Occasionally Laverne would see the flaring of a torch — a real torch — down below at some undetermined depth, or smell its smoke drifting up to him. But never a sound from Vulpe, who must know this place extremely well to negotiate its hazards so cleanly and silently. How he could possibly know it so well was a different matter. But Laverne felt his anger rising commensurate to the depths into which he descended. Surely he and Seth Armstrong were the victims of a huge joke, in which Gogosu was possibly a participant no less than Vulpe? Ever since last night when they'd met the old hunter it had been as if this entire venture were pre-ordained, worked out in advance. By whom? And hadn't George been born here? Hadn't he lived here — or if not here exactly, then somewhere in Romania?
And finally Vulpe's descent into the black guts of this place, when he thought the others were asleep… what little 'surprise' was he planning now? And why go to such elaborate lengths anyway? If he'd known of this place and been here before — as a boy, perhaps — couldn't he have let them in on it? It wouldn't have been any the less fascinating for that.
'The Castle Ferenczy!' Laverne snorted now to himself. 'Shit!' And how many leu had Vulpe coughed up, he wondered, to get old Gogosu to play his part in this farce?
Very angry now he stepped down onto a second floor where he paused to call out more loudly yet: 'George! What the fuck are you up to, eh!?'
His cry disturbed the air, brought down rills of dust from unseen heights and ceilings. As its echoes boomed out and came back distorted and discordant, Laverne nervously explored the place with the smoky, jittery beam of his torch.
He was in the vaults, the place of frescoed walls, many archways, centuries-blackened oaken racks, urns and amphorae, festoons of cobwebs and layers of drifted dust. And there were footprints in the dust, quite a few of them. The most recent of these could only be Vulpe's. Laverne followed the direction they took — and ahead caught a glimpse of flaring torchlight where it lit the curve of an archway before disappearing.
You bastard! Laverne thought. You'd have to be deaf not to know I'm back here! You've got a hell of a lot of explaining to do, good buddy! And if I don't like what you have to -
From above and behind, on the stone stairs where they wound up into darkness, there came the soft pad of feet and a softer whining. A pebble, disturbed, came clattering down the steps. Then all was silence again.
Shaking like a leaf, suddenly cold and clammy, Laverne aimed his torch up the stairwell. 'Jesus!' he gasped. 'Jesus!' But there was nothing and no one there. Or perhaps a shadow, drawing back out of sight?
Laverne stumbled across the stone-flagged floor of the great room, through an archway and into other rooms beyond it. His ragged breathing and muffled footfalls seemed to echo thunderously but he made no effort to be silent. He must shorten the distance between Vulpe and himself right now and find out exactly what the bastard was doing down here. The glow of Vulpe's torch came again, and the resinous stench of its burning; Laverne plunged in that direction, through drifts of dust, salts and chemicals where they lay spilled on the floor, until…
… This room was different from the others. He paused under the archway prior to entering, cast about with his weakening beam.
Mouldy tapestries on the walls; a tiled floor inlaid with a pictorial mosaic which illustrated some strange, ancient motif; a desk thick with dust, laid out with books, papers and other writing implements. A massive fireplace and chimney-breast — and the flickering glow of a naked flame coming down out of that fireplace! George Vulpe had stepped… inside there?
Finding not a little difficulty in breathing, Laverne gasped: 'George?' He quickly crossed the room and stooped a little to aim his feeble beam of light up under the low arch of the fireplace. In there, fixed in a bracket in the rear wall, he saw Vulpe's smoky, flaring torch… but no Vulpe.
A hand fell on Laverne's shoulder! 'Jesus God!' he cried out, as adrenalin pumped and he snapped erect. The back of his head crunched into collision with the keystone of the arch over the fireplace; he reeled away across the room, and for a moment Vulpe was trapped in his torch's beam; the other stood there silent as a ghost, his hand still reaching out towards him.
Laverne went to his knees on the floor, clutched at the back of his head. His hand came away wet with blood. Sick and dizzy he kneeled there. He was lucky he hadn't brained himself. But anger quickly replaced his pain. He found his orientation, again aimed his torch where last he'd seen Vulpe. But Vulpe — sleepwalker, clown, asshole or whatever he was — wasn't there. Only a fading flicker of yellow fire from within the chimney-breast.
Laverne staggered to his feet. He found his knife lying where he'd dropped it close to the chimney. He closed it and put it away. He wouldn't need a knife for the beating he was going to give 'Gheorghe' Vulpe. And when he was done with him the bastard could find his own way back out of here — if he had the strength for it!
Steadier now, gritting his teeth, Laverne went again to the fireplace. He ducked inside and at once saw,the rungs in the back wall of the flue. From up above he heard sounds: the echoing scrape of shoes, a low cough. And: What goes up, he thought, must come down! Maybe he should wait right here for the idiot. Except that was when Vulpe screamed!
Laverne had never heard a scream like it. It followed close on a nerve-rending grating sound — like massive surfaces of rock sliding together — and rose to a vibrating falsetto crescendo before shutting off at highest pitch. And as its echoes died away, they were followed by a glottal gurgling and gasping. Vulpe was going, 'Ak… ak… ak… ak,' as if choking: a sort of slow death-rattle. Laverne, his hair standing on end, didn't actually know what a death-rattle sounded like, but he felt that if the sound were suddenly to speed up to ak-ak-ak-ak, then that would be his friend's last gasp.
'Oh, Jeeesus!' he whined, and drove himself clattering up the rungs and through the flue to the place where it curved through ninety degrees to become a passage. Twenty or twenty-five paces ahead, there lay Vulpe's torch still flickering fitfully and giving off black smoke where it teetered on the rim of a trench cut in the stone floor to the right of the passageway.
But of Vulpe himself… no sign. Only the choking, agonized 'Ak… ak… ak' sounds, which seemed to be coming from the trench.
'George?' Laverne hurried forward — and came to an abrupt halt. Beyond the guttering brand, where neither its light nor his own torch beam could reach, triangular eyes floated in the darkness, unblinking, unyielding, unnerving.
Laverne wasn't an especially brave man, but he wasn't a coward either. Whatever the creature was up ahead — fox, wolf or feral dog — it wouldn't much care for fire. He lumbered forward and snatched up the smouldering torch, and waved it overhead to get it going again. A whoosh of flame at once rewarded his efforts and the gathering shadows were driven back. Likewise the creature along the passageway; Laverne caught a glimpse of something grey, slinking, canine, before it was swallowed up in gloom. He also caught a glimpse of something in the trench -
— Something which drove him back against the wall like a blow from a huge fist!
Gasping his shock, his horror — feeling his blood running cold in his veins — Laverne tremblingly held out the torch over the trench. His disbelieving eyes took in the bed of spikes and the figure of his friend, crucified and worse, upon them. George Vulpe squirmed there, impaled through his cheek, neck, shoulders and arms; nailed through his back, buttocks, and thighs; issuing blood from each dark gash and puncture, which coloured the rusty spikes and flowed in thickly converging streams around and between his twitching feet, into the channel and down towards the stone spout.