The Unhappy Medium 3: Wretched Things: A Supernatural Comedy, page 17
‘What the eff are you on?’ snorted Terry, looking from one Kraakenhausen to the other. ‘You’re bleedin’ mad, the pair of you. You been on the loopy juice or whaaaat?’
‘In alio loco vincula tua solve, ubi te angeli moribundi capiunt et tumulant,’ continued the archaeologist, grinning crazily. ‘Purpureis ruptis vincula rupibus in hoc vili vase iterum ambulare. Hoc est corpus tuum, domum tuam super mundum viventium. Absterge ab hoc mortali miseram animam et in tua potestate sume, nam utilem omnia perpensis.’
Terry, defiantly backchatting up to this point, now became instantly still, stunned into an immobile silence by the potency of the Latin incantation. As if hit by a bushman’s dart, he dropped onto his fat knees, then wobbled, hands raised before him, sun-burned face spasming like a boiling octopus. The Latin working its malevolent magic upon him, had his lumpen shoulders heaving and falling, his guts pulsing like a drinker retching outside a late-night kebab house.
‘Whab the flugging fluk!?’
In Purgatory, mirroring each of these convulsions, the spirit of General Maximilian von Kraakenhausen began pulling at his bonds. His struggles sent ripples through the purple and scarlet tendrils that tethered him to the amorphous walls as he prepared himself for release. Alongside him, in their own cells, from lowly camp guards to high-ranking field marshals, other Nazis watched excitedly as one of their own began his escape. Word shot down the long white corridors, provoking a cacophony of Teutonic chanting as an impromptu diversion erupted into life. As a host of bitter Nazis yelled and shrieked, their Purgatorial guards came running, floating in alarm from every direction, their concerned faces looking everywhere but the right place.
‘Age pater, veni teuton sanctificetur. Age, o heros et pulsum in hanc moronicam excusationem hominis,’ shouted the ecstatic Dr Kraakenhausen, sensing the nearness of his grandfather’s release. ‘Hoc est momentum tuum, nam te mors tenere non potest. Ab illo mundo ad hunc locum, ubi te exspectamus, effunde. Age nunc et accipe tua, quaeso!’
General Kraakenhausen was fully committed to his escape. Slipping his bonds, he ejected himself away from his humiliating confinement, flashing through the divide between one world … and the next. On its journey, his spirit had volumised, expanding like smoke from a vape shop, a coiling lumpen mass of purple that appeared without warning beside the prostrate figure of the stricken football fan. An umbilicus of violet vanished behind it into the space between the Earth and Purgatory. As his Nazi brethren cheered him on, the last vestiges of his loathsome spirit vanished from the cell like wet toilet paper, jumping between the two realities in one final, bloated … POP.
‘Familie! Meine Familie!’ gasped the spirit of the dreadful old Nazi from inside the body of the former Millwall fan. ‘Grandpapa … is home!’
‘Not home, General!’ shouted Dr Kraakenhausen. ‘Ve are not in Bavaria, Ve are here. On Crete!’
‘Crete?’ shrieked the newly arrived Nazi in alarm. ‘Not Crete! Nein! NEIN! NEIN! The people there are terrible. Subhuman peasants that vill slit our throats.’
‘No, no, it’s ok, General!’ explained Helena. ‘Ve are safe here. Quick, get out of the pool, quickly! Ve’ll explain it all to you later. For now, ve have verk to do on these other Untermensch!’
‘No! Please,’ begged another of the doomed Brits, having watched his nationalistic chum possessed before him. ‘Don’t, please!’
‘Do it, Papa,’ urged Helena. ‘Ve are vasting time. Line up the relics, and let’s get it over vith.’
Dr Kraakenhausen, his hands full of chainmail, rusted crosses and bent daggers, nodded, then began a new round of incantations.
‘Accipe etiam vasa inutilia. Sume vagum o veterum animarum,’ he chanted loudly. ‘ACCIPE NUNC EOS!’
The five surviving Englishmen and their wide-eyed driver were now dashing wildly about in the dry pool like cornered rabbits. Terrified and uncomprehending, they bounced off each other in a frantic attempt to outrun the new sea of tentacles that were manifesting around them. Spirits from the battlefields of the Crusades, from the ravaged fortresses of Anatolia and beyond, all were heaving themselves away from the lesser-visited cells of a Purgatory overwhelmed by a sudden uproar. Driven by Dr Kraakenhausen’s incantations, they punctured the veil between the living and the dead, crowding around their unwilling hosts like piranhas in a sheep dip.
One by one, they took them.
The ghastly business was over in just two minutes, the victims rendered inert, laying still where they had fallen as their parasitical tenants orientated in the panting, fallen bodies. Like businessmen familiarising themselves with the controls of a hire car, they waited, testing the neural connections, playing with modest muscle movements until, finally, they felt confident enough to stand. Only the horrified driver remained untouched. Uncomprehending, he gibbered in the corner, his mind well on the way to being blown.
‘I …,’ declared one of the hosts, finally upright, ‘am Raynald de Châtillon, Crusader knight. I am Lord of the Holy City of Jerusalem.’ He looked around, jaw jutting out Mussolini fashion. ‘To whom am I addressing myself?’
‘Velcome, velcome, brave knight!’ exclaimed Dr Kraakenhausen, clapping his hands. ‘I am Dr Kraakenhausen, a knight of archaeology and a champion of the master race, a race to which you yourself belong! I could not have vished for such good fortune! To have such a famous and brave varrior of Christendom amongst us!’
‘Yeah, well, I don’t know about that!’ huffed Raynald. ‘More a wretched sinner who hath failed my country and my faith. I lost Jerusalem, in case you hadn’t heard.’
‘Oh, that’s not important right now,’ replied Dr Kraakenhausen, reassuringly. ‘Ve all make mistakes. All wasser unter the bridge.’
‘Well, I did,’ said Raynald grumpily. ‘Small detail, but, hey ho.’
Another of the spirits had now heaved itself from the dirty pool floor.
‘And who might you be, sir?’ called Dr Kraakenhausen.
‘I am Count Otto Von Strumpenheim, knight of Saxony, and Crusader to my very core. Now that I am back upon this Earth, give me a sword and take me to a Saracen, that I might slit his heathen throat from ear to ear.’
‘Welcome, Count,’ proclaimed Kraakenhausen. ‘You do indeed sound like a vonderful Crusader, as well as a real champion of the Aryan peoples! But no Saracens here today, I’m afraid. However, I do have eine quest for you.’
‘A quest, you say?’ replied Raynald, his interest piqued. ‘Doth it offer redemption to us pitiful sinners for the loss of the city of Christ?’
‘It might,’ offered Dr Kraakenhausen. ‘Maybe … yes.’
‘Interesting,’ said Von Strumpenheim. ‘Is this why we have been thus summoned?’
‘Did someone mention a quest?’ said another, rising up from the dirty tiles. ‘Because I am so very up for that!’
‘Yes, brave sir knight. And vot might your name be?’
‘I am Lord Lionel of Melton Mowbray,’ answered the new Crusader. ‘I died at Antioch. Slain by a Moorish arrow. Cut down like a mere novice before I could even unsheathe my sword. I have Christian vengeance burning in my soul. Give me the cleansing fire of battle, and I will pledge to you unto death.’
‘And I am Ernest of Twickenham North,’ said the last of the six Crusaders. ‘I died of a very bad stomach upset in the desert of Sinai. How lame is that? I wanted to die with my sword red with Moorish blood. But no, … I shat myself to death behind a sand dune. Grant me thy patronage so that I may redeem my wasted honour in a manner befitting my breeding.’
‘Velcome, vun und all,’ announced Dr Kraakenhausen, as his grandfather’s parasitised body joined him by his side.
‘There’s one more,’ said Helena, pointing at the gibbering mess of the driver, trying desperately to remain unnoticed in the corner of the pool below.
‘Do ve need another?’ asked Dr Kraakenhausen. ‘Ve have six.’
‘Might as well,’ suggested Helena. ‘No point in leaving a vitness. If ve have any relics going begging, then vhy not? There may be loads of traps in there.’
‘I do have vun going spare,’ said the archaeologist, lifting up the dog chew. ‘No idea who it is. Found it in Istanbul, down the back of a sofa. Could be anyone.’
‘Who cares,’ said Helena. ‘Possess the bastard quickly. Sooner ve crack on the better.’
‘As you vish, daughter,’ agreed Dr Kraakenhausen, reconsulting the book. ‘O spiritus, quisquis es. Sume in angulo figuram, sume nunc illum, mortalia depone animam, ac repone tuam.’
The driver, eyes slammed shut in mortal terror, suddenly pitched over. His arms and legs then began flailing away as if he were swatting at hornets or kicking away grenades. Then the spirit from the other place descended upon him, hungry to grab himself an earthly form.
‘Velox quod potes placere,’ added Dr Kraakenhausen, getting a bit bored at the repetition. ‘Nos sumus in aliquantulus festinabat.’
The driver shot up onto his feet. Laughably to attention, he stood like a cadet in a third-world army, wobbling back and forth, eyes wide as his lucrative booking went horribly, horribly wrong.
‘YES!’ triumphantly screamed what had just been a Cretan cabby, punching the air.
‘And you. Who might you be?’ enquired Dr Kraakenhausen.
‘Me?’ answered the spirit, clenching his fists with delight.
‘Yes, … you. Tell us your name,’ demanded Dr Kraakenhausen.
The body of the driver squinted up into the bright light above him, struggling to see anything very clearly through piggy eyes.
‘Oh,’ replied Andronicus the Terrible. ‘I’m no one.’
*****
Georgios Antonakis (AKA MangosTangolakis) had been a builder all his adult life, learning his trade from his father before him.
Not so his son.
The young Mani had never so much as picked up a trowel, opting instead to bury himself in Grand Theft Auto and the dark underbelly of the web. Mani’s mother had died when he was just nine years of age, leaving his father the sole responsible adult, a role to which he was singularly ill-suited. Now a nineteen-year-old, Mani thrived in places he really shouldn’t, all whilst never leaving the comfort of his state-of-the-art gaming chair. At the same time, his father weathered austerity with odd jobs, earning them just enough to place food on the Formica table in their tiny kitchen.
However, when his father stumbled upon a hoard of Nazi memorabilia hidden inside a wall at the Villa Ariadne, their skillsets had unexpectedly joined hands. Knowing the risks of selling such a windfall locally, Mani set about offloading the foul relics for his father on the dark web, and giving the household a much-needed cash injection.
That was where their good fortune had ended.
First, they had had Helena Kraakenhausen exploding through the balcony door like the SAS, waving her pistol in their terrified faces until she had enough information to track down the new owners of her great-grandfather's relics.
Now, they had Vasilakis to contend with.
Enraged, the Cretan had locked his hand firmly around Georgios’s throat as soon as he had opened the door to their small apartment. Incensed, Vasilakis was shaking Georgios Antonakis around by his windpipe like a ragdoll.
‘Talk!’ demanded Vasilakis. ‘Or so help me, I’ll choke the life out of your treacherous body.’
‘I didn’t have any choice!’ bleated the builder. ‘She was going to shoot my boy.’
‘Who is this … she?’ demanded Vasilakis.
‘The woman …,’ squeaked the builder through his constricted throat. ‘The German woman.’
‘Keep talking,’ said Vasilakis, letting him drop.
‘Never seen her before,’ continued Georgios, from the floor. ‘HUGE army boots. Very, very angry. Even angrier than my wife, God rest her soul, and that’s saying something. She didn’t want the money; she just wanted to know about you. You and your friend … the Englishman.’
‘When was this?’ demanded Vasilakis.
‘As soon as I got back from seeing you,’ replied the builder. ‘She came in through the balcony, you see? She broke the glass.’
‘And you told her … what?’ demanded Vasilakis.
‘I said the Englishman was staying in the town,’ answered the builder. ‘That’s all’
‘Idiot,’ snarled Vasilakis, lifting his arm as if to hit the builder. ‘If you’d simply handed them into the authorities in the first place, we could have avoided this.’
‘I thought I was going to die,’ whimpered Georgios, flinching.
‘Thanks to you, my colleague may already have died,’ said Vasilakis. ‘Ok. Tell me more about this woman.’
‘I … I …. ‘
‘Here,’ said Mani, appearing at the door, holding a sheet of glossy printer paper. Vasilakis snatched it out of the boy’s hand. It was a screenshot of young Mani with the figure of a woman behind him, her gun held to the young Cretan’s head. ‘I was recording a live stream at the time,’ explained the boy. ‘I have a gamer channel.’
‘Well, this is helpful, at least,’ said Vasilakis sternly. ‘I’ll take this. You two can consider yourselves very lucky this didn’t end badly … for both of you. You mess with anything Nazi, and you get Nazis. Is how it works.’
‘I’m really, really sorry,’ pleaded the builder, still on the floor. ‘I promise … we won’t do it again.’
Vasilakis snapped a shot of the printout with his phone, then forwarded it on to Jameson in London … and left.
By the time the Cretan had climbed into his car in the street outside, Jameson had found a match.
‘So,’ said Vasilakis. ‘A Kraakenhausen family reunion?’
‘Seems so,’ confirmed Jameson. ‘The grandfather broke out of Purgatory last night, probably using one of the Necromancer’s guides Barlow failed to obtain in Wales. They think they sprang him in an incantation this morning. Who they used as a host, we have no idea, sadly. Could be anyone.’
‘This is very bad,’ said Vasilakis. ‘They clearly took the relics from Dr Barlow. It is safe to assume it would not have been done politely. What does it say on the database about this family?’
‘The Kraakenhausens are archaeologists,’ explained Jameson. ‘Well, … of a sort. They’ve been finding stuff to order for paying clients for years, digging up artefacts that should be in museums, then selling them to the dumbass rich, most of whom have no idea what they are even looking at. Particular emphasis on the darker stuff. The general’s grandson is a classic Nazi occultist lunatic. He’s written all sorts of nutty books about National Socialist Christianity, Old Testament gibberish laced with a heavy helping of master race mumbo jumbo.’
‘Bloody, stinking Nazis,’ sneered Vasilakis. ‘How do you match the compassion of our Lord Jesus Christ with their cruel racist filth?’
‘God only knows,’ sighed Jameson. ‘Let’s be honest, logic was never a big Nazi thing.’
‘They must still be on Crete,’ theorised Vasilakis.
‘Highly likely,’ agreed Jameson. ‘And it’s not going to be for the olives.’
‘If they are here, we will find them,’ declared Vasilakis, defiantly. ‘We have eyes everywhere. Crete is a small place in which to hide.’
‘It’s Newton we’re most worried about,’ said Jameson.
‘Well, he’s not dead,’ replied Vasilakis. ‘Or we’d know all about it, no?’
‘Well, that’s the thing,’ Jameson replied. ‘Dr Barlow alive may be a far bigger problem than Dr Barlow dead. Being Nazis, they probably have ways of making him talk. He could be tortured, drugged, or bamboozled. He could be giving away a whole raft of Purgatorial secrets, things which may drag us all into the abyss.’
‘He seems like a man of integrity,’ said Vasilakis. ‘He would never talk.’
‘Talking is what Dr Barlow does best,’ sighed Jameson. ‘They may hand him back.’
‘So, … what we do now?’ asked the Cretan.
‘I have help on its way to you,’ replied Jameson. ‘A team.’
‘But we have people here, already,’ protested Vasilakis, somewhat defensively. ‘Local people. Cretans.’
‘It’s Newton’s home team,’ said Jameson. ‘Don’t want to tread on your toes, Vasilakis, but Newton is a bit of a cause célèbre. Head office told me to sanction anything that gets him back into the fold. The quicker, the better.’
‘As you wish,’ conceded Vasilakis. ‘But my teams are here, and they’re ready. I can count on around fifty irregulars from the monasteries, plus agents in the museum service and local authorities.’
‘It will all help. Kindly get them on the case. Meanwhile, though, a Reverend Bennet will be arriving at Chania airport from Rome later today; you’ll need to get him up to speed ASAP. The flight carrying the Bonetaker will arrive during the night.’
‘The Bonetaker!?’ gasped Vasilakis, somewhat startled. ‘On Crete? Is that … wise?’
‘That worries you?
‘Well, yes, of course,’ said Vasilakis. ‘Crete is not an open book, even to the local teams. I myself am not cleared to know of these things. But the sensitivity of the Bonetaker, well, … from what I am told, he could open up the whole island!’
‘I’ve spoken to Bennet, and his instructions are clear,’ answered Jameson. ‘This is a strictly an overground operation. The merest hint that the integrity of the facility is threatened, then they have been told to back off.’
‘Does this Reverend Bennet know about Crete?’
‘Nope,’ said Jameson. ‘But then neither do I. Ignorance is not just bliss, Vasilakis; it’s company policy. I just know to avoid the awkward stuff. I leave all that to my superiors. Bennet is pretty bloody annoying, but he is, at least, good at following protocol, unlike Dr Barlow. If I say leave well alone,’ insisted Jameson, ‘then, Bennet will leave well alone.’
Chapter 16
Overground
As promised, the plane delivering the Bonetaker to Chania airport touched down in darkness just after 3:00 a.m. Watching from the windows of the darkened arrival lounge, Bennet, his large Adam’s apple rising and falling with the heart in his mouth, observed the knackered 80-year-old Dakota stagger in over the hills, then flop onto the runway like a tired swan. Safe on the ground, the transport then waddled painfully over to a dark corner of the apron before cutting its engines. After a brief pause, the pilot threw its bent and buckled cargo door open to the thyme-scented Cretan night. The Bonetaker dropped to the tarmac, the abruptly absent weight causing the World War Two transport to leap upwards with relief.
