Chapter Sixteen
1881
*
‘You need to get out of here. Now!’
Jacques opened his mouth to protest, but Isik stopped the boy’s words with a glare.
‘What is it?’ Freddie asked. ‘Is Monsieur Chevalier alright?’
‘Go! And do not look back.’
The boys backed out of the room, shocked by the guard’s aggression.
Isik crouched back down and saw Didier leaning over the statue, its mouth clamped onto his neck. A thin line of blood ran into the coffin, soaking into the statue’s blue mantle.
Isik put his pistol to the statue’s head and pulled the trigger. His hand jarred painfully. The bullet seemed to go into the head, but there was no change in its state. It remained attached to Didier’s neck. Isik tried to pull him away from the thing, but he feared he would injure his friend further and was unable to free him.
‘Didier, can you hear me?’
The Frenchman’s eyes stayed closed and he appeared to be in some kind of swoon. He was not struggling, but his face was pale and he started to twist round, slowly collapsing onto the floor. He would be dead soon if Isik did not do something quickly. Just at that moment, the others flew into the room in a whirlwind of noise and panic.
‘What is happening?’ Alexandre shouted. ‘What is Father doing? Papa, what are you doing?’
‘Didier!’ Marie-Louise cried out, running towards him.
‘Stay back!’ Isik shouted. ‘What are you doing in here? Get out, all of you! Run for your lives and do not come back!’ He pushed Marie-Louise away and she responded angrily.
‘How dare you, Sir! What do you think you are doing?’
‘Forgive me, Madame, but I fear for your safety. These statues are not natural. One of them is attacking your husband.’
‘Do not be ridiculous! Let me see.’ Marie-Louise pushed past Isik and bent down towards her husband. She screamed and jumped back in fright. ‘What is it doing? Get it off him! Please, Isik, do something!’
He spoke rapidly in Turkish to Savas and Nail who stood nervously in the doorway. Everyone else crowded closer, trying to see if Didier was alright.
‘Stand back, everybody!’ Isik shouted. His voice thunderous in the stone room.
‘What has happened to Papa?’ Isobel shrieked. ‘What is happening?’
‘Quiet!’ Isik roared once more. His guards joined him by the coffin and the others moved back a little. The guards held out their pistols. Isik aimed at the creature’s heart. The other two aimed at each side of its head. They fired … It was as if nothing had happened. The creature did not relinquish its hold on Didier. Its eyes remained closed and it did not move one inch.
‘Is she alive? What is she? It?’ Leonora asked.
‘I believe the old woman, Havva Sahin, was right. It is a demon,’ Alexandre replied. ‘A demon is attacking my father and we cannot stop it. Well, I shall stop it!’
He strode over to the coffin. His father now appeared limp and lifeless. ‘Give me your knife, Isik.’ Isik handed it across and Alexandre plunged it downwards into the creature’s heart. His hand twisted and burned as the knife point broke and the blade sliced through his palm.
The woman creature sat upright and released her grip on Didier who fell heavily to the ground. Her hand shot out and grabbed Alexandre’s wrist which was covered in dripping blood. With her eyes still closed and her mouth smeared with Didier’s blood, she pulled Alexandre’s wrist towards her mouth and broke his skin with her teeth. At the same moment, the three statues in the opened coffins sat upright. Everybody froze.
The statues sat rigidly in their coffins with no expressions on their chalk-white faces and their eyes still closed.
Isobel and Marie-Louise screamed and began to back out of the room. Marie-Louise tried to drag Jacques with her, but he resisted.
‘Run, Maman!’ he said. ‘I will save Papa and Alexandre, do not fear.’
‘No, Jacques,’ Marie-Louise had hold of his arm. ‘Come with us now!’
‘Sorry, Maman, but no. Run! Take Isobel to safety.’
Marie-Louise looked at her son, her eyes wild with terror, but she went with her daughter who dragged her out of the room and away to safety.
Jacques and Isik tried to pull the demon off Alexandre. He was not yet unconscious and struggled to no avail. Then, for no apparent reason, the demon released her grip on him and sank back down into the coffin.
‘Are you alright?’ Isik asked Alexandre.
‘I think so,’ he replied. ‘I just feel a little woozy. My father?’ He glanced at his torn wrist, now bleeding quite profusely along with his sliced palm, but he did not even register the pain.
Isik shook his head, ‘I am sorry. He is gone.’
Alexandre could not take in the enormity of Isik’s words and he crouched over his father’s lifeless body.
‘Come on, Papa,’ he barked. ‘Get up, we have to go.’ He felt someone take hold of his good hand - Leonora. She looked down at him with a mixture of sadness and fear.
‘I am so sorry, Alexandre. But we must leave. It is not safe here. There are many of these creatures. They will kill us if we linger.’ She had ripped a strip of material from her petticoat and was binding his wounds.
He staggered to his feet, unable to believe his father was actually dead. Everything had happened so quickly. He noticed the three other demons sitting up and realised Leonora was right. They had to get out of there immediately.
Isik and Alexandre lifted Didier’s lifeless body between them and made for the door.
‘We have to kill them!’ Jacques said.
‘There is no time,’ Alexandre replied. ‘They are too strong. We must get everybody above ground, to safety. Stop talking everyone. Move!’
They edged towards the door, trying to avoid the high open coffins with the eerie upright figures who sat stock still.
One of them suddenly leaned across and grabbed Leonora by her hair, pulling her over to him as if she were a rag doll. She screamed in shock and pain. Two of its long fingernails had pierced the skin on her forehead. Thin red lines of blood trickled down over her face.
‘NO!’ Victoria, Freddie and Alexandre shouted out at the same time. Freddie dived back towards her. Victoria shrieked.
‘My baby! Save my baby girl! Do something!’
Alexandre and Isik lay Didier’s body back down on the ground. They leapt towards Leonora with the other two guards. By now, all six men were trying to wrestle her free from the creature, but it had already begun to drink from her neck, its nails still embedded in her forehead. She swiftly faded into unconsciousness, her body bent at an unnatural angle over the stone coffin.
‘She is gone, my friend.’ Isik tried to pull Alexandre away from her body, but he angrily shook off the guard’s hand.
‘She is not yet dead! I know it! I know it …’ He slumped onto the floor and began to sob.
Freddie battered the demon with a rock, but he may as well have been kissing the creature goodnight, for all the effect it had. It flung Leonora’s limp body onto the ground as if she were an empty glass of lemonade and then lifted Freddie into the coffin with him.
‘This is suicide,’ Isik said. ‘I would stay and fight until my last breath if it would do any good. But they are too strong. We must leave. Now!’
Another of the creatures had taken Victoria and, after a brief scream, she too was silenced by its sharp teeth.
There was a loud BANG! The lid to one of the closed coffins flew across the room and smashed into the rock wall opposite. Its inhabitant rose slowly up out of its box and opened its kohl-rimmed eyes, turning its head this way and that. It was a young male wearing a gold headdress, red embroidered robes and a shimmering golden cloak.
Those not already dead or incapacitated stood rooted to the spot, staring at this magnificent creature who could bring about their deaths as easily as crushing a beetle.
The demon opened its mouth and uttered a low his
sing sound, making the hairs on the back of Alexandre’s neck and arms lift up. He knew he should run, but his body felt heavy, paralysed, as if turned to stone. So now he was going to die. He knew it just as surely as he knew his own name.
The creature leapt out of its coffin in one single fluid movement. It snapped Alexandre’s head back and sank its teeth into his throat.
Alexandre’s fear dissolved into faded bliss and then … nothing.
*
Only Isobel and her mother had managed to escape from the room and now they stumbled down the narrow corridor in fear for their lives.
‘Maman!’ Isobel gasped. ‘What are we to do? The others are not following! They will die!’
‘Hush child,’ her mother shivered. ‘Isik and Alexandre will save them. But right now, we have to get out of these accursed caves.’
‘Is Papa really …’
‘Do not talk of it. It is a bad dream and soon we shall awake and laugh and joke ...’ She stopped and her voice broke into sobs. ‘My Didier! My husband. It is monstrous. I do not believe what my own eyes have seen.’
‘Maman, we must continue upwards.’
Marie-Louise choked back her sobs. ‘You are right, Ma Petite. We will escape and send back a search party.’
‘What was that?’ Isobel whispered. She stopped and strained her ears.
‘I heard nothing,’ her mother replied.
‘There! That noise?’ She had heard a faint shout, she was sure of it. She listened again but heard nothing.
‘The others?’ Maman said. ‘It must be the others, they must have escaped.’
‘But it could be those creatures coming after us,’ Isobel whispered. ‘What should we do, Maman?’
‘I do not know, child. Wait, while I think for a moment.’ She looked around. ‘Here, come in here and we shall wait as quiet as mice until we know for sure. Then, when the coast is clear, we shall leave.’
She pulled Isobel into a small empty cell-like room. There was a millstone on the inside and they both pushed and heaved with all the force they had, until it rolled into place.
‘We will wait here. Now, what do we have?’ Her mother’s voice quavered. ‘We have two lanterns, some water, some dates and bread and we each have our pistols.’
Isobel crouched in the sealed cavern with her mother, shivering in its grim safety. The minutes passed.
A familiar voice rang out.
‘Did you hear that?’ her mother exclaimed.
‘It is Harold! We are saved.’
His voice drifted down from somewhere above them. He was calling out his wife and children’s names. Maman shone her lantern up to the ceiling.
‘Here! Look!’ She pointed up to a hole in the ceiling. ‘He must be on the level above us. We must go to him. Quickly, help me.’
They heaved the stone away from the entrance and turned towards the staircase.
‘Harold!’ Isobel shouted. ‘We are down here!’
‘Shhh!’ Marie-Louise put her hand over her daughter’s mouth. ‘We do not wish to alert those things to our whereabouts.’
Isobel’s breath caught in her throat. Behind her mother stood one of the creatures, its expressionless face staring ahead at nothing. Isobel extended a shaking arm and fired her pistol. Even from this point blank range, the shot had no effect. She heard a loud, high-pitched scream that seemed to last forever and realised the sound was coming from her own mouth.
Her mother did not have time to even turn around. The creature grabbed Maman’s arm and there was a hollow pop as it dislocated from its socket. She was dragged back down the corridor, her face twisted in shock. The lantern she carried clattered to the floor, its dim light spluttering in the gloom.
Isobel’s scream petered out and now she called out in terror, ‘God help us! Somebody help us!’ The robed creature appeared to fly back along the corridor. It had Maman in its grip and the last thing Isobel saw was the receding shape of her mother’s mouth, like a deep round cavern as her high-pitched scream disappeared into the darkness.
Isobel stood alone in the doorway, shivering and sobbing. She stumbled forwards in the direction the creature had taken her mother. The pain in her heart was like a sharp white throbbing light that blotted out all other feeling.
‘Maman,’ she cried. ‘MAMAN!’ she screamed. ‘Come back! You have forgotten me! It is me. It is Isobel. Do not leave without me!’
She crumpled onto the dusty stone floor and barely even noticed when one of them lifted her into its deathly embrace and carried her back down the corridor as if she were as light as air.
*
Harold held onto the side of the entrance for support, for the view in front of him was so shocking that all the strength in his body left him. One solitary lantern still glowed in the room and he could just make out the rows of high stone sarcophagi. It was like peering into hell. His family and friends all strewn on the floor, misshapen bodies, eyes staring.
The smell of fear and death filled his nostrils as he picked up the limp form of his wife, a wide smear of blood congealed on her neck. He kissed her mouth and rocked her back and forth.
‘Victoria, wake up. Victoria, you must wake up! We must leave and get you to a doctor.’ As he spoke the words, he realised it was futile. ‘My love, my beautiful Victoria ... No ... no. How can this be?’
He laid her down and gathered the bodies of his children to his chest. Leonora’s hair was matted with blood, her neck broken. He kissed her hair and then kissed all of their unyielding lifeless faces.
Refet stood in the doorway, taking in the scene, unable to speak. He saw Agha Kaya’s vacant eyes, his limp, lifeless form. Then he noticed two other uniformed bodies - his comrades. Dead. He walked woodenly over to Harold and shook his shoulder.
‘We must go,’ he whispered. ‘It is not safe here. We go now. They killed by bad creature … or murdered ... a wolf? I don’t know. Maybe the killer … the killer here still.’ He had other thoughts which he didn’t give voice to. Thoughts fuelled by rumours he had heard around the camp.
‘What animal could have done such a thing? Surely no person would do this?’ Harold choked out the words.’
‘I not know. We leave now,’ Refet insisted, trying to pull Harold to his feet. The young guard sensed lingering danger in the room. He could not identify it, but he knew it was present.
‘You go,’ Harold said. ‘I will not leave my family.’
Refet gripped his pistol and tried to keep his rising terror in check. He knew they should not remain here, but he felt strong sympathy for this man who had lost his family and friends.
‘You wait. Hold gun. I come back,’ he said, leaving Harold hunched over the broken forms of his wife and children.
A minute later, Refet returned. The young guard walked over to the lifeless body of Isobel, picked her up and carried her out. He had found a small room, that could be closed from the inside with a millstone and he planned to carry all the bodies there for safekeeping. He worked tirelessly.
‘Come,’ he said to Harold who was now sitting vacantly with his dead family around him. ‘We will bring you wife, you children.’
Harold did not heed him, so Refet bent down to pick up Victoria’s body.
‘Do not touch her!’ Harold shouted. He stood up. ‘Please,’ he said more gently. ‘I will carry her. You bring my boy.’
Refet inclined his head and carefully picked up Freddie’s flaccid body.
‘I will wait with them until you return,’ Harold said lifelessly. ‘Then we will take Victoria and Leonora together.’
Finally, the bodies had all been transferred to the small room.
‘They will be safe here,’ Refet said. ‘We go now. We come back tomorrow with help.’
‘I am not leaving my family.’
‘It not good to stay. Please to come back with me. We return in the morning.’
‘No. You go. I want to stay with my family. I will seal myself inside. No one will get in.’
&nbs
p; ‘I not want to leave you, but if I stay, they send more guards look for us. Not good for people to come here tonight. Too dangerous.’
Harold did not even look as though he was listening to Refet. He stared at the wall, his face contorted in shock and grief.
‘I take one light but leave you all others, you use only one at a time, yes? You have food and water. I return tomorrow. I very sorry for you and you family. I sorry.’
Harold did not reply and reluctantly Refet left the grieving man with his slaughtered family.
‘You push stone to close door,’ he said. But Harold was not listening so he gently shook his shoulder. ‘I cannot go until you close door. Come.’ He helped Harold to his feet and guided him over to the millstone. ‘I go, after you close door.’
Harold somehow found the strength to wheel the circular stone into place and then he sank down next to it. The light from the lantern flickered and danced over the bodies, which Refet had laid out neatly in a row along the back wall of the room.
Harold squeezed his eyes tightly closed. He did not feel as if he belonged to himself, he felt as though his real self had left his body and he had been transferred into hell. He crawled across to his wife’s body and wrapped his arms around her. His tears dripped onto her lifeless face and he lay with his cheek next to hers. He could not process his thoughts and soon fell into a half-sleep breathing in the scent of her hair.
*
Harold awoke some time later. He did not know how long he had slept. The lantern still burned, but the flame was low and the underground chamber had almost succumbed to the darkness. Harold did not care that his body was cold and thirsty; all he felt was the slice of pain as the memories rushed into his mind.
‘Dead,’ he whispered. ‘All dead.’ He gave a half-strangled cry, ‘No! No, no, no. My beautiful wife. My children. How can this be? What evil has befallen us? God, why did you not take me also?’
He took his wife’s cold hand and kneaded it in his own. As he knelt there, sobbing into her chest, he heard a gasp in the darkness.
‘Who is there?’ he asked looking around at the shadows. He felt a moment of acute fear and then he found he did not care. ‘Do you mean to kill me too? Take me then. I am not afraid. I should like to die. You would be doing me a service.’ He heard another gasp and a hissing sigh.