The Horrific Sufferings Of The Mind-Reading Monster Hercules Barefoot: His Wonderful Love and his Terrible Hatred (16 page)

“Extraordinary!” he said. “The eardrums are missing!” He twisted the lamp to one side to let the light fall on the ear at a better angle. “The boy’s deaf. But the sacculus which allows for gravitational orientation seems to be intact. I hope we’ll have the opportunity to do an autopsy.”

He took the instrument out and wiped it on a piece of lint.

“Your Eminence is of course acquainted”, he said solemnly, “with what the so-called evolutionists maintain? That man and beast have the same progenitor, who comes from the sea. And as evidence they adduce the ear. In animals and man alike the inner ear is filled with water. A remarkable anachronism, they say, that our auditory faculty should still be governed by submarine rules. Only through a filter of water can we transform sounds and render them comprehensible to the mind.”

Rivero stood up, clearly agitated.

“What are you trying to say?” he asked.

“Nothing in particular. This monster has in any case quite a different genealogical table. His ears contain no water whatsoever!”

Del Moro proceeded to take out a pair of scissors from his bag and cleaned them in a basin filled with alcohol.

“I’m going to remove his hair growth,” he said. “Nothing must be left to chance. I want you to examine the hair. Pay especial attention to the knots and tangles, that’s where they hide their amulets! And whatever you do, seal off your innermost being, so that the monster cannot possess you.”

And with two deft movements of his hands, so swift that in his confusion Hercule scarcely noticed what was happening, del Moro fastened his legs and what little he had of arms with leather straps to the chair and started the demonological examination.

It took the inquisitor an hour to relieve Hercule of all his hair. The furry back, in particular, offered resistance, and del Moro was forced to sharpen his razor no fewer than four times before the procedure could be concluded by exposing this part of Hercule’s body. He could hardly believe his eyes. The back was covered with large calluses; the skin was porous and tinted slightly green, as though overgrown with lichen. In between the shoulder blades he discovered to his amazement a deep cavity, the bottom of which lay somewhere in the region of the front of the monster’s chest. Here and there bones, wrongly grown, strained the overlying skin like a tent. Peculiar birthmarks had petrified to the point where they looked like stones.

All the while mumbling conjurations, del Moro rid Hercule of his downy beard and unruly whiskers. So fascinated was he by the young monster’s physiognomy that he failed to notice how the bulkheads that sealed off his consciousness were beginning to leak, the palisade beginning to crack, to the point where his thoughts became an easy prey for the object of his interest.

. . . attempting to find the witch’s mark . . . Satan is always a step ahead . . . why hasn’t this symptom had time to change . . . for every new method we develop, the Evil One serves up a new defence . . . a similar case was discovered in Paris a year or two ago . . . a boy picked up on everything everyone around him was thinking . . . could tell you where you’d lost things . . .

Hercule could make nothing of this, and his confusion mounted still further when he saw the demonologist open his bag and take out an awl-like object and, still mumbling conjurations, kiss it as if it were a chalice filled with sacramental wine.

. . . according to del Río one should be on the lookout for warts, or birthmarks . . . how can one do that on a body as deformed as this, it’s nothing but a heap of abnormalities and calluses . . . let us with God’s help put an end to this . . .

And just as Hercule had intimated from this jumble of thoughts, del Moro set about a scrutinising search for a witch’s mark on Hercule’s body, a hidden wart or birthmark which, according to the great witch-hunter Martin del Río, is insensitive to pain and does not bleed no matter how deeply the needle is inserted, thus proving, beyond any doubt, that what they were dealing with was one of Satan’s innumerable henchmen.

Hercule was only fragmentarily aware of his surroundings – the rain beginning to fall against the window, the Cardinal digging his fingers into the hair which had been cut off him and which lay in a thick mat at the foot of the examination chair.

. . . to find an amulet, a black relic, a chicken’s claw, a snake replica . . . he could have got this gift of his from just about anywhere, and even if the men of the Enlightenment rationalise the whole thing with formulas and prove the Evil One to be a fiction, it still doesn’t explain the fact that he has thrown a whole monastery into anarchy . . .

By now del Moro was stabbing needles into him with all the force he could muster; into his back, his armpits, the soles of his feet. Blood was oozing from dozens of wounds all over his body. The pain was excruciating. He started to cry and jerk convulsively against the straps as the needles dug half a centimetre deep into his flesh. Very calmly del Moro fastened Hercule’s head to the back of the chair and turned to the Cardinal, “Can you find anything, Rivero . . . an amulet, a devil’s cross?”

“Nothing so far.”

With a sense of horror that near rendered him unconscious, Hercule watched the inquisitor walk over to the laboratory bench, and clearly heard his thoughts:
This bit of theatre will soon be over . . . the men ought to be with Schuster at any moment . . .

That was when he knew they intended to kill him. And not only him, but his benefactor Schuster, too. In a moment of devastating lucidity he understood it all: that, in this context, his gift was of no import, whether it could be explained or not wasn’t of the least consequence. The important thing was not even whether it existed. But that it existed as a possibility.

Let me go!
he screamed right into del Moro’s gaping mind.

On hearing this soundless cry that echoed inside him seven times as loud as an ordinary scream, the inquisitor almost fell to the floor. During his thirty years of working as an exorcist he had never experienced anything like it. With the sweat pouring down his face, he turned to Rivero, “There’s no doubt about it, the monster is possessed! Let us, in the name of God, put an end to this!”

Hercule lost consciousness. And this, as it turned out, saved his life. For it was his unconscious body that afforded del Moro and Rivero the brief respite they needed in order to find out what was happening, a matter of extreme importance. In a building a street away, four novices – forerunners of the late-nineteenth-century
sapinieri
or
Sodalitiorum Pium
, the name later given to the Vatican’s secret service – had just been sent out on a mission to silence the chief witness to this affair.

LYING ON THE
bunk in his cell, Julian Schuster opened his eyes and looked around to see where the voice that had woken him up was coming from. There was no-one there. Just his own doubts lurking treacherously in the dark.

But then he heard it again: the phantom voice.

Hercule?
he asked.
Are you there?

Soon dead
. . . came the reply.

The message he received was scarcely louder than a hum. He listened intently, but now all he could hear was a faint murmur rising from one of the downstairs corridors where the Order’s officials had their offices.

Then he heard the voice again, much clearer this time.

Schuster
, it said,
we must get out of here . . . 

Hercule
, he replied,
is that really you?

The answer was instantaneous.
Hurry . . . the men are closing in . . .

Schuster got up, on legs so shaky he could barely stand.

What men?

Four of them . . . in this building . . .

Again the brother looked round the room as if hoping to see his ward there; but the only things to be found were the glum disconsolate grey of his barrack walls and a resurgence of doubts he could scarcely ward off.

What men are you talking about?

Doesn’t matter . . . hurry . . .

The novices selected by Cardinal Rivero for this mission were inside the building, and no more than fifty steps away. One was in the downstairs corridor of offices, and at this very moment was approaching the attic staircase. There he stopped for a brief second and felt the length of copper wire that lay coiled into a snare in his girdle pocket.

Hurry, for God’s sake
, the voice inside Schuster said.
Take the left-hand corridor. At its far end you’ll find a door leading to a closet . . . if you want to stay alive, do as I tell you
.

It was dark in the corridor. Schuster could hear footsteps on the staircase, and the breathing of someone approaching. Twenty metres along the corridor, to his right, he found the door and slipped soundlessly into the space behind it. It was some kind of a storeroom, crammed full with Mass crucifixes and vats of incense.

On the floor there’s a carpet . . . roll it aside . . . you’ll find a hatch . . . open it and climb down . . . they’re coming closer
.

How do you know all this?
he asked.

I can see, no, feel it . . . so can you, if you try . . .

But Schuster didn’t need to try, because the voice, the phantom mind – hovering in a state between sleep and waking in the small area drafted between death and unconsciousness where a final step is so easily taken, but impossible to revoke – was still functioning. Irrespective of time or of space, through walls and hallways, through the meandering corridors of this stronghold, inside the walls of which Loyola had once observed a world he could no longer understand, for a second in time Julian Schuster connected with the consciousness of one of the young novices who’d been sent out to kill him. For the briefest of moments Schuster found himself inside the mind of the novice, discovering there a young man who, half a generation later, was to make a name for himself during the controversies surrounding the first Vatican Council and win over the Polish and Lithuanian officials in the decree of papal infallibility. Schuster didn’t understand how he could possibly be aware of all this, since it belonged to the future. Nor could he understand how he knew that this man’s sheer cold-bloodedness would one day make him one of the most feared men of his time. Furthermore, that he was of Polish origin, Wittold Kossak by name, but known to his colleagues as “
el Lobo
”, “the wolf”. What he did know with absolute clarity, however, was that this boy, just as Hercule had warned, was out to kill him.

My God
, he thought, scared stiff by this revelation,
where on earth are you?

Same place you left me . . .

Exactly as the voice had foretold, Schuster found the hatch in the floor. Now he could hear distinct sounds coming from the corridor, someone tearing open the door to his room, then uttering a cry of disappointment. In only a matter of moments, they would go on searching the corridor, yank at locked doors and discover the room at the far end.

An iron ring had been screwed into the centre of the hatch. With an effort he managed to pull it open. Beneath him was a ladder fastened to the wall, leading down to a food lift.

Climb down into the shaft,
the voice said
, crawl into the lift and unhook the cable . . .

And if it won’t take my weight?
he wondered.
Will this be the last thing I’ll ever remember?

Footsteps were approaching from the corridor. He could hear men’s voices whispering in the dark, followed by someone hushing them. With a prayer to Providence, he lowered himself down into the shaft, opened the repair hatch and crept into the lift-cage. Cold sweat breaking out on his forehead, he unhooked the cage cable and with a jerk felt the cage begin to fall, faster and faster, until the brake slides caught hold and levelled off its acceleration.

Landing gently against the springs in the cellar, convinced that it was thanks only to a pure oversight on Fortune’s part the lift had borne his weight, he climbed out of the cage and half ran through a corridor dimly lit by tallow candles.

There’s a door at the other end,
the voice said
. There’s a key on top of the door frame, open the door, and go up the stairs . . .

By now Schuster had ceased to be amazed by the accuracy of the instructions he was receiving; he found the key in the specified place, and without asking any questions followed all further instructions to the letter. Climbed some stairs, turned left, retreated down a corridor, hid to order in a window-bay, held his breath, stood still when told, until finally he found himself behind the back door leading into the examination room where he’d left his ward some four hours before.

On the other side of the wall he could hear someone knocking on the door, and then a voice – that of Kossak, the Polish novice – explaining that Schuster had vanished, was nowhere to be found, though they’d searched the entire building. The voices rose agitatedly inside the room, a door slammed, and the conversation continued in the antechamber.

Go in
, he heard the phantom voice whisper,
take me away from this place . . . and then get out, as fast as you can . . .

The sight that met Schuster made him think of the morning, scarcely a year before, when he’d found the boy in the madhouse cellar. Unconscious, bound, and seated in something reminiscent of a barber’s chair, blood streaming from the open wounds on the disfigured body. An awl, dug a decimetre deep into his flesh, stuck out from his back.

Schuster released him from the straps, carried the featherweight body in his arms over to the back door. In the antechamber the quarrel was still going on, he heard the Cardinal’s agitated voice. It was only a matter of minutes before they would come back in the room.

He carried the boy a hundred steps before laying him down by a door which led out to one of the alleyways. Hercule was regaining consciousness.

Where is there any Divine justice for this creature? Schuster thought. Where was their God just now, when they needed Him the most?