“But it is. We have other documents signed by him in the same handwriting: Magnus of Skane — that is where he was born. But the handwriting changes.” He turned several pages: Carlsen recognised the headlong, untidy scrawl of the earlier volumes. “My handwriting expert said it was a clear case of dual personality. He still performs experiments in alchemy — but now he disguises many of the ingredients in code. But this is what I wanted to show you. . .” He turned to the end of the volume. In the middle of an empty page, there was a drawing of an octopus. Carlsen and Fallada bent over to look more closely. This drawing lacked the anatomical precision of earlier sketches of plants. The lines were blurred.
Fallada said: “This is inexact. Look, he shows only one row of suckers here. And he gives it a kind of face — more like a human face.” He looked up at Carlsen. “Did these creatures in the Stranger look anything like that?”
Carlsen shook his head. “No. They certainly had no faces.”
Geijerstam closed the book with a slam and replaced it on the shelf. “Come. I have one more thing to show you.” He blew out the oil lamps, and led them back out onto the landing. Carlsen was relieved to be out of the room. The smell was beginning to make him feel sick. When they stepped out of the front door, he breathed in the cold night air deeply.
Geijerstam turned to the left and led them along the path, then across the lawn by the fish pond. The moonlight made the grass look grey. “Where are we going?”
“To the mausoleum.”
It was dark among the trees; then the path emerged suddenly at the door of the chapel. It was built entirely of timbers and skaped like an inverted V. At close quarters, it was larger than when seen from the air.
Geijerstam turned the heavy metal ring, and the door opened outwards. He switched on the light. The inside was unexpectedly attractive. The ceiling was painted with cherubs and angels, and there were three circular brass chandeliers. The organ was small and painted in red, yellow and blue, with silver pipes. The pulpit resembled the gingerbread house of fairy stories, with a painted roof and a number of dolls that were obviously intended to represent saints.
Geijerstam led them down the northern aisle, past the pulpit, to a wooden door with an arched top. It was unlocked, and the room beyond it smelt of cold stone.
Geijerstam opened a wooden chest and took out an electric lead, with a light bulb at one end. He plugged this into a socket outside the door. “There is no electric light in the mausoleum. When the chapel was electrified — at the beginning of this century — the workmen refused to go in.”
The bulb illuminated an octagonal room with a domed ceiling. There were a number of stone tombs and sarcophagi around the walls. In the centre of the room were three copper sarcophagi. Two of them had crucifixes on the lids; the third had the effigy of a man in military regalia.
“That is the tomb of Count Magnus.” He pointed to the face of the effigy. This seems to be based on a death mask — notice the wound across the forehead. But look, this is the interesting part.” He held the bulb so they could see the scenes engraved on the side of the sarcophagus. Some were military. Another showed a city with church spires. But the end plaque, nearest the feet, showed a black octopus with a human face, dragging a man towards a hole in a rock. The man’s face was not visible, but he was wearing armour.
Geijerstam said: “No one has ever been able to understand this scene. Octopuses were almost unknown in Europe at that time.” They stood there, looking at it in silence. The cold in the mausoleum was intense. Carlsen thrust his hands deep into his coat pockets and hunched his head into his collar. This was not the bracing cold he had experienced outside; there was something suffocating about it.
Fallada said: “Very strange.” His voice lacked expression. “I can’t say I like this place much.”
“Why?”
“It seems rather airless.”
Geijerstam looked curiously at Carlsen. “How do you feel?”
Carlsen started to say, “Fine,” from force of habit, then checked himself, sensing a motive behind the question. He said: “Slightly sick.”
“Please describe it.”
“Describe feeling sick?”
“Please.”
“Well. . . I’ve got a sort of tingling in my fingertips, and your face is slightly blurred. No, everything is slightly blurred.”
Geijerstam smiled and turned to Fallada. “And you?”
Fallada was obviously mystified. “I feel perfectly well. Perhaps Carlsen drank too much wine.”
“No. That is not the reason. I am also experiencing what he described. It always happens in here, particularly at the time of the full moon.”
Fallada said, with only the faintest touch of sarcasm: “More ghosts and bogies?”
Geijerstam shook his head. “No. I believe the Count’s spirit is at rest.”
“What, then?”
“Let us go outside. I am beginning to find this oppressive.” He wiped the sweat from his forehead. Carlsen was glad to follow him. As soon as he stepped over the threshold, the feeling of nausea vanished. In the electric light, the colours of the organ looked gay and festive. His eyes no longer seemed blurred.
Geijerstam sat down in the front pew. “I believe that what we just experienced in there is not what is usually called a ghost. It is a purely physical effect, like feeling dizzy when you smell chloroform. However, it is not chemical, but electrical.”
Fallada said with astonishment: “Electrical?”
“Oh, I don’t mean that it can be measured with a lambda meter — although I wouldn’t discount the possibility either. I mean that I believe it is a kind of recording — like a tape recording.”
“And what is the tape?”
‘Some kind of field — like a magnetic field. It is due to the water that surrounds us.” He turned to Fallada. “Even you felt it to some degree, although you are less sensitive than Commander Carlsen. It was the same in Magnus’s laboratory. But there it is fainter, because it is above the lake.”
Fallada shook his head. “Have you any proof of this?”
“Not scientific proof. But more than half the people who go into the mausoleum at the time of the full moon notice it. Some have even fainted.” He asked Carlsen: “Did you notice that it stopped quite suddenly as we crossed the threshold? These fields always have sharply defined areas. I have even pin-pointed where it stops — precisely seven inches beyond the door.”
Fallada said: “There must be some way of measuring it — if it’s an electrical field.”
“I am sure there is, but I am a psychologist, not a physicist.” He stood up. “Shall we go back to the house?”
Carlsen said: “I still don’t really understand. . . Why should there be an unpleasant atmosphere? What happened?”
The Count switched off the lights and closed the door carefully. “I can tell you what happened in the laboratory. It is all there, in the records. Magnus practised black magic. And some of the things he did are too horrible to mention.”
They walked through the trees in silence. Fallada asked: “And the church?”
“Precisely. The mausoleum. Why should there be an atmosphere in there, when Magnus was already dead when he was laid there?” Carlsen felt the hair on his neck standing. “An unscientific question, perhaps, but worth asking.”
Fallada said: “It could have been the fear of the people who went into the mausoleum.”
“Yes, indeed — if anyone went in there. But for more than a century after Magnus’s death, it remained locked and double-bolted. This chapel ceased to be used because everyone was so afraid of disturbing his spirit.”
None of them spoke until they were back in the house. The library lights had been switched off, but the fire illuminated the room. Selma Bengtsson was sitting on the settee.
“The others have gone to bed. I waited up to find out what happened.”
Carlsen sat beside her. “Nothing happened. But I felt something.”
Geijerstam said: “I think we all deserve a little brandy. Yes?”
She asked Fallada: “Did you feel anything?”
“I. . . don’t know. I agree that it is an oppressive place –”
The Count interrupted him. “But you do not believe in vampires?”
“Not in that kind — the kind that come back to life after they’ve been buried.” He sniffed his brandy. “Vampires are one thing. Ghosts are another.”
Geijerstam nodded. “I see your point. As it happens, I also believe in ghosts. But I do not think we are now talking about a ghost.”
“Well, a man who rises from the dead. . . it’s the same thing.”