by Pavel Kornev
"Devil!" the girl cursed. "This all smells disgusting, even by underworld standards!"
"Not funny," I finally pressed out of my numb lips.
I was enshrouded in an unbearable cold. It froze me to my bones, rolling over me with an incomprehensible consternation. The rustling of the ice chunks was abrasive to my stripped-bare nerves. The shadows scared me half to death and awoke long-forgotten memories. It suddenly seemed this had all happened to me before. As if I had already stood over a lifeless body just like this one, but not in this life, in another that I had forgotten so painstakingly that it had ceased to exist.
"This is no place for me," I suddenly thought, but I carried on standing and watching Theodor gather the silver, not disgusted at tucking his hands into the chest cavity of the dead man, split from the center of his rib cage to the groin.
All of our attention was fixed on the ghastly spectacle, so when we heard a sonorous metallic clank on the stairs, it came as a complete surprise.
"Bugger!" the leprechaun cursed with a grenade in his hand. "Get the hell out of there!"
"And what if I don't?" Elizabeth-Maria bared her teeth.
Instead of answering, the pipsqueak pulled the pin and started counting down:
"Three!"
My consternation cast aside, I pushed the girl to the exit and rushed for Theodor's hand.
"Let's get out of here!"
I did not doubt the leprechaun's threat. He was going to do this regardless of the consequences.
"Two!" sounded out from the stairs.
"One last piece of silver!" Theodor groaned out, tearing a fork from the corpse's right arm as I dragged him to the exit.
We were still on the stairs when the albino exhaled:
"Bugger!" and tossed the grenade at the corpse.
I pushed my butler up and jumped out after him, slamming the hatch. Just then, an explosion blasted out, but the sound was unexpectedly muffled. The floor underfoot just gave a slight shudder and some dust came down from the ceiling.
"Where is that bastard?" Elizabeth-Maria bared her teeth, but the leprechaun's trail had already gone cold. "Leo, what does all this mean?" the girl suddenly harangued me. "How'd the chef end up in the basement with his belly and throat cut open and full of silverware?"
"How should I know anything about that? I was only five!" I objected and called out to my butler, who was sorting the silverware: "Theodor, what do you say?"
"I haven’t the slightest idea," my servant answered, not raising an eye.
"What a family!" the girl snorted. "Dignified people tend to have skeletons in the closet, sure, but you keep corpses in the icehouse!"
"Why the devil'd you even start rooting around down there?" I demanded an answer.
"Theodor called me to search for the leprechaun's treasure."
I was suddenly overcome by a wave of disgust, and I wanted unbearably to change the topic.
"Alright, to hell with the corpse, then! You put a spell on Albert!"
The girl laughed in my face.
"Nothing of the sort!" she replied. "I wouldn't have had to! He's got quite a compulsive personality. I was just blown away! I really did like spending time with him. You don't even know."
"I don't believe you!"
"My sweet Leo, trust is a decidedly intimate matter," Elizabeth-Maria noted caustically and turned to the butler standing behind her. "Has something happened, Theodor?"
"No," he answered calmly. But when the girl turned back to me, he suddenly grabbed her by the head and snapped her neck in one sharp motion. Her spine cracked with a sickening snap, and her body fell lifeless to the floor.
In a panic, I stepped back and grabbed the Mauser on my belt, but immediately regained my composure.
"What are you doing?" I exclaimed, not understanding what was going on.
Theodor shrugged his shoulders and calmly stepped over the girl’s body.
"Otherwise, it never would have ended," he said in a voice not his own.
"You're not Theodor!"
"Clever boy," smiled the thing from the other side, and my servant's eyes lit up with a dark flame of an unpleasant shade.
I didn't shoot, just concentrated, trying to imagine Theodor dead once and for all, but found no success.
"You can't really have believed that pedant was staying in this world just because of a sense of duty, right?" the unquiet spirit asked in surprise. "Nope! It was all his twin brother. I connected their souls with an invisible thread, created a loophole out of hell and spent all these years clutching onto it, my soul squirming in unbearable torment, and my body wallowing in the icehouse, stuffed with silver. I couldn't move an inch, or force this dummy to search for me. I couldn't even see myself until your girlfriend noticed the fork! But I knew I'd get free sooner or later!"
"Who are you?" I asked and immediately guessed: "The chef!"
"To you, I was just the chef," the underworld native confirmed and took another step forward.
I took a nimble step back and quickly drew my pistol.
"The death of his brother was quite lamentable," the chef continued, "but fortune smiled on me. Now, I am free and I will have what's mine!"
"What are you talking about?"
"The secret of your grandfather, Emile Rie," said the unquiet spirit, stretching out the butler's lips into an avaricious smile. "Why else would I get a job in this house? I knew the answer to the riddle was somewhere nearby. I was looking for it, but I made a little mistake..." he trailed off, his eyes burning with a fell light. His piercing gaze went all the way in to my liver. "Eating your pitiful little heart was a bad idea. I should have just ripped your head clean off!"
The creature controlling my butler made a jump, intending to surprise me, but I was holding "Theodor" in my sights the whole time and opened fire as soon as he stepped forward.
Shots thundered out, and though the bullets didn't do any harm to the unquiet spirit, just made pointless holes in his frock and vest, he was knocked back. Without letting him push me into a corner, I jumped aside, grabbed a silver fork from the floor and pulled my Cerberus from my pocket with my other hand.
"You're playing with me again!" Theodor laughed in the strange voice. "Do you need to be reminded how this all ended last time?"
"Probably in your death," I answered, taking a step toward the window.
The creature was afraid of silver, but my talent would never have managed to grab this spark and light a flame of boundless horror with it. I simply didn't have time.
"Yes, I did die," the unquiet spirit admitted, "but I took all the inhabitants of this house with me except for two degenerates – you and your father! I sapped the life force of everyone nearby! And I have continued to do so for many long years. The only one not to feel it was your girlfriend. What's wrong with her, boy? Will you tell me, before you die?"
Of course, there really was something wrong with Elizabeth-Maria. The girl was holding her head in both hands, and setting it back in place with a quiet snap, as if fixing a mannequin damaged by vandals.
The chef, fortunately, didn't notice a thing, so I hurried to distract him with a question, playing on his desire to say his fill after the long years of imprisonment in the icy underworld.
"I'd rather you tell me why it was necessary."
"You’re asking me why I wanted the secret of the weapon that did in the fallen?" The unquiet spirit asked in surprise. "I intend to destroy it, you silly person, and thus clear the way for the true sovereigns of this world!"
"The ancient gods?"
"The great ones have many names," the chef smiled. And just then, Elizabeth-Maria flew at him from behind.
She threw a noose around the unquiet spirit's neck made of the braided strips of enchanted Moor skin, pulled on it, and dug her knee into his lower back, not letting him turn around.
The butler's face instantly went a violet-black shade; he stepped back and pushed the girl against the wall. She didn't even wince.
"The saber!" she
shouted to me.
I dashed into the guest room, yanked my grandfather's saber down from the wall and ran back. I struck him from my running start, putting all of my momentum into the slash, but the chef managed to throw up an arm, stopping the blade at the cost of a sliced muscle and radius.
A strong slap to the face knocked me off my feet; I was spread-eagled on the floor, and when the unquiet spirit managed to throw the succubus off his back, I unloaded my Cerberus in him. The first two shots did nothing, but the third bullet was silver, and the servant's body went numb for a moment. And that was because the silver bullet managed to spark a fear in him, set alight by my talent. He had a fear of the noble metal.
The seizure lasted just an instant, but that short moment was enough for Elizabeth-Maria to grab the saber, and swing it with an inhuman might, utterly destroying Theodor's head. It went straight through from top to bottom.
The well-sharpened blade had entirely split his skull and was now embedded half way down the chest. Then, the girl pulled it out in one strenuous motion and struck him again, this time horizontally, taking the head off the shoulders.
The decapitated body, whose horrible wounds didn't give forth even a drop of blood, froze in place for a second, then collapsed on the floor with a thud. And I immediately stopped sensing the presence of the underworld native.
"Leo, it's extremely humiliating to hear from a stranger that you aren't a fellow’s first," Elizabeth-Maria said viscously. "How could we have any secrets?"
Before I managed to answer, the house shook. Clocks and pictures flew onto the floor. A cupboard fell down, nearly crushing me. The chandeliers shook, and a wide crack ran down the wall of the guest room. Then another, stronger impact broke through the floor, turning it into a stockade of broken boards.
Elizabeth-Maria jumped nimbly back from the dangerous place and grabbed the mantel, but a slimy tentacle suddenly shot up out of the hole. It wrapped around the girl, bashed her head on a cabinet, stunning her, and tossed her outside through a gap in the collapsed wall.
I darted into the hallway; the detestable appendage of the demonic creature cut into the walls, dashing through them with such ease, it seemed they were made of construction paper. One of the chunks of wall hit me and knocked me off my feet.
The tentacle shot upward and fell down, trying to flatten me out on the parquet. It missed by just a few hand-lengths and hit the silver lying on the floor. It shot right back up, but now there was an acrid smoke in the room. An instant later, its smooth violet-black skin had dozens of pus-swollen burns on it.
The manor shook from yet another blow. The floor in the guest room shuddered and curved in. The demonic guise of the dead chef crawled through the hole, hauling its disgusting shapeless carcass out. A second tentacle appeared. Then I saw a stinking mouth hole.
But I didn't step back. I knew this creature's weakness and was planning to give combat.
Silver! I picked up a silver fork from the floor. It was massive, carved and of ancient providence. I clenched it in my hand so hard it hurt. The demon had a fear of silver, and I always got along well with fear.
At that moment, the leprechaun popped out of the entryway. His tongue was lolling out as he dragged the suitcase containing Alexander Dyak's transmitter into the room, unlatched the belts and snapped his fingers, intending to start the thing up.
"Don't you dare!" I barked, not knowing how far the electromagnetic waves would reach. I was still nursing the hope that I could kill two birds with one stone.
I was only distracted for a moment, but I immediately paid for my gaffe. One of the tentacles slid into the hallway, wrapped around my ankle and dragged me into the guest room, right into the demon's embrace. The sharp jerk didn't leave me any chance to stay on my feet. I collapsed backward, but immediately turned onto my stomach and latched my free hand into the doorframe.
But it was of little use! The grasp of the otherworldly being was too strong.
My fingers started slipping. Then I bent low, contorting my body, and full-force jabbed the fork into the tentacle grabbing my leg. The silver tines went deep into the slimy flesh. It jerked back, nearly pulling off my boots, but the pain forced the demon to yank the appendage back and start smacking it at random against the walls in an attempt to free itself of the hateful metal.
Taking advantage of the opportunity, I got off my knees and filled my whole consciousness with thoughts of molten silver being poured into the basement, cleansing it. Like a sharp spear, my talent embedded the image in the demonic consciousness, and the undead chef froze for a few seconds, shocked at the horrifying image.
His puzzlement didn't last long, though. The bloated carcass soon burst from the basement with such force that the whole house shook, but by that time, Elizabeth-Maria was back from outside to help me. Her red curls disheveled, she walked over the rubble, saber in hand. She looked surprisingly like one of the legendary northern Valkyries, and I gave a signal to the leprechaun with a certain degree of irrational pity:
"Fire it up!"
The girl cut off the outgrowth that shot at her; the pipsqueak flipped the breaker and I darted away, hurrying to take shelter in the corridor. The demonic incarnation of the chef pulsed with a transparent flame in time with the Morse-code signals being broadcast. And these signals were repeated in my head:
Short-long-long-short...
The electromagnetic pulses tore through the bloated body of the underworld native, washed it away, and deprived it of reality. It shook harder and harder, first becoming semi-transparent, then suddenly disappearing in a blinding flash of light. Ghostly voices yelped in my head like a horrifying choir. For a moment, I was blinded by the constant flickering and, when I regained my vision, I found myself kneeling in the guest-room doorframe for some reason.
Threaten to kill me, I still wouldn't remember how it happened.
The smell of burnt wire coating and strong tobacco filled the house. I tried to look around, but my neck was asleep as if I'd spent several hours in this uncomfortable position. Standing proved difficult.
I walked cautiously over to the hole in the floor, looked into the basement and caught my breath with relief when the only thing I saw down there was ice. The demon had disappeared without a trace. Not even the slime from its tentacles was left. And what was more important – I no longer felt the presence of the curse filling the house. Not in the slightest.
"Bugger, your hurdy-gurdy’s toast!" the leprechaun announced, sitting on the suitcase as he threw a hand-rolled cigarette on the floor. "Now we're in a bad way..."
I nodded and suddenly froze, having noticed Elizabeth-Maria. Contrary to my hopes, the electromagnetic disturbances had not sent the succubus to hell.
Curses!
But then, Elizabeth-Maria took her blood-soaked hand from her face and stared at me with the whites of two blind eyes. The girl had ceased to be illustrious. The otherworldly essence had left her, and that scared me half to death.
I had created her as an image in my head, but the strength of the succubus had helped it be embodied in reality. Now, the infernal creature had been driven out, but Elizabeth-Maria hadn't disappeared, she'd become a normal girl! Demonic charm no longer surrounded her with its seductive veil. The once fatal beauty had been replaced by a sweet, cute young woman. Sweet, cute and blind.
"What is happening?" Elizabeth-Maria asked, undercutting my theory that she'd totally lost her senses. "What is happening?"
The girl's voice sounded unusually vulnerable, as if it was someone else entirely. When I tried to take Elizabeth-Maria by the hand, she quickly wriggled free and cried out:
"Don't touch me!"
"Calm yourself!" I demanded, but the girl took a step back. Then, she just ran down the hallway, blindly running into furniture.
I didn't follow after her. I simply didn't know how to behave now. Though I'd gotten what I wanted, for some reason, my conscience made me feel uncomfortable.
The leprechaun was also feeling out of sorts; h
e lit a new rollie and said, drawing out his words in perplexity:
"Bugger, what a situation!"
I kicked the pipsqueak away in silence and bent down over the apparatus, which reeked unbearably of burnt electrical wire. The leprechaun frowned aggrievedly and went to walk around the manor. I, meanwhile, had to pull the melted electric battery from the suitcase; the transmitter itself, to my untold relief, looked undamaged.
I got the desire to simply take it and rip out the wires, but instead, I unfolded my knife and carefully cut through them. It took some time, but the transmitter now looked somewhat more presentable than before. I had no desire to upset Alexander Dyak too badly.
I latched up the suitcase, dragged it back to the trunk of the armored vehicle and went up into the bedroom for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I didn't try to unscramble the code, just stuck the book in my bag and stared at the pencil portrait of Elizabeth-Maria von Nalz in contemplation.
" I do not feel the same about you, Viscount," her voice called out in my head painfully. In a rage, I rumpled up the sheet of paper and threw it into the trash bin. I quickly got it back out and smoothed it over as much as I could, then put it in my bag.
After that, I started gathering my things.
I did not plan to return to this house again. It made my skin crawl.
I didn't remember.
I didn't remember what happened in that basement sixteen years ago. But along with that, I was sure that I had seen a throat cut open in such away before. It was the same way the leprechaun had cut the Chinese enforcer's throat. And that fact scared me all the more.
I didn't remember, and didn't want to remember.
I wanted to leave here as fast as possible, but first, I had to get rid of some evidence. The curse was no longer protecting the manor, and anyone could come inside now to look for weapons and dead bodies. The last thing I wanted was to have to spend the rest of my life fleeing from investigators. To hell with the mummies, though. What I really needed to get out of here was the human corpses and weapons.
At first, I parked the armored car in the carriage-house and loaded all the boxes into it. Then, I searched for the hand-held machine gun and warped rifle, threw them into the trunk and went inside the house.