Baccano! - Volume 11 - Chapter Pr

The devil’s coming, lantern lit.

The devil’s coming, mask in place.

Here to put a mask on you,

Here with masks for every face.

The children smiled as they sang. They were unmistakably devils themselves…

…and so were they sinners.

PROLOGUE

THE DEATH OF THE CORPSE

According to the girl who’d seen it…

…the mysterious masked figure had simply stood watch.

That was what made it so very terrifying—and so very beautiful.

1705 The Italian Peninsula

Spanish viceroyalty of Naples City of Lotto Valentino

It was the turn of the eighteenth century.

The age could perhaps be called the period of preparation, a time leading into the change that would sweep across the countries of Western Europe.

The War of the Spanish Succession raged, with the inheritance of a vast kingdom at stake, and all of Europe joined in the fray. This new century began with a spectacular struggle for a great inheritance, and the quiet pulsations among the great powers of Europe could be clearly felt.

In terms of culture, this era was a turning point.

Even though all the royal houses were embroiled in a violent dispute over the Spanish throne—or perhaps because of that very dispute—the cultures of the arts continued to ripple and transform in a variety of ways.

And as the conflict raged on—in a certain town, an incident occurred.

The first person to discover the scene told the tale later.

The sight, he said, had struck him as something of great artistic value.

The era marked a shift in the baroque movement, just before rococo came to the fore and laid new foundations.

The rococo style called to mind something softer and lighthearted, characterized by paintings in which vivid colors dyed their canvases in iridescent hues. In contrast, baroque art was resplendent and gorgeous, nearly to excess.

A new artistic style may have been gaining ground, but the calculated indulgence of baroque showed no sign of fading yet, and in that spacious room, the ornate art pieces influenced by its techniques were difficult to ignore.

However—one of the articles seemed out of place among the rest.

That very dissonance highlighted it as the centerpiece, and the contrast between the object and its surroundings intensified the effect of both.

This was all according to the witness, and he would be criticized for his terrible taste for some time afterward. After all, the “art piece” he spoke of was…

…a bloodied young girl who lay spread-eagled on the floor, facing the chandelier.

The next morning

Lotto Valentino was a port town on the outskirts of Naples.

It was a small city with a population of about fifty thousand, and the atrocity that had occurred had provoked…no particular uproar among its citizens.

England’s first daily newspaper had been founded about three years earlier, but in this town, the closest equivalent was a mere newssheet, printed whenever some sort of incident occurred.

And as for whether the gruesome murder was loudly publicized in this newssheet…

…an article monopolized over half a page—a follow-up story on corruption in the town’s security forces. The girl’s death was given a brief nod after that.

The details of the incident weren’t given, and the people who purchased the newssheet skimmed the article indifferently, without wondering about it.

The corpse had been stabbed once through the heart. She had died without disturbing the pool of blood, perhaps dying before she could even struggle, and had been neatly lying there and gazing up at the ceiling.

One clue had been left at the scene: a mask.

It was a pure-white full-face mask, the kind worn at masquerade balls or at the Carnival of Venice.

The face of the expressionless corpse had been covered by an equally expressionless mask, the witness had told them.

It was truly a work of art, he said.

And there was one other bizarre detail about the incident: a mysterious masked figure.

This person was spotted near the crime scene, wearing a white mask. Their gender was unclear, and their mask seemed to float, isolated, in the darkness. It resembled the mask placed on the corpse.

The city police, who were responsible for public order in Lotto Valentino, had identified their prime suspect and begun a manhunt.

That was the gist of the article.

For some reason, this town had a unique public security system that was unlike those in Naples and the surrounding cities: A vigilance committee known as the city police kept the peace independently, working separately from the Spanish military police.

Although it wasn’t clear what sort of deal had been struck with the feudal aristocrats, the system had been in place for several decades. These serial murders were the first of their kind—and the very prestige of the city police hinged on their ability to win the fight against them.

There was so much to gossip about—a bizarre murder, strange clues, a challenge to the city police, and a mysterious, shadowy figure. And yet, the newssheets ceded their top spot to the corruption in the town’s security force.

People had already begun to tire of the incident. They were afraid, yes, but by now, unless the report was about the criminal’s arrest, they didn’t care.

After all, the girl was the twenty-seventh victim of this “masked man.” The serial killings had been ongoing for half a year, and people were already growing desensitized.

And so the incident failed to become much of an incident at all.

Ordinarily, it wouldn’t have been odd for them to go down in history as the grotesque murders performed by a lunatic—in fact, it would have been stranger for the killings not to be remembered that way—and yet there were no signs that this would happen.

Strangely, any uproar over the matter was limited to the urban area of Lotto Valentino, and it wasn’t a major topic in Naples, let alone overseas. It sent its lukewarm fear and madness swirling through this town alone.

Only a nameless newssheet continued relating the cold, dry facts.

Those facts became rumors, and those rumors became a fear taking root in the lives of the populace.

Slowly, ever so slowly, as if it were eating away at them…

…even after death, the dead continued to die.

It was as if they meant to steep the town in their own deaths.