Bloodthirst Page 18

  ‘And because we are an old people in an old land, the forests, lakes and even the rocks have a mystical significance for us. This land is in our blood, which is why we do not migrate south to the cities.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ said Bruno. ‘It’s just that I didn’t consider the floatplane.’

  ‘It’s the only way of quick travel here,’ Uutsi explained. ‘There are always lakes to land on, and as headman I travel far afield in the summer when my people are following the herds north. It is useful in case of emergency, too. In winter I have skis fitted.’

  The Lapp turned and spoke to his men who lowered their rifles and sat down, smoking Bruno’s cigarettes.

  ‘This lake of Inari is our most sacred place,’ Uutsi continued in English. ‘To us it is as important as Mecca to a Moslem or Jerusalem to a Jew. Out there is an island which has been in our folklore since our folklore began. In the old days the Midwinter Sacrifice was made there to call back the summer. Today our most sacred things — what is the word, totems? — are kept there. There are ancient graves and even treasures of gold. No Sabme would dare desecrate such a sacred place.’

  ‘I understand,’ Bruno said. ‘But I swear to you that we had no thought of plundering your holy places.’

  ‘Of that I am sure,’ said Uutsi. ‘If you had, you might have been sacrificed even though we have been Christianized since the eighteenth century — to some extent at least When one of our wise old men uses his drum to read the future there is a symbol of the Virgin Man painted on the skin as well as the crossed hammers of Thor.’

  He paused and looked sideways across the gleaming expanse of lake.

  ‘But there has been desecration,’ he continued softly. ‘One has come and put his own temple on our island. We do not object to the hospital on the mainland, for we recognize progress; what we cannot allow is a stranger setting up his shrine over the graves of our ancestors.’

  ‘You mean Dr Stromberg’s building on the island?’

  Uutsi inclined his head.

  ‘From listening to the talk between you and the man you call “doctor”, I believe you are after the same big wolf. Our wisemen sense nothing but evil in him. They say he does not have a spirit like other men. That is the talk of old men, but, as I told you, we are a very old people and our memories are long.

  ‘Whether or not he is what they say does not concern me. My duty is to protect our holy place. Please explain exactly your interest, for I did not understand everything from the radio.’

  ‘It is simple,’ Bruno said. ‘My friend and I believe this man, who has built on your island, is an evil one who has stolen a woman who means much to me. What he has on his island we do not know, but we have come a long way to find out At this moment my friend is out there.’

  Uutsi spoke to his followers. They climbed to their feet and picked up their rifles.

  ‘Your camera looks expensive. You had better pack it up,’ said the headman. ‘You are coming with us on our wolf hunt’

  Quickly Bruno unscrewed the telephoto lens from the Pentax and put it away in his camera bag.

  ‘It is strange,’ mused Uutsi as he waited for him. ‘Since that one came to Inari the wolves have been assembling — the oldest enemy of the Sabme. It is a bad omen. Come.’ And Bruno followed the silent Lapps into the forest.

  Chapter 22

  The portal opened and Peter and Anne-Marie stepped into a bare antechamber with two doors. One opened into a corridor similar to those in the main clinic with the same pastel walls. The only difference was the absence of windows, the illumination coming from fluorescent tubes.

  ‘Good God!’ he exclaimed as he passed through the other doorway. ‘Have you ever seen anything like this!’

  Anne-Marie followed him down some steps into the body- of a high, vaulted hall. It was lit by coloured rays of light streaming through windows of exquisite stained glass. It was an extraordinary replica of the type of mediaeval church built into a castle for the use of the baron and his retainers. The floor beneath their feet was made of massive flagstones, the walls were of rough-hewn blocks. In the centre was a black-draped catafalque on which rested an ornately carved coffin of oak. It was open.

  With a sense of dread Peter and Anne-Marie approached it. Splashes of colour reflected on its highly polished surfaces from one of the lancet windows. Cautiously they looked over the side, but all that met their eyes was a padded lining of scarlet silk.

  ‘Peter,’ said Anne-Marie. ‘What can this be?’

  ‘I don’t know who the casket is for, but I suppose you could logically say this is the clinic’s chapel,’ he answered in a whisper. ‘But it seems too ancient — It almost smells ancient. Look at those heraldic shields hanging on the pillars.’

  ‘When we saw the outside of the building there were no windows,’ Anne-Marie said. ‘Yet there’s sunlight coming through the stained glass.’

  Peter looked up at the multi-hued panes whose leaded shapes seemed to represent allegorical figures. Above the marble altar at the far end a huge window portrayed the Raising of Lazarus in glowing colours.

  ‘There must be special lighting behind the glass,’ he said. ‘But the effect is stunning.’

  They walked softly to the altar. Instead of the conventional cross, it had a large upright block of transparent acrylic in which was embedded something shining silver.

  ‘I think we ought to get out,’ murmured Anne-Marie with a shudder. To Peter’s surprise she crossed herself.

  ‘Remember I’m a staff doctor looking over the clinic’s amenities,’ he said reassuringly as he stepped up to the altar and gazed into the crystalline cube.

  ‘What is it?’ Anne-Marie asked, peering over his shoulder.

  ‘It’s an old silver plate,’ he answered. ‘There’s a hole in each comer where it’s been screwed on to something. It’s like the plates they used to fix on to coffin lids. There’s writing engraved on it.’

  Together they read: ‘Janos Nádasdy +1704-1714 + Requiescat in pace.’

  ‘Nádasdy — Nádasdy,’ murmured Anne-Marie, ‘I have heard that name before.’

  ‘My God, so have I!’ exclaimed Peter. ‘Do you remember my father telling us about the Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Bathori who killed over six hundred girls for their blood? That was her maiden name. She was married to a Count Nádasdy and had four children. This must be the coffin inscription for a descendant of the Countess.’

  ‘He was only a child when he died.’

  ‘If he died.’

  ‘Peter, you can’t mean that Stromberg … !’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Come on, we must search. Look, there’s a door to the left of the altar.’

  Nervously they approached the arched doorway which was hung with a black velvet curtain. Peter drew it to one side and saw a spiral staircase leading downwards. White light reflected on the stone wall and, with his left hand holding the newel, he descended. Anne-Marie followed behind in his grotesque shadow. At the bottom they found they had entered the crypt of the chapel, but there was no resemblance to its antique atmosphere.

  Thick rugs covered the floor, the temperature was kept too warm by means of electric oil-filled radiators, the bright light shone from fluorescent tubes while incongruously a tall chromium transfusion stand stood in a corner. In another was a purring refrigerator. There were easy chairs, a low table with books on it, and against the far wall a day bed covered with a rug made from animal skins.

  It was what lay on the rug which held the incredulous gaze of Peter and Anne-Marie — a thin, waxy-faced figure wrapped in a loose robe of some black material. There was a metal bracelet on its wrist, from which hung a thin iron chain. It coiled across the rugs to where its last link was locked to a great staple set in the wall. Only the rich auburn hair framing the skeletal face of the prisoner told them they had found Holly Archer.

  * * *

  In fascinated horror Anne-Marie and Peter watched the creature which was once their friend turn her lack
-lustre eyes upon them.

  ‘Why have you come here?’ she asked in a slow, strangely mechanical voice. ‘Only Janos comes here.’

  She moved her arm and the chain rattled.

  ‘Once I thought love was enough to bind me, but he changed it into a bond of iron.’

  ‘Holly, Holly darling,’ sighed Anne-Marie. ‘We have come to take you away. Bruno is not far away. You remember Bruno Farina?’

  The thing on the bed slowly sat up and, reaching to the low table, picked up a box of black cigarettes. She lit one with the blue Stick lighter Bruno had given her at Saintes Maries de la Mer and slowly exhaled, her livid lips a grimace of satisfaction.

  ‘I smoke and wait for Janos,’ she said. ‘And while I wait I have such dreams.’

  ‘A complete personality change,’ Peter muttered to Anne-Marie. ‘Listen, Holly, who is Janos? Is he the tall doctor who you met in Copenhagen?’

  ‘Janos came for me when the Gypsy flew over the cliff,’ she said. ‘Like a bird he went, out over the plain. There was danger, and then there was Janos and no more fear. Such pleasure, and such dreams! But now I stay here because Janos knows I have learned to hate.’ There was a long silence.

  ‘Why do you hate?’ asked Peter. ‘Is it Janos you hate?’ She looked up with sorrowful lunatic eyes.

  ‘Janos I hate because my love means nothing to him now. He is old … old. His love was lost long ago. A little girl with silver-gold hair, he said, who wept beside his bed. He has found her again, but she is not me, not me!’

  ‘Who has he found, Holly?’ whispered Peter.

  ‘His dream bride. He has found her again … the same face, the same hair. Now he only waits for her to become a woman, then I shall be … ’

  She waved her hand vaguely and the cigarette left a scrawl of smoke.

  ‘I shall be lost in my dream for ever,’ she continued at last.

  ‘That is why I hate him. My love he had, my body was his, yet that was not enough — I am not his child love, I am not Britt.’

  ‘Britt!’ gasped Anne-Marie. ‘Peter, take me from here. I’m going mad!’

  ‘Hold on, darling,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to help her.’

  ‘This time her name is Britt, a child of the cold sun,’ Holly went on in her dead voice. ‘She will be his bride, yet still he comes to me … ’

  Anne-Marie turned away, her hand clasped tightly across her mouth to stifle the scream which was growing in her throat. Peter tugged with all his strength at the chain, but the staple in the wall was immovable.

  ‘We must get away,’ Anne-Marie whimpered. ‘She is lost and crazy. There is nothing we can do. We must save ourselves.’

  ‘You cannot unlock me,’ Holly said. ‘Janos would not dare have me free. He knows what I should do if I had the chance. I have strange power and I would destroy him.’

  Her eyelids began to flicker. She dropped the cigarette into an ashtray and lay back on the furs exhausted. Peter saw dark marks where transfusion needles had entered her veins.

  Suddenly she sat up.

  ‘Have I seen you before? Why are you here? Does Janos know?’

  ‘Crazy!’ sobbed Anne-Marie. ‘Her mind has gone.’

  ‘We must go outside so I can call Bruno,’ Peter said. ‘We can’t abandon her to him.’

  ‘It is too late,’ wailed Anne-Marie. ‘But come!’

  Frantically she climbed the steps and burst through the black curtain into the chapel, then stopped and leaned against the cold altar for support.

  In the centre of the nave, close to the open coffin, stood Stromberg, ominous in a black silk sweater and black slacks. At the far end by the door lounged his two bodyguards. Their teeth showed brilliant white in water-melon grins.

  ‘You have entered a forbidden realm,’ he said softly, ‘but I expected it, Dr Pilgrim. For a long time I have recognized you as a danger. And you, Mademoiselle Clair. By pretending to go away, I have proved my suspicions.

  ‘At the hospital in London I knew from your notes you saw deeply into the case of the child Britt. May I pay you the compliment of saying you are too imaginative to be a man of science, though, of course, you tried to find an answer through science. When Sir Flenry discussed it with me, we both agreed you had gone too far with your theories based on the tales of old wives.’ He laughed gently. ‘Fate marked you, doctor, when the fool who is Britt’s father flew her to London.’

  Peter clasped Anne-Marie’s hand to give her courage and said evenly: ‘Tell me, Dr Stromberg, did you pass the contagion on to her?’

  ‘With my own blood … a bond was made that unites us irrevocably,’ he answered sombrely. ‘In this you and your kind can only see evil, for you are the children of Eve while my kind are the children of Lilith.’

  He paused, walked to the altar and pointed to the silver plate suspended in its transparent reliquary.

  ‘Yet one thing we have in common, the need for identity,’ he went on. ‘Can you imagine, doctor, the experience of waking as a child in an alien world, bewildered by vague memory, mourning for a love long lost and possessed by a thirst it would be death to reveal? I knew not who I was; I knew not what I was!

  ‘But I was endowed with the intelligence of my line. I observed and schemed and studied; studied to gain knowledge of my condition and to earn power enough to satisfy my need. You know how successful I have been. Yet the mystery of my origin remained. I searched Europe for that small piece of metal you see there, and when I found it in a dismal room in London it told me all I needed to know. Though I suffered a wound in getting it which could have endangered my grand design, it identified me.’

  He waved his white well-groomed hand round the chapel, its gloom cut by slanting rays of tinted light.

  ‘This grew from childish impressions which survived from the old time. A re-created environment where once I knew joy.’

  ‘And the coffin?’ Peter asked.

  ‘As you have observed, doctor, my kind can be vulnerable to cataleptic trance. With knowledge I have gained I can predict when this is going to happen to me, and it is infancy to rest as my ancestors rest.’

  There was silence in the seemingly ancient chapel.

  ‘And what about Hoi … your prisoner in the crypt?’ Anne-Marie demanded bravely.

  ‘She was a willing victim, mademoiselle. Blood calls to blood, and as your Bible says the life of all flesh is the blood thereof. What greater token of love can she give me than to grant the essence vital to my continuation!’

  Stromberg shifted his eyes from the coffin plate which had such significance for him, and looked directly at Peter. ‘Of course, doctor, I cannot allow you to leave with this knowledge in your mind.’

  ‘It would be impossible to expect you to have a conscience over murder when you can corrupt children with your own tainted blood,’ Peter retorted. ‘But I warn you if you or your Tonton thugs kill me, there will be enough evidence to send you to your own particular hell.’

  Stromberg’s fleshy lips tightened into a mirthless smile.

  ‘Dr Pilgrim, how can you suggest such a thing? Nothing so crude had entered my head. No, you will be returned to civilization physically sound. Only your memory will be missing. A relatively simple leucotomy will erase all this — and, indeed, all your past life — from your brain. When you are recovered, I’ll have you flown home to the London Hospital for Diseases of the Nervous System. Poor Dr Pilgrim, they will say, he’s nothing but a vegetable despite everything Stromberg could do.

  ‘As for you, mademoiselle, I have other plans. I have a penchant for women with beautiful hair … and soon I shall need a new source … He turned to the two Haitians lounging by the door. ‘Henri!’ he called.

  One straightened and swaggered past the coffin and walked towards Peter. Before Peter could move, he whipped out a leather-bound cosh and, with the expertise gained as a terrorist agent, swung it against the side of his head. Peter’s knees buckled and he collapsed to the floor.

  Chapter 23

 
A few minutes after Peter was struck to the floor he opened his eyes. Although he suffered from pain down the side of his head and a feeling of nausea, his mind was quite able to comprehend what was happening.

  He was on his back, his arms and legs tightly pinioned by straps to a narrow table. Light poured down on him from an adjustable non-dazzling lamp such as are used in operating theatres. By turning his head he saw the walls were made of gleaming hygienic tiles. There was a familiar smell in the air, and when Dr Stromberg moved into his line of sight he saw he was gowned in white.

  ‘What’s happening?’ he asked weakly.

  ‘I’m preparing you for your operation,’ Stromberg answered. ‘I regret facilities are very primitive for such surgery, but to operate in the clinic theatre would excite suspicion among the staff. Here, unfortunately, I only have this examination room at my disposal, but you can appreciate that what I intend to do is relatively crude compared to usual brain surgery.’

  Peter said nothing.

  ‘I also regret that I do not have an anaesthetist whom I could trust,’ he continued. ‘You will have the interesting experience of actually feeling the probe. Now, Miss Saturday … ’

  Swivelling his eyes, Peter saw the feline Haitian girl looking down at him with concentration. She began to cut away the hair from his forehead with scissors. It hurt when hairs caught between the blades.

  ‘You can’t do this,’ Peter shouted. ‘It’s utter madness.’

  ‘I assure you of my best professional attention,’ said Stromberg. ‘The instruments are correctly sterilized, and I am sure Mademoiselle Clair will give you the best of post-surgical care. I did ask her to help me with the theatre work, but she was uncooperative. Saturday may be eager, but her experience is negligible.’

  As he spoke tufts of hair continued to fall into Peter’s eyes. When sufficient had been removed, he saw black hands moving above his face as his stubbly scalp was lathered prior to being shaved.

  From somewhere behind his head came the buzz of a delicate electric drill. Experience told him Stromberg was testing the device which would bore the preliminary aperture in his skull.