The two men passed a tiny campsite as they climbed. There were three large tents, one for the work crew to sleep in, one for the quartermaster stores, and a last one that was used as their living space, to dine in and shelter from the inhospitable weather. The workmen had been brought over from Poland, cherry-picked by the visitor’s man in Warsaw, chosen for their trustworthiness, reliability, hard work ethic, and, possibly even most importantly, lack of ties back home. There were six of them, including the foreman. A good number.
“We are here,” said the foreman, speaking in English but with a thick Polish accent, his walruslike mustache twitching nervously. He stopped as the man in black caught up with him.
It would have been difficult to spot the cave entrance from almost any angle. From above, the overhanging cliff ensured it was masked by the mountain, while from below there were trees and bushes blanketing it from sight. What had once been a natural opening within the rock had been adapted centuries ago. The rock face had been hacked away, apertures acting as shrines around a dark, arched doorway, for pilgrims to deposit offerings in. The nubs of black candles could be spotted within these alcoves, their dark wax staining the lichen-covered rock. The visitor paused, letting his fingertips trail over the frozen trails the wax had left down the rough stone. There were other carved churches within the Buzau Mountains, dotted around the village of Nucu, but none like this. He looked to the foreman, who stood at the entrance.
“After you,” said the man in black with a smile.
He followed the foreman into the church. A generator chugged away in the corner of the compact cavern, an arc light throwing its glow around the roughly carved room. A couple of tiny stone benches were placed before an altar, behind which was a mosaic. The man in black stepped closer, inspecting the picture. Knights could be seen marching into battle beneath a huge, boiling cloud of darkness, their armor black and their weapons raised. Instead of foreign enemies meeting the sword, though, the Crusaders’ fallen foes in these pictures were also Europeans, recognizable by their livery as the Knights Templar. Some of these knights were crucified, hanged, or impaled upon giant stakes that lined their bloody route. The man in black smiled once more.
The foreman stepped through a fissure at the back of the cave, great blocks of rubble gathered around its base. The visitor looked at the opening in the rock, noting the place where at one time the passageway had been bricked up. He followed his companion through the gap and down a set of stone stairs. A different kind of cold gripped the man in black as he walked deeper into the mountain. This one didn’t prick at his flesh like the harsh wind outside. This one gnawed at his heart and soul. So close now.
The cave chamber at the foot of the flight of stairs was roughly the same size as the church up top, another arc light illuminating the excavation site from its place suspended from a rig. The five other members of the work team sat on camping stools beneath it, crowded around an electric heater while they sipped from tin mugs. The man in black nodded to them as he passed, though none returned the greeting. One even managed to spit on the rocky floor in an open display of contempt.
“What’s the matter with him?” whispered the visitor to the foreman. None of the other men spoke English. The man in black had selected them for that quality, too.
“They want away. Their work is done. You pay them now, yes? The final fee?”
“Of course,” said the visitor. “Do tell them I have the money with me, in the helicopter. All of it. I’m very happy to give them their final payment . . . once the job is complete.”
“But the job is complete,” said the foreman, frowning. “Can you not see what we’ve unearthed? This is a tomb.”
The man in black turned back to the walls and their grisly tableau. Skeletal bodies were exposed within the earthen walls, lining the chamber, shoulder to shoulder like members of some grotesque assembly. They appeared to have been buried upright, packed into the rock face like hideous statues. At a glance, he counted thirteen bodies. He closed his eyes and made a silent prayer for their sacrifice: acolytes, disciples—noble souls one and all. There was only one area of the cavern where the dig remained unfinished. A tall, wooden structure was half exposed within the rock, packed into place by centuries-old mortar and soil. It was perhaps ten feet tall and rectangular, its surface scored where the tools had caught it, leaving welts crisscrossing the timber’s dark stain. The visitor’s breath caught in his throat.
“They’ll have no more part in this work,” said the foreman. “This is unholy.”
The visitor turned on him quickly. “Then they don’t get paid,” he snapped. As the foreman flinched, the man in black controlled his temper. The smile was there once more. “I was under the impression that none of your crew were religious souls, and therefore this undertaking should have been straightforward. If they wish to not be paid . . .”
He looked past the foreman toward the men. They might have been Polish, but they clearly understood enough English to get the gist of what was said. They nodded at their boss.
“They want paying.”
“Then they finish the job,” said the visitor, standing aside and gesturing to the far wall as the men picked up their tools once more. “They open it.”
The workmen closed on the wooden paneled construct. None of them were fools; they recognized a coffin when they saw one, and an enormous one at that. They were suspicious. For what reason would this Frenchman hire them for this peculiar, specific work? They were superstitious, too. They’d heard the legends of Romania, especially old Transylvania, but they were just stories, weren’t they? Above all else, the thing that unified these men was money. Bad debts and worse decisions had driven each of them to the Buzau Mountains and this record-breaking payday. It had been too good an offer to refuse.
The men wedged axes, crowbars, and chisels into the edge of the timber panel, splintering it in places and causing it to flex. It was fully ten feet high from floor to ceiling, but it wouldn’t budge. Curses were muttered among the workers as they bickered about where the best point was to prize the coffin lid open. Finally, the foreman stepped before his men, directing each of them to key points up and down the strange casket. Raising a hand, he counted down, before dropping his fist as a signal. They all pushed as one, putting their backs into a combined effort as the dark timber bowed and buckled. The men cried out as a snapping, rending sound came from the box and the wood broke out into the chamber in an explosion of splintering shards. The workers staggered clear, choking as something large toppled out of the coffin, accompanied by a cloud of foul-tasting dust.
One of the workers tripped over a stool, crashing into the lighting rig and launching it swinging from its mooring. This sent a dizzying beam of light lurching around the room, to nauseating effect. As the lamp creaked overhead and the men spluttered, its glow passed over the strange object that had tumbled from the coffin, the details only visible in fleeting, terrifying glimpses. It looked like a giant black seedpod, perhaps nine feet long and three feet wide at its center, thinning at either end. The men edged closer, trying to see it by the careening illumination. The pod’s surface appeared to be covered in thick, trunklike arteries that webbed their way around it entirely. One of the workers gave it a jab with the head of his pickax before his colleagues could stop him. A cracking noise emanated from the pod, followed by a hiss, as if a seal had been broken.
Then nothing.
The light continued to swing crazily overhead. One of the men pointed, indicating a great jagged line that had appeared on the pod’s surface, leaving a gaping darkness within. The crack was only a centimeter wide, the contents invisible. The workers craned in to examine it once more. Only the foreman was wise enough to begin backing up, retreating toward the exit. One more tap from a workman’s tool was all it took, as a crowbar teased the split carapace.
With a squealing animal cry, a darkness rushed out of the pod, the crack widening in the blin
k of an eye until the chrysalis tore apart. The men screamed as the entity whipped through them, lashing out, seizing hold, and breaking them like kindling. Oily fingers found their flesh, latching on, tooth and talon slicing the men open like rich, juicy fruit so that the monster could gorge upon their blood. The foreman had seen enough, spinning to run up the steps, leaving his five companions for dead.
He staggered to a halt, the man in black before him. He tried to speak, his lips twitching uselessly as he found no air in his lungs. Only a gurgle emerged, as he felt his insides flooded. He glanced down as the visitor withdrew a smoking, silenced handgun from against the foreman’s chest. The visitor smiled, turned the man about, and gave him a gentle shove back toward the emptied coffin, where his colleagues were being quickly drunk dry. He prayed he would die before the monster in the dark took hold of him. He wasn’t so lucky. A crooked, clawed hand reached out and drew him into the madness.
The man in black dropped to one knee, whispering praise to the Master, mouthing the magical, arcane words of the Unspeakable Oath. His powers of suggestion were limited, nothing like those of the fallen high priest, but he had still managed to cloud the minds of the Polish work team, convince them to remain here against their better judgment. The workers’ death rattles echoed around the room, a steady gulping guzzle rising as they fell, one by one. The foreman’s corpse was the last body to topple to the floor, an emaciated husk, as the specter swept before the visitor. The shadows moved around the beast, easily mistaken for a cloak, but these were great and terrible wings of darkness. The Master rose to his full height before his kneeling servant, towering ten feet tall and filling the room, the light still in motion at his back.
“Vendemeier?”
The voice was like a cold knife through the man in black’s skull. It felt like his eyes might burst from their sockets, forced out by the all-consuming darkness that invaded his mind.
“High Priest Udo is gone, Master. Never to return. I am Guillaume, Keeper of the Unspeakable Oath, Brother of the Endless Night, and your most humble servant.”
The entity hissed in fury, lashing out, tossing the corpses about the room until they bounced off the walls and the lighting rig crashed to the ground, plunging the chamber into darkness, only the faint glow from the church finding its way down the staircase behind the Frenchman. The Master’s voice was in his ear now, the breath a whisper of ice that reeked of death and decay.
“And the offspring?”
“The last of them yet lives, Master.” Before the darkness could rage again, Brother Guillaume spoke more urgently, his head bowed, unable to look upon the beast. “But Udo did not die in vain. Wheels are still in motion; the boy was Marked. The first part of Vendemeier’s prophecy holds. Should the boy now die as you desire, the second part will be completed. The Age of Unlight will come to pass.”
The cavern was silent, the Master considering his acolyte’s words. Slowly, a low, sickening chuckle rose, causing the man in black’s innards to reel and roll.
“Bring me the boy,” hissed Hastur, the King in Yellow. “Fetch me Van Helsing!”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Massive howls and hat tips to Kendra Levin, my eagle-eyed, ghoul-grappling editor at Viking. Additionally whopping thanks to my vamp-vanquishing agent, John Jarrold. Kate Renner, cheers for giving Max Helsing such a stylish, killer cover design. And high fives, fist bumps, and tentacle slaps to Jake Wyatt for his fiendishly fine jacket art.
Here’s to many more monster hunting escapades together, folks!
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The Thirteenth Curse Page 22