Flowers over the Inferno, page 3
She was out of breath by the time she reached the front door, and a lock of her curly hair had escaped her chignon; she hurriedly tucked it back with a hairpin while examining the state of her shoes. Before she’d even touched the door knocker, shaped like a wolf’s head, the heavy door opened, and a wide, ageless face stared at her through small, stern eyes.
“You must be Magdalena. Come in, follow me.”
Nurse Agnes Braun was like the building she lived in: austere and derelict. Her thick grey hair framed a face much younger than Magdalena had expected. A few subtle touches would have been enough to make her look almost beautiful, but perhaps those kinds of concerns were not welcome in the School. Magdalena had been advised not to wear any rouge for her job interview here, to dress plainly, and to gather her hair in a bun.
Nurse Braun was coolly cordial as she showed Magdalena around what she clearly considered her realm—judging by the regal demeanor she adopted as they walked among slabs of marble, gold-plated friezes, and the few valuable furnishings that seemed to be left. But the building appeared otherwise vacant, and so quiet that Magdalena wondered where its residents could be.
The atrium was pristine and decorated with a mosaic representing the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s coat of arms: a double-headed black eagle on a golden background. The walls were adorned with trompe-l’oeil paintings of hunting scenes. The only blemish on this delicate backdrop of pastel colors was a pendulum clock with two Moors carved on either side of the dial; the expressions on their ebony-carved faces were terrifying, their gaping mouths revealing sets of curiously sharp ivory teeth.
Agnes Braun sensed the newcomer’s shock.
“It was made with artifacts from the African continent,” she explained smugly. “It belonged to the director’s family. He thought it would make a nice gift to the School.”
Magdalena thought it was horrifying, but managed to force a polite smile.
Nurse Braun rested her interlaced hands on her stomach and observed Magdalena.
“Do you think it tasteful?” she asked.
The young woman would not meet her eyes.
“I do,” she said, but knew immediately how insincere she sounded.
When she looked up again, she saw a smile spreading over the other woman’s face. Agnes Braun seemed pleased.
“You mustn’t be embarrassed,” she heard her say. “Your little lie tells me you might be suited to this place after all. The School expects devotion, and devotion requires that we forego certain personal liberties—like our freedom of thought. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Magdalena nodded without even realizing it. There was something about this woman that disturbed her. Just like the School itself, something about her felt wrong.
-5-
The grown-ups were upset. Mathias could tell from the way his mother kept shooting nervous glances his way while she talked to his teacher and some of the other kids’ mothers. Every look was like a tug on a leash, a way of drawing his attention and keeping him close even as they stood apart. In her arms she held his little brother, Markus, who was only a few months old. He’d fallen asleep a while ago, but she hadn’t put him back in his pram.
The school auditorium was alive with anxious whispers. A heap of multi-colored costumes lay abandoned on the stage, illuminated by floodlights. Earlier, two men Mathias had never seen before had interrupted the rehearsals for the school’s nativity play. They’d spoken to the teacher first and then gone up to Diego’s mother; after a brief conversation, she had followed them out, looking pale and stumbling as she walked, like a zombie. Only when Mathias’s mother had called out to her had she remembered her son. She’d told him to stay put and behave himself; the teacher was going to look after him until grandma arrived. Her voice was shaking.
Mathias saw Diego slumped in one of the collapsible chairs in the stalls, staring at the black sky through the row of windows high up on the wall. Every day, night fell a little earlier, and it seemed as if the blackness had begun affecting people, too. Travenì was no longer the same place Mathias had always loved; over the last few hours, the town had been crushed by the weight of suspicion falling on its residents like snow. Ever since Diego’s father had disappeared, the air had been poisoned with fear.
Mathias approached his friend, whose face, half-illuminated by a beam of light from the stage, was like a small moon, sad and perhaps a little furious. Mathias felt he should say something, but he also understood words would be useless.
Diego’s father was dead. Nobody had said it out loud yet, but they knew—just like you know when you’re about to be smacked, or when you feel a fever building even though your forehead still feels cool to the touch.
Mathias scrunched his hat up into a ball and threw it at Diego.
Diego’s hand shot up and caught it, though his eyes were still staring out into the darkness.
A flash of a smile escaped Mathias. Diego was still there, even though he was trapped in a morass of confusion and fear. He was Mathias’s best friend and his biggest rival—though in that moment Mathias wanted to tell him he didn’t care about being the head of their group, Diego could take his place if he wanted; he had all the qualities of a leader anyway. But he said nothing; leadership had to be earned, not gifted. For now they would continue to challenge each other—though never at the expense of the fraternal bond that united them.
Mathias was on the verge of saying all this to Diego, but a sudden thought made him focus on something else entirely.
“Where’s Oliver?” he asked.
On hearing the name, Diego seemed to fall back to earth. Oliver was only a year younger than them, but they all regarded him as the baby of the group.
They looked at each other, sharing the same urgent thought. They had to find him. They had to protect him—especially here, within these walls.
The hallway that led to the students’ bathroom was a dim passageway with no visible end. The lights had been switched off already, and the classrooms on either side of the corridor were black holes emitting a faint odor of chalk and paper.
Oliver swallowed and heard his saliva moving down his throat, an unnervingly clear sound in the stillness of the hallway. He looked for the light switch, but he couldn’t recall where it was since he’d never had to use it before. He glanced back at the faint, reassuring glow behind him. The doors of the assembly room opened out halfway down a corridor around the corner.
I’m not alone, he reminded himself.
He turned his head once more to the stretch of corridor ahead, that abyss he’d stubbornly wanted to cross on his own, without asking anyone for help.
Oliver knew: he was lurking somewhere in the dark—tidying up the equipment in the gym room, or making sure all the windows were shut in the canteen. He never made any noise when he moved and glared sternly at everyone he passed. But only with Oliver did he reveal his true nature: as cruel as a fairy tale ogre, beyond reason or measure. Oliver’s stomach cramped at the thought.
He blinked several times in quick succession. It was as if the gloom were a physical mass stuck to his eyelashes, his skin, his clothes, determined to engulf him. He took a step, and then another. In his imagination he’d entered that bubble of darkness now, edging too close to its core and too far from the light.
If a hand were to emerge now from the dark and drag him away . . . He pushed that thought away, but the cramps in his stomach lingered as a reminder. Surely the door to the bathroom wasn’t much further away. A few steps more and he would feel it beneath his outstretched hands, and all his fears would be wiped away by the light. Mathias and Diego would be proud of him and finally see him as their equal.
He advanced with greater conviction until he felt the smooth surface of the wall beneath his fingertips. He ran his hands along the wall and found the door, then felt for the handle, and pushed down. A familiar smell of chlorine and bleach told him he’d come to the right place.
He hesitated, trying to work up the courage to slip a hand into the darkness.
Idiot, he thought, feeling embarrassed even though there was nobody there to witness his fear.
He pursed his lips and stuck his arm out, feeling hot and cold at the same time. Finally he managed to feel his way to the switch, and the neon lights on the ceiling flickered to life.
The blue bathroom tiles gleamed under the cold light. A loose tap dripped water into the sink at regular intervals.
Oliver’s chest deflated as he let go of the breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. There was nobody else there, nobody waiting for him.
He made for the cubicles, a row of three open doors in front of him. He chose the middle one and began to undo his trousers. He stopped at the first button.
He could feel it. He wasn’t alone anymore. There was somebody behind him. Someone else was breathing with him in the silent room—a heavy breath that smelled of garlic and tobacco.
“Hello, you little shit.”
Oliver slowly turned around, as if those words, uttered in that rough voice, were some kind of order. He was shaking.
Right there in front of him, making him feel even smaller than he already was, stood the imposing figure of his daily nightmare.
Abramo Viesel was the school janitor. He was older than Oliver’s parents but younger than his grandparents; his body was so thick that he moved with difficulty, and when he walked he rocked from side to side like a ship in a storm. But Oliver wouldn’t have called him fat. The word that came to his mind whenever he saw him was “powerful.” Like a villain in superhero comics. Powerful enough to crush him.
Oliver looked at the janitor’s hands: they were as large as Oliver’s head. He imagined his skull imprisoned by those rough, hairy fingers.
“I see you’ve worked up the courage to come all the way here on your own,” he said. “That wasn’t a good idea.”
Oliver didn’t reply. He had learned by now that any word he said was bound to be the wrong one. Mr. Viesel had enjoyed torturing him since the day Oliver had first set foot in the school. The torment had only been verbal so far, and Mr. Viesel had yet to lay a finger on him, but Oliver could feel that, too, would come one day soon. He looked at the man’s hands again and saw they were wracked by spasms, muscles rippling beneath his skin.
“They’re waiting for me,” Oliver said.
Mr. Viesel’s belly shook as he let out a quick, low laugh.
“You came here for a piss. So do it,” he commanded, standing firm, his shoulder blocking the door.
Oliver squeezed his eyes shut. The pressure on his bladder was beginning to hurt.
“I need to get back,” he said. “Please.”
“No, you’re staying right here. Standing to attention, like a little soldier, until you’ve wet yourself.”
Oliver felt something dampening his cheeks.
“Crying like a little girl now, are we?” Mr. Viesel mocked him.
Oliver thought of Lucia, who was a girl, but also brave and strong. He opened his eyes. His attacker’s silhouette seemed to tremble when he saw it through his tears.
The man leaned toward him.
“You know what I’ll do if you go telling anyone about this, don’t you?”
Oliver didn’t reply.
“I’ll come for you at night when you’re asleep, and . . .”
He made as if to grab him. Oliver let out a strangled scream and Viesel burst out laughing. But then something hit him on the head and bounced off onto the floor. Viesel looked at the object and Oliver followed his gaze. It was a blackboard eraser. It had left a chalk mark across the man’s cheek.
Mr. Viesel turned around and Oliver took his chance to squeeze through the gap between Viesel’s thigh and the cubicle door, pushing through with all his strength to reclaim his freedom.
“Where do you think you’re going?” said Viesel, but it was too late. Oliver was safe now.
Mathias and Diego stood between him and his tormentor.
“So you need your little friends to rescue you,” Viesel grunted. “When will you stop being such a wimp?”
“Leave him alone!” said Mathias.
“What’s your problem, Klavora? Your father forgot to give you a proper beating this week?”
Abramo Viesel wiped the chalk off his face.
“And I see young Valent is here, too,” he said, looking at Diego. He picked up the eraser. “Now your old man’s come to a sticky end.”
“Shut up!”
But Mathias’s cry went unheeded. Oliver saw him grab Diego’s arm and try to drag him away, but Diego seemed to have turned into stone.
“Let’s go!” Mathias pleaded.
“I heard the cops talking in the parking lot, before they went in to look for your mother,” Viesel whispered, as if sharing a secret. “Do you want to know what they were saying?”
Diego kept his eyes fixed on the janitor and didn’t reply. Oliver thought he looked like he’d been hypnotized.
“Do you want to know how he died?”
Now all three boys were listening, transfixed.
Abramo Viesel raised his hands, curled his fingers like talons, and brought them slowly toward Diego’s face.
“They took him into the woods and ripped his eyes out. Like this!”
His tale was interrupted by the voice of a teacher calling out for them from the hallway. Oliver felt Mathias pulling him away and saw that he was dragging Diego out, too.
Behind them, Abramo Viesel was now complaining forlornly about how tired he was, with all his aches and pains, of being subjected to the pranks of these spoiled brats while he tried to clean the toilets. Oliver didn’t look, but he could picture the janitor standing there, waving the eraser about in one hand and supporting his back with the other.
He did look at Diego, though, and almost didn’t recognize him. Diego’s face had gone so pale that he looked dead. Just like his father.
-6-
In the half-lit room, a projector beamed photographs from the crime scene.
There were close-ups of parted, cyanotic lips, and details of capillaries spreading beneath the epidermis like river deltas. A pale sternum. Black craters where the eyes used to be.
These images were the raw materials of their work, lumps of clay they would mold into the face of the killer, a face to which they would then attach a name. It was always a killer’s profile—the portrait of his psyche—that led investigators to his identity, never the other way around.
Slouched in her chair, Teresa considered the slides, with Ambrosini, the regional chief of police, and Gardini, the deputy public prosecutor, sitting on either side of her. She regarded them as friends, though their friendship had no bearing on their professional relationship. Behind them sat the rest of her team.
They had just returned to the police station having spent hours examining the crime scene and collecting evidence until the cold had seeped into their bones. But their work had only just begun, and the day was sure to blend seamlessly into night.
Teresa’s eyes, though stinging with exhaustion, were fully focused.
More images now, scenes from a natural landscape untamed by man. The vegetation was dotted with the forensics team’s markers signalling every piece of evidence they’d found: traces of blood, prints, and branches snapped by the fury of a beast with human features.
And finally, the culmination of that morbid repertoire: an effigy made out of the victim’s bloodied clothing.
Teresa heard Gardini’s breath hitch in revulsion. He had just realized that this was no “ordinary” homicide; there was an element of psychosis in it, and perhaps something even more dangerous that Teresa hadn’t been able to identify. The usual motives weren’t going to apply here. The human mind wasn’t capable of nursing this kind of horror out of simple jealousy, revenge, or greed. The meaning of that effigy was far more complex. It demanded their attention because it revealed so much.
“In my view, that’s the single most disturbing element,” murmured the deputy prosecutor.
Teresa felt the same, though looking at it now she thought she could perhaps glimpse something more. She hadn’t yet been able to put her finger firmly on it; at the moment it was still just an indistinct trace beneath the surface that showed up intermittently and slipped out of reach every time she tried to give it a name.
“Something wrong?” the deputy prosecutor asked her.
She didn’t respond immediately, waiting for her impressions to take a more concrete shape. Finally, she shook her head and stayed silent. She didn’t want to muddle everyone else’s thoughts with the vague hunch that if it hadn’t been for the context in which they had found it, and all that blood on it, she would have said there was something childish—even playful—about the effigy.
Teresa studied the eyes, which were made out of berries.
“We should figure out where the killer got those from,” she said. “I didn’t see them anywhere else in the area; it might turn out to be an important clue.”
The prosecutor nodded his agreement.
“What could it mean?” he asked.
Teresa wasn’t sure yet, but she had a theory.
“It was important to him that they should be there,” she said. “If the effigy is a representation of the killer, it’s showing him looking at something.”
But looking at what? The dying victim? The village nearby?
During their inspection of the scene, Teresa had noticed a detail that had unsettled her: from the angle it faced, the effigy seemed to be looking straight at the bell tower of Travenì’s church.
“The absence of a mouth makes it look expressionless,” Gardini noted.
“That’s the killer’s way of masking his emotions,” she explained. “It’s impossible to tell what he might have felt in that moment: rage or fear, anguish or excitement.”
