He crossed the forest of columns and swerved to the right, into some circular hall. It was illuminated by the shimmering moon and crowded with strange people. He slipped between them, looking for an exit. In vain! They surrounded him in an increasingly closed circle. From pale, bloodless lips flowed out a menacing whisper:
‘It’s him! It’s him!’
He stopped and looked defiantly at the throng:
‘What do you want from me?’
‘Your blood! We want your blood! Blood! Blood!’
‘What do you want it for?’
‘We want to live! We want to live! Why did you call us out from the chaos of non-existence and condemn us to be miserable half-corporeal vagrants? Look at how weak and pale we are!’
‘Mercy!’ he wailed, desperately throwing himself toward a winding staircase in the depth of the hall.
‘Hold him! Surround him! Surround him!’
With the speed of a madman he ascended the stairs to the upper floor and burst into a medieval chamber. But his oppressors entered after him. Their slender arms, their fluid, damp hands joined in a macabre line.
‘What did I do to you?’
‘We want full life! You confined us to this house, you wretch! We want to go out into the world; we want to be released from this place to live in freedom! Your blood will fortify us, your blood will give us strength! Strangle him! Strangle him!’
Thousands of hungry mouths extended toward him, thousands of pale, sucking lips.
In a crazy reflex he flung himself toward the window, ready to jump out. A legion of slimy, cold hands seized him by the waist, dug crooked hook-like fingers into his hair, wrung his neck. He struggled desperately. Someone’s fingernails cut into his larynx, someone’s lips fastened to his temple … .
He staggered, supported himself on the embrasure with his shoulders, and leaned back. His convulsively extended arms spread out in a sacrificial movement; a weary smile of fulfilment crept over his whitened lips – he was already dead … .
At the moment when the interior cooled with the agonized throes of Wrzesmian’s body, the pre-dawn silence was interrupted by a dull ripple. It came from the vat at the corner of the house. The surface of the water, mouldy from the green scum, seethed; inside the rotten barrel, encompassed by rusty hoops, swirls rose, refuse undulated, sediment gurgled. A couple of large, distended bubbles escaped, and a misshapen stump of a hand appeared. Some sort of torso or framework emerged from the depth, dripping with water, covered with mould and a cadaverous putridity – maybe a man, beast or plant. This monstrosity glinted its amazed face toward the sky, opened spongy lips wide in a vague imbecilic-enigmatic smile, extracted from the vat legs twisted as a thicket of coral, and, shaking the water off, started to walk with an unsteady, swinging step … .
Daybreak had already arrived; violet luminosities slithered about the boundless regions of the world.
The monstrosity was heading toward the deep-blue forest on the distant horizon. It opened the gate in the garden, hobbled on bowlegs along a narrow path, and, drenched in the amethystine streams of morning twilight, tottered toward fields and meadows slumbering in daybreak’s obscurity. Slowly, the freakish figure diminished, became diluted, and started to expire … until it dissolved, dispersing in the gleams of early dawn … .
For two years after the mysterious disappearance of Giovanni Tossati, gravedigger of the main cemetery in Foscara, the town’s inhabitants, particularly those settled near the place of eternal rest, complained of continual disturbance by the souls of the dead. Apparently, one group was tormented by all sorts of nightmares, another group had the onset of sleep blocked by phantoms, while others were bothered during the evening by ghosts moving about noisily from room to room. Masses conducted in these houses and exorcisms carried out by the bishop over the graves didn’t help. On the contrary, the unrest flowing from the main cemetery seemed to spread, almost infectiously, to other cemeteries, and soon the entire city fell victim to the capricious deceased.
Only the arrival of the learned archaeologist and art scholar, Master Vincent Gryf of Prague, and the effective advice he gave the distressed councillors of the town, put a stop to this dangerous phenomenon.
The master, carefully examining the main cemetery, and particularly its monuments and tombstones, released shortly afterwards a small volume entitled Satanae opus turpissimum, seu coemeterii Foscarae, regiae urbis profana violatio. This little book, a curiosity of its type, printed in the year 1500 in medieval Latin, today belongs to those rare works forgotten under piles of library dust.
On the basis of his scrupulous study of the tombs, Gryf came to the conclusion that the main cemetery at Foscara had succumbed to a desecration unprecedented in Christian history.
Vincent’s claim was met at first with violent opposition and disbelief, as his reasoning was based on details too subtle for the unskilled eye of the community. But when artists and sculptors from neighbouring towns verified his judgement, then there was nothing left for the city councilors to do but gracefully accept the verdict and apply his advice.
And, in truth, Gryf’s opinion was most interesting and unique. For he noticed the desecration precisely in those splendid monuments and eloquent inscriptions of which the Foscara cemetery was celebrated throughout the entire country, and which every traveller visiting charming Tuscany had to see at least once.
And yet, after his thorough examination, which lasted more than a month, Master Vincent showed that behind the pious, seemingly dignified works of art was hidden a sacrilege exhibiting truly devilish skill. The monuments, the marble sarcophagi and family tombs were one uninterrupted chain of blasphemies and satanic concepts.
From behind the hieratical poses of tomb angels appeared the vulgar gesture of a demon, on lips bevelled with suffering flickered an illusive smile of cynicism. Statues of women, bending with the agony of despair, aroused the libido with sumptuous bodies, unfurled hair, hypocritically bare breasts. The larger compositions, formed of several figures, created the impression of a double meaning, as if the sculptor had intentionally chosen risqué themes, for the boundary between lofty suffering and lewdness was ambiguous.
The least amount of doubt, however, was awakened by the inscriptions – those celebrated Foscara stanzas whose solemn cadences were admired by all lovers of poetry. These verses, when read backwards from bottom to top, were a scandalous, completely cynical denial of what was proclaimed in the opposite direction. They were rank paeans of honour for Satan and his obscene affairs, hymns of blasphemy against God and the saints, immoral songs of falernian wine and street harlots.
Such, in reality, was supposed to have been the cemetery. No wonder that the dead didn’t want to lie there, that they raised an ominous revolt, demanding of the living the removal of the sacrilegious monuments.
Because of Gryf’s findings, it was decided that the cemetery had to undergo a radical change. In the course of a few weeks all the suspect monuments and statues were shattered, the tombstones dug up and broken, and labourers carried off the pieces beyond the city.
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