This Haunted World Book One: The Venetian: A Chilling New Supernatural Thriller (22 page)

I don’t know when I died. But it was after Enrico and after Dr Gritti too, a long time after. The others tell me my husband threw himself from the bell tower, that the demons drove him to it. Perhaps they did – if you can call his victims demons. And Dr Gritti, he died some time later in the operating theatre, just before he was due to experiment on yet another patient. Instead of slicing down with his scalpel, he cut his own throat, his hand forced upwards as his eyes bulged in disbelief. I smiled when they told me that – the demons, the others, my friends and my family. They have such a unique sense of humour.

Those that came after them – the doctors, the nurses – I can’t tell you much about them. I’d ceased caring. All I know is that they were frightened of me, scared to come into my room even. They said it had an unnatural feel to it. They only did what they had to do: administer food, more drugs, and keep me clean. And they always came in pairs. Sometimes they would find me in a good mood, still lost in that brief but perfect moment when I first held my baby. At other times I was far from happy as that moment shattered, as I remembered she had taken her first breath not in my arms, but in his, and that he was the only one privy to what life she’d had. Where was she, my perfect child? How had they disposed of her? That word, it tortured me! She was disposed of, as though she were neither human nor a miracle – something untouched by evil, even though evil had played its part in creating her. That was the miracle – and they couldn’t see it. Or perhaps Enrico had, but all too briefly. After she died, he reverted back to what he really was and so quickly. Our daughter couldn’t save him. She couldn’t even save herself.

I waited so many years for her. I would scan the others. Was one of them holding her close? I knew they’d do her no harm. Even so, it wasn’t enough. I wanted to be the one to hold her – the phoenix who had risen from the ashes only to be struck down again. She was here, I was here, and the others were here. They had to help me find her, whilst I was still alive.

And so they did.

I don’t know when I died because I’d been dead inside since she left my body, although my heart continued to beat. The doctors, the nurses and the orderlies, they were all so easy to fool. The medication they gave me was having little effect, but as long as I remained a mute, they let me be. They hardly even bothered to lock my door anymore. I wasn’t going anywhere, I never did. I wouldn’t even cross the room to the window, and rarely was I encouraged to. On the table in the corner, my books were covered in dust and cobwebs. Not once did they think to pick them up and inspect their titles. I was not an object of curiosity, and nor were my books – curiosity would have indicated an interest, and these people simply had no interest in what lay beneath.

But I was moving again, I made myself move. When all was quiet, I would force myself from my bed, and place my feet onto the hard, tiled ground. My limbs felt so old, so useless. With a shock I realised they were old – my skin not as smooth as it had once been. There was looseness to it and on my hands were brown spots, so many of them. But my age was of no concern. Only one thing concerned me.

I would circle my bed, stand by the window and even gaze at my books, but I couldn’t bring myself to touch them, not yet, not after he had touched them. And then I would move further out of my room – but only at night, always at night, and follow the others, turning left, turning right, keeping to the shadows, the darkness an ally – protecting me. It is easy to hide in Poveglia. But even if it were not, there was so few staff by this time it was hardly a problem avoiding them. There were fewer patients too – the asylum, like everything else, perishing.

I remember when I first arrived I imagined it to be such a noisy place, with patients screaming in grief, anger or self-pity, babbling loudly as they rocked themselves to and fro, screeching in the dead of night, railing at the madness that had gripped them, the harshness of life. But the opposite was true. It surprised me how quiet it was, even those in charge barely spoke to one another. It is still quiet, the drugs doing their job no doubt but that isn’t the sole reason, I know that now. All those who have ever had to call this stark place their home are lost within themselves as well as from the world at large. Perhaps they are screaming, but it is silently, always silently.

I have screamed silently so many times too. But one thing I will not do is to call this place home. I don't belong here. And nor does my baby. Which is why I continue to follow the others, out into the open, into the fields, to find where she’s been laid. Several times I’ve been caught sight of. The nurses’ whisper to each other about the woman in white, but I’m no ghost, not yet. But the ghosts that are here will show me where my baby is. They promise me, over and over again, just as I have promised them.

It takes time, some things do. And when at last I find her, it surprises me. She is not in the fields; she is in the grounds by the cottage, her bones crammed into a tin casket. It seems Enrico wanted her close by after all. They pushed her upwards, the others, helped to release her, one sharp edge of the box already visible in the soil as I fall to my knees to retrieve it with bare hands. The precious cargo clutched to my chest, I take her somewhere safe, somewhere no one goes anymore, where no one dares but me. I’m not afraid of anything, you see. Not anymore. I will find a place to lay my baby and I will cover her in white as I was covered. Then I will wait for someone to come. Even after all the living have departed, after what life-force I possess has fled too, I will wait for someone who can take her from here, acknowledge that she lived, that she died, and who will bury her elsewhere, on soil that is sacred. Someone who understands the miracle of life and the grief we feel when miracles turn to dust before us. ‘Women are emotional beings,’ Enrico said to me once, ‘some are perhaps over emotional.’ It is true, so very true.

My name is Charlotte Evans. I was born in Somerset, England to loving parents. I had a brother, Albert. He teased me once and called me ‘The Venetian.’ But I am NOT the Venetian, and neither is my baby. She will leave here. And when she is gone, when she is far away, I won’t hold back. A woman wronged is someone to be wary of, but be careful if you wrong a mother too – if you tear her baby from her body, from her arms, if you dispose of it. Sanuto and Gritti are afraid, so very afraid and they are right to be. Without her bones this place will be the hell it really is and in hell there is always retribution.

Can you see now, what I want you to do? Find her and I will release you… find her…

There was a loud bang, not immediately outside but from further down the corridor. Even so, it brought Louise back to full consciousness and she fell forward, not gently; it was as though she’d been dropped from a great height, landing heavily on her knees, her hands splayed out in front of her. The images she’d seen, that Charlotte had forced upon her, reminded her of an old black and white film, some scenes clear, others stilted. Her voice too had woven in and out, telling her so much except one thing – the most important thing – the location of the child. She cursed the noise that had broken the spell.

“Charlotte, Charlotte, are you still here?” She kept her voice low; not wanting to draw attention from what else might be lying in wait.

There was no indication she was.

Her heart racing she looked around her, at the pages and pages of books. She felt certain it was Charlotte who’d torn them from their spines. Finally touching them again, not in love and admiration as she’d done so many times, but in hatred, in loathing and in fury.

I am NOT the Venetian
.

No, she was an English woman who’d married an Italian doctor, who’d been trapped here, confined, imprisoned on an island so very far from home, who’d suffered the worst fate imaginable, who was bent on revenge. If the asylum had closed in 1968, she would have died before that, fifty years ago or thereabouts, yet still she was energised by intent.

Although Louise wasn’t sure her legs would support her, she tried to stand anyway, pushing herself upwards whilst glancing left and right. Had Charlotte really flown or was she in the shadows? There were so many shadows. Why was that?

My phone, where’s my phone?

She fell to her knees again, scrabbled around for it. She must have dropped it when Charlotte had wrapped her arms around her and possessed her. Her eyes widened. Is that what had happened, she’d been possessed? In a scenario that didn’t make sense it made the greatest sense of all. And if so, if that were the case, she’d been possessed from the moment she’d seen Charlotte in the painting in the hotel lobby. She’d been marked, the veiled lady seeing her as that someone she’d waited for, someone who understood. Certainly Louise understood her threat – Find her and I will release you… find her… If she failed, they’d suffer: she, Rob, Kristina and Piero, alongside Sanuto and Gritti.

At last her hands touched something solid as opposed to pages so delicate you feared they’d turn to powder in your hands. It was her phone, no light coming from it because it had switched itself off. With shaking fingers she struggled to turn it back on, praying that the battery hadn’t died. It hadn’t – there was still a small percentage left. Using the torch facility, she shone it round in a burst of erratic arcs to keep the shadows at bay.

This was where Charlotte had spent the majority of her time on Poveglia – prior to that the cottage with the bones in it and the suite of rooms over the archway too. She thought also of their hotel room – 201. What she thought had just been the curtains swaying could have been her, watching, waiting.
So patient, Charlotte, you’ve been so patient
.

She summoned up the courage to speak again – praying she’d be heard. “Charlotte, I’m sorry for what happened to you, and I
will
try and help but please, don’t harm me, or my husband and friends. We’re not the enemy, we’re not to blame.”

Where had her bed been? In the centre of the room perhaps, the head of its frame pushed against the wall. Not a small room, it was fairly large, but it was soulless, as all rooms in the asylum were, despite being populated by so many souls. The lost, the lonely, and the wronged, they were all waiting to swoop, to do what their mother wanted; the one who had seen behind the façade, the people that they were or could have been, who’d read to them, been kind and, ultimately, who’d stayed. Their devotion would know no bounds.

“Oh, Charlotte, where did you hide her?”

Tears flooded her eyes at the fate that had befallen both mother and child. Charlotte was right; the baby had been a miracle. For the short time she’d breathed she’d represented hope, she’d stopped Enrico on his journey into darkness, and shone a different kind of light. Who knows what would have happened if she’d continued to breathe. Would Enrico have finally found the courage to stand up for his family if not his wife alone? Would Charlotte have forgiven him his weakness in time – for the sake of their child? Would they have returned to England to start again, leaving behind the madness that had consumed at least one of them? Maybe. But the baby had died and with her, hope and forgiveness too, but not a mother’s love. That never died.

“Charlotte, I’ll do what you ask of me, despite the danger.”

And there
was
danger – there was Sanuto and Gritti – desperate to keep the baby here, their only protection against the full extent of Charlotte’s wrath. After all, there was only so much a mother wanted her daughter to witness. The darkness that had followed her, the writhing mass that had picked up speed as she had picked up speed, that had only fallen back when she’d entered this room, it was out there, in the shadows too.

She exhaled, and tried to think. Where was it on the island that no one went, not even the living when they’d been here, not for years and years and years?
Think, Louise, think!

There was another loud bang and the door burst open, it almost flew off its hinges it had been pushed so hard. Louise screamed and took a step backwards, bracing herself for the entity that was Sanuto and Gritti combined, their energy that of the weak and the deluded, the ambitious and the self-centred. All attributes that even in her own darkness she’d never had to battle. She’d battled the same as Charlotte, grief, loss, bewilderment, and anger – especially anger. But all emotions were potent.

She turned her head away, couldn’t bear to look as together they rushed at her, as surely they would. They’d freeze the blood in her veins, turn her to ice; a statue that would crumble, be trodden into the ground as so many had been trodden before. Instead, a voice called her name, forcing her to open her eyes to see if she could trust her ears.

“Louise! Thank God, I have looked everywhere! Why did you run off?”

It was Piero, dishevelled and wild looking. A spirit clothed in flesh not shadows, and with a beating heart at its centre. He’d been responsible for the bangs.

“Piero!”

Darting forward, she threw herself into his arms as a lover might and hugged him close. It took a moment for him to react and when he did it was only briefly, relief surging through him, so palpable she could feel it.

“Why did you run off?” again he demanded to know.

“I… erm…” She started to explain but words kept failing her. How could she possibly explain what had happened, would he believe her or would he think she’d gone insane too? A prospect that fuelled her – she wasn’t insane and nor was Charlotte! Nor were so many on this island. But they’d been driven to insanity – by those who were supposed to care for them, tend to their needs, help them.

“Louise…”

She shook her head, still couldn’t speak. They didn’t help, they experimented, Sanuto and Gritti, in the theatre, the one Gritti had committed suicide in, the one subsequent doctors and nurses kept closed ever after, wanting to forget what had happened in there and to
whom
it had happened. Not even looking in its direction as they passed it – keeping their eyes on the ground or fixed ahead. Hiding yet another dirty secret.

Her hands reaching up, she gripped Piero’s arms as he gripped hers.

“The theatre, do you know how to get to it from here?”

“The theatre? You mean the old theatre?”

“Yes, that one.”

Fear leapt into his eyes. “I think I know, but—”

“No ‘buts’, Piero. We have to go there.”

“At night? There is no way!”

She had to change tack, try a different approach.

“Piero, do you and your wife want to leave the island?”

“Of course!”

“Tonight?”

He looked beyond her, into the darkness, his fear increasing. “Yes, tonight.”

“Then take me, because what we need to get off the island, it’s there.”

His eyes widened. “The key you mean?”

“Yes,” she answered. “The key to all of this.”