Haunted: Dark Delicacies® III

by Del Howison

  Collecting flakes of snow, each of the assembling wore a tall black headdress as the faces beneath them stared down with a grimness as stony as the granite they stood on. The oldest, a small, withered-looking woman of considerable age, took a half step forward as her voice carried across the frozen cobblestones below. “Can we be of service to you?”

  Major Grunwald’s square jaw tightened as he shouted up at them, “We will ask the questions, Sister. This is, we presume, Grey stone Abbey?”

  The old woman’s hands twitched with palsy as she wrapped her gnarled fingers nervously around her rosary and bowed her head in the affirmative.

  “I am Major Hermann Grunwald and this is Sergeant Kimmel.” He nodded back to the caravan. “We are twenty in number and we will need rooms for sleep and hot water to bathe. You will also supply food and drink for us.”

  The old nun’s voice quivered and she had to clear her throat. “We can make you as comfortable as we are able, Herr Major, but you might find us lacking in some of the amenities of the modern world.”

  “Do as the major says,” a voice said from behind the assembled sisters. Both nuns and Nazis turned to see a tall woman stepping onto the balcony as the others parted to put her at its center. Even at seventy, her strength and power were evident. “You must forgive Sister Mary Ruth,” the woman said, bowing apologetically. “She is young and has yet to learn the ways of the order.”

  Kimmel and Grunwald stared at Sister Mary Ruth. Young? She looked as if she were at Death’s door….

  “And what order is that, specifically, Sister?” Stenecker’s voice cut across the windy plaza.

  Grunwald moved aside and said, “May I introduce Field Marshal Stenecker.”

  The tall woman bowed again. “We are the sisters of St. Ignatius, Herr Stenecker. The order has been here for more than two centuries now.”

  “And during that time, have you always been in the practice of insulting your masters by looking down on them?” Stenecker’s eyes narrowed.

  “We meant no disrespect—”

  “Come down this instant!” Stenecker’s words were clipped and cutting. Led by their imposing mistress, the nuns started a quiet descent down the stone steps. “We stay on the parapet for our own protection, Herr Stenecker—”

  “Field Marshal Stenecker,” he snapped.

  She stepped to the courtyard floor and again bowed her head. “I am Sister O’Cyrus. Mother superior of the abbey.”

  “No,” he said sharply, “your title is not recognized by the Führer. Therefore it would be equally insulting to refer to you as ‘superior’ in any way. You are, in the eyes of the Reich, superior to no one, Sister.” He didn’t hide his quiet joy in demoting her.

  Mother O’Cyrus showed no indignation. There was something behind those eyes, something being masked by that stoic face, but it wasn’t anger. And Stenecker did not like it. He did not like that his presence left these old women so seemingly undisturbed. He suddenly turned to all of them and hissed, “Heil Hitler.”

  He waited a moment, then stabbed his arm into the air. “I said, Heil Hitler!” The nuns bowed their heads and Stenecker turned to the mother superior. “I will say it once again, and only once. Heil Hitler, Sister….”

  She stared at him before she lifted her arm. Her words were soft in the whistling snowfall. “Heil Hitler, Field Marshal Stenecker.”

  “All of you!” Stenecker swung around and grabbed Sister Mary Ruth by her tremulous arm and jerked her forward as he would a disobedient child.

  The nuns all raised their arms now, Sister Mary Ruth’s shaking with palsy as they gave a somber, joyless salute to the Führer. Stenecker moved back to Mother O’Cyrus and leaned in so close he could smell the dampness of her woolen shawl. “You said you stay on the parapet for your own protection, Sister. Protection from what?”

  “You have entered a very dark and strange country, Herr Field Marshal,” Mother O’Cyrus replied.

  “Have we?”

  “Beyond your darkest dreams,” she said quietly.

  He leaned even closer and studied her with a quiet menace. His words billowed mist into the icy air. “I doubt you could fathom the darkness of my dreams, Sister.” He looked back at the massive gates and the mountains beyond them. “And if there is so much to be wary of here, then why, in fact, did you open the gates?”

  Mother O’Cyrus looked up slowly as if she were going to answer. But she didn’t.

  * * *

  The vast dining hall was flanked by two enormous archways, each sentried by Stenecker’s soldiers, guns at the ready, suspiciously eyeing the sisters who worked to clear the long table where the platoon was finishing their meal. The men’s voices echoed to the high rafters and found their way down again to the second table, closer to the fireplace, where logs snapped and popped and warmed the field marshal, Kimmel, and Grunwald as they ate.

  Hanging high above them was a long blue banner with large Latin words embroidered in gold. Abyssus abyssum invocat.

  “What does that say, Sister?” Major Grunwald nodded to a small, skeletal sister who was collecting their dishes. The tiny woman lifted her eyes and studied the banner as if she couldn’t remember.

  “Hell calls Hell,” Sister Mary Ruth answered for her, “is the literal translation, Major.”

  “A Latin warning that one misstep leads to another,” Kimmel added.

  He felt a vibration move across the table. He saw his wine goblet rattle beside his fork and studied it a moment before turning away.

  A sharp scrape turned him back.

  The other officers now stared as well. “My wine,” Kimmel said, “did you see? It moved. It moved by an inch….”

  He looked over at Stenecker, who calmly spoke while picking his teeth. “What’s the matter, Herr Kimmel? Are you letting your imagination get the best of you?”

  The gunnery sergeant lifted his eyes to the rafters. “I am wondering what other black magic we have walked into here. I am remembering dead soldiers attacking us in the snow.”

  Stenecker stared past his toothpick at him. No one had mentioned the events of this morning, and now suddenly all were thinking about it again. “Do you know what we are talking about?” Stenecker narrowed his eyes at Sister Mary Ruth. The old woman reached down with a palsied hand and took his plate. He grabbed her gnarled fingers forcefully. She dropped the dish and it clattered back to the tabletop. “I asked you a question.”

  She looked at him with milky gray eyes as he gripped her tighter. “These things in the snow that once were men? Do you know what they are?”

  “The wandering unholy.” Mother O’Cyrus’s voice echoed from a distant archway. Her words turned every Nazi head in the room. “That is what we call them.”

  “You seem strangely untroubled by their presence.” Stenecker released Sister Mary Ruth and pushed his plate toward her.

  “We have been in these mountains many years now.” Mother O’Cyrus moved toward him. “We have seen many things that might trouble those who have not.”

  “Does it not challenge your beliefs, Sister, to have these ‘unholy,’ as you call them, walking about?”

  “You would be surprised, Herr Field Marshal, at the kinds of creatures wandering the woods these days.”

  A sudden silence, and then Stenecker smiled at her note of irony. He stood and encouraged the smiles of those around him—and then backhanded the mother superior viciously.

  Even the officers were taken by surprise. The old woman reeled and almost fell to the floor. Stenecker’s whispered voice again was laced with menace: “Watch your tongue, Sister, if you would like to keep it.”

  Mother O’Cyrus did not look up. Her hand went to her lip as she kept her head bowed and said softly, “Perhaps you misunderstood my meaning.”

  “Or understood it perfectly. I am sure you are aware, the Führer has nothing but contempt for your Christianity.” She found the strength to look at him then. He added, “The greatest setback in the history of Man, to use his exact app
raisal. The most severe blow mankind has ever endured.”

  “We are aware the Führer has other allegiances, gentlemen,” Mother O’Cyrus said, leveling her look at Stenecker.

  “Then you might also be able to guess the focus of our mission.”

  “You would do me a great kindness by telling me.”

  “You have a necromancer here, Sister,” Stenecker announced. “We know this now.”

  The mother superior narrowed her eyes. “I am not even certain I understand the meaning of this word—”

  Stenecker grabbed her by the throat, and her large white collar bent as he pulled her to him. “I will break your neck with my bare hands, old woman, if you lie to me again. Did you think we could be stopped by a few frozen corpses this creature might throw in our way?” He searched her eyes for fear and again could find little. “You have a necromancer. Either here, within these walls, or you know where this creature dwells.”

  He released her and she brought a hand to her throat.

  “If a necromancer is someone who can raise the dead, Hen-Field Marshal, in my belief, there is only one man capable of this—”

  Stenecker swung his pistol from his holster and pointed it directly at her. “If you think, even for a moment, that I will leave this place without taking with me what I have been sent to retrieve, then you underestimate my resolve.” He took a step closer, until the barrel of the Luger rested upon the creases of her forehead. “Do you admit you know of this creature?”

  Mother O’Cyrus nodded without meeting his eyes, and Stenecker nodded back. “You will take me to him.”

  “To her, Herr Field Marshal.”

  She met his look then, and a wave of panic rushed over him. Grunwald and Kimmel lurched up from their seats to draw their pistols. “No,” Mother O’Cyrus said softly, “it is not I.” Stenecker lowered his gun, and Kimmel and Grunwald poorly masked their relief.

  “It is the sister who began this order. Our mother foundress.”

  “You told us the order had been founded over two centuries ago.”

  Mother O’Cyrus nodded, and Stenecker’s pistol raised again. “You want us to believe that this woman is over two hundred years old and still living?”

  “She has many powers the Lord has seen fit to give her. One is longevity beyond human boundaries.”

  “And she is your necromancer?” Stenecker’s words brought the hall to a sudden silence. Only the popping of the logs in the fire punctuated his next inquiry. “Answer me! She then is your necromancer?”

  Mother O’Cyrus stared back in silent confirmation.

  “You will take us to her.” His voice became hushed and full of purpose. “Now.”

  * * *

  The long stone hall was lined with cruel-looking iron-pronged candleholders, all of them empty, making the fire from the sisters’ candelabras the only light for Stenecker, his officers, and six armed soldiers as they were led into the abbey’s lower chambers.

  Major Grunwald, at the rear of the procession, watched the squarish shape of his head, its shadow cast by the candlelight growing and shrinking as it glided down the wall next to him until he could clearly make out two small points, jutting out just above his ears. He looked to the soldiers moving between them, deciding it was the upturned barrels of their rifles that added this sinister affectation.

  “There are no lights in this part of the abbey, Sister?” Kimmel inquired.

  “Not for the mother foundress,” Mother O’Cyrus called back to him and then met Stenecker’s suspicious stare. “She takes great exception to light.”

  “Why do you keep her so isolated?”

  “She is, with all due respect to her, frightening to the other sisters, Herr Field Marshal.” Her admission made the officers exchange glances. She saw this and said, “Make no mistake, she is a gift from God. The Sisters of St. Ignatius were created solely to watch over her. We have done this now for many decades.”

  Stenecker was getting uneasy. They were moving farther from the dining hall and deeper into the ancient convent. “I warn you, old woman, if you think you might lead us into a trap, any action taken by you or your gaggle of old geese will be met with the most severe opposition.”

  “With my most sincere apologies, Herr Field Marshal, it is I who must warn you.” She came to the end of the hall and slid her candelabra onto iron prongs beside a set of substantial double doors. “There was a time when the mother foundress would commune with deceased saints to answer questions of papal importance—”

  Stenecker cut her off abruptly. “And why our intelligence reports back to us that His Holiness, your pope, makes great use of this creature.”

  “But she has grown over the years,” she cautioned. “And her powers have grown with her, powers no longer restricted to her communiqués with the dead.” Her words were cut short as Stenecker pushed her toward the doors. “You asked us why we opened the gates for you? It takes twelve of us to open the courtyard gates, and they can only be opened manually.” She looked past Stenecker at all of them now. “We did not open them, gentlemen. The mother foundress did.”

  Stenecker was having none of it. “Then why did we not see her there?”

  “Because—” The nun spoke, then hesitated. The sudden silence was as unnerving as her next words.

  “She does not need to be in the courtyard to open the gate.”

  “I have heard enough talk, Sister. Open this door,” Stenecker ordered.

  “The men in the snow who attacked you? We did not send them to stop you!” She turned to him as he tried to reach out and pull the iron handles. The doors were locked, and her words became a cutting whisper. “We did not even know you were coming.”

  “Unlock the door, Sister.”

  “She knew. The mother foundress. She pulled them out of the snow where they had died and she sent them to stop you!”

  For the first time, Stenecker could see fear in her eyes. And not because of him.

  It was because of what lay beyond that door.

  This troubled him, and though he would never betray this, he turned and pushed back through his men to young Hans, whispering in his ear, “Go back to the dining hall. Find Gerhard and tell him to radio our position. Tell him we may need more men.”

  Stenecker grabbed the candelabra from Sister Mary Ruth and gave it to him. Hans and his flame retreated and were swallowed by the cavernous hall as Stenecker strode back to Mother O’Cyrus. “Open this door.”

  “There is a protocol for communicating with her,” she said.

  Stenecker turned to five of his six soldiers. “If anyone comes down this hall, shoot them.” Then he nodded to the sixth. “You, draw your pistol and stay at our flank.”

  “You would be doing yourself a great kindness to allow me to facilitate the conversation,” Mother O’Cyrus said as she slid a key into the lock. He pushed her aside and turned the key himself. An ancient tumbler turned, and Stenecker grabbed the large iron handles and pulled. The rusty hinges squealed like a dying pig as the doors swung open onto a vast darkness.

  Moonlight streaked in from high rectangular windows and silhouetted a mountainous shadow some yards away. Stenecker grabbed the mother superior’s candelabra and took several steps toward it, just enough to see the enormity of what sat in the center of this room.

  The mother foundress was not only centuries old, she was massive.

  She was perhaps three times as large as any human being, an insanely obese woman, slumped and motionless in the largest wooden chair Stenecker had ever seen. The soldiers all stared in puzzlement. The woman’s great, shadowed head was bowed in sleep, and thick gray strings of hair hung from it like some oversized mop in need of wringing out. Her guttural snore marked the rise and fall of her enormous shoulders, stooped with the weight of the thick and rusted chains that anchored her to the floor.

  For a moment Stenecker could not find his voice. “Why is she chained?”

  “She has, on occasion, attacked … some of the sisters,” Mother O�
�Cyrus whispered back.

  “Surely she cannot move.”

  “She bites them, Herr Stenecker, when they get close enough to feed or wash her.”

  “She is mad?”

  O’Cyrus recited a line of Latin and then translated: “God’s beautiful abomination.” The stunned officers moved deeper into the room, trying to confirm this human impossibility.

  “Wake her,” Stenecker said.

  “She is never asleep.”

  “Prove to me this old sow is your necromancer,” Stenecker hissed, “and that you do not think to make fools of us!”

  “You have seen her powers,” Mother O’Cyrus insisted.

  “I said prove this is the creature we seek! Tell her we wish to speak to her!”

  “She hears everything we are saying, Herr Field Marshal, believe this. And she does only what she wishes. She will not perform like a monkey on a chain.”

  “She is already on a chain, sister!” He glared at her. “And if what she does will be exclusively her choice, then she can choose to speak to me or watch the rest of you die. Sergeant Kimmel, take your pistol out and shoot that old one.”

  Kimmel looked back at him.

  “Do it!” Stenecker barked.

  The gunnery sergeant raised his Luger and aimed it at Sister Mary Ruth. He saw her hands shaking uncontrollably and swung his aim at another. “Which old one, Herr Field Marshal?”

  “Any of them, you idiot!”

  “I would not do that, Herr Stenecker,” Mother O’Cyrus cautioned. “The mother foundress likes to teach. Especially the commandments.”

  “Shoot any of them!” Stenecker shouted, and Kimmel swung back to Sister Mary Ruth and fired point-blank at the old woman—but his own chest exploded with the shot. The gunnery sergeant went wide-eyed and clutched at his wound as he saw his weapon’s smoking and shredded metal. The bullet had fired out the back of the gun!

  As he crashed to the floor, Kimmel heard Mother O’Cyrus’s voice: “Do unto others, Herr Field Marshal—”

  Major Grunwald stepped up, aimed his own pistol directly at Sister Mary Ruth’s forehead, and pulled the trigger. The bullet ripped into Grunwald’s own head, and he flailed back and slammed into the wall.