The Cursed Manuscript: Shadows of Ancestral Secrets

Beneath the silver glow of the moon, Lily was listening to the calling of a scops owl, when she was startled by the howling of wild dogs in the far distance. A soft breeze scanned the tall grass around the campus. She liked to sit on the rooftops of the lecture buildings alone and stare at the stars. It was as if she was present exactly at that moment, and it was how she liked to recharge. Her dorm room was full of noise and distractions after all.

The campus was near a village surrounded by green scenery and was about 15-20 kilometers away from the nearest town. The university was so underfunded that the security was minimal, two middle-aged guards with a dog: they stayed mostly around the central gate, with occasional walking patrols with small flashlights. The main complex of dorm houses, a little neighbourhood was inside the campus. She knew all areas and routes by heart. With the lighting on the grounds ranging from insufficient to non-existent, moving around the campus in the cover of the night undetected was a piece of cake.

On a few summer nights, she would even bring a guy there to share this scenery until she discovered she did not like to share it with any guys. Instead, she would invite them when there was still some daylight left for an afternoon pick-nick outdoors at a clearing near a gorge. To find that place they would have to hike beyond the village and continue up the hilly terrain after the “official” road ended. At the final crossroad, a left would lead to Saint Anthony’s tiny chapel or a right would lead to the ruins of a water mill, one of the main ways to enter the gorge surrounded by the woods. That area was used by the military during the German occupation during WWII, when the locals were throwing themselves in guerilla warfare, but now stood abandoned, seldom visited by sheep to graze in specific periods, and of course Lily.

As she lay down on the rooftops on campus under the stars, her phone vibrated next to her interrupting her chaotic flow of thoughts. Even though there was no sufficient reception everywhere, the main reason she brought her phone with her was for cases of emergency. She looked at the screen, it was her best friend Marina’s message:

“Hey, I’m at the dorms right now, but I don’t see you. There is a party at the president’s, and many are going. Call me back!”

Billy the dorm president was a student elected by fellow students living in the dorms, one of the popular kids, and promised seasonal parties and fairness in solving technical issues with the administration.

“Fun and efficient” was Billy’s motto, and even though he had a girlfriend, Eva, he would still hit on every other girl. Lily pitied his girlfriend even though she didn’t like her very much.

Eva was the kind of roommate who would invite people to socialise all the time, so she was not even a moment alone. So, Lily would do her best not to frequent that chatty nest of a dorm room.

“Pfft, this is not an emergency”, she murmured to herself as she rolled to her side, but then she thought that her friend was looking for her. Unreluctantly, she stood up and quietly headed back to the dorms.

Amidst the loud techno beats, people dancing and others shouting “Drink, drink, drink!” together with the flashing lights, it felt overstimulating and overwhelming to Lily after her calm walk outside. She didn’t even like that kind of music. She looked for her best friend like a kid looks for their family when they get lost at the grocery store. 

Marina had dyed her hair red recently, shoulder length. She had big eyes and a big forehead, making her face look like a doll’s, not so much like Barbie - more like one of the Bratz dolls.

She waved to Lily amidst the crowd and approached with a toothy smile “Hey, you made it! Let’s go get a drink”.

At the drinking booth, which was a table where people selling drinks and people mixing drinks, Marina asked for a cheap white wine, and Lily got a beer.

The loud music made Lily uncomfortable, and she grabbed the neck of the beer bottle until her knuckles became white. Mariana was enjoying the party but picked up on her friend’s nervousness.

“Let’s go outside, I need to smoke,” Marina said.

As they headed outside, they bumped into President Billy, who looked like he had just had another argument with Eva.

“Hey, Paul, my man! You enjoy the party?” he headed towards the DJ part of the room. Eva turned around and went outside for a smoke as well.

They sat in silence, and Lily could not understand it, she said, “You know you can do better, right? He doesn’t deserve you”.

For a moment Eva looked back at her with curiosity, and then she changed expression. “You don’t need to meddle. We have been together since high school; it is meant to be! And my father is buying us a trip to Spain for the summer break”.

Same old, spoiled Eva, a rich girl who had everything, yet Lily pitied her for being so subservient and blind. Lily decided to not say anything back.

Marina changed the topic, with her back turned at Eva.

“You know, another lecturer is down with burnout. They are going to postpone the exams of his course until they replace him next semester”.

“Who is it this time?” Lily asked.

“It’s Panos Karadeniz, Medieval Social History of Europe - MSHE 105”

“Oh no, and I liked that one”.

“I know”, Mariana blew the smoke out forming little grey circles, “You little nerd” she teased and smiled.

************************************************************

After the weekend passed, Lily volunteered to clean his office and persuaded Mariana to tag along. The administrative office of their department allowed it as she was known as trustworthy, and so the girls took on the responsibility of returning his possessions to the lecturer’s address, in the nearby town.

Mr. Panos shared his office with another colleague who was on sabbatical. His side of the office was easy to spot, as it was messy, with pages overflowing, a full wastebasket with notes he was scribbling, memos, pens, and notebooks everywhere.

On the shelves, they could find plenty of books on the history, society, and economy of the late Middle Ages, as well as anthropological books on magical practices, which were not completely out of place. As Mr. Panos always said, the belief in the magical was also indicative of the society imagining it. In some instances, people from disadvantaged groups felt the need to have more power over their lives, even via the involvement of third parties like a spirit. Of course, the influence of Christianity had influenced those values but only strengthened the belief in the magical, just in a different form.

The girls had a carton box, and they were picking up everything to put in the carton and organizing the office.

“What a boring guy”, Mariana concluded. Just as she said that she opened the lower drawer and found a few parchments with scribbles.

“Looks like he was copying something,” Lily said with curiosity “Good find, Mariana”.

It was all in Latin, with the title “Codex Gigas” with a little drawing of a devil on the last page. Perhaps he was studying this to make a course in the next semester, or for pure interest.

Lily quickly took pictures of those pages using her camera phone. She was itching with curiosity, but she was also in a hurry, so she would have a look later.

She smiled, “Hmm, so he was doing something like calligraphy, still boring! Let’s finish fast and get out of here. We can have a coffee in the town after we drop off these”.

“Okay, let me take this, I will put it in a binder, so it doesn’t get destroyed”.

When Lily touched the parchment she felt like electricity, a weird energy. An image of an owl flying off the branches lighted her memory for just a second. She shook her head, and put the item in the binder, and into the carton box with the rest of the stuff.

They bought their tickets with 0,70 each –cash- from the shady cigarette breath guy at the little shop on the campus. From that stop, they took the bus to the town. It was so full, it felt like sardines in a can. They put the box on the floor, and they stood next to it securing it with their feet, shaking every time the bus was turning or going over a cavity or damp on the road.

“This is it”, Mariana said after they got off the bus. They both signed a breath of fresh air.

“The address is not far from here”, Lily said, staring at the address on the piece of paper. They were taking turns carrying the box.

They found an apartment building with the right address and rang the bell. They waited, then rang again, and a third time. They heard movement from around the house.

The lecturer was tall, with brown hair and green eyes, but his face looked particularly pale, and his eyes were swollen with red veins and visibly sensitive to the sunny outside. He had a brown blanket around his shoulders. His voice was familiar, deep, but shaky.

“What do you want?”

“Hi, sir, you remember us from class, we volunteered to clean up your office and return your stuff for you. So here it is”.

“Thanks, you can go now”, he hastily took the carton box out of Lily’s hands, and he was about to say goodbye. He was not looking well at all. Lily had a weird feeling.

“Sir, if you want to talk to someone, we can have some tea and discuss”.

“Look, if you want to butter up…”

“The hell with that, I just want to help!”

Lily took it personally; she did not need to do any of this to gain any favours, and she didn’t think of herself as that kind of person, she would rather vomit. She was just concerned for him, and she liked his classes because he genuinely seemed passionate about the students understanding the topic. Okay, maybe she was also curious about the parchments and intended to ask about that too later, but she believed she hadn’t done anything wrong.

“You can help by being gone, Lilith!” he yelled and slammed the door in their faces.

He was looking more than a bit paranoid and agitated in his expression and manner.

“Hey you, ungrateful arsehole!” Mariana yelled at the closed door, and then turned to her friend, “Let’s go, honey, leave him, we can go now”.

The girls walked by the beach, amongst the tourist crowds, and busy area, enjoying the salty summer breeze. The streets were so crowded they could only walk slowly.

“I almost forgot, it’s tourist season,” Mariana mocked

Lily and Mariana found a seaside café with air conditioning and shade. They placed their order of iced coffee.

Lily took out her phone and Googled “Codex Gigas”, She found information about something called the “Devil’s Bible”. She did a bit more digging from her phone, and she thought first chance she would go to the university library.

“Hey, no phones!” Mariana teased, but she was half-serious.

“Did you know that the text Mr. Panos was copying was from this?” and she passed the phone to Mariana.

“Okay, he was weird alright, but let it go, it’s for the best”. She left the phone on the table.

The young waiter brought the coffee for the girls and left.

Lily said, “I mean, the stories say that a Benedictine monk in a Bohemian monastery wrote it. His name was Herman the Recluse. But he could be from anywhere, when you become a monk you change to a new name, everyone knows that”.

She shook her head and continued, “Anyways, he was imprisoned for not keeping his vows, and he was sentenced to be buried alive. He promised to write a volume containing all human knowledge in a single night, and before the literal deadline, his body and mind were giving up at around midnight. That’s when the devil itself visited him in his cell. He made a deal with the devil, and he was able to complete the work, this time, as a devil’s book”.

“Speaking of writing things last moment”, Mariana entertained the thought, “He was being naughty. And what happened to the book?”

“Well, during the Swedish siege of Prague at the end of the Thirty Years' War, the manuscript was taken as war spoils and transferred to Stockholm. They have the whole thing available online in digital version, the thing is that indeed some pages are missing”.

“Ooo, now it gets interesting. But what was in that book anyway?” Mariana inquired while nervously playing with her hair.

“In most of the book, there is some medical knowledge of the times, spells, diary of the monastery, some etymologies, some stories, generally many stuff. But the missing pages were never recovered, so we don’t know what could really be there”.

“Well, medical knowledge was not good at the time, so not really useful” Mariana decided.

“I mean, not for practical use at least. Remember the book I found at the university library the other day, Robert Burton – The Anatomy of Melancholy? So many volumes speaking of illnesses and the body in types of fluids being misplaced”.

“Could the missing content be a map to a treasure?” Mariana laughed in disbelief.

Lily leaned forward like she was telling a secret, “Or a curse”. She made her voice with special effects. She didn’t believe in superstitions, but she was certainly compelled by them.

“Oo fun, but still, I like the treasure option more”.

“Well, we could be both right, you know, you get something, you give something. Isn’t that how magic is supposed to work? Unless of course, you have the magic inside you, in your lineage, in your blood”.

“A witch,” Mariana said in a special effects tone, obviously entertained.

“Okay, girl, you got me there”, she sighed with a smile. “Now we must solve this riddle, I am having fun with this. In our humble university, Mr. Panos stumbled upon those pages”.

“I must study them to see if they match any of the content that is available online – his scribbles and handwriting were so hard to read. Admittedly, I am nosy enough to have the pictures. The answer remains to be seen, tonight” Lily smiled deviously.

************************************************************

Lily borrowed some books from the campus library to help her with translation and met with Mariana. Together they waited near the dorms, till it was late, and the campus was empty and dark, to go to Lily’s favourite place by the rooftops of the lecture halls. They were energized by the excitement, and it was like an adventure under the bright moonlight. The night was completely still as if the wind was holding its breath.

Lily put the printed pages on the floor.

“Okay, so I printed the photos at the library, to make it easier. We can write the translation with this pen right on this paper. Based on what I have read already, this does not exist in the rest of the book”.

“Then, it’s the missing pages indeed?”

“Yes, on the condition that these actually belong to the book”.

“Let me see”, Mariana approached and sat on the floor studying curiously the contents. She was quiet and she was taking glimpses of the vocabulary book of Latin to aid with the translation. “Is it…?”

“Yes”, Lily responded proudly

“No… it can’t be, you’re kidding me, get out of here!”, Mariana responded with excitement.

“The missing pages are nothing but the contract the monk made with the devil. Perhaps it was stolen by another monk to prevent people from reading it and getting into temptation”.

“But how can we read it now?” Mariana wondered.

“Whoever it was that stole the pages, was tempted, instead of destroying the page, and kept it, and someone found it and made copy or copies”

“Wow, curiosity is such a thing!”, Mariana concluded as she was touching the page, her fingers hovering over a sentence.

She read it outloud, "Sanguinem proprium, visum, terram, et aquam, pro omni sapientia offer, animam propriam pro aeterna protectione dilectae et eius posteritatis da."

Lily explained out loud, “It means roughly, Sacrifice own blood, eyesight, earth, and water, in exchange for all wisdom. Give own soul for the eternal protection of beloved and her descendants. The monk was in love. Isn’t it kind of beautiful? Mariana?”

Mariana sat still, her stare on the horizon like she wasn’t listening anymore. Lily tried to touch her shoulder, and then she met Mariana’s glare, something was off, and it was like looking in the eyes of another person, not Mariana, but someone with a completely different expression. Her skin was cold, and Lily retreated “Hey, what’s wrong?”

Then Mariana started a hysterical laugh like she heard the funniest joke in the world, tears escaped the corners of her eyes, and red veins popped from the pressure, her jaw hung open while her voice was making high- and low-pitched unfamiliar sounds.

It was way more eerie than the Joker’s laugh, it was not funny – if that was a prank. Then a thought crossed her mind, but it couldn’t be, this thing couldn’t be the real deal.

Lily made another attempt; she reached out and tried to shake her friend’s trembling shoulders. Her voice was quivering, “Please, snap out of it. It's just words on a page. It can't control us."

For a fleeting moment, like a micro expression, Mariana’s familiar face came back, and with a strained growling she whispered,

“Run”