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Short Fat Stubby Finger Stories PRESENTS:

The NIGHT OF THE DARKNESS

EPISODE 45

“If you really believe that there are bodies in those embers – shouldn’t we tell the police?”   Harvey asked, his voice simply offering advice, but his mind constantly seeking a way of rejecting the possibility that what Joseph was suggesting was even remotely true.

“No,”   Joseph replied with relief as he was dragged screaming away from his thoughts and back to the moment.   “I believe that the people we are dealing with to obtain the antidote to be both callous and dangerous.   If the police became involved, and we are seen to have been responsible for the situation that brought them here, I don’t think they would be very sympathetic to whatever reason we come up with if it means that they can’t get access to the statue.   And besides that, I doubt very much that the police will believe us anyway.   Most likely the only way we could convince them what we were saying was true would be by encouraging them to take samples for D.N.A. testing, but that would mean them interfering with the burning embers, and we certainly don’t recommend that … it is far too dangerous.”

“What do you mean, dangerous?”  Harvey asked in confusion.   “It doesn’t look dangerous. It’s smouldering, not blazing.”

“Martin, was there another broom in that cupboard?”

“Yes, I think so.  Would you like me to get it?”

“Yes, please.”

Martin quickly marched of to the cupboard and returned a few seconds later with a straw broom in his hand.   “Here you go, guv,” he called out jovially in his best cockney impersonation, “Would you like me to slip up the chimney or sweep up the embers?”

“No, thank you, and no dancing either, you, or your chimney-sweep mates.  In fact, Martin, I think this time … I would like you to throw the whole broom into the embers, but slowly and gently if you please.

“Righto, guv.   Here we go … one, two, three.”  Martin counted three very short running steps as he moved on his toes like a ballerina towards the outer rim of the embers before gently releasing the broom into the air like it was a javelin that only had to travel four yards to win gold.

Mary and Harvey took in the antics of the two men as if they were both a tad crazy, and both simultaneously rolled their eyes in bemusement, but neither one of them were prepared for the sudden loud cracks of energy that fractured the quietness of the room as every straw on the broom and the tight cord that bound the bristles, all but simultaneously burst into flame.   Mary got such a fright her feet literally lifted several inches off the floor and she suddenly found herself in an embarrassing situation as she fought gallantly to regain her balance once they touched base with the ground again.

“What the hell?”   Harvey whispered hoarsely, his eyes wide open in disbelief at what he had just witnessed, and his immediate reaction to the unexpected fright he had received reflected in the snarl in his voice.   “Is this some kind of trick you have set up to have a bit of fun with me?”  He asked, and as he spoke Harvey swung around, traversing his eyes in a three hundred and sixty degree circle as he searched for some clue as to how they had set it up.

“My god, Joseph,” An ashen faced Mary asked in a shaky voice, “You scared the life out of me.   How did you make that happen?”

“So many questions,” Joseph replied light-heartedly, “You are like a couple of investigators interviewing the prime suspect in an episode of New Tricks.   No, Mary, we did not set it up.  For a start, we had no idea that Harvey would be here, or you for that matter.   We thought that we would arrive before you so we could get on with our search without becoming involved in side issues like we are now.  But, as it turns out, both of you arrived before we did.  And, if after all, you both got here before we did, how could we set anything up?  We were hoping nobody would be here.  And we certainly had no reason to kill anybody, which is what probably would have happened to the police should they have begun rummaging through the embers.  I should imagine that the firemen’s protective clothing would have protected them should they have walked through it, though I very much doubt that they would have needed to wander through it.  In such a confined space, whatever they were using on it would have been just as effective on the fire from where we are standing, as standing in the middle of it; the police, on the other hand, would most likely have joined the witches because their job would have required them to rake through the embers looking for clues.  And so would anybody else that entered the burning area as we did.   Whatever is causing it is very selective, it seems to prefer flesh and combustible matter rather than solid objects such as the broom handle.   We tested a live chicken on it yesterday and, I’m sorry to say, the chicken was not impressed.   And I didn’t feel so good about it myself afterwards.   My intention wasn’t to barbeque the chicken, but I did need to test a theory that had just entered my head.  And while the chicken was not so fascinated with the test results, fortunately for us my theory proved to be correct, otherwise it may have been us instead of Chicken Little that was on the barnyard missing list.

Whatever is going on in the village, and here at the farm, is well beyond my understanding.   What is happening is not what we were expecting.   We were expecting nothing more than a ‘Where’s Wally’ puzzle to be solved in a relatively short time period, and without clues to help us; locating an item discovered in the desolation of an Asian desert and brought here and hidden somewhere while waiting to be sent to a safe museum for the world to see.  Find it, and exchange it for an antidote we need to overcome Rosetta and her father’s current medical predicament.  The statue is considered valuable, in both monetary value, and historical value.   It is reasonably large, around six feet in length, give or take a foot either way, and at least two feet wide, and that alone should make it easy to locate … and this is the very reason why we need Vittorio’s assistance.   Although we may discover its hidey-hole today, I don’t think that we will.   I believe that it has been disguised in some manner to make it extremely hard to recognise as being what we are physically searching for, or, in the worst case scenario, it has been moved to another area possibly away from the farm, and if that is the case then, without Vittorio’s assistance, time is definitely against us.

And, to make matters worse, there seems there is the possibility that there are now several other interested parties searching for the prize we seek, possibly, probably, including whoever is responsible for the attacks on Rosetta and her father.  I have no idea of who they are, nor what they may look like, or how they are involved in the scheme of things … nothing!  And that is what makes them so dangerous; it also means that we can trust nobody, though I am taking the risk on you two … so I do truly hope that my instincts are right.”

“You can, Joseph.”   Harvey and Mary replied as one voice.

“Well, thank you, both, but now, to make our task even more difficult than it is already, there is something strange taking place in this village.   And although I have no idea what is happening, it is happening … and whatever it is, it appears to possibly be concerned with our mission, therefore we are all becoming dragged screaming and kicking into the middle of it.  Which means we now find ourselves in a bit of a quandary.   We do have to find this missing item, and we do have to get the antidote … there are lives at stake here, perhaps many lives, and bringing the police in on it will only hamper our attempts to protect those lives.   We can’t very well expect to tell the police how we are involved and expect them to not attempt to prevent us from completing our mission, even if they do half-believe what we would need to tell them if we were forced to tell the truth.  They’d more than likely lock us up for our own safety and call in some psychiatrists.   Harvey I just had a thought.   Did Vittorio say ‘it’, or ‘they’ would, or could, come back?”

“Funny when I heard it at the time … it never struck me as odd.   But now, when you ask, he did say ‘it’.  But he was a bit wibbly-wobbly at the time.  And he is Italian, perhaps it got lost in translation.   Why do you ask?”

“I’m not too sure.   It hits a nerve for some reason, but I can’t think why.   Never mind, it will come back if it’s important.”

“You know, I am starting to wonder now.”  Harvey began, “If those are dead bodies burnt to a crisp, then possibly Vittorio was frightened into his current situation by something far beyond my wildest imagination.   But what could have been in that reasonably confined space that caused so much damage to the witches, and poor Vittorio’s mind, without my seeing it moving around inside the house, seeing shadows on the wall, or seeing it escaping while I was standing outside.  I’m now beginning to believe that the two witches I saw running out in front of Vittorio may very well have met with a similar fate.   God, I must have been lucky to have not joined them.  No, you’ve got it wrong.   They can’t be dead … it’s not possible.”

“Harvey,” Mary interjected, “Laurie told me that the majority of the witches are missing from the village.  Do you know anything about that?”

“There are rumours floating around about a whole group of locals heading off for a boozy weekend in London without a word to those closest to them, men and women, but I didn’t know that they were witches.   And I don’t know how many there are involved, just that there was a lot.  My wife told me that she had heard that quite a few husbands had done the dirty on their families by taking off for the city for a footy game or two.  Seems that there is some kind of super weekend being played over the holiday break, several matches on each day … that sort of thing.  Other stories had men and women kidnapped by aliens on the night of the long light and not yet returned to their families.  But nobody is saying anything about who is actually missing – so nobody seems to really know what the truth is.   A few of the locals have been having a bad go of it lately, so I suppose that there is a chance that some have simply walked away hoping that a weekend away will help them get out of their depressed state.   Some of the hired hands may have even gone off to better paying jobs.   It’s impossible to know who is really missing.   I am sorry, but that’s all I know.   My wife only mentioned it yesterday.  Or, at least, I vaguely remember her talking about it yesterday.  I am afraid I don’t really listen to a lot of what my wife says – especially when it comes to local gossip.  Perhaps I should try a bit harder – I could learn a few things.”

“Laurie suggested much the same thing.”  Martin said with afterthought.

“That I should listen more to my wife, or I could learn a few things?”

Martin simply shook his head and rolled his eyes at Harvey’s response, but Mary offered something new to their education; something that made everyone think twice about what might have happened.  “Laurie told me the witches had attempted sacrifices at least once to his knowledge.  Maybe they did conjure up the devil – and paid for their actions.”

Joseph looked quizzically at a smiling Mary for a second before turning back to Harvey.

“Do any of these markings mean anything to you?” he asked, indicating the drawings on the wall.

Harvey appeared to be really noticing them for the first time since he entered the room and gave the drawings a long perplexed look before finally replying.

“No, gruesome looking things aren’t they?”

“Not exactly Van Gogh or Da Vin… .”  Joseph said in agreement, but his words were quickly cut off by Mary’s unexpected scream, and as Joseph and the others turned to see what she was looking at, they saw the blood red eyes staring into the house.

“Quickly … we can’t let him get away this time.”  Joseph yelled as he headed towards the front door, exiting the house just in time to see a figure disappearing into the barn.  “God he’s fast.  That’s a good fifty or sixty yard sprint.   Was that him?,” he asked Harvey as they sprinted towards the barn, “Was that Vittorio?”

“Yes, that was him … though he looked a bit worse for wear than he did this morning when he had breakfast.  I really do think the sooner we get him safe housing, the better off he will be.”

Joseph, his vision concentrating on the doors in the middle of the barn directly in front of him, failed to see the short stubby figure in a dark suit who quickly ducked back behind the side of the barn as the rest of the small group came running out of the house, but the bystander on the hill had seen Vittorio running to the barn and knew what would happen next;   His plans were ready.

But so were the plans of Akerious … and this time Joseph managed to not react to the voices in his head.

********

The small group assembled at the barn doors, and Joseph reached out to grab the handle to swing the doors open, but Harvey stopped him mid-action.

“Is it dark or light in there?”   Harvey asked.

“It’s about fifty fifty with the doors wide open.”   Joseph replied, “we were unable to find the light-switch.  Though Vittorio seemed to know his way around in the dark.   We will definitely need to keep well away from the shadows.

“Vittorio may be scared of us because we are a group,” Harvey suggested, “I will go in alone and try to coax him out.”

Harvey pulled the door open several feet and took a few steps into the badly illuminated barn and began to call out. “Vittorio … Vittorio … Don’t be frightened.   It’s me, Harvey, your friend.  These people just want to ask you a few questions.”   Harvey kept calling out every few seconds or so, but there was no response.

“He came out from underneath somewhere at the far side of the building last time,” Mary contributed, omitting to state that she had seen Vittorio do so while she had been spying on them.

“Why don’t you show Martin.  That way we can keep all the exits covered.  In the meantime I am going in.   I don’t think that Harvey is going  to succeed on his own.”  Joseph suggested as he headed into the barn to join Harvey while Mary shook her head in agreement and she and Martin quickly made their way outside the barn and around the corner.

********

Looking around the inside of the badly-lit barn proved no easier for Joseph than it had been the day before.  The loft was covered in black and silver patches where the sun filtered in from the holes in the roof, and the light became lost in shadows behind the bales of hay.  The left hand side of the barn at ground level was reasonably open – while the right hand side, completely out of reach of the morning light that poured in from the open door, remained totally isolated and threatening in its permanent darkness.

“I don’t suppose you know where the light switch is, Harvey.”

“Sorry, I don’t know.   I don’t normally come in here.  I have seen Vittorio enter and leave the barn most days I am at the farm, but I, myself, have never been inside.   It was always ‘no entry’ to anybody but the professor and Vittorio … ‘top secret’ and all that jazz.   I have no idea where the switch is.  He may not even turn the lights on when he goes in.  You can’t tell from the outside.  However, at a guess, I would assume that it is somewhere near the doors.”

“Yes, so did we … with no success.”   Joseph stated despondently   Joseph felt hopeless in the pursuit of his goal, but the glimmer of an idea began to form in his head, and suddenly he took aim with the only weapon that he felt was available to him at this particular point of time.

“Vittorio,” he called out loudly and clearly.   “My name is Joseph.  I am a friend of your niece, Rosetta.  We are here to try and find a cure for your brother.  We need your help before it is too late. Already Rosetta is in trouble.  Last night someone attacked her at the hotel where she is staying and drugged her.  Do you hear me, Vittorio?  I said that Rosetta is in trouble and I … .”

Joseph didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence; a figure rushed at him from out of the shadows only a few feet away from where he was standing.  The momentum took both Joseph, and his attacker, flying to the floor.  They struggled while the attacker continually muttered something completely indecipherable.   It took Harvey several seconds to react, but as soon as he did, he jumped into the affray and finally he and Joseph pinned Vittorio down by sitting on his chest.

In the eerie, half dark-half bright illumination, Joseph looked into the eyes of this wild, red-eyed man underneath him.  It was quite apparent that they may have him down, but he was far from being subdued.   Vittorio continued to struggle, but as his dulled senses began to realize that movement was useless, he finally calmed down, exchanging his anger and resentment from physical action to a verbally threatening manner.

“What have you done to Rosetta?  Tell me!  Now, or I Will kill you!” his voice roared, in a manner befitting a man who was in charge of the situation, rather than one who was currently restrained.

“Easy, easy, Vittorio,” Joseph said slowly, his voice soft and calm, “I didn’t harm Rosetta.  We are very close friends.  We are here because she wanted us to make sure that you are alright after what happened to your brother. ”

The words had the desired effect, and Vittorio stopped struggling.

“She is alright?  My little Rosetta is alright?”  Joseph admired the man’s genuine concern, but was dubious about his choice of description.  Rosetta was not little by any stretch of the imagination.

“Yes, she is alright – in a manner of speaking; she was drugged when she caught someone searching her room last night.  Whatever they used, it has left her comatose in much the same way your brother was, however, in her case, the doctor thinks that she may recover in a day or so.

“Why would they drug a little girl?”

“Vittorio … how long has it been since you last saw Rosetta?”

“A couple of years, five, six … seven, perhaps … I don’t know.  Would you mind getting off me, please?”

By now Vittorio’s voice had assumed a more rational tone and Harvey, violently nodding his head, appeared quite willing to take the chance.   However, Joseph, after his encounter with Vittorio the day before, and with what Harvey himself had told him about Vittorio’s current state of mentality, was unsure whether this was a genuine normalisation in his mental state, or just a ploy to try to escape.

He hesitated for a second or two, then took the risk and indicated to Harvey that they should get off him.  The three of them got to their feet just as Mary and Martin came through the door.

“We thought that we heard noises in here.  Is everything alright?”

“Yes, thank you.  We just had an unexpected visitor drop in.  Mary, Martin, may I introduce you to Rosetta’s Uncle Vittorio?”

“Pleased to meet you, old chap.”  Martin extended his hand in friendship without thinking, and, to his surprise, it was taken. “Your niece speaks highly of you.’

Vittorio turned back to face Joseph.  “Are you sure that Rosetta is alright?”

“She should be.  The doctor said that the drugs should wear off in a few days with no side effects other than a headache.  In the meantime she is sleeping soundly back at the hotel.  The staff there will keep a good eye on her, and the doctor will visit her again tonight.  She will be just fine.”

“You three were here yesterday.”  Vittorio said.

“Yes, that is right.  Why did you attack us?”  Joseph asked,

“And scare the life out of me?”  Mary chipped in.

“I didn’t attack you.   I didn’t know who you were, or what you were doing here.  I was frightened.   I thought that you might have been with the others.”

“What others?”

“The ones that want to destroy everything.  The ones that want to reincarnate the Devil!”

“Here we go again.” Harvey commented, shaking his head.

“Do you mean the Punjani, or the witches?”  Joseph asked on the off chance that the voices inside his head that had begun speaking to him were correct in their advice.

“You know about them.  How?  Maybe you are part of them,” Vittorio’s voice began to quaver and grow louder, angrier, suspicious, as he spoke, and his eyes once again began to assume the wild look that it had taken earlier.

“I am still not certain whether you are talking about the Punjani or the witches, Vittorio.”   Joseph answered slowly, cautiously,  “Rosetta told us what her father had told her about the Punjani, and we have read some of your brother’s diary.  But it was some of the locals that have told us about the witches.   And I can assure you that we are not normally involved with either one of them.”

“And Laurie told me about Doctor James’s involvement with them,” Mary blurted out causing both Martin and Joseph to suddenly turn to face her.

‘Just exactly what did she know about all of this,’ Joseph wondered to himself, ‘beside possibly everything that we don’t?’  Mary’s continued sporadic offerings of information and Vittorio’s current see-sawing between reality and insanity was beginning to unnerve him no end.

“What else did Laurie tell you?” Joseph asked Mary, doing his best to sound calm.

“Quite a lot,” Mary replied with a wink , “quite a lot.”

“I think that we should get together later today, for a long chat.”

“That would be lovely, Joseph.”

Joseph immediately turned back to Vittorio, careful to retain the man’s balance of mind on the right side of sanity in order for him to eventually reveal his greatest secret: the hiding place of the statue.

“Vittorio, the ones that were at the farm were not the Punjani, they were witches from a local coven.  I just wanted to know which group you thought would come back.

“I do not trust the Punjani, but it is the witches that I fear the most.”  Vittorio’s face went dark, however, to Joseph’s relief, he did not raise the tempo of his voice,  “They know not what they are dealing with, and they cannot control it or even negotiate with it the way that the Punjani can.   It is the witches that will attempt to go back; they think that the Punjaniti, or whatever devil from Hades they are trying to bring up will reward them for their valiant attempts to appease him, but they don’t have the statue and they will not appease him in any way whatsoever – it will only anger him … and god forbid what he will do with that anger.  What I am certain of is that it is the Punjaniti that they are calling up, it was the Punjaniti that arrived in the house that night.  And the Punjaniti has its own agenda and it is not to appease some the members of some little tinpot countryside coven, it is far more than that.   The village is in danger thanks to their meddling, we all are.  Soon the world will be.   They must be stopped at all costs.  I am sorry, senorita, if I frightened you,” Vittorio said, his voice now remarkably calm, “but when strangers turn up and look around the farm, I become suspicious about their motives.  Especially after what has happened here, and those witches that were here that night – they have no idea what their meddling may have done.  I know that they’ll be back one day soon to cause further damage and when they do – I’ll be ready for them.”

“I know that you didn’t know us when we were here yesterday, but surely you recognised Rosetta?”  Joseph asked, as he attempted to get himself on a more personal level with Vittorio to test the waters on his chances of convincing him it would be safe to reveal the hiding  place of the statue.

“Rosetta … was that Rosetta that I saw?  That beautiful young woman that you were with, that was Rosetta?”

“Yes.  That was Rosetta.   She is twenty one now … all grown up.”

“I don’t believe it.  Yes, she’s certainly all grown up.  My God how long have I been away.  I didn’t recognize her.”  Vittorio’s mind began to wander away to a time many eons ago … a time when he was back in Italy.   His mind began to conjure up memories of the fun days that he and Rosetta and her mother and father had had when they were all much younger and still living more regularly in their beautiful Italian home.  Memories that were saved into their hearts long before the endless journeys to the sweltering heat and endless deserts of foreign lands began to deny them such treasured moments.  How he would tease the shy young girl about boys, or join in with her joy when her father performed his wonderful magic show.  Then just as quickly as they had arrived, the memories began to move forward, over the years of travelling and digging and discovering.  Ever onward until they reached the land where they discovered the artifacts of the Punjaniti … then maliciously the memories transported him back here to the farm where they had brought the statue.  Suddenly the horror of that thing that the witches had conjured up came flooding back.   His mind began to snap again, his eyes became glazed, and saliva started to form at the corners of his mouth.  “They will come back and they will try again – and this time they may succeed.  We must stop them.  We must destroy the Devil’s gateway.”

Vittorio’s voice was seriously beginning to exhibit agitation once again and Joseph was desperate to obtain the answer to his unasked question before the unfortunate man slipped back into his madness.

“The witches.” Vittorio suddenly cried out loudly, startling Mary, and worrying Joseph that the man was going to completely lapse into madness within seconds, “The Devil’s workers.” Vittorio continued, his voice rising in a mixture of fear and anger with every syllable, “The Punjaniti.  It will be here soon.”

“’It’, again!” Joseph thought to himself, ‘So was it the Punjaniti that arrived, or something else?’, he wondered,   Eventually Joseph decided that Vittorio was no more certain of what he had seen that night than Joseph was and that, Joseph thought, was a shame.   He had accepted the fact that he was in the business of doing battle with the Punajniti, and that the battle with the Punjaniti was real … and he was absolutely certain that the Punjaniti was responsible for the annihilation of the witches, but something was niggling away at him.   Something was telling him something about the Punjaniti that he wasn’t aware of, but he couldn’t bring it to the fore.  Eventually he sighed, dismissed the thought, and took his attention back to the task at hand: obtaining the whereabouts of the statue

“Vittorio, I need to ask you what happened to you that night, but before I do, I need to know something.   Something that may upset you, and if it does I apologise profusely in advance, but I truly need to know.  Have you been back inside the house since that night?”

“No!”  The question seemed to snap Vittorio back into reality.  Fear shook the words that were his response:  “No.  I don’t know if that thing is still there, or if it ran with its own when the fire exploded.  I have only looked in through the windows.”

“Do you know how many of the witches ran out with you?”

The question seemed to have a reaction with Vittorio, and for a moment the vision of impending madness was replaced by one of absurdness.

“I should imagine that they all came out with me.  They were in as much a state of panic as I was after the thing arrived.   Why would you ask me such a question?”

Joseph decided to wait a bit longer before telling him what he had suspected had happened to the witches.

“Vittorio, are you able to describe what happened that night?   Why the witches were here … and what happened to your brother?”

Vittorio began to tremble all over.  Fear reflected in his eyes as recollections of the horror of the night began to reform somewhere within the theatre in his mind.  His facial features clearly reflected his unwillingness to return to the scene that were about to confront him, but he drew deep into his courage and, to Joseph’s relief, agreed to do as he was requested.

It soon apparent to all that Vittorio was having difficulty composing himself, but he seemed to putting every effort he could into staying rational, and they could only hope that he achieved his aim, at least long enough for them to obtain the answers that they needed.   The right information could go a long way to re-establishing normality to his entire family.

“It commenced on what we had thought to be the day before the witches would come,” Vittorio began, his voice gradually easing into the unaccustomed role of tale teller.   “Roberto, my brother, Rosetta’s father, and I were in the process of moving the statue to its new location.  We had discovered some more information about the cult through some follow up to our initial discovery of the site.   An associate of ours, who had been doing research for us into the markings on the scabbard, had e-mailed us some updated information … and it came with several warnings.

It appeared that the knife that we had found must be used to kill three sacrifices on one particular night of the three nights of the Ramis in order to allow the Punjaniti to travel to this world once the statue was completed.   The symbols on the knife indicated that the victims must be young, two females and one male, and take place on the first night of the Ramis … which was only one night away according to our researcher’s findings.   He also indicated that he felt that the death was not simply theatre, but necessary to extract the energy from the life-force of the victims, though he does not explain his reason for this comment.   We had not mentioned the statue in our original communications with him, we had simply requested information on the knife under the pretense that we may have come across it and wanted more details about it because it was not really our forte.  And neither had we given any indication where we were presently based.  Admittedly, it was a warning, not an enquiry about our dig, and we were the beneficiaries of the warning, but we could not help but wonder whether he had guessed what we had come across, or … .”

Vittorio flapped his arms in dismay as he failed to finish his sentence and Joseph was of the opinion that he had been worried that his friend had been compromised by one of the newcomers to the search for the statue.

“The contents of the warning made us consider that there was a good chance that our findings and whereabouts may have already been discovered,”  Vittorio  continued, “and unfortunately the museum was not going to collect the items for another two weeks, so we decided to move the statue to a new location to be on the safe side.

Before we had departed for England my brother had personally arranged production of the box that would house the statue on its journey to the farm.  The container was purposely designed and built to allow us to unpack it ourselves without any help when it arrived in England; disassemble it, store it, and eventually reuse it to send the statue to whichever museum would end up with it … all done by just the two of us.

For security reasons we had dismissed our helpers at the site before we had the statue crated for delivery to England.  The box had been sealed before it left the site and the seals were still intact when it arrived.  We had hired an import-export company in London that we knew we could trust to make the arrangements to deliver the statue to the farm discretely.”

Joseph and Mary both winced at this statement as they remembered the strange event that had taken place at Johnson’s only a few days earlier, Joseph in particular who suddenly remembered where he had heard the name Tuscanni before, and Trenthamville as well, and that brought back realistic memories of what he had seen that day.  And as the memories arrived, the truth of his involvement with the Punjaniti was reinforced.   But neither one of them expressed their surprise at the connection, and nor did they say anything lest it distracted Vittorio.

“And while we were waiting for it to arrive,”  Vittorio went on, “we created a special stand to rest the statue on as we removed the container and, eventually, we used it to work on the statue.  We had created a false workbench cover to hide the statue whenever we weren’t physically present in the vicinity, and we had set up a series of warning cameras and alarm systems that completely surrounded the barn.   As far as we were concerned nobody had managed to penetrate our security, so we seriously doubted that anybody had been able to ascertain the whereabouts of the statue, and therefore had not verified its presence on the farm.    But after we received the warning from our friend we decided to give it a far better hiding place and my brother came up with a brilliant idea.   It did mean moving it not very far from its original hiding place, but it took quite a while to prepare the new one so it would not appear in any way conspicuous.   And it was then, when we had completely finished moving the statue into its new hiding place, and reassembled the old one to make it also inconspicuous, that we received the second e-mail from our fellow researcher whose message rocked our world.   He had e-mailed us to point out that there was an international time-line between us that he hadn’t taken into account … the ceremony wasn’t taking place the next day our time … it was, in fact, only a few hours away.  Thank god we had acted immediately … or things could have gone far, far worse than it did.  Even then we were fortunate that the witches had not thought to break into the barn while we were moving the statue … or the Punjaniti may have already arrived and enslaved us all.  But there was a second warning, a warning that was once a warning of a back up plan for the Punjaniti … now it is a warning of the most intimate danger.   The warning said that in the event of the first attempted arrival of the Punjaniti failing, it will be followed up by a second attempt – and the date of the next attempt is tomorrow night!

The mouths of every member of the small group with the exception of Vittorio were wide open, and their eyes threatened to pop right out of their head, but Vittorio did not give them the chance to ask questions as he immediately continued with his narrative.

“This is why I say the witches will be back.  And this is what worries me about my friend.   How would he know that the witches, or any group for that matter, knew that we had the knife, and possibly the statue, unless he himself was involved in the Punjaniti’s arrival, and if that is so … then why bother warning us?  Something is not right.  We had gone to great lengths to protect the statue’s existence and whereabouts from anybody that may have had an interest in it since the day that fate had decreed that we should find it.

At first our greatest fear even back then had been that an unscrupulous dealer or collector may try to steal it and it would end up locked away from the world as a result.   Then, as we began to find out more about the origins of the statue, the more concerned we had become about our own safety when we realised the type of people that would be interested in owning it for what they hoped they could gain from it, or even worse, to submit to its powers … to attempt to make contact with its originator.   We didn’t discover it accidentally, you know.   It was found by somebody who gave us a gift we had never expected to receive in our life time.”

Vittorio’s eyes began to shift around the barn as he spoke, as if he was frightened that unseen ears were listening, while Joseph’s ego was further chuffed by the realisation that his own instincts had been right about the construction of the storage box.  To Joseph, everything that Vittorio was revealing was reinforcing proof that he, Joseph Jacobson, was deeply involved in this happening … very deeply involved, and probably knew a lot more than his mind and memories were letting on.   However, he didn’t want to know anything more for the moment.   To Joseph’s current way of thinking, the less he knew, the safer he was, because he still didn’t know who he could truly trust.

“A local goat herder came to visit us at our digs one night with a tale about a mysterious and hithero unknown god who went by the name of the Punjaniti, who had formed a band of thieves several hundred of years ago,” Vittorio began, “and this god had given them protection in order for them to carry out robberies so they could build a statue to his specifications.  When the statue was finished there was to be some sort of ceremony that would allow this god to enter our dimension as a living, breathing, tyrannical Super-God, who would go on to rule the world and suck nearly every piece of goodness out of it.   It would appear that the Punjaniti was a powerful entity in the right conditions, but its abilities in this world were restricted by those that protected the dimensions and boundaries that separated our planet from wherever the entity resided.  The statue, however, had some sort of power that would allow the Punjaniti to overcome the restrictions and enter the Earth.”

“This must be what William spoke of.”   Martin whispered, but was quickly silenced by Joseph placing a finger on his lips, and Mary was beside herself at the realisation that what Vittorio was saying was a confirmation of what Doctor James had told her the previous evening.

“The Punjaniti has found a way to communicate with humans when it wished to, even though it cannot physically gain entry to the planet…  and it can have a virtual reality projection of itself gain entry.  It has also found a way to use its mental powers on the planet when required.  It cannot do so for long, but usually long enough to achieve a particular task such as protecting its followers from the law.

This god individually made verbal contact with one hundred villains who swore allegiance to him, and he promised them wealth beyond imagination in return for their allegiance.   He had already recruited a rogue priest to lead them on his behalf.   He had told his mercenery soldiers that they would refer to themselves as the Punjani and their duties were to follow the orders he gave to the priest.   They were to perform robberies, and the occasional murder, in order to obtain the wealth that would be required to manufacture a statue of the Punjaniti itself; a man sized statue made of gold and covered with rubies and diamonds.  The robberies were always well planned, which was just as well, for the majority of the establishments they attacked were well fortified and heavily protected.   That had been the reason for the need to employ one hundred members; strength and superiority in numbers.  The robberies had always been undertaken without a blemish, the Punjani always received perfect instructions and plans of the establishment they were to attack and rob.   And when they made their getaways they were well protected by the Punjaniti who could cause natural disasters to rise from dark shadows and create obstacles for those that would dare pursue his followers.  Sandstorms would suddenly be whipped up between the escaping members of the Punjaniti and the hapless guards who tried to give chase, even though there had not been a breath of wind in the air before the thieves had begun their getaway.   Sinkholes would suddenly appear swallowing the pursuing guardsalong with their horses and camels .. and so on.

Since the inception of the Punjani, the cult that he had created, the Punjaniti had been able to protect the murderous gang of thieves that were his followers from danger whenever he sent them on a task, but he was not able to continually watch each one individually.  Otherwise he would have been able to avoid the incident where one of them sold out his fellow followers to the soldiers of the government and the statue was stolen and lost to history.   Legend has it that a handful of loyal followers, including the priest that the Punjaniti had recruited as his second-in-command, escaped, and they fled to unknown parts where the Punjaniti still protects them and their wealth to this very day while it patiently awaits the discovery and return of its gateway.

This man that came to our site said that he had discovered the location of a statue, claiming it was the missing statue of the Punjaniti, and asked if we were interested in claiming the discovery for ourselves.  When he finished telling us about the background of the Punjaniti, we most certainly were interested and agreed to his terms, which were quite reasonable, on the condition that we did not pay him until we actually saw the statue, and he agreed to this request.  To be perfectly honest, we had never heard of this Punjaniti before that day and we were highly dubious of his story, but we weren’t making much progress where we were so we had decided that we were going to lose nothing by checking out his story.

As it was nearly dusk when he arrived at the camp it was agreed that he would remain at our camp overnight, and we left at first light the next morning to see his unique find which was located about three miles from our dig.  Our hearts leapt with joy when he took us to the cave in the mountains at the desert’s end and we saw the partially exposed jewel encrusted golden body lying on the floor amongst a pile of stones.  It only took us a couple of moments, combined with some very enthusiastic digging with the tools we had brought with us, to confirm that it was indeed a large statue.

To this very day I will never understand why we didn’t ask him how he knew that this was the statue of the Punjaniti.  We simply accepted his story; we were so excited and taken with this discovery that it never occurred to us how bizarre the whole thing was.  For a perfect stranger to approach us offering us the discovery of a lifetime, when reality would expect the man to either claim the discovery for himself, or at the very least, dismember the statue and sell the gold and jewels   He said at the time that he was but a simple goat herder, and that was all that he required of life.   He said that it had been a serendipitous accident that he had discovered the statue, in fact it was as a result of one of his goats wandering into the cave that he had come across the statue.   He also offered, for the price of a single ruby each, some villagers we could trust implicitly to help bring the statue out of the cave so that we could pack and ship it.  The fee was to go towards their children’s education.   We had nothing to lose so we took him up on his offer.   We took the measurements and approximated the weight.  Then Roberto and the man who had discovered the statue drove into a neighbouring village where they arranged the manufacture of the box Roberto had designed.   Within five days of being shown the statue we had dug it out of its muddy coffin, packed it in its new temporary accommodation, took it to the freight office and despatched it by the sixth.

The villagers that had been brought in to help went about their business and never asked questions, seemingly content with the ruby each one of them would receive.   This, in retrospect of course, was also very strange.   And so was the fact that when we found some human bones buried with the statue, not one of them flinched.   I would have thought that they would have been superstitious about disturbing a grave and refused to work on the dig as we had encountered with workers on other sites we had worked on.   But it didn’t seem to bother them at all.   Instead they retrieved all the bones that they could find and gave them a decent funeral in the cave, then never mentioned them again.  Actually, in retrospect the whole affair seems an unlikely event, but unfortunately discoveries of this importance are a rarity in the life of an archaeologist, and I am afraid we just got carried away with the whole thing.   It was only afterwards, when we arrived here at the farm; as we waited for the arrival of the statue, that we began to do some real research into the Punjaniti and the Punjani on the internet, and that led us into thinking about how everything had unfolded to bring us to the farm.   It was then that we started to think about our achievement and began to put bigger pieces of a jigsaw together.  It was then that we realized how easy it had all been; how easily it had gone through customs at both ends.  We had been breaking rules left, right and centre in our adrenaline induced, intoxicated state; but we were not trying to break the law, in fact we hadn’t even thought about obtaining legal authority to move the statue which should have been our number one priority.   We were just so excited by our find we temporarily lost control of our rationality, and by this stage we couldn’t turn back.   We were exporting possibly one of the biggest finds of the twenty first century without any acknowledgement to the country that it had been located in, knowing that it was illegal to do so.  God only knows the trouble that we could have landed in, never mind the embarrassment we could have brought to Italy and Great Britain because of our impetuous behaviour if somebody had intervened in what we were doing … if somebody had reported us to the authorities … .  But, no, some serendipitous moment had arrived in our lives … or some unscrupulous villain had used us a patsies and taken us for a gigantic ride.   But, whichever … we had gotten away with it.  And now, the sooner the museum took the statue off our hands the better of we would feel.   After all, we weren’t selling it to the museum, we were giving it to them.   The only negotiations that had taken place concerned insurance and security once it had been handed over to them.  My brother and I have no need for more money … we already have more than enough.   We had just wanted to see a unique, almost unknown, piece of our beautiful world’s past made available for all to see.  But our thoughts now were quickly moving in on the idea of it never to be seen again.  Destroyed perhaps, but mainly on it never being in a situation where the creature could get access to it.

And this was the bane of our situation.  Getting rid of the statue was now only one little part of our overall problem.  The more that we discovered about the Punjaniti, the more we feared what may happen, because a lot of our research indicated that the Punjaniti and the Punjani were not only still active, the beast now seemed to have a chance to locate its missing point of entry.   We wondered if that meant that the beast was on its way, and if that was the case, did that mean our lives may be in danger.   Not jut our lives, but perhaps nearly every man, woman and child on the planet.  By the time that the museum made an offer on the statue we couldn’t wait to be rid of it.   By this stage we had begun to understand that we had been set up by someone to get the items here, but we had no idea who it had been.  We, of course, realized that the man who had contacted us in the first place was involved, but who else was involved …and why?

And then we had a new problem.  I said earlier that we had security devises installed.  Well as a result we knew that for some time just after we arrived at the farm somebody had been spying on us, for we had seen one or two figures trying to hide themselves behind the trees across the driveway several times.  We used to set off one or two of the alarm systems closest to them and watch them on the monitors  scampering  away with their tails between their legs.   This stopped for a couple of days, but their courage must have returned … for so did they.   This time, however, as we had became more concerned about who, or what, was behind using us to remove the statue from its resting ground, we decided to discourage whoever it was that was hanging around from hanging around … and achieve it on a permanent basis.  We achieved this by taking the occasional pot shots at the tree where they were hiding.   It was perfectly safe.  We are both expert marksmen with a rifle, and the monitors had shown us exactly where they were.  We always pretended that we hadn’t seen them and were only having some fun shooting down the branches, but we certainly let some of the bullets come close enough for them to change the colour and dryness of their trousers.  Eventually we thought that they had got the message as we hadn’t seen anyone since …until the night of the strange light, that is.  But when we saw them that night it was too late … they were already in the house..

On the day that we moved the statue we had undertaken  a thorough check of all our equipment ensuring every alarm and monitor was turned on and working so we would have been prepared for any attempt to enter the barn … what we hadn’t been prepared for was anybody entering the farmhouse.

As we were returning to the house it was minutes from total darkness, the light from the front door of the farmhouse was all we had to guide us,everything else including the house itself was in darkness and I managed to trip over a rabbit hole or something.  I never actually saw what it was, but I ended up lying on the ground.  Roberto stopped, and was starting to reach down to help me up when he noticed someone hiding behind a tree.  He called out, but the figure fired something that caused Roberto to collapse before running off into the darkness of the woods.   I managed to get myself up, and went to Roberto’s aid.  He was lying there, gasping and grasping at his throat.  I pulled his hands away and in the half-light I could see some kind of spur stuck in his neck.  My instinct told me that this had caused his collapse and it could still be lethal.  I reached inside my pocket and got out a handkerchief, which I wrapped as thickly as I could around the object, and carefully pulled it out.  I tried to get him on his feet but he was writhing about too much, so I put my coat around him and ran back to the house to call the doctor.

The house had seemed to be in complete darkness from the outside as we approached it from the barn, and that included the door on that side of the house which opens into the small corridor that leads up to the entrance to the main room.   It is the only light outside of the bathroom that we need to turn on in the morning.   That is because it gets no outside light.   We normally leave our boots and coats on a rack and small stand about halfway up the corridor if it has been raining, or we have gotten a lot of dirt on our boots for one reason or another.  The light needs to be turned on to find them and find our way out … and we quite often left it turned on all day by accident, so when I opened it and it was on, it did not surprise me.  As it turned out so were all the lights in the main room.  However, I didn’t notice the main room lights were on at the time because the light in the corridor was turned on, and the light from both rooms merged into one.

Of course it would have been different if the corridor light had been turned off, I would have been much more cautious, but it wasn’t and I was busy trying to think if we had a doctor’s number in the house.   I had Roberto in my mind, not unwelcome visitors, and I didn’t really did know the doctor’s phone number.  I was scratching my head at first,  not knowing what to do when I remembered when we first arrived in the village being told by the real estate agent that there was a hospital in the village and I could call them or the police on nine nine nine.  But I only managed to get as far as giving the operator my name, and the name of the farm, before beginning to explain my brother’s condition, when two hooded men dressed in white robes grabbed hold of me and restrained my movements.  I tried to struggle, but it was useless.   They half pulled, half pushed, me into the main room and it was then that I saw there were a dozen or more figures, all  similarly dressed, slowly moving around in a circle, chanting quietly as they moved.  And it was then that I noticed that all the curtains had been drawn which was why I had not noticed the lights inside the house were all turned on … and they shouldn’t have been because we  had spent the entire day inside the barn.   By the time we both got out of bed in the morning it had been light outside.   We didn’t need to turn on the lights, we simply had to pull the curtains back.  And had we seen the lights sooner we would have become suspicious and cautious in our movements … and we would certainly have gone back to the barn and retrieved our rifles.

“But the curtains were all open when I arrived.”   Harvey interjected without thinking of the possible consequences of interrupting Vittorio in his fragile state.   However, fortunately for all of them, Vittorio did not go off the rails.   Instead he responded with relevance to the statement.

“You are correct, however that had not been the case when I first entered the house.  But as the two witches now held me in a position that allowed me to see what was going on in the room … things quickly changed.  I was horrified by the scene that confronted me.   In the centre of the circle, resting on a red cushion, was the Punjaniti’s scabbard which they had somehow located from its hiding place.   The cushion was held at chest height by someone whose face I couldn’t see because they too were covered head to foot inside a hooded cloak.  But what frightened me the most was what I saw at the foot of this unidentified person.  Lying on the carpet – his eyes squeezed tight in terror – was a young man of about eighteen years of age, whose body was totally naked.  His feet and hands were bound in front of him, and his mouth taped.  Beside him on either side two young women roughly the same age were also tied up in a similar manner.  I was horrified at the thoughts that my mind conjured up for their future, but my instincts refrained me from even thinking about helping them; warned me to not take my eyes off the figure with the knife, to instead look for the first chance of escape offered to me.  That was a feeling that I cannot forget, for every bone in my body was warning me that an even greater danger than the witches that confronted me was fast approaching … and I would truly need both luck and my wits about me should I wish to survive the carnage that was coming.

And it immediately proved to be the right option, because at that very moment the chant that came from those that created the circle began to rise in pitch and volume.  And as the chanting rose somebody ripped the curtains open and a strange light that seemed to grow from the ground below the window could now be clearly seen through the windows as it passed upwards towards the sky.  Suddenly, the one in the middle of the circle let the cushion fall to the floor as he raised the knife high into the air high above his head.   Then, both hands firmly clasped on the handle, calling out something in a language I did not understand, he dropped down onto his knees in front of the trembling boy.  The witch then raised his head upwards and again screamed out something totally indecipherable at the top of his voice.   At the precise same second the chanting suddenly reached a crescendo that was on the side of deafening, and the witch rammed the knife downward and into the chest of the young man whose scream could still be heard in all its pain and agony as it pierced the now silent room – despite the tape restrictions tightly bound around his mouth.   And the girls also silently screamed in absolute terror as they felt his warm, glistening, blood splatter over their naked bodies.”

Mary winced and found herself on the point of being sick, while the men found themselves to be speechless.   But Vittorio continued, his voice now beginning to quaver badly as he spoke in obvious distress at what he was recalling, and Joseph wondered just how much longer his coherency would last.

“I could not bear to watch any more than that I had already witnessed, but one of the witches holding me forced my head to face the direction of the vile attack, but he could not force me from squeezing my eyes shut.  This all happened in the few minutes that the two witches had held me at the back of the room, otherwise I may not have survived to tell you this story.   The very instant that the knife entered the young man’s body the extremely bright, white light that seemed to be coming up from the ground outside the house spilt into the room through the windows.  The entire room filled with an unbelievable brilliance.   So bright was the light now that I didn’t know whether there was too much power being fed into the bulbs, or it was coming from the fires of hell.   Then fireballs and sparks began to fly out from the walls, all reigning down upon the young man and the two girls who lay on the carpet, and a face, oh my god, this face – the face of the devil itself began to come through the wall and into the room.   Garbled words from this thing before my eyes roared through the house, a deafening roar that, along with the chaos that was ensuing, made it impossible for me to comprehend what it was saying.   My captors released their grip on me instantly and I thought that they were going to feed me to the creature, but instead they turned and ran out of the house as fast as they could.   I took the opportunity to escape and followed them out, only I ran towards the woods while they ran to the roadway.   There was nothing that I could have done for the three that were tied up.  I had considered for a moment to try and save them, using the confusion that was taking place in the room as a cover, but their bodies had disappeared.  All I could see where they had lain was nothing but hot, glowing embers.   I had no choice but to follow the two witches that had held me prisoner out of the closest door, but the woods seemed a far safer place to be than in the open space where they ran, and that was where I was headed.  But as as soon as I thought it safe I made my way back to where Roberto had been lying.

Fortunately for me, nobody seemed not to have followed me, but when I arrived to where I had left Roberto, he was nowhere to be found.   I searched throughout the night but to no avail.  Finally exhaustion overcame me and I collapsed somewhere in the woods.  I don’t know how long I slept, but when I awoke – dawn was breaking.   I made my way back to the farm only to find people from the village crawling all over it.

They could very well have been the witches returning for all I knew.   After the previous night I did not trust anybody, and they had all been wearing hoods over their faces, so I wouldn’t recognise them even if they were in the crowd.  I was surprised that the place wasn’t crawling with police after what happened to the young boy, but it suited me fine that they weren’t.  I hid out of sight until I was certain that the crowd had all left, and then I moved into this barn.  We had some provisions stored here, and there was plenty to drink in that old fridge there.  He pointed, indicating a small fridge just inside the doorway.   “So I was able to eat something each day, but it was nothing like the meals your wife made, Harvey.” he said looking at Harvey who grinned at the statement.  “I always hid the cans after I had eaten so no one would realize that someone was living here, and I just waited for them to come back.”

“The witches?”  Joseph asked in a soft, calm voice.

“Yes.”

‘These witches … you really expect they will return?”

“Yes.”

“And what were you going to do when they come?”

“Kill them,” Vittorio stated; his voice soft and passive, almost matter-of-fact.

Why?”

“They are murderers.  They have already killed.  They killed that young man, or at least they tried to.   Maybe he didn’t die, but they certainly tried to kill him.  They were certainly going to kill the girls next, perhaps even feed them to that creature if it hadn’t turned on them.  They may have killed Roberto for all I knew.   I presume he is dead.   He hasn’t returned to the farm, and he certainly wouldn’t have deserted me.  But the witches will try again to call back that demon.  They don’t know what they are dealing with.  I am absolutely certain that they have never heard of the Punjaniti.   They think that they are calling something else up, something far less volatile, but it doesn’t matter.  There is no way possible for them to control it.  It will destroy them, as it will destroy every living thing on the planet.   it is better that they are all destroyed before things end up in a disaster unlike anything that man has ever seen.  These devil worshippers are not people that one can talk to reasonably, they are like men and women possessed, and what they are possessed with is a thirst for the Devil itself.  I have no doubts on their ruthlessness.   Especially after I was a witness to what they did to that young man.  They will be back, and they will try again.  They must be stopped.”

“But it would still be murder, Vittorio.”  Joseph interrupted,  “No matter how you try to justify it.  However, I really doubt that they will be back.”

Vittorio looked suspiciously at Joseph.  “How can you be so certain that they won’t be back?   You weren’t witness to their atrocities.  You didn’t see the things that they were doing here.  They will be back!”  Vittorio’s voice became louder and angrier with every word he spoke; every syllable and vowel spat out with emotion.

“Relax, Vittorio … just relax.”  Joseph re-approached the subject with gentleness in his voice, but panic in his heart.   Time was running out, possibly for both themselves … and Vittorio.   He knew instinctively that this may be the only time possible to retrieve the information from Vittorio about the statue, but he would still have to be subtle,   “Vittorio, we don’t know how, but we believe that the flames that you saw coming out of the wall actually killed most of the people in that room.  Only a few, besides you, may have escaped.  And I really don’t think that they will come back here again.  I should imagine that they too are bordering on insanity at this very moment.   Now, Vittorio, you need to listen very carefully to me this time.  I mentioned it earlier but you were too interested in finding out about Rosetta.  Your brother Roberto is in hospital.   The police found him wandering down a road a fair distance from the farm, but he fell into a coma before he could tell them anything.   He had been injected with a very rare drug and there is only one way that we can obtain the antidote.”

“Roberto, he is ill.   He is in hospital.   I must see him.   Take me there now, please.”

“We can do that Vittorio, but you will not be able to talk to him.  He is not expected to ever recover without the antidote, and we need your help to obtain it.  We need to locate the statue and exchange it for the antidote.   It is entirely possible that Rosetta will need the same medication.   There is no other way.   Once we get Roberto and Rosetta back on their feet we will do whatever we can to destroy the statue before it is too late.   But, please, Vittorio … we need to know where you have hidden the statue.   We truly, really need it as quickly as you can advise us.

Vittorio was surprised by this new information.  He let it sink in and thought about it for a while before continuing.

“You are right.  I will tell you where it is in one moment.  Despite my dislike and distrust of the witches and the punjani, Roberto’s life must come first.”

Joseph was beside himself.   One minute, one more minute … that is all that it would take to wrap this thing up.   One minute and he could retrieve the missing statue, get the antidote and head back to London.   One minute …, but Vittorio had one more moment of hesitation to offer before surrendering the prize that Joseph and Martin so desperately wanted

“There was also a third, possible, warning on the e-mail.”  Vittorio went on, “Our friend thought that somebody had found out about our discovery and were trying to obtain it the easy way.”

“Did they say who it was?”

“Yes.  It was …” But Vittorio never got the chance to finish his sentence.  The bullet grazed Joseph’s arm and slammed into Vittorio’s chest sending him reeling backwards towards the floor, hitting his head on a post as he fell, and instantly knocking him unconscious.

The three men quickly swung around in search of the gunman.   Suddenly a noise of something hitting the floor caught their attention just in time for them to see a rather chubby silhouette exiting the barn.

“Stay here, Mary.”   Joseph ordered, “See if you can stop that bleeding.   The three men, perhaps foolishly, then ran out of the barn and round the side towards the unknown.  They turned the corner just in time to see a figure disappear over the hill at the back of the long barn, but before they reached the halfway mark they saw the large limousine heading up the driveway towards the road.  By the time they reached the top, the sound of a car speeding in the distance was all they could make of the assailant.

“Well, its a waste of time of chasing him.” Harvey noted, “He could be anywhere by the time we got on the road.   But there is also a good chance that if he has returned to the village that we will find him.  Well, come on boys, let us see how our friend Vittorio is getting on.

As the three men walked back to the open barn door Harvey rang for the ambulance, but the apparent condition of Vittorio made him wonder if the hapless man would even survive the trip back to the village.

Joseph had a similar thought, only he extended the thought to the loss of communication with Vittorio as well.  He knew that he had been so close to obtaining the location of the statue when Vittorio had been shot, but at least he had indicated that the statue was still close by … possibly still in the barn somewhere.  They would just have to search harder.   And it was at this point that Joseph felt the strange warmth on his arm and turned his head to see what was going on … and nearly passed out in shock to see the blood that saturated his coat sleeve as he realised if the bullet had been several inches further to his left, it might very well have been his heart that it had entered.

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Go to Episode 46