Inferno Study - The Plot

The Plot

Rose Elliot, a girl living in New York City, buys an ancient book in antiquarian, Kazanian's, shop. The book of the three mothers, tells about the building of the three mother's houses by the architect Varelli, in Rome, New York and Frieberg.

Then Rose must go down through a manhole cover, where she has lost her keys. She discovers a submerged room, in which there is a floating decomposed corpse.

In Rome, while attending a lesson at the Conservatory, Rose's brother, Mark, reads a letter in which his sister writes about the Book. Also Sara, one of Mark's friends, reads the letter and goes to a library looking for that book. A man with long nailed hands forces her to give the book back to him, after having almost drowned her in a boiling pot.

Sara escapes in fright and asks a neighbour, Carlo, to stay with her: they are both slaughtered. At the same time, Rose is killed in New York.

Then Mark goes to New York, to his sister's building, in which a strange assortment of characters live. Among them, there is a sinister doorkeeper, a paralysed professor with his nurse, a countess and his butler.

The countess is assaulted by a bunch of ferocious cats and then stabbed to death. The doorkeeper and the butler try to steal the countess' jewellery, but they are killed too. Kazanian's end is similar: in an attempt at drowning some cats he slips into the water, is assaulted by a horde of rats and then stabbed by a cook coming from a nearby fast-food kiosk.

Mark continues with his survey: he discovers that the building is full of hollow spaces and that the paralysed professor is the architect Varelli. The old man tries to kill Mark, but his own voice amplification machine strangles him. A fire breaks out; Mark recovers in a room, where the professor's nurse appears: she is Death, incarnation and reunification of the Three Mothers.

Mark runs away as the fire destroys the building.

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