She wasn’t lying to me. I could see it in her face — not only did she think she was telling the truth, she was telling the truth. Perhaps I have known that all along. Perhaps I just didn’t like to think that she was mixed up in all this too. I wanted better for her than that. I wanted her to have normalcy — even if that normalcy was as a struggling single mother with no family, no money and no one to help her.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, trying to keep the weariness out of my voice as I accepted the idea. ‘I do believe you.’
When I saw that she was doubtful, I told her a little about my own recent experiences. Not the whole of it, of course, for I had no wish to scare her. So I didn’t tell her of the burning demon who had almost decapitated Stephomi outside Michael’s church or of the strange notes I had been sent. I didn’t tell her of the black fur and the claw marks and the cracked mirror in Stephomi’s hotel room… I knew that Casey was religious, for she had told me before that her whole family were Catholic. But most religious people, even if they do believe in a vague way in angels and their demonic counterparts, do not believe that devils and angels walk the Earth in a more physical manner — brandishing large swords, ripping hotel curtains to shreds, leaving black fur all over the cream suite, freezing wine solid in long stemmed wine glasses…
But I did tell her that I had known my share of strangeness since coming to Budapest. That I sometimes seemed to be haunted by strange dreams and waking visions that I couldn’t shake. That something followed me through the days and nights… And she believed me. In fact, she seemed incredibly relieved that someone other than her had experienced things they could not explain. Things that haunted them and made them fear they were going mad.
When I at last got up to go, Casey pressed a string of prayer beads into my palm; the smooth feel of them and the soft click of the wood as the beads fell against each other was incredibly soothing and reassuring. I returned to my apartment aware that there were barriers between us that had been swept down beautifully that evening.
If I had ever had a daughter, I would have wished her to be just like Casey. Had I loved Luke like this? Was this what it had felt like? The conviction that you would do anything… anything to keep them safe from whatever might try to hurt them. I let Luke down, didn’t I? A parent is supposed to keep their child safe. There should never ever be any need for those tiny little coffins. Not because of illness, not because of negligence, not because of accident… Children should not die. Old people die. Adults, sometimes. But not children. I don’t know why God doesn’t forbid it. I won’t let anything happen to Casey. I’d die before I let anything hurt her.
After the incident with Casey and her attackers, life was uneventful for a week, and this lulled me into a false sense of security. The weather continued to cool and Budapest became laced with frosts during the night — frosts that melted away quickly as soon as the sun came up, shining down on the city with all the sharp, clear, freshness of a winter’s day.
There had been no notes or visions or strange dreams. There had been no nocturnal visits from Lilith, even after I stopped taking the sleeping drugs. And life had seemed sweet to me, like nectar. But then, yesterday, I received another note. Like the first one, it had been slipped under the door and spelt out in block capitals but it was written in Italian rather than Latin:
PER ME SI VA NELLA CITTA’DOLENTE.
PER ME SI VANELL’ETERNO DOLORE.
PER ME SI VA TRA LA PERDUTA GENTE…
LASCIATE OGNI SPERANZA VOI CH’ENTRATE!
This quote is from Dante and translated into English it reads:
Through me one goes to the sorrowful city.
Through me one goes to eternal suffering.
Through me one goes among lost people…
Abandon all hope, you who enter!
The passage is straight from the Divina Commedia itself, Inferno III, which sees Dante and Virgil passing through the Gates of Hell on which the famous words are engraved. I can’t say that the words did not chill me. But, unlike those passing through Hell’s Gates, I did have some hope left. For now at last I would know who had sent me these notes.
After the initial twinges of foreboding, my first feeling was one of triumph. I had caught the little shit in the act. At last I would have the identity of my anonymous tormenter. I would know who had been sending me these threatening things. And then I would therefore also know who had stitched photos into the backs of antique books and hidden them in crates of wine. I would know who had stood in the hotel room in Paris and photographed Stephomi and me. And I would know who had killed Anna Sovanak. At last I would know what twisted man dropped her body into the sea, contained in a crate, and left her there for months before raising her to the surface, transporting her across Italy and Austria back to Hungary to deposit before the weeping willow memorial in the centre of Budapest for all to see when her ocean-bloated corpse washed out onto the street. This sick bastard had wanted her to be discovered in a public and sensationalist manner. Had he been trying to make the front page, perhaps? The story certainly should have made headlines and its banishment to page six was worrying in itself.
I had already drawn the uncomfortable conclusion that this man, too, was known to me before I lost my memory. He had been there with Stephomi and I in Paris, and he knew that I understood Latin and Italian and he had my address in Budapest. I very much hoped that we had been on bad terms, for I hated the thought that I had kept such vile company. When I took the camera down from the wall to replay the video, I half feared that the man might have seen the camera and somehow disabled it, or that there would be just blank, unexplained snow filling the screen. But the camera had not been tampered with and after watching it I did indeed have the identity of the note sender.
But I couldn’t believe it. I must have watched and re-watched the tape at least a dozen times to be sure that I was not somehow imagining it. Even when I was quite certain what the camera showed, I still thought that there might be a mistake or another explanation somehow. That it couldn’t possibly be what it seemed.
The only thing to be done was to confront him. And it seemed so unlikely and incredible that if he had told me he hadn’t done it then I think I would have believed him over the evidence of my own eyes. But when I went round to Casey’s apartment that evening and told her I needed to speak to Toby, and that it couldn’t wait until the morning, she went and got him up and brought him into the kitchen and I could see by the guilt in his eyes as soon as I held out the note that the camera had not lied and that it had indeed been Toby March who had been putting these threatening things under my door.
I knew that Toby couldn’t possibly have written the notes himself. Not unless he could read and write in ancient Latin. No, the deliverer and the sender must be different people altogether. Toby could be nothing more than an agent. Whoever the perpetrator of this scheme was, he had managed to find out who my neighbours were and had somehow bribed Toby to deliver these notes in secret. I remembered back to when I had received the first note a month ago, and had chased the fleeing footsteps down to the lobby where I had seen Toby loitering by the door before Casey found him and they left the building together. It was clear now why Toby had always seemed so nervous at the sight of me, and had been so uncomfortable in my company. It had never occurred to me that the nine-year-old might somehow be involved in all this — that the one responsible could be wretched enough to involve a child in this sordid mess.