The Essence of Darkness Read online

  Over the centuries, the ghostly organization had grown in strength. It had built itself up in the chaos of wars and political plots. Ravenwood had been able to detect, not without difficulty, the dark ramifications of its lineage. It accepted very few into its secret ranks. One could have counted them on the fingers of one hand every year. But all of this was just speculation.

  Something supernatural lay in the supposed influence this organization could have on political circles and on other very closed, secret societies also considered occult. Over the centuries, the Order of the Adepts seemed to have concentrated all its strategic skills on a single objective: to make itself invisible. And if it had acquired such power, it was precisely because no desire for representation hampered it. No ego. No interest other than that of spreading, of gradually creeping into the subtle cogs of the course of human history. Like the cosmic singularity astrophysicists referred to as a black hole, the Order was undetectable, formless; it existed only through the effect it had on its environment.

  According to some, the wars, famines, and plague epidemics that occurred in Europe during the Middle Ages weren’t due to chance. Even then, the conspiracy theory found supporters. The Church spoke of the devil. Kings cut off heads within their courts. Only a handful of scholars inferred the existence of an all-powerful secret brotherhood beyond all authority. It was the most rational hypothesis. However, sensible minds saw only unfounded popular beliefs behind this, tales told in the evening, by the fire, in cottages.

  The motivations of this obscure order, if it existed at all, remained unknown, except that it sought to transmit the source language to its future followers. The group of researchers studying them had so far only been able to make suppositions. Some contemporary Masonic societies boasted, in elaborate philosophical discourses, of conveying man’s decline in order to confront evil, to push him to react to his self-destruction. Industrial overproduction, the sale of weapons, cigarettes, and alcohol, the glorification of violence, widespread pornography, the proliferation of media run by fools, the absurdity and incompetence of elected politicians, the fundamental incoherence of most of the laws passed . . . According to some so-called “great masters,” all of this served the good of humanity. According to them, everything was reversed. For evil, sooner or later, would be the compelling force in man’s awakening.

  Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case. These secret societies and their costumed masters were in fact involved in economic and political networks. They contained nothing, absolutely nothing, of benevolent and fraternal religious organizations. These fools were blinded by the power they thought they held and by their greed for even more. Money, political supremacy—all of this managed to corrupt the most determined minds. Ultimately, only the world’s ignorance governed it. Chaos gradually took hold. And nothing positive for man could come out of it.

  If absurdity and blindness dominated humanity, it was presumably not by chance, according to Ravenwood. Only hands that worked in the most impenetrable secrecy could manipulate the puppets at the forefront of secret societies. Such hands didn’t exist anywhere, either for the common man or for the initiated.

  An order within an order, the Illuminati had come out of the shadows. Why betray their own secret? A sacrifice? No. A strategic maneuver aimed at bringing to life the theory of an all-powerful, mysterious organization, no doubt to gain useful influence in the future. For once they reached the working classes, they became a solid base, a breeding ground for sowing the seed of dark supremacy.

  Little by little, belief became reality.

  Maybe the shadowy hands had the will to build a better world. Maybe the Order of the Adepts wasn’t evil at all. However, no light seemed to emanate from the occult worlds. Seen from another angle, frightening representations had adorned the greatest mysteries of history. Wrathful divinities with fiery tongues and lightning in their eyes had embellished them. Ravenwood didn’t like that idea. Terror could only germinate the seeds of evil. And it would continue going from bad to worse until the ultimate decline.

  The day had passed quickly, and the sun was already going down. The purple rays of the sunset invaded his office with a blood-red glow. The more hours that passed, the more fiercely Ravenwood attacked his work. He forgot to eat or drink; he even let his pipe go out. The further he progressed, the more he felt like an intruder engaged in the conquest of an unknown land. By dusk, he’d finally managed to formulate his first coherent interpretations out of his work. Some words fell into place, then sentences. Slowly, using the mysterious alphabet consisting of more than forty symbols, Ravenwood brought back to life a time so ancient that humanity likely hadn’t yet been born.

  “You who enter, pure of heart, in the unaltered lineage . . .”

  He had translated the first words from the source language.

  It was the induction into the order—maybe a chant.

  “Perform the ritual that will deliver you from your shell of flesh, and don the armor of secrecy, forever.”

  The first paragraphs referred to the transmission and then the elevation of the chosen one to the rank of adept. The book described many of the steps with precision. Even if entire chapters just seemed to be endless invocations, it couldn’t have been witchcraft. The context of the whole, the terms used, evoked biological processes. They were like appeals, as if officiants positioned themselves as receptacles of a force, or more precisely, an entity. There were only phonations oriented toward the accomplishment of physiological transformations. He thought they might be tools, mechanisms for freeing imprisoned forces, for inviting them to penetrate the flesh of the one reciting them. He was unable understand any more about these paragraphs because they lacked any known ontology.

  He continued to work, so absorbed by his task that he was no longer aware of the hours passing. The next day’s sun rose on the pale horizon. He didn’t see a single one of its rays spread over the flat, cold waters of Lake Ontario. Only by the words illuminated his soul, then sentences he could piece together, sentences as old as the first days on Earth.

  18

  Wilderstein Castle, Isolde Hohenwald’s residence:

  October 30

  The Interpol forensic team’s camera flashes were popping in the cellar. They removed the bodies on stretchers that came and went on the basement stairs. They then loaded them into two helicopters that shuttled them to Berlin. Other agents rushed through the hallways to collect from each room everything needed for analysis. The first identifications of the bodies would certainly happen later in the day. Then the others would follow in time depending on their state of decomposition.

  Fournier examined the contents of Isolde Hohenwald’s personal computer file by file. This wasn’t his job, but he was convinced he would find a serious lead.

  Officer Norbert interrupted his search.

  “Some other guys just arrived. We scheduled a briefing for everyone in the great hall. You need to come down and join us in ten minutes, okay?”

  “Okay,” he responded without taking his eyes off the screen.

  The German officer turned away and left him to his work. Fournier read and reread the documents with careful attention. The invoices—one of them dated back eight months, saved under the title “Volodymyr delivery.” The total was forty thousand euros, paid in cash. There was no other information either on the nature of the goods or on the business identity of the supplier.

  He entered the Slavic-sounding first name in the computer’s search bar. Immediately, several related folder windows opened. The most interesting one resulted in a phone number. There was no address, just a number for a certain Volodymyr Prazdniev.

  Bingo.

  Forty thousand euros of unidentified goods, paid in cash on delivery. Presumably, this Prazdniev was the possible deliverer. Based on his last name, he was Ukrainian. Fournier immediately made the connection with the pile of bodies in the cellar—thirty-four bodies, to be exact. The Ukrainian mafias were definitely involved in the human trafficking market. Th
ey were even among the most active importers in Europe, right after the Turks. So unless Isolde Hohenwald herself had been responsible for abducting the thirty-four people massacred in her cellar, a provider specializing in this type of activity had supplied her.

  Forty thousand euros on the human trafficking market corresponded to about twenty units, Fournier estimated. Twenty living bodies in a subjugated state. He saved all the data relating to this Volodymyr Prazdniev on his flash drive and closed the files. Afterward, he sat thoughtful for a few seconds in front of the turned-off screen. He then left the office and took a detour into the adjoining room, Isolde Hohenwald’s bedroom.

  Eight silhouettes in white coveralls were busy at work under hyperpowerful projectors whose dazzling light, however, seemed to dim from time to time.

  The men in white gathered around the black stone tomb taking photos, samples, fingerprints, and a multitude of other complex analyses. Fournier smiled as he watched them moving about awkwardly, like astronauts in zero gravity in a too-small cabin. They were using experimental equipment, he noted, devices whose function only they knew. But this state-of-the-art equipment seemed to be experiencing serious malfunctions, just like the projectors. He didn’t hang around; he went to join the rest of the agents for the briefing on the ground floor.

  Norbert was addressing a dozen other Interpol officers gathered around him in a semicircle.

  “First of all, a big thank you to Karl for thinking to bring coffee packets,” Norbert said. “We’re going to need them!”

  All eyes turned to the man in question. Some gave a thumbs-up, others called out a “Thank you, Karl” to him in chorus.

  “Yes, well done, Karl,” Norbert added, “because the owner of the place only drank tea, apart from her hemoglobin aperitifs.”

  He ventured a smile that quickly froze on his face because no one thought the joke was funny. It was hard to laugh at the nightmare that was becoming a reality here. An icy horror seemed to have crept over the agents, even the most hardened ones, overwhelming their professional good humor.

  “Okay. I think you’ve all taken a walk through the castle,” Norbert continued. “In the basement, everyone probably saw the well-stocked pentagram that was obviously Isolde Hohenwald’s pantry.”

  An officer raised his hand and spoke with a serious demeanor. “Norbert, the guys . . . we don’t want to take this as a joke. What was this Isolde Hohenwald? Can you give us more info?”

  “At the moment, we don’t know much more than we have here.”

  “And what exactly do we have, Norbert?” asked an agent.

  “We have a case of cannibalism, aggravated by acts of barbarism during occult rituals—witchcraft, in other words.”

  Another agent raised his hand. “Wait a second, please, Norbert. Are you saying she ate them alive?”

  “We don’t know if they were alive or dead. Only the autopsies will answer this question with any certainty.”

  “And the scuba divers up there—who is that team? We’ve never seen them. Earlier, I wanted to go into the room where they’re working to pick up some things, and they wouldn’t let me through.

  “They have priority. They’re from the Berlin office, and I don’t know them either. They’ve placed the room under quarantine for security reasons.”

  “Quarantine?” asked another man. “If there was a viral threat, these guys should have come in before us, right?”

  “I can assure you that the premises are safe—not a single virus. Those agents are there to perform specific analyses. However, they have authority over us and at any time may classify as confidential any material they deem necessary. They initiated the quarantine procedure so they could work in peace; that’s all.”

  “Yeah,” muttered an agent, “those aren’t our usual methods. Personally, I don’t like it.”

  “Same,” another agreed.

  “Me neither,” another man chimed in.

  Norbert spread his arms in a gesture of appeasement to put an end to the scattered comments taking over the briefing.

  “Guys, please, let’s try to stay on track. Here are the questions we need to answer. Who was Isolde Hohenwald? What of her family, her friends, her mental state? Why does the registry office indicate her year of birth as 1852? And the mass grave—what was the real motive for the massacre? Witchcraft? Fanatical occultism? Insanity? Connections to secret societies? Who are the victims? We need their city or country of origin, their age, and anything else that will allow us to identify them, beyond what the autopsies will show. Of course, if you find elements that seem to be abnormally out of . . . normality, don’t hesitate to add them to your reports.”

  An agent from Norbert’s team raised his hand and asked very seriously, “Actually, in terms of normality, a lot of things are outside the ordinary. So I have a question that may seem strange.”

  Norbert signaled to the young agent to continue.

  “Is it possible that we’re dealing with a real case of vampirism? Personally, I don’t believe in that kind of thing, but now . . .”

  “Guys, let’s be serious, please. No more questions like that, thank you. Witchcraft, vampirism . . . Let’s leave the folklore aside and take care of providing concrete answers to all our questions. We know of this mass grave and its creator: Isolde Hohenwald. Her DNA is present on all the bodies found in the cellar. This Isolde is currently on ice in one of the drawers at a Pennsylvania morgue on the other side of the Atlantic. So she wasn’t immortal. Our job is simply to solve all of this, even if this case raises unusual questions.”

  The team didn’t seem convinced.

  “Guys, you’ve all had training to be tough. You’re not going to tell me you believe in that kind of thing. Come on, you’re not afraid, are you?”

  An embarrassed silence fell over them in a matter of seconds.

  Fournier spoke up. “I found an interesting lead when I searched her computer’s hard drive.”

  Norbert introduced him to those who didn’t know him yet.

  “Gentlemen, this is Special Agent Patrick Fournier, who works on the French side.”

  The young German officer invited him with a gesture to share the results of his research with the others.

  Fournier cleared his throat before continuing. “First of all, Isolde Hohenwald belonged to an important secret society you have surely heard of: the Ordo Templi Orientis, known by the acronym OTO. You should also know that this order is very well established in the West, throughout the United States.”

  The agents nodded slightly.

  “Then I took from her files the contact information of a Ukrainian individual named Volodymyr Prazdniev. The police forces of this man’s country know him. In my opinion, he may have supplied Hohenwald with human beings—people she probably would have used later for her bloody rituals. I deduced this from an invoice that proves Hohenwald paid forty thousand euros in cash to this Prazdniev for a ‘delivery.’ It is well known that the Ukrainian mafia runs many human trafficking networks across Europe.”

  “We’re going to dig deeper into this lead,” Norbert confirmed.

  “I think we should quickly set up an undercover buy with this Prazdniev,” Fournier proposed. “If we catch him, maybe he’ll give up his superiors to us. At worst, it’ll knock off some mafia heads.”

  Norbert and some other officers agreed.

  “At best, it will lead us to uncover a human trafficking network on an international scale,” Fournier went on. “Let’s not forget this case is linked to child abductions on American soil.”

  “Okay, Fournier,” Norbert said, “we’re going to set this up. I’ll leave it to you to plan the operation.”

  The French agent nodded in turn.

  One of the men spoke up. “And that sarcophagus up there? Is it normal for electronic equipment to malfunction as soon as you get close to it?”

  “All of that’s fucking weird,” added another agent.

  “Gentlemen,” Norbert concluded, “we have to adapt to th
is case, however strange it may be. The scientific team up there will have answers for us very soon. So let’s stop messing around and get to work.”

  The officers scattered through the corridors to continue their investigations. Fournier waited until they had all gone before speaking to Norbert.

  “You know, the guys aren’t wrong. Not only is this investigation creepy, but it’s completely out of the ordinary.”

  “To say the least,” Norbert added, “but we’ll have to deal with it.”

  19

  Rochester, New York

  In the pale morning, the clouds hung low over the Webster residential area. It looked as if the rows of bourgeois colonial-style houses, all of them more-or-less white, created a microclimate around them through their similarity.

  Under the blanket of clouds that the sun had not yet broken through, incessant barking came from a block of houses. The canine rage turned to sorrowful whining. It seemed to be the only thing that could get through the fog.

  In the middle of the rows of comfortable houses that were almost too similar, Sir Wilbur Ravenwood’s home stood, no different from the others. Inside, the usual tranquility of the place reigned. But this morning, there was something off about the silence. Noxious odors floated through it.

  A few minutes earlier, screams had erupted. A fierce struggle had taken place, involving broken furniture. . .

  And four gunshots.

  Upstairs, Ravenwood’s body lay in the middle of his library, among the piles of spilled books and scattered leaflets. His eyes stared into the void with an expression that mixed surprise and terror with the same intensity. His mouth was still open in a cry frozen from the time that had stopped for him. The old gentleman still clutched his musket in his hand.

  The killer had left just as he had come, without anyone seeing or hearing him, except the dogs who had smelled his evil odor. Sir Wilbur had shot at the silhouette four times without being able to hit it. It had come out of nowhere to attack him, as quick as it was silent.