(phone rings) “Hello, Simpson, Clarke and Walters! This is Christina Walters! How can I help?”
“Hi, Christina, it’s David Randall, I’m glad I caught you before you left for the weekend, sorry it’s so late! My sister and I have been going through some more of great-grandfather’s papers, and we discovered yet another old key that doesn’t seem to fit any of the doors we’ve already tried, so there’s a good chance it will open that locked door in the corner of the basement! Would it be possible for someone to come by for the key?”
I was the only one left in the office so I reluctantly agreed to pick the key up in the morning! As I was single, I could use the weekend to complete the probate inventory before Wednesday’s auction!
The mansion felt a bit chillier than I’d remembered, everything was just as we’d left it the week before! I was pleased to see that the key opened the cellar storage room’s door.
The mansion’s late owner, an eccentric collector of rare antiquities, maintained detailed notes concerning each of the items in his extensive collection. We’d found ledgers detailing the history of all the items on display throughout his mansion. One particular ledger was marked “Dealings in death”. This one fascinated me as it listed a diverse collection of artefacts! Pottery taken from Egyptian and Mayan tombs, even the private library of Countess Elizabeth, the fabled Blood Countess, who reputedly drank the blood of her female victims, and one final entry, the stone pedestal upon which once stood the infamous Virgin of Nuremberg!
I came upon the list by accident! I’d completed the inventory and was flipping through the remaining pages of the ledger, when I came across some names on the final pages! A long list of names and dates that went on for several pages, including:
1949
Joanna H…18 April
Susanne L…2 May
Becky W…21 August
Rachael M…17 November
2010
Marsha F…26 February
Barbara D… 7 May
Meredith A…14 July
Robyn F…26 August
Donna C…8 Sept
Alexis M…22 Sept
My heart stopped as I saw the next name written at the top of the next page:
2015
Christina W…14 March
Jesus! Why was my name and today’s date written in the ledger?
Putting all thoughts aside, I walked over to the high backed leather armchair that had been in the family for generations, and sat down in it! A weird thought formed in my mind! I imagined that the deceased used to sit in this chair and watch as a series of call girls stood on the stone pedestal gyrating upon it! At least he didn’t have a stripper pole installed on it!
Wanting to confirm my suspicions I walked over to the pedestal and stepped up onto the smooth polished stone surface! As it turned out, stepping up onto the pedestal turned out to be the worst decision of my life, as a sudden feeling of vertigo swept over me and time seemed to stop!
Christina felt some unseen force pulling her upright as it forced her arms together behind her back. The unexpected sensation of the room’s chill against her bare skin, as her clothes vanished from her body, and the horrifying realisation that something was beginning to materialise around her, something that she instantly recognised from the darkest annals of history, something utterly and completely terrifying… the infamous Virgin of Nuremberg!
Suddenly, as quick as it began, the sensation of vertigo abruptly ceased, and she found herself tightly strapped within the claustrophobic confines of the legendary Virgin of Nuremberg!
She struggled to escape but straps materialised to hold her tight as the confining body of the Virgin continued to appear around her. She tried to open her mouth to scream for help, but a large leather gag suddenly materialised around her mouth before she could utter a sound!
Christina suddenly realised that she’d neglected to leave as much as a note for anyone at the office. She hadn’t thought to mention to her client that she’d planned to complete the inventory over the weekend. No one would even start to miss her until at least the Tuesday after the Bank Holiday!
The second thing she noticed was just how cold it was getting! It had been a typical autumn day outside, cold and raining when she’d arrived. All morning as she worked, she’d felt it getting colder inside the mansion. Now with her nude form strapped tightly within the Virgin’s cold metal sarcophagus, she started worrying about the cold,
“Oh great, I’m going to freeze to death long before anyone even starts looking for me!” she thought to herself!
Moments later, she noticed something that erased all thoughts of the cold and sent a terrifying wave of unimaginable horror coursing through her tightly bound body!
The spike-lined front of the Virgin of Nuremberg was slowly closing on her!
With each passing moment, she watched in terror as the gleaming razor sharp spikes of the Virgin moved closer toward her eyes and, struggle as she might, she quickly found that she couldn’t free herself from the Virgin’s tight restraints!
Although she continued to struggle, deep down she was already accepting that she’d never escape! That in a minute or two at most, she would die on the Virgin’s diabolically cruel spikes!
Even as the Virgin slowly closed on her, she wondered how this was happening to her, and why? She suddenly remembered that the Virgin had been used “exclusively for the execution of women found guilty of adultery”!
Christina felt a sense of foreboding as she recalled an event fifteen years ago when she’d had a one night stand with a married man, and a faint groan escaped her gagged mouth as she realised that the Virgin was going to exact revenge for that one night’s indiscretion! A male voice resonated in her head, “ Come join me, harlot! Accept your fate, for this awaits all ye sinners!”
The Virgin’s front panel grew inexorably closer, until she felt the cruel spikes pressing into her breasts and belly, their sharp points dimpling the soft fullness of her bosom, and despite the mouth filling gag, Christina’s high pitched screams of agony echoed off the storage room’s uncaring stone walls as the front of the Virgin finally closed, driving its diabolical spikes deep into her eyes and body! It was an obscenely long 30 hours of torture later, that her heart finally gave out, and she surrendered at last to the darkness!
By the time the auction service arrived on Wednesday, the Virgin of Nuremberg’s spike-lined form had faded away, reabsorbed along with Christina’s corpse and a considerable amount of blood, back into the harmless looking stone pedestal from which it had arisen!
As for Christina, like so many young women, her disappearance remains a mystery to this day!
Addendum
The auction went very well for the Randell family. The winning bid for their great-grandfather’s property exceeded their expectations, and soon what consisted of the estate was shipped off to JFK airport and from thence to an address in Southern Pennsylvania!
Gabrielle Hunter, or Brie, parked her Lamborghini and entered her mansion-like home! She never tired of looking at the property, paid for with money she’d blackmailed from various married men for her staying silent about the many affairs she’d had with them! After showering, she went downstairs to her ‘dungeon room’ to inspect the property she’d successfully bid for in that auction in the UK. She salivated at the items, which had been unpacked and placed around the room! The first thing she looked at was a ledger lying on a writing desk! She opened it at the last page, looking at the list of names written there! She nearly dropped the ancient ledger when she saw the last name written there:
Gabrielle H…22 March
“That’s odd!” she said to herself, “my name and today’s date.”
She put the ledger down and looked over the other items! These included a full-size guillotine, as used in the French Revolution, a working rack, and a stone block, with a circular indentation in the floor, and a channel cut into the stone which ran towards a brass receptacle affixed to the front of the block!
Tentatively pulling her slippers off, something impelled her to stand on the block, in the centre of the circular indentation! A sudden feeling of vertigo swept over her, and time seemed to stop!
Brie felt some unseen force pull her body upright, as her arms were bound together behind her back. In an instant she stood naked as her clothing suddenly disappeared! She tried to move, but her ankles were bound tightly together making any movement impossible! She tried calling for help, but a leather ball gag materialised in her mouth!
As she stood on the stone block, a thrill of horror hit her as she watched a dark shape materialise around her! Her eyes widened in terror as she recognised the shape for what it was, it was a nightmare from medieval times… the infamous Virgin of Nuremberg!'
The horror of the situation increased for Brie as the front of the Virgin began to close in on her! A male voice sounded inside her head, “All whores pay the price for infidelity! Come to me, and spend eternity within my embrace!” Soon, the Virgin’s spikes pierced her beautiful body, draining her life’s blood, which flowed into the receptacle… and disappeared on contact with the metal!
Hours after her life ended, the Virgin shimmered and grew fainter, eventually disappearing, taking Gabrielle’s corpse with it!
Her disappearance is an ongoing investigation by the FBI, and the York County PD!