The Rats of Frankfurt: The Gospel of Madness (Book 1 of 6) (The Gospel of Madness - (A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller Series))
Page 17
Toni didn’t say a word while the thoughts in his brain were twirling. But still a part of him was able to follow the policeman’s words when he reported what he knew about Azrael.
Francesco Santoro. Contract killer. Angel of death. Entire families executed.
“But now he’s dead and the danger to you and your mother is over.”
The cop rose from his kneeling position, threw a last glance at Toni and turned around to leave the room. Bianchi, who had been standing quietly in a corner of Toni’s small chamber listening with a pale face, raised his voice.
“What about the missing boy? What about Benno? Don’t you want to question Toni like we talked about?”
“Yes, of course I will. Tomorrow. First of all, I want to make sure that the body is taken out of the house so that Mrs. Da Silva and her son can move halfway freely again.”
***
The interrogation actually took place the next day. Father Bianchi had had a substitute teacher from the neighboring community come and squeezed Toni and his mother into a rickety VW and drove them to the building of the Homicide Department in Bologna. There they were welcomed by the commissioner and entertained with coffee and biscuits. Toni’s mother did the talking. In a broken, weepy voice, she reported how Azrael - Francesco Santoro - knocked on her door one fateful night and everything that had happened afterwards. Well, not everything obviously. Why he had just chosen Mrs. Da Silva, she could also not tell, only that they have had a short affair in former times - much earlier, shortly after their common school time. Azrael probably simply had not known where else to turn to after Rome had become too hot for him.
After the first details of what had happened at the Da Silva’s house had been properly documented, the Commissioner, who was dripping with compassion, sent a doctor and a photographer to examine and document the traces of the mistreatment Toni and his mother had suffered. Toni had to pull himself together so that he didn’t giggle when he looked into the affected faces of these idiots while slipping out of his clothes in an adjoining room to show them the marks of the beatings.
The commissioner and the priest then asked additional questions in turn, but most of the time they listened silently to Toni’s mother, while a young female journalist with pretty legs, as Toni noticed, typed in everything that was said in the light-flooded room. At some point the interrogation was brought to an end with the somehow bored remark from the commissioner that it had been enough for today, but that there were still more questions to be asked, and the preacher drove Toni and his mother back home.
“And you really don’t know what happened to Benno?”
Toni denied just as briefly and unemotionally as he had already done during the interrogation.
“All right. The Commissioner told me that Francesco Santoro’s belongings will be picked up in the next few days. I’ll come back tomorrow.”
So Bianchi turned and walked away. Toni knew he didn’t believe him. But it didn’t matter. Maybe that even helped his plans. After all Toni knew, there were still groups of parents, pupils and helpful third parties looking for Benno.
For the next two days, Toni did not attend to class but stayed in the house to explore Azrael’s study. The books he found there absolutely fascinated him. Feverishly he read one after the other, took notes, wrote down whole chapters that seemed particularly interesting to him.
He was that absorbed in the occult scriptures, so captivated by them, that he did not even notice that his mother did nothing but lie apathetically on her bed. The dark and the mysterious, the strange philosophies and views in the works of which Azrael’s library consisted, captured him completely. So much that in the night of the second day of his manic studies he did not even notice how the front door was quietly opened and closed again.
On the morning of the third day, at the time of the big break, there was a knock and he woke up, his head on page one hundred and forty-nine of Lavey’s “The Satanic Essays”.
When he reluctantly went down the stairs to see who was bothering him, it was the priest who had knocked on his door. Toni noticed that the worry lines in his face had become even deeper when the man told him with a broken voice that his mother had drowned in the lake.
Astonished, Toni noticed that the cautiously spoken words and the Bianchi’s caring, worried look caused nothing in him but strong reluctance against this man and everything he stood for.
Disgusting.
Nevertheless, a few days later, after his mother’s funeral, Toni agreed to move into the Bianchi’s modest house and live with him until he would reach the age of maturity.
To Toni it seemed like the greatest, no, the most fantastic prank ever played by a child of his age: pretending to be the good boy while the priest gave him lessons to make him a faithful sacrificial lamb. The only thing Toni regretted very much was the loss of Azrael’s library. They had come a week after his mother’s suicide. With some delay, admittedly. They had taken everything. But it was just books, Toni said to himself. He’d get new ones when he was done here. He had to be more careful now that he was under the well-meaning but imprisoning protection of the priest.
Nevertheless, on several occasions, he managed to sneak out of the house and prepare his last prank during those nights when the preacher, who had suddenly aged considerably, had consumed too much wine. It took him two months to secretly make his preparations. Then he decided it was finally time to set the bait.
***
In the early evening hours, a tragic accident happened in the small mining town of Mircin. An explosion has occurred in a disused tunnel, a silver mine formerly operated by the now insolvent company Monti-Farrina. Three boys from the village and the pastor and village teacher Bianchi are missing. It is assumed that they were buried in the tunnel that the victims visited during an unauthorized excursion. The salvage work is in full swing. Our reporters will keep you posted.
THE GOSPEL OF MADNESS is continued in book 2 - “Under Ivan's Knout”. Just a click away!
Georg Bruckmann, c/o Werneburg Internet Marketing und Publikations-Service, Philipp-Kühner-Straße 2, 99817 Eisenach, Germany
POSTSCRIPT
You have reached the end of this book. If you enjoyed the read, I would be honored if you would leave a short review and recommend my work otherwise.
In case you found any typos, it would be great if you could send me a short mail to nachwelt2018@gmail.com . Quality is important to me, but things can always slip through.
So, thank you for your time, I hope we´ll meet again in the next volume. :-)
Links´n´Stuff
Bloodword.com
(My humble site)
Youtube
(Mostly German content, but there will soon be some fine music available. And music – as we all know - is universal. And sometimes it can do bad and terrible things ...)
Let me introduce: OLD BARON - The Chronicles of the Red Rage!
The Old Baron and her little crew are in trouble. On the run from Grailknight von Juntzt, the Baron was badly damaged. In order to raise the money for the necessary repairs, the team around Sternenreich deserter Günther von Richthofen accepts a job that turns out to be much more difficult than initially thought.
Governor Talla Ozzynski, who manages the free trading station Pri-C5, operates an ore conveyor station on a moon of Rizon 325 without the knowledge of the Sternenreich, to which the contact has broken off for unknown reasons. Her son also works as a warehouse logistician at this station.
In equal parts, out of fear for her child and out of fear that the Sternenreich will gain knowledge of her black-op, she sends the Baron to see what's going on.
The crew around Captain Gunther von Richthofen quickly realizes that it will not be easy to fulfill the mission.
The station is refusing communication, the defenses are still active.
Something's wrong on the third moon of Rizon 325.
<>
Captain Günther von Richthofen is a disillusioned deserter. Together
with the clone couple Ryder and Hook, as well as pilot and hacker Alyhda, he makes his living on board the stolen and badly beaten Old Baron with mercenary jobs and tries to stay under the radar of the Sternenreich.
However, this proves to be a lot harder than expected and the Reich isn't the only problem the crew of the Old Baron has to deal with.
The "Red Rage", a devilish psi epidemic that turns the worst nightmares of the infected into a cruel reality, begins to spread in a mutated form.
Yeah, right. I am mixing space opera and horror in this project, and on top of that I am releasing this as audio-books. If you like your freakshow, go listen to a German guy narrate in English and follow one of those links below.
Bandcamp
Amazon
Audible
Deezer
Napster
Spotify
ITunes
Hope you enjoy – this is a challenging experiment for me! :)
In case you absolutely can not stand listening to me, there is also an ebook containing episode one. Go grab it! :)
Special thanks for this one go out to Robert Graczyk.