Fortress of Ghosts (Ouroboros Book 2), page 1
Fortress of Ghosts
Ouroboros Series Book 2
Written by David Longhorn
Edited by Emma Salam
Copyright © 2017 by ScareStreet.com
All rights reserved
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Table of Contents
Prologue: Unit 774, Poland, 1968
Chapter 1: Cries for Help
Chapter 2: New Recruits
Chapter 3: Goritza, 1991
Chapter 4: In Plain Sight
Chapter 5: Borderlands
Chapter 6: Convergence
Chapter 7: The Place of the Serpent
Chapter 8: The Castle
Chapter 9: The Zamyatin Device
Chapter 10: Showdown
Epilogue: After the Fire
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Prologue: Unit 774, Poland, 1968
“Why are we here at all?” demanded Captain Kuragin.
Colonel Shevchenko raised a bushy eyebrow.
“Quite a philosophical question for a junior officer,” he rumbled.
“You know what I mean, sir,” said Kuragin. “Why are we stuck in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of glorified witch-doctors? Surely these eggheads could do their experiments in Moscow.”
The colonel arose ponderously from behind his desk, pointed at his subordinate with a half-smoked Havana cigar.
“It is not for you to question our mission, Captain,” the big man said quietly. “It is for you to obey orders. If you cannot maintain discipline among your men, I will have you sent back to the Soviet Motherland to undertake less onerous tasks. Supervising penal activities in Siberia, how about that? Do you own plenty of thick woolly undergarments?”
Kuragin turned bright red, and his lips quivered, but he said nothing. He knew better than to challenge the colonel when Shevchenko was using his 'reasonable' voice. It was designed to be especially menacing, and it worked.
“What is the precise nature of the problem, Captain?”
The third man in the colonel's office was a small, thin civilian, wearing a tweed jacket with elbow patches. Professor Zamyatin of the Soviet Academy of Sciences was, in theory, in charge of the operation. In practice, however, Unit 774 was a military outpost and the colonel was never tired of asserting his authority.
Captain Kuragin waited until his commanding officer gave a curt nod, then turned to the scientist.
“The men say there are people in the woods,” said Kuragin, reluctantly. “They say these people appear among the trees whenever you make a run with that, that contraption downstairs.”
Zamyatin's small mouth twisted up in a smile.
“Are your men seeing ghosts, Captain?”
Kuragin colored again.
“They think they are enemy soldiers, perhaps Western infiltrators, or Polish traitors.”
Zamyatin said nothing more, but took off his round glasses and began to wipe them. The colonel turned to a map of central Europe and placed a stubby finger on southern Poland.
“We are many miles from any help if we are attacked, Captain,” he said. “I need your men to be alert, disciplined, and ready for anything. Not nervous or jumpy. See to it. Impose iron discipline. Treat any fools or cowards with the severity they deserve. Dismissed!”
Kuragin whipped his arm up in a salute, then exited without another glance at Zamyatin. Once the door had closed on the captain, Shevchenko looked hard at the scientist.
“Is this problem caused by your infernal machine?”
Zamyatin shrugged.
“Our experiments are radical in nature. It is not impossible that some psychic residue may be stirred up by the Transducer.”
“Psychic residue?” growled the colonel. “You mean ghosts, yes?”
The professor shook his head emphatically.
“That is an obsolete superstition foisted on the masses by religious leaders,” he said in his precise, dry fashion. “No true Marxist believes in the supernatural. I speak merely of after-images of dead men, a kind of recording. The fabric of a structure may retain psychic images of emotionally-charged events. The presence of a brain attuned to the right frequencies may trigger the recordings, that is all.”
“That sounds like double-talk for ghosts to me!” objected the colonel.
“A shadow is not a man,” retorted the scientist. “We are dealing with mirages, echoes, a mindless residuum. This castle has seen much bloodshed down the centuries, not least in the Great Patriotic War against the Nazis. But the after-images are more dangerous to your men than playing music from a gramophone. The dead are dead. You should prevent them from mixing with Polish villagers. They are reactionary Catholic peasants, not enlightened agrarian workers.”
The colonel stood looking at the little man for a couple of seconds.
“I hope you're right,” he said. “I am here to defend this installation from the living. Phantoms are above my pay grade. As for the Poles, if I didn't let the men buy moonshine vodka and fraternize with village girls, I'd have a mutiny on my hands.”
After offering more reassurances, Zamyatin took his leave of the colonel and returned to the main laboratory. The lab was situated in the old wine cellars of Mista Venja castle. The location was ideal because the cool stone floor and walls reduced the risk of the experimental machinery overheating.
“Are we ready for another run?” Zamyatin called as he descended the steps to the underground chamber. Technicians confirmed that the generators were ready, and the subject in place. Zamyatin went among his subordinates scrutinizing dials, ensuring that checklists were complete, discussing minor changes to the procedure.
“This time we'll get it right, eh?” was his constant refrain.
After he had assured himself that all was ready, Zamyatin went to examine the Transducer itself. The machine was a bizarre-looking construction. At the heart of an array of cables was a sealed capsule that reminded the professor of a Soyuz capsule. Through a small, round window of thick glass he looked in at the test subject. A young woman in striped prison coveralls stared back. Her eyes were dull, unfocused, her jaw slack. Her shaved head was covered in electrical sensors. An intravenous drip ran into her arm.
I hope we did not overdo the drugs, Zamyatin thought. We must have some kind of response. If she can't tell us what she sees, we achieve nothing. Suitable subjects are not easy to come by.
Zamyatin went back to his position at the main switching panel. He took a deep breath, looked around at his team, and gave a curt nod to the chief technician. The man threw the main power switch. The lights flickered as energy surged through the machine. Zamyatin could just make out the woman's face through the glass panel. Her mouth was wide open now, but if she was screaming nobody outside could hear her.
“Take it up to full power,” said Zamyatin, calmly. “Keep your eyes on your gauges. The only things we need to know about the subject will come down those wires.”
***
Private Pavel Lermontov paused in his patrol of the perimeter fence to light a cigarette. It was nearly midnight, and the castle was an island of electric light surrounded by an ocean of darkness. That darkness was a dense forest broken only by a narrow cart track to the nearest village.
The perimeter lights flickered.
Those sneaky bastards, he thought. What are they doing in there? These scientists gave us nerve gas and the H-bomb, who knows what they might cook up next?
Pavel looked up at the castle. The soldier had heard the gossip in the canteen. He had done his share of staring into the woods, wondering if every movement was a 'ghost'. There were stories about the bloody battle for the castle in 1945, when the remnants of a Nazi regiment had been slaughtered by Russian troops. And there were older stories, the ones told by the Polish villagers, about the castle's dark, bloody history.
Pavel shuddered, took a deep draw on his cigarette. Then he hefted his rifle and set off again on his patrol.
Stories. Ghost stories. For old women and children. Nothing for a man to worry about.
The firing began away to his left, in the darkest part of the woods. At first, he heard single shots, interspersed with shouts. Then came bursts of automatic fire. He unslung his rifle and lay flat on the ground, peering into the night. All the shots sounding the same, he noticed. That meant all the guns firing were standard Red Army Kalashnikovs. Which left two possibilities.
Maybe the Americans use our weapons, he thought. Dress in our uniforms. Special forces trick.
The other possibility was no less worrying. It meant that Pavel's comrades were shooting at shadows.
Or at beings like shadows, he could not help thinking.
The firing died down as suddenly as it had started, but the shouting continued. Lermontov recognized several voices, including his corporal who was swearing profusely. The perimeter lights flickered again, then went out completely.
“Bugger!” hissed Pavel. “The silly sods have blown the fuses!”
He got to his feet and took out a flashlight, swept the beam around him. The weak l
ight picked out tree trunks. Above were boughs heavy with spring foliage, below was the undergrowth. A thin figure was standing half-hidden by a tree. But as he swept the flashlight back, Lermontov saw that it was just a sapling.
A hand fell on his shoulder. He jumped, spun around, finger on the trigger of his rifle. His flashlight picked out the red star badge on the tunic of the newcomer.
“You bloody moron, I could have shot you!” said Lermontov.
He flicked the flashlight beam up to see which particular moron he was dealing with. The yellow light revealed a dead face, eye sockets sunken hollows, skin like parchment stretched taut over the skull, black lips pulled back from grinning teeth. Pavel staggered back, dropping his flashlight, as the dead soldier lunged forward. A dead face was pushed into a living one, and Private Lermontov felt a terrible coldness pierce his eyes, his heart, and his brain.
He heard the distant shouting turn to screams.
***
“Get the power back on!” shouted Zamyatin. “And remove the subject from the capsule.”
In the gloom, it was hard for the professor to make out if his orders were being followed. Figures in lab coats rushed back and forth, some tinkering with equipment, others apparently fleeing the cellar.
“Anyone who abandons their post will be subject to extreme sanctions!” Zamyatin yelled, his voice hoarse. The coded threat of death by firing squad did not have the desired effect. He tried to make out who was running up the cellar steps. It was only then that he realized he should not be able to see anything. The cellar had no windows, and anyway it was pitch black outside. Yet a faint, bluish glow allowed Zamyatin to make out his colleagues and the sharp-edged forms of equipment.
Where's that light coming from? Some residual static charge, perhaps?
The scientist started groping slowly towards the Transducer core. As he did so, he heard distant shouts and the crackle of gunfire.
“Remain calm, comrades!” he said, but was dismayed to hear his voice sound less than resolute.
Zamyatin reached the sealed unit and peered into the window. The glow was coming from inside, which made no sense to him. He began to undo the lugs that secured the hatch. “Someone help me with this!” he shouted, but nobody came to his aid. Cursing, he bruised and bloodied his hands unlocking the capsule. The neural sensors were dangling from the roof of the metal cylinder, no longer attached to the test subject. The woman's overall was lying heaped on the floor.
Where is she?
Zamyatin leaned forward and put his head through the hatchway. The overall shifted and he realized, a split second too late, that it was not empty. A wedge-shaped head with glowing eyes reared up. The scientist tried to pull back but the creature fastened onto his face. Pain coursed through his body. The last words he would hear as a living man echoed through his mind, inhuman in their cold avidity.
“Feed me your soul!”
Chapter 1: Cries for Help
Ghosts.
In Brad Steiger's dreams, there were too many ghosts in the castle. A few were familiar. Most were strangers, figures in all kinds of historical costumes wandering the stone corridors of the strange fortress. There were Victorian gentlemen and ladies intermingled with dashing officers and silk-gowned beauties from the age of Napoleon. Renaissance lords and ladies wandered through a dim-lit banqueting hall. Brad even glimpsed what might have been a Roman soldier in an iron helmet and red cloak.
The ghosts of these strangers were merely a distraction, though. The familiar faces were more worrying. There was the private detective, Matt Arnold, killed by Ouroboros in London while working for Brad. He looked reproachful, puzzled.
“I'm sorry,” Brad said as the investigator walked up to him, “I didn't know what we were getting into.”
“You got me into death,” replied Arnold. “Or something even worse. But hey, no hard feelings, pal.”
The detective drifted away into the milling crowd of ghosts. Then, in the distance, at the far end of the great hall, Brad saw a young woman amid the throng. Brad half-recognized her, and at first hoped that it was his daughter, Kelly.
No, he thought, let it not be her, because then she would be dead, too.
The woman came closer, and he saw that the resemblance to Kelly was superficial. The face was too pale and pinched, the hair mousy and lank; a damaged person, someone who drew a bad hand in life and then died.
“Hello, Brad,” said Kathy Hopkirk. “In case you were wondering, I'm still dead.”
“I'm sorry,” Brad said in his dream. “I couldn't save you.”
Kathy smiled, and Brad tried to remember if he had seen her smile when she was alive. She had had little to be happy about.
“I'm not here for my health,” she said, waving a slender hand at the assorted ghosts. “I'm supposed to deliver a message.”
“A message? From whom?” he asked.
Kathy shrugged.
“They didn't show me any ID. It was all very informal. They just told me to tell you about the Place of the Serpent.”
Brad was puzzled, but before he could speak, again the milling assembly of the dead bore Kathy away. He tried to get to her, but the ghosts of strangers held him back. As he tried to push through them they changed, fine clothes fading and turning to rags. Their flesh also grew ragged, bones breaking through the skin of cheek and knuckle. They overwhelmed Brad, yellow-nailed fingers tearing at him, reaching for his eyes.
“Save us!” they pleaded with black-tongued mouths, even as they tried to kill him, “Save us from the jaws of Old One!”
Brad awoke, he lay staring at the ceiling. He watched shifting patterns of shadow, cast by cars, passing in the street until he felt sure he was awake. He switched on his bedside lamp and reached for a notepad and pen. Brad had begun to write down the contents of his dreams at the suggestion of cult expert Marcus Valentine. The experiment had not yielded much so far. After several weeks, he had scrawled a seemingly random set of words and phrases. Some were attempts to describe weird images or sensations, others were half-remembered snatches of conversation.
He wrote Place of the Serpent. Kathy H. Castle. (British?) Ghosts of many eras.
After a moment he added, Nothing about Kelly. Again.
Brad got up, showered, and checked his business email. He was officially in London again for work purposes. He had attempted to get a permanent assignment in the British capital but so far, it was no dice. As a result, he had spent the last couple of months liaising with Marcus from the US. The Englishman had done his best to locate Kelly, but the trail had gone cold.
As he attended to routine matters, Brad mused on the disaster in the village of Wychmere that had almost killed him and his daughter. The bizarre incident had instead destroyed most of the members of the Ouroboros cult. But at least one survivor, Jonathan Clay, had presumably escaped with Kelly. He was almost sure she had been brainwashed. Almost. But his only conversation with her since she joined Ouroboros had planted a seed of doubt.
She seemed so damn rational, he thought. She really believed that damn snake cult could change the whole world for the better.
Brad turned the TV on and caught the news. Wars, famines, terrorism, other horrific crimes, plus bigotry and stupidity in abundance. He could understand how a young idealist, like Kelly, could look at such a situation and think that the only solution is to tear it all down. But he was still coming to terms that his only child was not only committed to such a plan, but part of a group that might be able to achieve it.
***
Brad arrived at Marcus Valentine's Camden flat in time for lunch. The cult expert was his usual welcoming self. The two were soon chatting like old friends over a scratch meal in a book-lined living room.
And yet, thought Brad, we only worked together for a few days. It feels like we went through a war together.
“I wish I had more detailed information for you,” explained Marcus, “but what remains of the Ouroboros cult seems to have dropped off the radar.”
“I thought they had friends in high places?” said Brad. “Why would they need to hide?”
Marcus shrugged.
