The Best new Horror 4

by Stephen Jones

  “I wouldn’t have thought an Etruscan necropolis was a mere detail!” she snapped. “Especially one that’s being ruined by a squatter!”

  “Ruined? Not in the least.” Anzani had regained his normal professional tone. “One thing the Vipegnos have always been noted for is the way they guard the site. You sound knowledgeable on this subject. Can you name anywhere else like it that’s actually in occupation?”

  “Of course not, but . . .” Ann drew a deep breath. “You said Vipegnos, plural. Giuseppina said something about them having been there for a hundred generations. I never heard anything so ridiculous! Why, that would take us right back to Etruscan times—twenty-five centuries!”

  “All I can say,” Anzani answered after a pause, “is that he holds rights in perpetuity. How far back they date I can’t say, but the generally accepted term is ‘from time immemorial’.”

  “Oh, this is getting more and more absurd!” Glancing at Carlo, who nodded vigorous agreement; she was holding the phone a little away from her ear so he could eavesdrop. “What about—what’s the term?—eminent domain, isn’t that right? Nobody has any business monopolizing part of our national heritage! Especially not on someone else’s land!”

  “I’m afraid his claims have been challenged over and over,” Anzani sighed. “And they’ve always had to be upheld—even against the Soprintendenza dell’ Etruria, even the Direzione Generale delle Antichità e Belle Arti. The reason your late aunt lived in such straitened circumstances was because her father attempted to dispossess Tarchuno Vipegno’s predecessor, and it virtually bankrupted him. Of course, if you have a taste for expensive lawsuits – ”

  Taking the phone, Carlo broke in. “How would Vipegno meet his legal bills, then?”

  “Ah, Signor Bertelli. I can guess what you’re thinking—it might be worth trying to exhaust his presumably limited resources, is that right? Drive him to surrender? I can only say I wouldn’t advise you to try. Certainly it didn’t work in the case of his father, though of course that was before my time.”

  “This is getting us nowhere,” Ann sighed. She reclaimed the phone and promised—or rather threatened—to call again.

  They had bought some wine in the village, marginally more interesting than Asti Spumante, and sat gloomily after their evening meal—the broth from the lunchtime bollito plus mixed broken pasta of the kind that children call tuono e lampo, thunder and lightning—sipping a second bottle and debating what to do. Clearly the opinion of another lawyer would be called for; Ann’s contacts among Etruscan scholars offered a further line of approach; and in any case it was impossible to imagine a government department being defied by a dirty-nailed peasant.

  In the end, this time having remembered to save enough wine to wash down her Pill, Ann announced her intention of turning in. Carlo, though, felt too much on edge, and preferred to sit up a while longer. Shrugging, she headed for the back door, saying that if they were going to keep this as a weekend retreat the first thing they’d have to do something about was that revolting privy.

  “Want the lamp?” he called back.

  On the threshold, she glanced at the sky. “No, the moon’s up. It’s a bit cloudy, but I can see my way.”

  “OK. With you in a little while.”

  And he delivered himself to the tantalizing contemplation of a billion-lire windfall.

  Finally it dawned on him that he hadn’t heard Ann come back. Puzzled, he consulted his watch. Fifteen minutes had gone by. Muzzy from the wine, he debated whether to go looking for her. She could scarcely have missed her way, but the ground behind the house was rough and she might have twisted her ankle, or caught her foot in a treeroot. Sighing, he rose, reaching for the oil-lamp and was struck by a better idea. There was a flashlight in the car. Where were the keys . . .? Ah, here in his pocket.

  Duly equipped, he set out in search, calling her name softly for fear of waking Giuseppina. Swinging the beam from side to side, he caught sight of marks in the dust among the bushes Ann would have made for.

  Footprints. Not his—they were too big—and certainly not hers. Besides, they were paralleled by the paw prints of a dog.

  Vipegno? Surely not! But—who else?

  Advancing in bafflement, he abruptly noticed something else. There was a wet patch with scuff-marks near by. The footprints leading towards it, approaching the house, were shallow. Those leading away were much deeper.

  Made by someone carrying a heavy load.

  Carrying Ann –?

  Without thinking Carlo began to run.

  He lost the prints as soon as dry grass covered the ground, but that didn’t matter. He knew where he must go. Shortly, panting, he breasted the final rise overlooking Vipegno’s ancient home, and only then wondered what use he could be, without so much as a stick to wield against the kidnapper’s shotgun—not to mention his dog. Oh, there was no doubt he had come to the right place; light could be dimly seen in the porchway, and a moving shadow.

  An armed man, a dog . . . and not even a stick. This was ridiculous! Feeling all the agony of a city dweller confronted with primitive rural violence, he cast around for something, anything, to serve as a weapon. Aided by the half-moon, veiled by scudding clouds but shedding useful light, he spotted the woodpile he had earlier noticed by the door. Perhaps there . . .

  Switching off the flashlight, he stole towards it, hoping against hope he would not alert the dog. Sweat ran down his dusty face; he felt streaks of the mixture on his skin, foul as mud. There was a branch that looked as if it might be suitable –

  The ramshackle door slammed wide. With a gasp Carlo found Vipegno confronting him, Cerbero beside him with lowered head and sharp, bared teeth.

  But he had no gun. Instead, he carried objects in both hands: in his right, a cudgel and a rope; in his left, two bags made of cloth.

  At a gesture the dog circled around behind Carlo to cut off his retreat.

  Nodding approval, his master spoke.

  “You’ve taken a woman of our gens. I shall reclaim her if I can so she may bear a zili’s heir. That was the custom of my ancestors. It has endured a hundred generations. But by ancient law you – ”

  Carlo finally found his tongue.

  “What have you done with her?”

  “Look inside,” Vipegno invited, stepping back so he could approach the doorway. A guttering lamp revealed Ann slumped against one of the square pillars, her eyes closed, her shirt torn from shoulder to waist in testimony to the resistance she had put up.

  How could he not have heard her screams? Thoughts of chloroform crossed his mind. He caught sight of pale cloth on the beaten-dirt floor; had that been what Vipegno used?

  Then he focused on it: Ann’s shorts and panties. They would have been down around her knees so she was unable to flee, then ripped from her legs on arrival . . .

  He began to curse under his breath.

  “Take this,” Vipegno said, holding out one of the black bags. “And your chance of rescuing her with it!”

  “What?”

  “I said take it!”—throwing it at Carlo, who caught it by pure reflex. “Don’t don it yet. First tie this rope to my wrist. I’ll have to put it on Cerbero because he won’t let anyone else touch him.”

  “I –” Carlo’s mouth had already been dry. Now as it dawned on him what he was condemned to, it became like a desert.

  That picture. The one Ann had explained . . .

  “Move! If you don’t, I’ll let Cerbero attack!”

  Cerbero—Cerberus. Of course. The guard-dog at the gate of hell!

  Whimpering, Carlo accepted the rope and did his clumsy best to knot it tight. Then Vipegno looped it around his dog’s neck.

  “Take the club,” he commanded, straightening. “And put on the hood.”

  So saying, he did the same himself, and waited, muttering what might have been a prayer, or an incantation. It was not in any language Carlo recognized.

  Wild hope seized him. If the hoodwinks were indeed opaque Vipegn
o could no longer see him, and he would take a while to release himself from the rope. To run, reach the car, bring help—it would be too late to save Ann from what the devil had in mind for her, but . . .

  “Put it on!” Vipegno rasped. “I may not be able to see you but there are plenty who can!”

  Who?

  Slowly Carlo turned around. On the slope of the hill behind him were ranged half-seen figures; he could not tell how many were men, how many women. But they numbered at least a score.

  Bring help? Oh God! There wasn’t going to be any help!

  Of a sudden his brain was ice cold. Fixing his and the other man’s relative positions as exactly as he could, he picked up the cudgel; Vipegno had let it fall while fastening the rope around Cerbero’s neck. It felt reassuringly massive. Perhaps he might smash the dog’s snout. Grasping it in his right hand, with his left he drew the bag over his head. At once there was an unmistakable sigh from the onlookers.

  Belatedly he began to swing the club, aiming for where he recalled the dog had been—and it met air. Losing his footing and almost his balance, he cried out and tried again. This time he connected with something, but it was not the dog: Vipegno’s arm, perhaps, for the blow elicited a grunt of pain. For a fatal instant he dared to remember what hope used to be like.

  And the cudgel was gone, snatched from his hand.

  Screaming in terror, he ripped off his hood. The dog had seized the stick in his enormous jaws. Now he dropped it and lunged, his blunt muzzle slamming into Carlo’s midriff, driving the wind out of him. An instant later he was sprawling on his back with Cerbero standing over him. Drops of slaver fell on his throat, like acid.

  “Hah!” Vipegno said with contempt. “When my father took Giuseppina her brother put up a better show than that! Broke the dog’s foreleg before it bit his ankle to the bone. Walked with a limp until his dying day!”

  He added something harsh in dialect, and Cerbero responded with a growl.

  Hood discarded, he untied the rope and cast both aside. Carlo tried to follow what he was doing, but if he so much as rolled his head the dog snarled again, so he dared move only his eyes. He thought he made out that Vipegno was bringing—leading, dragging, carrying?—Ann into the open and laying her down. Some kind of mantle was spread over them, though he couldn’t see by whom. There followed moans.

  Vaguely he grew aware that the witnesses had descended from the hillside and were watching intently from close by. Ann had said something about the Etruscan trial by ordeal being a precursor of the Roman Games. Here was the nearest to their vicious audience he had ever dreamed might still exist in modern times . . .

  And there was another dog! Beside it stood its owner—and oh God, it was the priest’s, here was the priest, and no wonder Ann had thought she recognized him, for were you to shave Tarchuno’s beard you’d find Father Maru’s double underneath!

  He moved too far, and Cerbero administered a warning nip, not even hard enough to break the skin, but fearful. He lay rock-still again, ears tortured by the loathsome sounds of glutted lust.

  “You can get up now,” the priest said eventually. Carlo felt as though he might never move again, but managed to, cramp-stiff in every limb.

  “Has the world gone mad?” he mumbled as he forced himself upright. “The bastard’s kidnapped my wife, and raped her, and you—you—and all these people watched!” Words failed him. Fists clenched, he rocked back and forth on his heels, staring towards Ann. She lay with eyes closed, her torso at least obscured by the mantle Carlo had seen being delivered to Vipegno, but her long lovely legs bare to the thighs and bruised and smeared with grime.

  “It was done beneath the mantle, as is proper,” said the priest. “There has been no offence.”

  The mere effort of standing had drained Carlo of the ability to wonder what that meant. He could think only of the pathetic broken figure on the ground.

  “Help her, damn you!” he moaned.

  “Mother, see to the girl,” Maru commanded after a pause. Mother? Carlo jerked his head around.

  Of course. Giuseppina. Who else? But she was making no move to comply. She was showing something, a bag—Ann’s handbag. She was showing something from it to her son the priest. It was flat, and shiny on one side, and . . . and it was the dispenser pack holding Ann’s monthly supply of the Pill.

  For one wild second Carlo wanted to laugh. If the purpose of this loathsome ritual was to ensure there would be another generation of Vipegnos, this time it had misfired. Then he was snatched back to the horrors of reality.

  Face darkening, Maru flung down the foil pack and ground it under his heel. “An abomination!” he rasped. “Now it will all have to be done again!”

  Tarchuno was standing by the door of his home, fastening his belt, his expression indecipherable thanks to his dense beard. His brother stormed over to him and muttered in his ear. At once he tensed with rage. He strode towards Ann, cuffing aside Giuseppina and other women approaching to attend her, snatched away the mantle, and spat upon her naked belly with a curse. The sight drove Carlo over the brink. No matter what it cost, that must be avenged!

  But he couldn’t move. He was held tightly by his arms, and far too weak to break away.

  Furious, he turned to see who gripped him, and said after a terrible pause, “You too?” He almost uttered the words in Latin. Sad-faced, slump-shouldered, this traitor, this Brutus, was Anzani.

  “It’s no use fighting what you’re up against,” he said after a pause. “They’ve had too much practice. The Romans couldn’t stamp out this tradition, nor the Church, nor the Fascists . . . Sometimes I think the Bolsevietans aren’t people any more, not as we think of people. Not individuals, I mean. More like a collective organism. At any rate they behave like one.”

  He seemed to be talking for the sake of talking, to distract himself.

  “You wondered whether you might exhaust Tarchuno’s funds by taking him to law. I told you the father of your wife’s late aunt tried that and failed. I didn’t tell you why. It was because they act together. He wasn’t only suing one man. He was suing the whole community, and it would take a billionaire to match their resources. They’ve been here a long time, Signor Bertelli. When they speak of a hundred generations they’re not exaggerating. Two thousand five hundred years . . . and in all that while they’ve never lacked a protector, a zili. At present they are especially strong, for as you must have realized Giuseppina bore twin boys, so they have a maru too.”

  “What”—Carlo barely recognized his own voice—“what if the child is a girl?”

  “At least they no longer kill it out of hand. Now they try again with someone else. I’m afraid this won’t apply to your wife. They regard her as having evaded her obligation. When her contraceptive has worn off – ”

  “No! No!” Wrenching himself free, Carlo seized the older man by his lapels. “It’s impossible! The whole idea is crazy! They can’t just imprison us here! We have jobs, friends who’ll come looking for us, we have – ”

  “As much chance of resisting as of stopping Etna from eruption,” declared the lawyer. “To my cost, I know.”

  Carlo dropped his hands, searching Anzani’s face.

  “You . . .?”

  A nod. “My late wife was one of these people. I made the mistake of coming here last year with our daughter.”

  “But –” Carlo hesitated. What he wanted to ask seemed so terrible, he could not frame the words.

  “Why has he taken your wife too, so soon after?”

  “Uh . . . Yes!”

  “Serafina’s baby is a girl.”

  “They did the same to her? And you—you come here, you do their work, you . . . Oh, God. The world has gone mad.”

  “It’s a very old kind of madness. So old, it may in fact be more like sanity.” Anzani’s face was grey in the moonlight.

  “Nonsense! Rubbish!” Carlo cried. The lawyer ignored him.

  “You see, they will give you a dog.”

  “What
do you mean?”

  “A dog that will make sure you don’t go away.”

  “This grows madder by the moment!” Carlo set his fists to his temples. “I’m going to take Ann back to our car, and I’m going to drive her home, and I’m going to rout out a notary to take her sworn deposition that she was raped, and a doctor to verify there’s semen in her vagina, and get it typed so it can be proved that it’s not mine, and . . . Why do you keep shaking your head? They’d have to kill me to stop us!”

  “Your car isn’t there,” Anzani said. “You don’t own a car any more.”

  “What? Goddamn it! I still have the keys in my pocket! See?” He fumbled for, produced and dangled them.

  “Do you think that matters to these people? No, you sold it this morning and the new owner collected it soon after you reclaimed your flashlight. By morning it will be in Yugoslavia, or on a ferry to Greece. The proceeds have been deposited in the bank account you’ve opened in Matignano. Your apartment in Milan is up for sale. You see, when you arrived here you fell in love with Bolsevieto and decided it was the only possible place to live. Letters confirming the fact have already been delivered to your respective employers. They may be surprised at receiving them so promptly, considering the state of the post these days, but at least they will appreciate being notified, though no doubt annoyed at losing your services with so little warning. Still, your holiday has a week to run.”

  “No! It’s impossible!”

  “I assure you it isn’t. How often do I have to tell you? These people have had two and a half thousand years of practice! And the letters and other documents, including the authority to sell your apartment, will withstand the closest scrutiny. I can assure you of that, too.”

  “You? You faked them? Why, you bastard!” (An echo of Ann: “Who in his right mind trusts a lawyer?”)

  “Your wife seems to be recovering,” Anzani said, ignoring the fist that Carlo raised before his face. “You’d better go to her.”

  “Not until you tell me what drove you to throw in your lot with these monsters, this spawn of hell!”

  “Haven’t you guessed?” the lawyer whispered. “I love my daughter. Poisoning your aunt, forging her will—the land was never hers, of course, but the Vipegnos’ as it’s always been—that was the only way they’d let me have her back, and my grandchild. You see what I mean about them being sane? They are dreadfully, terribly, horrifyingly sane. They obey the most pitiless kind of logic. They belong to an old world that had no room for generosity or kindness. They are what all of us might have remained had there not arisen teachers to reveal a better way . . . Go to your wife. If you can prove you love her in spite of what they’ve done, even their iron hearts may some day soften. I pray to that end, every morning, every night.”