Vatican Prison: Pope Leo XIV, Cain, and the Creatures Underground

When they told him about the meeting, Pope Leon XIV laughed.

“It’s a joke,” he said. “Surely.”

The master of ceremonies only made the sign of the cross.

“Your Holiness, the protocol is very clear. At 3:33 a.m., on the first night of your pontificate, the chief jailer of the Vatican will come to your room. You must go with him. Alone.”

Leon had survived conclave politics and the white‑smoke chaos of his first day on the throne of Peter. He had shaken thousands of hands, smiled for a hundred cameras, given three speeches he barely remembered. His bones ached. His throat burned. All he wanted was sleep.

Instead, at 3:33 on the dot, someone knocked softly at his chamber door.

The man who entered knelt, kissed Leon’s ring, and rose without a word. He was young—no more than thirty—with dark hair, a thin face, and eyes that had seen too much.

“I am Father Rukaku,” he said quietly. “Chief jailer of the third basement. The hour has come, Holy Father.”

Leon pulled his robe tighter around his shoulders. “What exactly am I supposed to see in a basement at this hour?”

“Not what,” Rukaku said. “Who. And what they are.”

They walked in silence through corridors the Pope did not know yet, past saints frozen in marble and Swiss Guards half asleep at their posts. At a plain wooden door with an iron beam across it, the jailer stopped.

Leon reached out, tracing the old wood with his fingers.

“The beam,” Rukaku said. “It’s the one that held Peter’s body when they crucified him upside down. Tradition demands you kiss it before you pass.”

Leon hesitated, then bent and pressed his lips to the splintered grain. The wood was cold and faintly bitter, as if soaked in old iron and tears. Rukaku lifted the beam and opened the door.

The air changed on the first step down.

It was cooler, yes, but also thicker—laced with stone dust, stale incense, and something underlying that Leon’s mind didn’t want to name. They descended a long, narrow stair whose walls wept moisture. No sunlight had ever touched this stone.

“At the bottom,” Rukaku said, “we reach the first basement. Relics, forbidden texts, artifacts. Two floors below that is where my predecessors served. And three below your rooms…” He paused. “That is what only popes see.”

They passed the first level without stopping. Leon glimpsed a vault of glass cases and barred cabinets: crowns blackened with age, knives that seemed to drink the light, monstrous bones arranged like museum pieces. On the second level, the smell of incense and oil was stronger, but the doors were shut.

The third basement did not feel like any part of the Vatican Leon had ever imagined.

A long stone corridor stretched ahead, lined with heavy iron doors. Each door bore a number and a small barred window. Pipes ran along the ceiling, dripping holy water at set intervals. Every seven hours, Rukaku explained, sprays of sanctified water bathed corridor and cells alike.

“Blessed irrigation,” Rukaku said. “Sprinklers for monsters.”

Leon stopped at the first door and peered through the bars. Inside, lit by a weak bulb, stood what he thought were statues—grotesque gargoyles frozen mid‑grimace, wings half spread, claws extended.

“This is what you keep beneath St. Peter’s?” Leon asked. “We could have burned these. Why preserve such…idols?”

Rukaku’s hand closed around his wrist.

“Do not call them idols, Holy Father. They’re not objects. They are petrified. That’s different.”

Leon snorted. “Petrified. By what? Your imagination?”

“By Medusa,” Rukaku said, perfectly serious. “Her head’s in cell sixty‑three. We use it when they get out of hand. One look, and—”

He snapped his fingers. Stone.

Leon opened his mouth, then closed it. The statues’ faces, twisted in what he had thought was stylized agony, now looked uncomfortably like real fear captured at the moment it became permanent.

Rukaku tugged him onward. “This wing is of lesser concern to you. You’ll receive written reports. You don’t need to see them all. But there are three you must meet: the new one, the danger in 217, and—” his voice dropped “—Cain.”

Leon stopped. “Cain. As in…Genesis?”

“As in the first murderer,” Rukaku said. “Yes. But first—do not touch anything that comes out from under a door marked 217.”

Leon raised an eyebrow. “Why on earth would I touch anything?”

They turned a corner. The corridor here was narrower, the numbers painted in iron above each door. Halfway down, a gleam rolled out from under one of the doors and came to rest at Leon’s foot.

A gold coin. Heavy. Bright. Too bright for a place like this.

Leon bent automatically.

“Holy Father!” A voice from the opposite cell hissed. “Don’t you dare. You’ll get us all killed.”

Leon straightened. Behind the bars of 218, he saw a man. Or something that looked like one. Dark hair. Brown skin. A shirt in the red and white of the Peruvian flag.

“Mi hermano,” Leon breathed. He’d spent years in Peru before Rome, had come to love its people. “Why are you here? Who caged you like an animal?”

He rounded on Rukaku. “Open this cell. Immediately. I will not have a Peruvian brother rotting under the Vatican.”

Rukaku winced. “He’s not Peruvian, Holiness. He’s not even a he. Not really.”

He went to a metal cabinet bolted to the wall, opened it, and pulled out an old Polaroid camera.

“Humor me,” he said. “Take a photograph of him.”

Leon, irritated, did as asked. The man in the cell posed with hollow eyes, fingers gripping the bars. The camera spat out the image with a soft whir. Leon shook it until it developed.

A man stared back. The same man. The same Peruvian shirt. The same plea in his eyes.

“Now my turn,” Rukaku said. He took the camera, stepped to the cell, and snapped his own picture. When the film appeared, he didn’t hand it over immediately. He looked at it, his face going very still.

“Who do you see?” he asked, passing Leon the first photo.

“A poor man,” Leon said. “Terrified. Begging for mercy.”

“And in this?” Rukaku handed him the second.

Leon’s breath caught.

It was not a man in a Peruvian shirt. It was a woman in a flour‑streaked dress, in a cramped kitchen lit by a single bulb. She kneaded pizza dough on a scarred wooden table, her dark hair tied back, her face lined and worn—but her eyes shining with a warmth that pierced even the cheap film.

“My mother,” Rukaku said softly. “I see her exactly as I remember her. Naples. The smell of bread. The sound of her humming. That’s who this thing shows me.”

He gestured at the cell. “You see Peru. I see my mother. Anyone else sees whoever they miss most. It’s a doppelgänger, Holiness. A shape‑shifter that mimics the beloved.”

Leon looked back at the bars. The man inside raised his hands like a supplicant.

“Holy Father,” he said, in accented Spanish now. “Help me. You love my people. You lived among us. Don’t leave me with these…monsters.”

Rukaku shut the viewing grate with a bang. “We caught this one in Berlin in ’47,” he said briskly. “It pretended to be a couple’s son, killed in the war. Lived with them for six weeks. Ate at their table. Slept in his bed. Then it tried to eat them.”

He nodded at the coin still resting on the floor. “And that is from the next cell. The one I warned you about.”

He unlocked 217 and cracked it open just enough to reseal his warning.

A small figure sat in the shadows, shackled with heavy chains. Its beard was a tangled mass. Its eyes gleamed with a greenish light. Beside it lay a pot brimming with gold coins.

When it saw the door, it lunged as far as its restraints allowed, hands scrabbling for the coin on the floor.

In a perfect, mocking Romanian accent, it said, “Francisco! You finally read your letter! Take your coin. Keep it. A souvenir from your old friend.”

Leon flinched. “My name is Leon,” he said. “Pope Francisco is dead.”

The leprechaun froze. Its face twisted.

“Dead,” it repeated. “Dead, is he? Then you’re the new thief in white.”

It laughed, a high, ugly sound. “Take the coin, new Pope. Just one. I insist.”

Leon stepped back. The coin rolled to the lip of the doorway and stopped.

“If anyone takes even one,” Rukaku murmured, eyeing the pot, “he transforms. Grows. Becomes something that makes giants look small. Chains won’t hold him. And the first thing he does is kill.”

He shut the door. The leprechaun’s curses followed them down the corridor.

Leon’s legs felt weak. He leaned briefly against the wall, breathing hard.

“I have done Level Four and Five exorcisms,” he said. “I know demons. I know their tricks. But this—this is something else.”

Rukaku smiled without humor. “Every pope says that on their first descent. Faith does not change. Its object does not change. Only your knowledge of what lurks under the floorboards.”

They walked past more cells. Some were silent. Some held whispers in languages Leon did not recognize. On certain doors, reliquaries had been affixed, little windows of bone and wood, nails and thorns. On others, consecrated hosts gleamed behind protective glass.

“North wing holds pagan gods, for lack of a better term,” Rukaku said. “Valakian. Quetzalcoatl. Dracula. They’re in punishment right now—no visitors for a year. Helped two Nahual creatures escape last Easter. The hunter is tracking them as we speak.”

“The hunter,” Leon repeated. “You keep mentioning a hunter.”

“You’ll meet him another day,” Rukaku said. “Today is for someone older than hunters.”

They turned one last corner.

This corridor was shorter. At the far end, a cage hung from the ceiling, swinging gently. Inside, in the flickering light, Leon saw what looked like a child—small, pale, knees drawn up to its chest.

“For the love of God,” Leon whispered, hurrying forward. “You caged a child?”

“Holiness—” Rukaku began.

But Leon was already at the bars, reaching for the latch.

The lamp flared, just for a second, throwing the occupant’s features into sharp relief.

Every inch of its exposed skin was scarred, stitched, or discolored. One eye was milky. Its fingers ended in blackened nails. When it spoke, its voice was not that of a child, but a man’s, deep and resonant, layered with something inhuman.

“Let me out,” it said in flawless Italian. “Or I swear I’ll escape like the Nahuales did. I’ll come through your window at night.”

Leon jerked his hand back as if burned.

“What is that?” he asked.

“Reconstructed,” Rukaku said. “A boy from Texas drowned in a pool. His grieving parents paid a man—part surgeon, part witchdoctor—to dig him up and piece him together with parts from other bodies. Classic Frankenstein nonsense.”

“The soul does not return in such cases. Something else climbs in. This one houses Andras, demon patron of assassins. We could exorcise him, but then he’d just move on, find another child to fill. Here, at least, he’s contained.”

Leon shuddered and moved on. His mind felt frayed, his theology stretched by the force of what his eyes insisted was real.

Fifty meters later, the tunnel opened into a round chamber. In the center lay a wide circle of worn stone. Within the circle, someone slept, wrapped head to foot in a black tunic.

A sign hung on the far wall. The words were painted in Latin in red letters on yellow:

Cain filius Adae et Evae, frater Abel, unus ex tribus Iudaeis vagantibus, malitia absoluta. Nolite tangere lapidem tinctum.

“Cain, son of Adam and Eve, brother of Abel,” Leon translated automatically. “One of the three wandering Jews, evil from absolute malice. Do not touch the stained stone.”

“It’s a joke,” he said. “Enough. Enough shape‑shifters and goblins. This one is too far.”

Rukaku did not smile. “It’s Scripture,” he said. “Genesis. ‘And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.’ He cannot die. He has tried. We have records of every failed suicide.”

He pointed toward the circle. At Leon’s feet, just within the boundary, lay a stone half sunk in the floor. Its surface was darkened with something that did not look entirely like age.

“Abel’s blood,” Rukaku said. “We found the stone two years ago, in a valley in the Middle East. He was drawn to it. When he’s close, his strength leaks into it. He cannot cross the circle. The stone catches him.”

Leon stepped carefully to the edge. The tunic moved.

The figure inside uncoiled in one lithe motion, rising to its feet in the center of the circle.

If there had ever been anything human in that face, time and something worse had erased it. The skin looked as if it had been eaten from the inside and poorly regrown. The muscles beneath twitched, coiled, relaxed without pattern. The ears were long and sharp, the nails hooked, the teeth too many.

On the brow, half hidden by lank hair, glowed a symbol Leon did not recognize, yet understood instinctively: the mark. Not of the beast, as medieval paintings liked to show it, but of a man branded by God and refused death.

Cain grinned, revealing narrow, crowded teeth.

“Don’t you know how to respect another man’s sleep?” he asked, his voice dry as leaves. “I’ve killed hundreds for less.”

Rukaku instinctively stepped back. Leon stayed where he was, though his heart pounded.

Cain’s eyes slid over the white cassock, the pectoral cross, the tired, stubborn face.

“And here you are,” he said. “All in white, as if it means something. John Paul was a real pope. Benedict was wise. Francisco—ah, Francisco was loved. What will you be, Leon? The one who lets it all fall?”

The words hit like a thrown stone. Jealousy. Insecurity. Fear. The little poisons that rot men from within. Leon felt them rise, like bile, on his tongue.

He swallowed them and lifted his hand.

“Silence,” he said, and was pleased his voice did not shake. “You killed your brother with a stone from behind. You have been wandering longer than any empire has stood. You will not bait me like a child on a playground.”

Cain laughed, circling just inside the stone boundary, testing it, recoiling each time he drew near.

“That one you pray to,” he said, “doesn’t favor you any more than he favored me. You think he does because your little flock sings to you on balconies. But you and I, Pope, we are both men marked by stories we did not write.”

Leon took a breath. “How long before you offer me a bargain? Knowledge for freedom? Prophecy for a chipped stone?”

Cain’s smile curdled.

“Ask your jailer,” he snarled. “Ask him about Father Temoli. The guard who swore he’d never be jealous, because he had everything. The rich only son. He stepped into this circle willingly. One bite. That’s all it takes. Now he wanders, or did, until Judas cut his head off.”

He bared his teeth, lunging toward the edge. The stone drank his momentum. He collapsed just short, panting, muscles trembling with impotent rage.

Leon found himself praying automatically, asking not for Cain’s punishment, but for the mercy Cain had never believed existed. Cain heard it and laughed until it dissolved into a cough.

“Save it,” he said. “You’ll see. He won’t forgive me. That’s the one thing you and I will agree on before the end.”

Rukaku touched Leon’s elbow.

“Enough,” he whispered. “There’s more you must know. And your heart has had as much as it should today.”

They left the circle chamber. For a long moment, both men walked in silence.

In Rukaku’s small office on the far side of the prison, guards filed in, kneeling for Leon’s blessing. He laid hands on each bowed head, murmuring words, half on autopilot and half with a new weight in his chest. When they were gone, he sank into the old wooden chair opposite Rukaku’s desk.

“Temoli,” he said. “What happened to him?”

Rukaku rubbed his face with both hands.

“He was one of ours,” he said. “Strong. Brave. Born into wealth. Only child. He’d never had cause to envy anyone. Cain got to him in hours. A few sentences, a few comparisons. Suddenly, Temoli thought immortality was a prize, not a curse. He stepped in. Let Cain bite him. Wanted to be one of the wandering three.”

Rukaku’s mouth twisted. “We sent the hunter after him. Judas and Lazarus found him near the Austrian border. He’d already eaten two hikers. They cut his head off. Brought it back. It’s in cell 650. We make new guards look at it. As a reminder.”

Leon blinked. “Lazarus,” he said. “That Lazarus? Raised from the dead in Bethany? One of the wandering Jews?”

Rukaku nodded. “The only true resurrection, body and soul. Your Christ was very fond of him. He and Judas work for us now.”

“Judas Thaddaeus?” Leon asked weakly. “Judas Barabbas? There are so many—”

“Judas Iscariot,” Rukaku said. “Best friend of Jesus.”

Leon laughed once, sharply. “That’s enough,” he said. “Monsters, I can stretch myself to believe. Ghosts, perhaps. Even Cain. But to tell me Judas Iscariot never betrayed Jesus—that is too much.”

Rukaku opened a drawer, pulled out a slim leather volume embossed with a key and a fish. “The complete gospels say otherwise,” he said. “The ones we keep down here. But you don’t have to take my word for it.”

He closed the drawer again before Leon could reach.

“You have one more obligation before you sleep,” he said. “It’s part of the same protocol that sent you down here.”

Leon stared at him. “More?”

“You must visit Francisco’s tomb,” Rukaku said. “Kneel. Fold your hands. Blink three times. Time will pause for you. Francisco will appear. It is called the Sacra Unio—the sacred meeting of colleagues. Every pope speaks once with his immediate predecessor. He will tell you the rest. Including the prophecy of the last days.”

Leon’s skin went cold. “Prophecy.”

Rukaku nodded. “He knows when the world ends. You need to know as well. For now, you know this much: under the Vatican there is a third basement, and in it the Church keeps what the world would worship or be devoured by if loosed.

“Above, they will see you in white on balconies. Below, you will walk stone corridors lined with what disbelief calls myth. Between those two worlds, Holiness, stands you.”

He smiled, tired and sincere.

“And in the end, against everything you’ve seen tonight, the strongest weapon you have is the one Cain hates most.”

“Which is?” Leon asked.

“Humility,” Rukaku said. “The one thing a monster cannot counterfeit.”

Leon sat a long time in that small office, feeling the Vatican above him, the stone and water and cages beneath, the weight of a simple, impossible commandment—be humble—in a world full of creatures that had made envy and pride into immortal engines.

Then he stood up, smoothed his white cassock, and went to meet a ghost.