She stared at him, open-mouthed. ‘Have you been at that foreign hooch again, Rick?’
He grinned broadly. ‘I’m far from drunk, Betsy; I’m a bona fide millionaire. So you know what? If Metropolitan Studios aren’t interested in the movie I’ll bankroll the thing myself.’
She couldn’t quite take it all in. ‘You’re a millionaire? You’re not having me on?’
‘Cross my Dragutin heart,’ he said. ‘My father made a fortune out of manufacturing munitions during the war.’
Her eyes hardened. ‘So he made money on the back of death and destruction. That figures.’
‘Sure, but it’s here now and it’s what you do with it that matters,’ he said.
‘It’s money made from other people’s blood, Rick. It’s profiteering. Nothing you can do with it will ever make it clean.’
‘Does that matter?’
Her brows furrowed. ‘It would have mattered to you greatly at one time,’ she said.
‘Well things have changed.’ He laughed at her serious face. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not about to change into my father, am I?’ He grabbed her hand. ‘Come with me, I want to show you something.’
Her foot caught the cloth that covered Dorottya’s portrait and it slipped away. Betsy found herself looking back at it. Dorottya’s face appeared even more grave, as if her frozen eyes were trying to tell her something. It sent a shiver through her as Mason half-dragged her from the room.
They went back downstairs to Baron Dragutin’s office and Mason opened the cupboard where his father’s masks were kept. He took one of the black velvet-covered boxes out.
‘I’ve smeared the inside of one of the masks with butter,’ he explained.
Her face crumpled into confusion. ‘Whatever for, Rick?’
‘Then I melted a few candles and poured the wax into the mask. You see, he had the inside of each mask made to fit the contours of his disfigured face. By pouring wax into it I can hopefully make a cast of his real face.’ He reached inside the box and carefully lifted the mask out.
‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ she asked tentatively, a little apprehensive.
‘I wanted to see if it was as horrific as they say, or just a tall tale. You can almost make it out by looking into the mask, but this will let me know for sure.’
‘I’d leave it be, Rick,’ she urged, the troubled image of Dorottya floating in her mind. ‘It’s enough you want to bring him to life for the benefit of the movie, but isn’t this a step too far? Let him be.’
He ignored her, his fingers prising away at the yellow candle wax. It came away from the porcelain mask quite easily, finally separating the wax impression from that of its mould. He slowly tilted it towards Betsy.
She gave a tiny scream of disgust. The flesh on the right side of the face had melted away, revealing skull-like teeth, an almost fleshless cheekbone. The eye socket was empty, the nose all but eaten away, the ear missing completely.
‘Put it away, Rick!’ she said. ‘It’s too horrible!’
He stared at the wax face, fascinated. ‘You were one ugly son-of-a-bitch,’ he said. ‘And this is just perfect!’
* * * *
18
The Curse Lives On
Franz Horvat was staring out of the window. Dusk was folding over the land. The snow glowed as if illuminated by its own light, unreal, as if in a dream, he thought. The snow would keep them locked inside the castle for another day or so longer than expected. He shivered, his eyes watering with his intense gaze. How he wished this could all be done and finished with, that he might finally wash himself clean of this castle’s dark hold on his soul.
Though he was careful never to let it show, he was glad Baron Dragutin had died. Immensely relieved. But he remembered he could not believe it when he stepped into the bedroom and looked down upon Baron Dragutin’s dead, marble-like face. That horribly deformed, sordid, blasphemous face. They could not close his one good eye, though they had tried. In the end the doctor had placed a neckerchief over his face so his frozen skull-like glower would not upset people. The mortician will stitch down the eyelid, the doctor assured Horvat.
‘Strange,’ observed Horvat, ‘that he insisted the likeness he commissioned for his tomb that sits in the mausoleum has its eyes open, and here he is defying anyone to close his eye.’
‘Strange indeed,’ said the doctor, but did not believe what he said. ‘He was a strange man, was he not, Mr Horvat? But rest assured, even strange men die.’
‘Are you certain he is dead?’
The doctor smiled at such a peculiarly naive question. Then he gave an insubstantial laugh. ‘Of course the man is dead. There is no beating heart, no blood pumping through his veins.’
‘The same as could be said of him in life,’ Horvat murmured.
‘He is dead,’ said the doctor with clinical finality. ‘No matter what a man did or did not do in life, he cannot come back from the dead. His sins, whatever they may be, will be answered for in a far higher court than we possess.’
‘A curse lives forever.’
The doctor laughed, this time laced through with derision at the foolish old man. ‘Mr Horvat, I had expected better of you than to believe in something so absurd. You had better tread carefully; you are starting to sound like those illiterate, clod-hacking Slavonian peasants outside.’
‘I myself am Slavonian, doctor, though through necessity I had to change my name, as so many Slavs did under the Austro-Hungarian occupation.’
‘That was no bad thing, and you have done well out of it.’
‘You Hungarians treated our country like servants’ quarters and our people like dirt beneath your boots. I for one am glad the war helped unravel Austro-Hungarian imperialism and limit the power of people like Baron Dragutin.’
‘I didn’t take you for a political man, Mr Horvat.’ He took papers out of his bag. ‘I will sign a death certificate presently.’ He smoothed his wax-tipped moustache with an index finger, studied the corpse lying in the bed, candles burning on either side of it, and guttering so that it gave the impression the neckerchief twitched with movement from under it. ‘The Austro-Hungarian Empire had been a civilising force in this backward country, Mr Horvat. Without it I see evidence that it will be plunged into the backwardness we rescued it from. We were never in collusion with the devil, though many would like to believe it was so. If reliance on superstition is you and your people’s means of expressing yourselves then it is a sad affair.’
But Horvat knew what the doctor did not. The man had never met Baron Dragutin, had never had to gaze into that soulless eye that blinked from behind its forever-young, forever-beautiful mask of Antinous. He had never heard Baron Dragutin’s chilling voice and the menace every word carried. He knew nothing of his corrupt life, his unhealthy, demonic urges that had to be satisfied. What’s more, he had never been haunted by a dead man.
Franz Horvat had been plagued by nightmares ever since the Baron had died. He had visited him every night without fail. Dreams so real he woke awash with sweat, his heart crashing wildly in terror. And always the same message: carry out the task, or your soul will be taken.
Unreasonable fear? Perhaps. For dreams are not real, they are created in the head and they say they are reflections of deep, subconscious scars that need to be healed. They are not the place for dead people to make demands. That’s what Horvat, as a logical man, had tried to tell himself. But he was tired, worn out with the nightly experiences, which were not getting better or fading with time, but becoming clearer, assuming the guise of hard reality with every nightmare. The Baron refused to die.
The snow outside had tried its best to hide the cheerless roll of the landscape, to obscure the mountains in the distance, like a virginal white sheet. But it was a thin, insubstantial disguise. It was there always. The poison could not be covered.
In this very room where he now stood, the Baron’s private quarters, thinking about the past, thinking about the man he’d persuaded to come back to
Castle Dragutin, he had been shown something by the Baron that he was determined no one else should ever see.
One evening – whether for sport or as a barely-disguised threat designed to keep the lawyer in his place – Baron Dragutin had invited Horvat to take a look at a few items in his personal collection. They had been discussing the terms of a will, at the time his young wife Dorottya being heavily pregnant. He’d suggested that the Baron might like to deal with another lawyer. The business with Dorottya had upset Horvat and he was more than ever determined to sever all links with Castle Dragutin. Dragutin did not take too kindly to the suggestion, and it was then that Horvat realised the full extent of Baron Dragutin’s hold over him, over his very soul.
Dragutin lifted down a wooden box, the kind so often used by collectors to house their collections of coins or butterflies. Horvat shrank back in repugnance when a drawer was slid open by the Baron to reveal about ten slender bones, some bearing evidence of flesh, each about three inches long, and each bearing a ring – plain gold, signet, diamond, a wide variety.
‘They are the ring fingers of some of the people I have personally killed,’ said the Baron. ‘See, each is carefully labelled so that I will never forget where, when or during which war their lives were taken. The rings are a beautiful touch, don’t you think?’
Horvat’s face paled in horror. ‘You murdered them?’
‘There is no such thing as murder in war, Mr Horvat,’ he said, his voice calm, deep, unwavering, even for an old man. The mask remained expressionless. ‘But I have one more thing to show you.’ He went to a bookshelf and eased out a large black leather-bound volume. He handed it over to Horvat.
‘It is a copy of the Bible,’ said Horvat, puzzled.
‘There was a man,’ said Dragutin. ‘A man who tried to kill me. He was sent by another, an enemy of mine, a fellow mercenary. It was a long time ago now, a campaign I scarce remember, and an argument over some spoil or other – gold, silver, a woman, I cannot recall the trinket. Mercenaries are such a vile lot, Mr Horvat; they will kill each other as easily as they kill their chosen enemy of the moment. But the plot to kill me failed, I had the would-be assassin apprehended and I had him taken to a forest where I ordered him stripped naked and tied to a wooden cross. I skinned him alive, Mr Horvat, peeling back his flesh an inch at a time. He lasted three days before dying. He confessed everything, of course; no man can resist the pain that being skinned alive brings. But I did not kill the man who sent the assassin. I terrified him. I used my would-be assassin’s tanned skin to bind two Bibles, making a present of one to my enemy, the other I saved for myself.’
Horvat looked at the Bible. He tossed it back at the Baron. ‘That is monstrous and sacrilegious!’ he said, wiping his hand on his trouser leg as if the human leather had transferred dirt to it.
Baron Dragutin’s eye burned fierce behind his mask. ‘No more nonsense about leaving me, Mr Horvat,’ he said. ‘I value your discretion too highly. When I am dead and you have completed what I ask of you, then your soul will be free to leave.’
His soul. Yes, he had heard clearly. And yes, Rick Mason was correct. He had been afraid of Baron Dragutin, and he still was afraid. He was sad that he’d been instrumental in bringing Mason back to the castle. It would never end, he thought, the Baron’s all-consuming evil; it was like a poisonous barb, the castle’s black venom already circulating in Mason’s innocent system, already infecting his poor, unsuspecting soul…
He shook his head. Foolish, foolish old man, he thought. Superstitious nonsense. There was no devil’s curse. There was only the evil made real by the living, breathing man that was Baron Dragutin, a man who had died and taken that evil to the grave with him. This young man was different. He was kinder, he had a warm heart. Baron Dragutin was dead and would remain forever so. As for his own part in things it had been his duty, that is all, the execution to the letter of a will’s legal stipulations, no more. He was glad to hear Mason was heading back home, allowing the castle to crumble, fall into ruin. It would be a loss to no man. He would be free of it for good, and free of Baron Dragutin.
Franz Horvat looked down at the collection of finger bones, tipped the drawers of their macabre contents one by one into a paper bag. He would destroy these things, crush them to powder, and bury them in the castle grounds.
Next he put on his gloves and pulled the flesh-covered Bible from off the shelf. He thought he felt it shiver under his fingers and with a flick of the hand tossed it onto the log fire that burned brightly in the grate of a fireplace that bore the Dragutin crest. He watched intently but it appeared to defy the flames so he shoved a poker into the red-hot centre of the fire and caused the logs to crackle and spark. Eventually, the pages began to catch light, the leather to bubble as if it were erupting into black sores.
To burn a Bible tore at his heart, but he convinced himself it had been corrupted by its hideous binding, as Baron Dragutin intended it should. Then blooms of blue flame spread across the Bible’s surface like sprays of otherworldly flowers, and Horvat sat in a chair and did not take his eyes off the fire until he was certain the unholy book would be fully consumed and transformed to ash.
‘I want to leave this place,’ Betsy said. ‘I really do not like it.’
Rick Mason laughed. ‘We will, as soon as we can. Look at these things,’ he said, trying to distract her.
The old trunk was filled with military uniforms, medals, an ornamental sword in its scabbard, black leather boots wrapped in paper. He lifted out a blue jacket, resplendent with gold buttons, epaulettes, white piping and sleeves edged in red. He held it up in front of him.
‘Put it away, Rick. I don’t like it.’
‘But it belonged to my father. Horvat says he preferred to wear uniforms to anything else.’
‘Put it back in the trunk,’ she urged.
‘It might fit me,’ he said, starting to unbutton the tunic.
‘No!’ she cried, taking it off him. ‘Do not put that thing on.’
He looked at her, bemused, but saw she was quite upset. He laid it back in the trunk. ‘You’re getting jumpy. What’s with you?’
‘Nothing, Rick. Maybe making this movie isn’t such a good idea. Maybe you just ought to let the man and his memory rest. What good can it do bringing him back to life?’
‘It’s a great story!’ he protested. ‘And it will make a great movie!’
‘But that’s just it, Rick; it’s not a story, is it? It’s based on truth, so let it be. Let’s go back home, forget this place, and forget all about Baron Dragutin. Some things are best left alone.’
‘No way, Betsy. This is gold dust.’
‘You don’t need gold dust, Rick, you’re a rich man.’
‘It’s not about the money, Betsy. I’m not giving up on becoming a successful actor just because I happened to inherit some guy’s fortune. I’ve still got dreams, and plans for you and me. None of that has changed. When I get back to New York I’ll telegraph Victor in Los Angeles with our proposal, which should be in good shape by then. It’ll be perfect, you’ll see. When I show them the wax effigy of Baron Dragutin that’ll clinch the deal.’
‘You’re not seriously going to use that, are you?’
‘Sure I am! Audiences thought Chaney’s Phantom was frightening. Well if we can replicate the Baron’s face through makeup then we’ll have them wetting themselves with fright.’
‘He’s dead, Rick. Leave it that way.’
‘No, Betsy. I’m going to bring Baron Dragutin back to life. That’s the magic of the motion picture. He’ll live, he’ll breathe, and he’ll frighten and torture people all over again! The curse lives on! Hell, Betsy, think of the publicity! On movie posters six-feet tall; up there in lights above theatres – The Curse Lives On!’
* * * *
19
The Edge of Reason
The day came for their departure from Slavonia, and not a day too soon, thought Betsy Bellamy. She was more than happy to leave Castle Dragutin behind.
She stood in the yard before the brooding building, flapping her arms to fend off the cold, watching as the coach driver climbed down from his seat and silently began to load the cases onto the roof of the coach.
‘What is that?’ she said, pointing to a wooden trunk wrapped tight with metal bands. She knew what it was, of course, and it filled her with a chill equal to that which blew off the cold lake.
‘A few things I need to take back with me,’ Rick Mason said, avoiding her eyes.
‘What can you want with your father’s old uniforms and things? Leave them here.’
‘I thought they’d be useful.’
‘Please leave them behind, Rick,’ she said.
He went to her, patting her arm lightly. ‘Don’t get yourself all hot under the collar, Betsy. It’s only a few old clothes.’ He turned around in time to see the driver bending down to the trunk. ‘Here, let me give you a hand with that,’ he said, darting to the trunk and taking hold of the leather strap at one end. Between them they heaved it up onto the roof. ‘Make sure it’s fastened securely,’ he ordered. ‘I don’t want any damage doing to it.’ He glanced at Betsy. ‘It also has the masks in it,’ he admitted.
Betsy sighed. ‘You’re not taking those as well, are you? They’re horrible.’
‘I need to take them and that’s final,’ he said, a look in his eyes she’d never seen before.
Franz Horvat trudged through the snow to her side, and the pair of them watched as Mason fussed over the strapping of the trunk to the roof.
‘He’s becoming obsessed,’ she said to Horvat. ‘If it was up to me I’d destroy the lot. Everything.’ She looked hard at the castle. ‘I don’t know why, but I hate this place, Mr Horvat.’
‘I cannot blame you,’ he replied evenly. ‘It might be best if you step inside the coach, Miss Bellamy, out of the snow and the wind. Look, your brother is already doing so.’
SILENT (a psychological thriller, combining mystery, crime and suspense) Page 12