The Ancient Curse by Valerio Massimo Manfredi Read Free Book Online Page A

covered only by the thin veil of dust that had fallen from the inside of the sandstone lid over the centuries.
    He saw a tangle of human and animal bones, all jumbled up and practically fused together by a fury and ferocity beyond any limit. Enormous clawed paws, a disarticulated jaw with monstrous fangs still attached, and a human body that was barely recognizable. Shattered bones, mangled limbs, a crushed skull whose top dental arch yawned wide in a scream of pain that could no longer be heard but was still present, desperate, immortal. Both the coffin walls and the inner lid were scored with the deep abrasions that Fabrizio had seen on the ground outside.
    There was no doubt about what had happened here. A human being had been buried together with a wild animal that had torn the body apart and then tried to writhe and claw its way out of that narrow stone prison before dying of suffocation. Fragments of coarse cloth were still sticking here and there to what was left of the man’s head, and this detail left no doubt in Fabrizio’ mind as to the horrifying ritual that had brought about this person’ death.
    He pulled back from the coffin, his face pale and beaded with cold sweat, murmuring, ‘Oh, Christ my God. A . . . a Phersu . . . ’

4
     
    F RANCESCA ARRIVED at about five and saw that the workers had already loaded a sarcophagus on to the pickup and were removing the winch cables. It was a striking alabaster cenotaph coffin with the figure of a woman reclining on a triclinium. She saw that the door to the tomb was open and had been entered. Fabrizio was leaning into the other roughly hewn sarcophagus with his head and arms practically inside.
    He straightened up when he heard her footsteps and she was shocked by the expression on his face. He looked as if he had been to hell and back.
    ‘What’s happened? You look horrible.’
    ‘I’m a little tired,’ he said, motioning for her to join him. ‘Look at this. Have you ever seen anything like it?’
    Francesca leaned over the open coffin and her smile disappeared instantly. ‘Good God. It’s a . . .’
    ‘A Phersu . . . I think it’s a Phersu. Look at the skull. There are still shreds of the sack they closed his head in.’
    ‘This is a sensational discovery! I would say that this is the first time archaeological evidence of this ritual has ever been found. Up until now, we’ve only seen it represented in the iconography.’
    ‘I’m sure you’re right, Francesca, but I don’t feel satisfied or excited. When I opened the lid and saw this scene I thought I was having a heart attack. It felt like it had just happened.’
    Well, that’s only natural,’ said Francesca. ‘The same thing happened to me when I excavated the harbour at Herculaneum with Contini. Those scenes of death and desperation seemed crystallized in time and were still laden with human drama . . . at least for me.’
    ‘What do you think this poor wretch did to deserve such an end?’
    ‘Come on, you know he was already dead when they shut him in the sarcophagus.’
    ‘All right, let’s say he was dead, but what led up to this? I mean, have you seen that animal inside? I’ve . . . never seen anything like it.’
    Francesca leaned into the coffin again to peer inside, more apprehensively this time. ‘What do you think it is?’
    ‘It looks like a dog, but—’
    ‘Yeah, it does, but its snout is so long and it’s . . . enormous. Did they have dogs that big back then?’
    ‘Don’t ask me. I have no idea. I want to contact a friend of mine in Bologna tonight. Sonia Vitali is a palaeozoologist. I’ll email her a picture. Hopefully she’ll be free to come here and have a look at these bones.’
    ‘What do you have left to do here?’
    ‘I’ve photographed everything, both on film and digitally, and I’ve recorded the position of every find inside the coffin. I just have to remove the remains.’
    ‘Does Balestra know?’
    ‘I called him at the office and on his mobile