Apocalypsis 1.07 Vision by Mario Giordano Page A

called itself Temple of Equinox. And the name of the Grand Master of this order was, once again, Aleister Crowley.
    Bühler had discovered that a man of the same name had founded a magical commune called the Temple of Equinox in Poveglia in 1922. Which meant for Bühler that a drug and sex addicted lunatic had been celebrating satanic orgies at the exact same time as the notorious mental hospital was being built. But he would not have been interested in any of this if the location of the web server had not been his only solid and verifiable lead. Where there was a server, there had to be more.
    The vaporetto landed behind the octagon of the fortifications, and as soon as Bühler had jumped to shore, it chugged off again. Not a single sound could be heard, not even birds. The commander of the Swiss Guards stood for a moment to get his bearings. In front of him were the ruins of the mental hospital, hidden behind rusty scaffoldings. To his right was a bell tower. The whole area was overgrown with trees and bushes that grew wildly through doorways and window frames, penetrating every crack in the walls, and forming shady roofs over the porches. Narrow, well-beaten trails led through the thicket; proof that Poveglia still had regular visitors. Bühler released the safety catch of his SIG P220 and took one of the narrow paths into the dilapidated building.
    The floors of the rooms were covered with rotten wooden beams and debris from the collapsed ceilings. Scattered in between were decaying remnants of furniture, yellowed and unreadable documents, rusty heaters, pipes and the railings of hospital beds. When Bühler touched one of the walls, clouds of plaster and white mold fell to the ground like dust. He walked through the entrance hall and a corridor with former wards on either side. He entered the former chapel of the psychiatric hospital, where shattered pews were piled up to into what looked like a pyre. Bühler found the former hospital kitchen with its rusty ovens and the huge pivoting soup boilers. Further in the back was the former laundry room with large drum washing machines and electric clothes presses. Junk everywhere. Every now and then, there was a rustling in the foliage that penetrated the walls wherever he looked and, once, Bühler saw a rat scurrying down the corridor. There was not a single person in sight. Yet Bühler could not shake off the feeling that someone was watching him.
    It started to get warm. Bühler put his gun away and took the rickety spiral staircase up into the bell tower to get a view of the entire island. From there, he could see the rooftops of the palaces of Venice as well as the neighboring islands in the Lagoon. It was a beautiful day, the perfect day for an excursion. But this was no excursion.
    Bühler turned around and looked over to the other side of the island, searching for any kind of structure or electrical installation that would hint at a server. A small channel divided the island into two parts. Behind the channel he could see nothing but trees. Bühler looked at his watch. In thirty minutes the vaporetto would be back to pick him up. Just when he was ready to give up and return to the landing stage, he spotted on the other side of the channel, hidden behind trees, the roof of another building complex.
    The path led him past a mass grave that had apparently been excavated by archaeologists. It was a ditch, approximately thirty feet long and less than three feet deep, filled with hundreds of human remains. Plague victims that had not been burnt but hastily buried in a shallow grave. The small excavation site suggested that the entire island was a mass grave with thousands of nameless corpses.
    Bühler did not pay any further attention to the bleached bones and focused instead on the building by the canaletto , which he could now see clearly in front of him. It looked like an extension to the mental hospital, but far less dilapidated. The facades were clean and not overgrown and