The Ninth Gate
THE GIRL does so to reveal a small landing and a flight of stone steps leading downward. She stops short: the steps have no guard rail and the cellar beneath is shrouded in darkness.
120. CHATEAU: WINE CELLAR INT/NIGHT
The MUSTACHE prods CORSO through the doorway until ALL THREE are on the landing, then throws a light switch.
Bare bulbs shed little light on the steps but illuminate a large vaulted chamber below. it’s the chateau’s wine cellar: oak barrels and racks of bottles thick with dust and cobwebs are housed behind an iron grille with a door in it. The door is ajar, the key in the lock.
MUSTACHE (to THE GIRL): Move!
THE GIRL sets off down the steps. CORSO follows with the MUSTACHE at his heels.
Halfway down, CORSO pretends to stumble: he crouches and turns in a single movement. The MUSTACHE, following close behind, trips over him. CORSO seizes his robe and yanks at it, helping him on his way. Simultaneously:
CORSO (to THE GIRL): Watch out!
THE GIRL plasters herself against the wall to avoid the MUSTACHE’s somersaulting body. The automatic escapes from his hand and slithers across the flagstones as he comes to rest, with a sickening thud, at the foot of the steps. THE GIRL follows him down and picks it up.
CORSO reaches the foot of the steps and rolls the MUSTACHE over on his back. He’s out cold, with blood oozing from a broken nose.
THE GIRL (faintly admiring): I didn’t know you had it in you.
CORSO: Another thing you didn’t know?
He takes hold of the MUSTACHE’s ankles and, with THE GIRL’s assistance, hauls him through the grille into the inner cellar. He stares down at the man for a moment.
CORSO (cont.): Hey, give me a hand. I want his gear.
He starts to peel of fthe MUSTACHE’s robe from the feet up, revealing a pair of exceptionally hairy legs.
121. CHATEAU: WINE CELLAR INT/NIGHT
CORSO shuts the grille door, locks it, and tosses the key into a corner. The MUSTACHE’s naked, motionless body can be vaguely discerned through the bars.
122. CHATEAU: PASSAGE INT/NIGHT
CORSO and THE GIRL cautiously retrace their steps along the marble-floored passage. CORSO is wearing the Mustache’s robe and pentacle over his clothes with his shoes and trouser bottoms incongruously visible below the ham. They pass the stairs they descended and continue on their way.
They turn a corner. As they do so, they hear a faint, intermittent hum. They pause to listen, then walk on. The sound grows louder and more distinct: somewhere in the chateau, voices are chanting in unison.
Turning another corner, they find themselves in an anteroom that terminates in two massive double doors. The chanting is coming from beyond them.
CORSO walks over to the doors with THE GIRL at his heels. He grasps the handle.
THE GIRL (hisses): No! Up to the gallery.
123. CHATEAU: BACK STAIRS, GALLERY INT/NIGHT
The chanting is even louder now. CORSO and THE GIRL reach the top of some uncarpeted stairs and cautiously open a small door. A wave of sound hits them.
124. CHATEAU: GALLERY, GREAT HALL INT/NIGHT .
They steal through the doorway into the shadowy gallery, which runs around three sides of the Great Hall, and peer over the balustrade. They’ve emerged near the top of a spiral staircase leading down from the gallery to a point near the double doors at the rear of the hall.
At the far end of the huge room in a dais draped in black with some shallow steps leading up to it. On the wall above the dais hangs an inverted silver crucifix; on the dais itself, which is flanked by a pair of outsize black candles in three-foot silver candlesticks, LIANA stands facing the hall from behind a silver lectern on which reposes ‘The Nine Gates’. Arrayed in the body of the hall are the 50 GUESTS, now cowled, each holding a lighted black candle. The flickering candle flames bathe the whole scene in tremulous chiaroscuro.
LIANA and the GUESTS are taking it in turns, like priest and congregation, to intone passages from the Latin text of ‘The Nine Gates’.
CORSO (quietly, to THE GIRL): You stay here and cover me. I’m going down.
Pulling the cowl over his head, he sneaks down the spiral staircase, secretes himself in the rear rank of GUESTS, and concentrates on LIANA and the book as the litany continues.
All at once, unseen by us, the doors swing open with a crash and BALKAN’s deep bass voice punctures the air on a derisive note.
BALKAN (O.S.): Mumbo-jumbo-mumbo-jumbo-mumbo-jumbo –
The GUESTS stop chanting, and fifty cowled heads turn to look for the source of this unseemly interruption. Up on the dais, LIANA freezes.
BALKAN: Mumbo-jumbo-mumbo-jumbo-mumbo-jumbo-
Looking over-life-size in his dark and elegant double-breasted suit, he strides toward the dais. Any GUESTS who fail to get out of his way in time are brusquely elbowed aside. LIANA watches him, transfixed, as he climbs the steps and turns to face the bemused GUESTS.
BALKAN (cont.): Look around you – yes, all of you. What do you see?
The GUESTS involuntarily turn to look at each other.
BALKAN (cont.): I’ll tell you: a bunch of buffoons in fancy dress. What are you expecting, an apparition? I’m the only apparition you’ll see tonight. You really think the Prince of Darkness would deign to manifest himself to the likes of you? He never has and he never will – never!
He closes ‘The Nine Gates’ with a snap and holds it up.
BALKAN (cont.): You read from his book, yes, but you have no conception of its true power. I alone have grasped its secret. I alone have fathomed the Master’s grand design. I alone am worthy to enjoy the fruits of that discovery: absolute power to determine my own destiny.
LIANA finds her voice at last.
LIANA: You’re insane, Boris. (puts out her hand): Give it back at once.
BALKAN rounds on her.
BALKAN: As for you, Liana de Saint-Damien, you’re even guiltier than the rest of this pathetic rabble. You have at least some idea of what this book can do in the right hands, yet you lend yourself to these farcical proceedings, these orgies of ageing flesh conducted in the Master’s name. You’re a charlatan!
LIANA tries to grab the book, but BALKAN holds it above his head.
LIANA claws his cheeks in desperation. BALKAN clasps his face, dropping the book.
LIANA makes a dive for it, but BALKAN pounces on her. They roll over in a clinch, struggling fiercely.
BALKAN grabs LIANA by the throat. She tries to break his grip, but he redoubles it. Halfway down the dais steps with BALKAN on top of her, she fights for breath. Her suffocated, agonized face is turned toward the hall.
The GUESTS shrink back in horror, some of them dropping their candles. Hysterical screams rend the air.
CORSO comes to life. Hampered by his robe, he makes for dais as fast as he can, scattering frightened GUESTS in the process. He takes hold of BALKAN’s shoulders and tries to haul him off LIANA.
BALKAN, still throttling her, turns to look. He glares at CORSO through his heavy hornrims, his features contorted with rage and stupefaction. Then, removing one hand from LIANA’s throat, he deals CORSO a backhanded blow that sends him reeling.
LIANA seizes the chance to break free. She crawls away and almost regains her fact, but BALKAN is too quick for her: grabbing her pentacle chain from behind, he proceeds to garrotte her with it.
LIANA, now on her knees, scrabbles unavailingly at the chain that is biting into her neck. Her face turns purple, her tongue begins to protrude.
CORSO looks around wildly for a weapon. He seizes one of the three-foot candlesticks and raises it over his head. Suddenly:
THE GIRL (O.S.): Don’t, Corso!
Startled, he lowers the candlestick and looks up: THE GIRL is perched on the gallery balustrade just above him.
Too preoccupied with Balkan and Liana to wonder what her game is, CORSO raises the candlestick once more.
THE GIRL lands on top of CORSO, bearing him to the ground, and immobilizes him with a hammerlock.
CORSO: Get off me! He’ll kill her!
THE GIRL Leave them.
BALKAN completes his grisly work: LIANA’s purple face is all too reminiscent of Baroness Kessler’s. With a final tug at the chain, he plants one foot in the small of LIANA’s back and sends her limp body sprawling across the floor of the hall.
Screams and cries of horror go up from the GUESTS, who have recoiled still further.
BALKAN straightens up, a somewhat dishevelled but still imposing figure despite the scratches on his cheeks. Even his hornrims are still in place. He leans fonward, eyes narrowed in a mock menacing way, and stamps his foot.
BALKAN (in a voice like thunder): Boooh!
With more hysterical screams and cries of dismay, the GUESTS turn tall and flee the hall like a herd of panic-stricken cattle, jostling each other in their eagerness to get out the door.
Calmly, without so much as a glance at THE GIRL, CORSO, or LIANA’s corpse, BALKAN smooths his hair down, picks up ‘The Nine Gates’, and strides majestically after them.
Silence falls. THE GIRL releases her grip on CORSO’s arm, gets off him and rises to her knees. He sits up, nursing his elbow and staring at her with blank incomprehension.
CORSO: Why did you do it?
THE GIRL Some things are meant to happen. That was one of them.
CORSO: Don’t give me that crap again! You were working for him all along!
THE GIRL Funny, I thought you were.
CORSO: You played me for a sucker, the two of you. I don’t intend to take the rap for that maniac.
THE GIRL He just murdered someone with a roomful of witnesses. That lets you off the hook for the other killings. You should be grateful.
CORSO: I’m ecstatic.
He gets to his feet. We hear the sound of cars starting up and driving off in a hurry.
THE GIRL rises too, starts to pat the dust of fhis robe. CORSO impatiently evades her hand.
CORSO (cont.): Where’s he off to?
THE GIRL What do you care? Your job is done. This is as far as you need to go.
CORSO: The hell it is! The sonofabitch owes me the other half of my fee.
THE GIRL (ironically): Of course, it’s just business. I thought your curiosity had gotten the better of you.
CORSO: Okay, so what’s meant to happen next?
THE GIRL You really want to know?
125. MERCEDES/MINOR ROAD EXT/DAWN
THE GIRL, with CORSO red-eyed and unshaven beside her, is driving along a country road bordered by rolling fields wreathed in gray mist. They’ve appropriated Liana’s Mercedes sedan.
126. MERCEDES/FREEWAY EXT/DAY
CORSO has taken over the wheel. THE GIRL is fast asleep with her heed on his shoulder. The deserted freeway runs across a viaduct that spans a valley hundreds of feet below. The hazy blue shapes of mountains can be glimpsed in the distance.
127. MERCEDES/MOUNTAIN ROAD EXT/SUNSET
THE GIRL is back behind the wheel, CORSO smoking. Dazzled by the setting sun, THE GIRL lowers the visor. The landscape has become bleaker and more mountainous. Switchbacks are visible ahead.
128. MERCEDES/MOUNTAIN ROAD EXT/DUSK
