The Nosferatu Scroll

9

Marietta Perini woke with a yelp of fear as something brushed across her face. Her eyes snapped open. She rubbed desperately at her cheeks, but whatever had touched her – a fly or spider, or whatever it was – had disappeared. The rattle of the chain that secured her left wrist to the wall, and the impenetrable blackness that surrounded her, only confirmed her terror. The nightmare of her dreams was her living reality.

She ran her hands over her body, checking that no other insects were anywhere on her skin or clothes, because she now knew the source of the noise that had so alarmed her the previous night. It was the sound of dozens, maybe hundreds, of tiny pointed feet moving across the flagstone floor and along the walls. The cellar was alive with cockroaches.

She had screamed at the realization, and had immediately lifted her feet off the floor and on to the mattress, away from what she’d felt sure was a plague of insects heading towards her. And then she’d heard a louder, more pronounced scurrying noise, and she’d screamed again.

Cockroaches were bad enough, but that noise had then convinced her that there were also rats or mice down there with her in the darkness.

Within minutes, the sound seemed to have spread all around her, and she’d created a terrifying mental image of tens of thousands of cockroaches swarming on to the bed and all over her, and rats gnawing at her flesh. But actually, the reality had been considerably less traumatic. She’d continued hearing the insects and the rodents scurrying about, but not one creature had touched her or climbed on to the bed – yet.

She hadn’t expected to sleep, because of her fear and loathing of the other residents of the cellar, but the air down there was cold, and eventually she’d pulled an old and smelly blanket – the only piece of bedding provided – over her, simply to keep warm. And within a few minutes she’d drifted off into a fitful sleep, from which she had awoken, shivering and terrified, at intervals during the night.

Marietta had no watch on her wrist, but she guessed it was mid-morning, and she was ravenously hungry and really thirsty. She’d had nothing to eat or drink since the previous afternoon, and her throat was parched and dry.

She consoled herself with the thought that if her captors had intended to kill her, they would probably already have done so. And that meant that they wanted her alive. But why? It couldn’t be for ransom – her family wasn’t rich, and she had no money of her own. There must be something else. And if they didn’t want her to die, they would have to feed her.

Even as that thought gave her some slight comfort, she heard a grating and rumbling sound as the door at the top of the spiral staircase was opened, and the cellar lights snapped on.

Blinking in the harsh illumination, she stood up, shivering and waiting. Alone. And very frightened.