From hell alex hunter 8, p.8
From Hell: Alex Hunter 8, page 8
Along the way you’ll pass an eleventh-century Romanesque abbey, and tucked in one of the many cave mouths you’ll find Valadier Temple, built in the early 1800s. Plus there’s the rubble of some unknown ruins that could even be many thousands of years older. Though the deeper cave system had only been ventured into in the last few decades, there are those who had known about their labyrinthine pathways for many generations. To those few who know about them, the caves have always been a place of worship, and experts think the primitive peoples of the region considered the deep chambers sacred and used them to speak with their chosen gods.
The caves usually contained the silence of the tomb, broken only by the distant drip of water, or maybe the scuttling of some unknown arthropod in hidden corners. But lately from within its deepest recesses there came the sound of chanting, and following that rhythmic sound was a group of worshipers. A group who devoted themselves to something that far predated any concept of good and evil laid down in any religious texts of the last few millennia. The collection of men and woman seemed trance-like as they swayed with the chant. Their faces were covered with otherwise featureless masks dotted with eyes, and around them hung effigies of hands and other limbs, giving them a grotesque, alien appearance. Blood ran from wounds on their bodies, carvings of ancient symbols and the eyes of all manner of beasts.
The language they used would only have been able to be penetrated by the likes of Professor Matt Kearns and his learned colleagues, and if anyone did take the trouble to understand the words, what they would have heard was a somnambulant chant repeated over and over until its vibrations sank into the stone around them and penetrated deep into the Earth.
She comes again – She must be fed – She comes again – She must be fed.
Around them tiny tendrils, whip thin, came up from the rock in a carpet and, one after the other, the people took turns lying down among them. The tendrils waved and swayed and some broke off and stuck to the group, quickly vanishing inside their bodies.
CHAPTER 12
Sicily, Catania, in the shadow of Mount Etna
Aimee smiled as she maneuvered the sports car along the Via Nazionale. On one side of her was the multi-hued town of Catania and on the other the long, golden beach of Letojanni. In the air was the smell of salt and hot sand, and the water was the color of sapphires. Umbrellas dotted the beach, people splashed in the shallows, and further out, sailboats tacked in a gentle breeze.
Aimee leaned out of the car, her black hair whipped back by the wind. “Yahoooo!”
“Moooom.” Joshua turned and gave her his best ‘grow up’ look before shaking his head. “So embarrassing.”
She laughed and took one hand off the wheel to nudge him. “Come on, Josh, get with it. Your dad will here soon, and we’re on holiday; nothing to do but swim, eat, laugh, and then swim some more. We’re in heaven!”
“Yeah, I guess.” He nodded as he looked away. “I just wish we could have brought Tor.”
“He’s on holiday too, remember? Large meadows to run in, a creek, and plenty of doggy buddies to hang out with. I bet that’d be his idea of doggy heaven.”
“I bet it’s not; he’s not just a dog,” Joshua muttered.
“Coming up.” Aimee tracked the house numbers, and finally pulled into the Giarra. “Oh boy.” She’d rented the luxury villa for the entire week – sea views, spa and pool, balcony overlooking the coast, and a garden with a gate directly onto the beach. It was everything she hoped for – a two-story building on the hillside that had terracotta tiles, blue and white awnings over a large balcony, and bright red geraniums spilling over the railings. She turned to her son. “You’ll feel better once we’ve had a swim, and then maybe some of the world’s finest gelato. Double scoop … or maybe a triple.”
He grinned. “That could work.”
“Damn right it could.” Aimee felt better than she had in years. And once Alex arrived it really would be heaven. The day-to-day mundane jobs, the endless petrobiology conferences, as well as the horrors of Alex’s work, would be washed away in the azure waters of a Sicilian beach.
She popped the trunk and shouldered open her door. “Help me with the bags, Hercules.”
“Kay.” Joshua opened his door and stepped out, but as soon as his feet hit the warm road, he frowned. He tilted his head as though listening to something.
Aimee was at the back of the car, about to lift the trunk lid, but paused to watch him. Joshua crouched and placed a palm flat on the ground.
“Watcha doin, big guy?”
Her son ignored her and continued to stare at the ground. “Bad,” he said, and moved his hand over the ground. “Bad things.”
Aimee looked around but saw nothing except a beautiful beach, sparkling ocean, their villa, and blue, blue sky. She was about to look away when she noticed all the seagulls heading out to sea at top speed. Fish, she guessed, and faced her son again.
His mouth now gaped open, and a line of drool hung from it.
“Joshua?” She came around the side of the car just as he rose to his feet.
He faced her and his eyes were milky white, completely, and his mouth worked for a moment before finally forming words.
“Bad things are coming … coming up.”
CHAPTER 13
Sicily, Catania – on the slopes of Mount Etna
Angelo’s cups, saucers, and plates rattled on the dresser, and he stopped in his tracks to stare at Gina, his wife. She returned his gaze, her hands stopping their work peeling vegetables.
Their shared look held a thousand questions, and a million fears. They waited. The seconds stretched, and then the plates rattled again, but this time a vibration in the floor that tickled the soles of their feet accompanied it.
Angelo turned to the window, the one that had a view to the volcano. It sat there mute and colossal, dominating the skyline. But it seemed quiet, calm, and dormant, other than a few wisps of smoke escaping from ancient vents.
Mount Etna was a stratovolcano, cone shaped, and like all of them had the characteristic steep slopes, built up by many layers of hardened lava, tephra, pumice, and volcanic ash, and also had a penchant for periodic and explosive eruptions. In that regard, Etna didn’t disappoint.
The five craters at the summit could all erupt, spewing toxic gas, ash, and fiery plumes. But it could also erupt from its flanks, where there were more than three hundred vents ranging in size from small holes in the ground to large, cave-like apertures dozens of feet across. Over the last few centuries there had been hundreds of eruptions from both the flank and summit, and in only 2012, the summit had exploded once again. That time Angelo and Gina had endured cracked walls, broken tiles, and sulfur stains on their curtains.
But they knew it was only a matter of time until there was another big one. Some locals sought guidance, forewarning, and protection from science, some from lucky charms, and others from gods far more ancient than any Christian variety.
Angelo and Gina lived on the outskirts of the city, and had a small market garden where they grew huge roma tomatoes, peppers, and grapes for a delicious homemade wine called Montepulciano that was as dark as ink. Their small harvests were always excellent as the volcanic soil was rich and never needed fertilizing. From their eastern window they looked toward the Ionian Sea and the city of Catania, Sicily’s second largest city, with a population of well over a million.
As the pair watched, it was like a dark blanket was being pulled over the city even though it was midday. Automated streetlights started to wink on. Angelo rushed over to the opposite window and saw a dark gray mushroom cloud rising up from Etna’s summit and spreading in the upper atmosphere to create a thick umbrella.
The ground still tickled the soles of his feet, and he nodded slowly. “It will pass.” He watched the plume spread and, as the midday sunshine was blotted out, instead of feeling a growing coolness from the lack of sunlight, he felt a radiating heat, and with it an accompanying whiff of sulfur. He turned to Gina. “It must pass,” he said softly and made the sign of the cross over his chest.
The explosion that followed made Gina scream and Angelo grip the windowsill. Within seconds, hard pellets started to rain down on their tiled roof, and a dry snow coated their garden beds.
Angelo backed away from the window. He spun to his wife. “Grab what you can. We go, now.” He snatched up his wallet, his keys, opened the kitchen dresser drawer and found papers, birth certificates, deeds, and other contracts.
Gina scurried from room to room, picking up photographs, bags of food, and some clothing. She crossed herself in front of a small statue of the Virgin Mary and then met Angelo at the front door. He nodded, not knowing what to say, and settled for simply rubbing her shoulder for a second before turning and pulling open the door.
The thing that filled the doorway made Angelo’s mouth gape, and he dropped everything he held. Gina simply fell, fainting dead away beside him. He desperately wanted to check on her, but found he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the huge lumpen figure.
The thing didn’t make sense. It seemed to be made up from pieces of different bodies, arms, hands, bits of faces, with crying, raving, or gibbering mouths covering the slick, red torso. Something that could have been a head leaned in at him on a long rubbery neck like it was a giant finger. Eyes dotted the “head”, most human, but some not.
Heat radiated from it, and being so close to it seared Angelo’s flesh. Horrifyingly, it reached out an arm that had dozens of hands, each taking hold of him and pulling him close, closer, and then finally right onto its slick body, where he stuck.
“Gina!” was all he yelled as his face was pressed to the hot, wet flesh – and then into the flesh.
CHAPTER 14
Hotel Vergilius Billia, Naples, Italy – 365 miles from Mt Etna
Matt stood at the third-floor window and looked east across the sparkling harbor to the volcano. Mount Vesuvius, called Vesuvio here. It dominated the landscape, skyline, culture, tourist trade, and just about everything else in between.
The caldera was still cone shaped, but now its sides were coated in green vegetation, and amazingly, or bravely, the settlements traveled all the way to its very base, and even a little up the slope. Just over the other side of the bay from where he stood were the ruins of the city of Pompeii. The ancient ruins were approximately the same distance from the cone as he was now.
Matt tried to imagine what it was like back then. The daytime sky had turned black, and the volcano had started to shake the ground as the sea of magma beneath it built pressure in preparation for the eruption, the poisoned fluid of a boil about to burst. And when it did, that terrible emanation, called a pyroclastic flow, rushed toward Pompeii, searing, scalding, and burying everything before it. Many of the victims vanished forever, were probably still encased in stone dozens of feet below the surface.
Matt rubbed his chin, feeling the stubble graze his knuckles. He also knew of the legends. Those that were rescued at the docks told stories of people taken in the volcanic fog. Some thought it was the work of the gods or even ancestral spirits rescuing souls from the pain of a fiery death. But others saw it as something darker and more malevolent. Many reported the screams in the fog that were more terrifying than anything else they heard that fateful day.
And if they were taken, why and where were they taken? And most importantly, who took them?
Matt loved mysteries of the past, and one thing he had found over the years was that buried inside every legend was a kernel of truth. He believed something strange had happened back then in among the chaos – because chaos was always the perfect cover.
His eyes were drawn to the street below as a little red Fiat cut across traffic and pulled in fast. He smiled as he saw a slim arm protrude from a window to give the finger to a passing car that had obviously leaned on their horn.
“That’s my girl.”
Maria was fun, and smart, and sexy, and full to the eyebrows with life. He also knew she was pretty unflappable, and their earlier conversaion had been the first time he’d heard confusion and nervousness in her voice. It wasn’t the promise of her treating him a holiday that got him here, it was that fear in her tone.
Matt wore jeans, sneakers, and a T-shirt, and grabbed a cotton bomber jacket before finishing with a NY baseball cap over his long hair. He looked in the mirror.
“Could you look any more American?” He chuckled and headed for the door.
Once on the street he found her car, but it was empty. He spotted Maria at a café, ordering coffee. He jogged over.
“Black, one sugar.”
Maria turned, smiled broadly, and leaped into his arms. “Buongiorno! My beautiful Americano.” She kissed him so hard on the lips he was sure he’d end up with a bruise. Worth it, he thought.
She turned, keeping one arm looped around his neck to shout the extra coffee order to the barista. She faced him again.
“I thought I lost you,” he said into her beaming face.
“There is okay coffee up at the dig site, but better coffee here. So …” She was handed a cardboard tray that contained three coffees. “One for you, Andreas, and me. Let’s go.” She kept hold of the tray and took Matt’s hand in a tight grip as she headed to the Fiat.
Inside the small car she passed him the coffees, but Matt knew better than to try and take his cup and sip from it. The woman drove as if she was permanently pissed off, in a race, and also well out of control. Better just to hang on and enjoy the coffee when they got there, or what would be left of it anyway.
They screamed along the harbor foreshore, dodging traffic as if it was standing still, with the occasional horn blast and Italian curse hurled from the window. Matt held tight to the coffees with one hand and kept a death grip on the armrest with his other.
Maria took the turnoff to the Pompeii ruins sharply and headed up a steep track on the mountainside. After another few minutes of hill climbing she pulled over under a stand of trees and jerked the handbrake on.
Matt looked through the windscreen. “What are we doing? I thought your dig was down in the ruins.”
“It is, and we were.” Maria took the tray of coffees from him.
A slim young man with glasses appeared from out of the trees and waved to them.
“Andreas,” she said. “Like I mentioned in our chat, you could say our dig has been … commandeered.”
“Who by?” Matt frowned. “Why?”
“The government, police, Martians – I don’t really know yet. But officials from some federal agency turned up, ordered us to stop excavating, and then kicked us off the site altogether.” She bared her teeth. “Then, poof! Just like that, our dig permits were cancelled.”
She opened the door with a squeal of hinges, stood and handed Andreas a coffee. She took hers out, placed the tray on the roof and then leaned her elbows on the car. “And I’m betting the why is because of what we found.”
Matt shook hands with Andreas and then grabbed his own coffee. The man saluted him with his cup and grinned, showing long, horse-like teeth with a small gap at the center.
“I am a fan of your work, Professor Kearns.”
“Matt.”
“The translation work on Petra stones was brilliant.” Andreas’ eyes gleamed.
Matt shrugged. “The Nabataeans were a race that was a blend of two worlds: one Arabian, and the other Hellenic. Once you understand that, then you see how it comes together.”
Andreas nodded. “The reading of the language was one thing, but the understanding of the inferences is what made it special.”
Matt’s grin widened and he held up a finger. “Pro tip number one: try and get into the head of the people doing the writing. It makes a difference.”
“I’ll remember that.” Andreas toasted Matt with his coffee again.
“Cut out the speed dating, you two.” Maria reached into the car and grabbed a small pair of binoculars. “This way.”
She led them further up the hill and then into a thick stand of olive trees, where there was an ancient rock wall. She sat down and lifted the glasses to her eyes.
Matt sat on one side and Andreas on the other. The view over the ancient city and the dig site was magnificent. But there was something down there that stood out among the ancient ruins – a huge tent, possibly the size of a football field, covering a portion of the site.
“That used to be our dig site.” She still held the glasses to her eyes as she scanned the activity down there.
Matt squinted. “So, seriously, who are they?”
“I wish I knew.” She exhaled loudly. “AISI, AISE, DIS, CISR, take your pick, they’re all the same. They arrived a few days back in their dark suits, waving badges in our faces, and then started to assist us in gathering our belongings … or some of them. Twenty-four hours later, this circus tent went up, and we weren’t allowed back in.”
Maria’s jaw worked for a moment. “But they’ve got my notebook, and I want it back. They refused to let us into the site so there was no way to recover my notes, or find out what’s going on.” Maria turned and smiled sweetly. “Until now.”
“You got your permits back?” Matt’s brows went up.
“No, something better than that.” She tilted her head toward him, still smiling. “We’ve got the internationally renowned Professor Matthew Kearns now.”
“Me? What can I do? I don’t carry any weight with these guys. Whoever these guys are,” Matt turned back to watching a few people milling around outside the large tent. “Not much security though.”
“Why would there be?” Andreas said. “No one knows about them confiscating the site. And for that matter, we didn’t exactly attract a big crowd.”
“Most of the activity is inside, and I know for a fact that they can’t fully decipher the tablets they’ve found.” The corners of Maria’s mouth drew up. “They brought in Carlo Rembrani, and even he’s having a tough time of it. The old fool.”
