you the drugs you need. Consider it done.”

  16

  Sir Wilbur was on his seventh cup of tea. It was almost five in the morning. The smoke from his pipe haunted the room. He had not let it go out all night. In front of him lay dozens of printed documents all lined up, digitized replicas of the pages of the precious work, like promises of inconceivable revelations. He feverishly compared ideograms, measured the angles their features formed, imagined their phonetics, and tried to pronounce out loud impossible words coming out of the depths of time. When Miss Gray had walked into his house the previous morning, she had transformed a legend into reality in a matter of moments.

  The book existed.

  Over the millennia, the lineage of its authors had founded an order for the sole purpose of transmitting obscure knowledge. The secret they had defended in the shadows, with weapons when necessary, had never before emerged from their lineage. Researchers called them the Order of the Adepts. What did this knowledge include? That awaited discovery. But before that, he had to decode their writing system to translate the source language. Without this, it would be impossible to understand any of the handwritten discoveries from Mesopotamia.

  How had Miss Gray come into possession of this work? This question kept coming back to Ravenwood’s mind. Without realizing it, she had certainly had crucial information. Why had she mentioned witchcraft? Who had given her the book? All these questions tormented him and prevented him from concentrating on his work. Unable to wait any longer, he picked up his phone and dialed Natalie Gray’s number.

  Lauren, who had reached the town of Avon, had parked the Jeep as planned on a forest track above a shopping area where there was a pharmacy. She had let herself fall half asleep waiting for the right time to break into the store to get the drugs Eliott needed.

  Her cell phone rang, tearing her out of her nap. The lit screen displayed the paleographer’s name.

  “Natalie, am I bothering you?”

  “No, not at all. Do you have news, sir?”

  “I’m making progress in my work, but something is bothering me, to the point that I couldn’t help calling you.”

  “What is it?”

  “Well, here it is: I don’t know who gave you this book, but what I can tell you is that this person is necessarily involved in the order to which the authors of this manuscript belong.”

  “I’m not following you, Sir Wilbur. Could you be a bit clearer?”

  “The Order of the Adepts is wholly impenetrable, Miss Gray, bound by secrecy. What I want to tell you is that the person who entrusted you with this book must be in direct contact with the Adepts. Do you understand? It is even likely that the person is one of them and you don’t know it.”

  At these words, a deduction began to take root in Lauren’s mind. Eliott had taken possession of the book from a witch. Could she have belonged to that order? Had Eliott’s metamorphosis inducted him into this dark lineage in spite of himself? He had described to her what looked very much like a ritual of satanic sacrifice, but what if it had been something else?

  “Sir Wilbur, these Adepts . . . have you seen any images of them? I mean, is it possible they might not be human?”

  “Natalie, it’s now my turn to ask you for clarification, if I may. How, and from whom, did you come into possession of this manuscript? We must work together if we want to understand it. That means you have to trust me.”

  “I can’t tell you anything about the person who gave me this assignment, sir, and I’m sorry
about that. All I can tell you is that this translation is of the utmost importance to this person—even a matter of life and death.”

  “I understand,” he replied with resignation. “But then can you describe to me the conditions under which this person acquired this work? Natalie, we still know almost nothing about this order. You must give me all the details you have because the smallest of them could be of major importance.”

  “Look, I’m on the road right now, and I’m going to see this person. I’ll tell him about our meeting and your request.”

  “Very well. In that case, I’ll wait for you to get back in touch with me.”

  “Perfect,” she responded. “I’ll call you back very soon, Sir Wilbur. Keep me informed of your progress on the translation.”

  “Of course, Natalie. I’m going to get back to work now.”

  Lauren sank into her seat. She tried to go back to sleep but couldn’t. This paleographer was starting to annoy her with his mysteries. Eliott was two steps away from insanity. She felt he had reached his absolute limit. He might decide in a fraction of a second to shoot himself in the head to end the incredible suffering weighing on him.

  It was almost midnight—still two more hours to wait.

  Then she’d break into the pharmacy.

  The process was a formality.

  At most, the whole thing wouldn’t take her more than half an hour.

  *

  Sir Wilbur stared into the flames crackling in the hearth of his fireplace without really seeing them. His thoughts were all on the brief discussion he’d just had with Natalie Gray.

  The person who had given her the book could only be an Adept. There was no doubt about it. It was inconceivable someone could have removed from the Order this precious work its members had written generation after generation. It would be like a London baker in his street-corner shop greeting his customers one morning with the crown of England on his head. It wasn’t possible—period.

  Ravenwood had spent over fourteen years of his life traveling through the territories of ancient Mesopotamia, from the Zagros Mountains to the plains of Iraq, from Baghdad to Tehran, from Aleppo to Jerusalem. Through courage and determination, he had gathered a wealth of information, major archaeological finds, and manuscripts. They proved—irrefutably, in his eyes—the existence of the Order of the Adepts. Although he wasn’t the only specialist to shoulder this hypothesis, like Christ bearing his cross, there were only a handful of them. These diehards had even founded a society—as secret as the results of their research—to avoid the wrath of the great archaeological institutions as well as of their own universities. Ravenwood had still been a student at Cambridge at that point in his life.

  One day in April 1954, the group of researchers had received a missive from a mysterious stranger, an Iranian benefactor named Amar Jambi. He had invited the dozen young Englishmen to his home, a palace nestled in an oasis of vegetation near the city of Khorramabad in Iran. This elderly man, almost a hundred years old, with sky-blue eyes, had heard about their quest. Like them, in his early years he had completed advanced studies in archaeology and had focused on the study of extinct languages and civilizations. And like them, he had pursued passionate research on a form of writing only attributable to a civilization whose existence dated back to extraordinarily ancient times. Amar Jambi himself had inherited archaeological finds that his father, a paleontologist by profession, had discovered during his lifetime. His father had warned him that his research should remain secret—because his life might depend on it. Shortly after he’d transmitted to his son the mysterious tablets he’d uncovered at an excavation site in Alborz province, Izmir Jambi had disappeared under circumstances never explained.

  The Alborz tablets were the oldest evidence of the existence of the source language. Although this writing was incomprehensible, Amar Jambi later had been able to gather translatable testimonies, written in Sumerian, which had evoked the existence of a secret order. It had been the only holder of this language and this obscure knowledge since the beginning of time.

  Some passages, written in Sumerian and engraved on these tablets, often concluded with this sentence: “The lineage will live forever and defend the secret of the original knowledge against all who try to seize it or to reveal it to the eyes of the ignorant.” Another variant of this warning appeared again at the bottom of other tablets and concluded with, “The supreme knowledge knows no law other than itself and will punish the profane with death.”

  In Ravenwood’s view, the most incredible part was that this language—originally intended to protect this immeasurably ancient knowledge like an encryption—had, over the millennia, formed the veritable root of every language known to humanity.

  In fact, this meant the wisdom this language conveyed might also be the source of all knowledge.

  17

  Lauren returned to the Jeep less than twenty minutes after she’d left it, as silent as a shadow. She threw the backpack into the back seat, filled with drug vials and the break-in tools she had just used to disarm the pharmacy’s security system. Everything had gone as planned. She slipped the key into the ignition and started the Jeep. Less than an hour later, she reached the hills of Olean.

  Eliott saw the Jeep’s headlights lighting the track in the distance. A few seconds later, the large yellow eyes of the four-wheel drive dazzled him as it came around a bend. Lauren parked below his camp, precisely where he had directed, in a circle drawn on the ground. He had restrained himself with his own handcuffs, which he had firmly attached to a chain around a tree. That way, Lauren would be out of danger in case of metamorphosis; at least she would have enough time to escape.

  As they had planned, she ran to him, her face hidden by her hood so that the beast couldn’t see her features through Eliott’s eyes. There wasn’t a second to lose. Without a word, without even looking at him, she took the vials of sedatives, the anesthetics, and the intravenous syringe out of the bag. She had to work quickly to avoid giving the thing time to assess whether she represented a threat or potential prey. First, neutralize the metamorphosis, then take the blood sample immediately after.

  Lauren grabbed the syringe and waited for Eliott to tell her the doses.

  “One hundred eighty milligrams of propofol.”

  She stuck the needle into the first vial. Her fingers were trembling. She couldn’t help looking into Eliott’s eyes. Second vial:

  “Four hundred seventy milligrams of pentobarbital,” he mumbled weakly.

  She carefully filled the syringe. Their eyes met again. They were both dying to kiss each other, to touch each other. But this wasn’t the time to give in.

  Third and final vial:

  “Two hundred forty milligrams of diazepam.”

  Lauren, totally focused, finished the mixture and then shook it vigorously before rolling up the sleeve of Eliott’s jacket. She looked at him again, tapped the veins of his forearm to bring them out, and pushed the needle into the thickest one. A shiver of terror ran through her when she looked at him again. Like an electric shock. Eliott’s pupils were only two black beads on either side of his face, which had gone pale.

  “Hurry up, Lauren . . . and then run . . . as far as you can!” he managed to gasp.

  She pressed on the plunger, and the thick yellow liquid passed into Eliott’s blood. He struggled violently with an atrocious roar that sounded like an enraged bear. She jumped up, dropped the syringe, and, forgetting the blood samples, sprinted to the Jeep without turning around.

  She took refuge in the vehicle, locked the doors, and waited, ready to start it and stomp on the accelerator.

  Silence.

  There was no more noise in the hills.

  In the rear-view mirror, she could see that the chain still attached Eliott to the tree. He wasn’t moving. The solution seemed to have worked. She remained motionless, attentive to the tiniest movement the silhouette might make.

  Body between two bodies.

  One minute, two . . . then five
more passed.

  The human form remained as it was.

  The drugs had indeed neutralized the metamorphosis. The lethargy would surely last several hours, given the dose of sedative poor Eliott had just received. Then he would gradually regain consciousness. Lauren would then take the blood sample and then inject a second, smaller dose to keep him in this semiconscious state that made the transformation impossible. Kept in this state, he would still be able to move and speak—with difficulty, but enough to talk to her.

  *

  The paleographer tapped his pipe in the ashtray and cleaned it carefully while continuing to ponder from every angle the obvious question that had appeared to him. A person intimately linked to the Order of the Adepts had entrusted Natalie Gray with the book. It couldn’t be otherwise because the Order and the book formed a single continuity over the millennia. So why was this person trying to have it translated?

  There was a striking contradiction there because the Adepts were the sole holders and authors. It was therefore inconceivable that they would have sought a translation of their own writings.

  It didn’t make sense.

  This meant that the person who had entrusted the book to Miss Gray had taken possession of the book without the Order’s knowledge. Maybe that person had even stolen it from the Order—the ultimate sacrilege.

  He plunged back into his translation as if into a refuge sheltering him from the fear invading him from all sides.

  Ravenwood’s hands trembled every time they brushed the pages of the dark book. At the slightest noise from outside, he tensed up and glanced worriedly out to the street. He was ready to grab the gun lying next to him: an old musket that he had stuffed with powder and loaded with shot.

  He knew the power of the Order.

  Or at least the power attributed to it.

  So many murders committed in the shadows in the name of secrecy.