The Visitant: A Venetian Ghost Story

by Megan Chance

  His concern for a woman who treated him so badly lodged a soft spot in my heart. I remembered the confusion of emotions playing over her face. I had not thought of it from her point of view, but I realized Nero was right. Madame Basilio had been undone. It would be more compassionate to wait.

  “Very well,” I said. “Tomorrow will be soon enough.”

  He released my arm gratefully. “I should go see to her. But I don’t want to leave you alone here. If he wakes—”

  “He’s bound so tightly he can’t move. And I have the morphine and a knife.” I patted my pocket. “I’ll be fine. Go see to your aunt. It does you credit that you want to.”

  He made a face and then smiled softly. “I don’t want to. You see? Already you’re making me a better man.”

  “I’ll see you’re a saint before the year is up.”

  “Perhaps not a saint,” he said with a wicked smile, pulling me against him. “That would be boring for you, I think. Ah, I love your blushes. Are you pink all over? I should like to see.”

  “I thought you meant to look in on your aunt.”

  “Perhaps later. In an hour. Do you think that enough time?”

  “Enough time for what?”

  “To see just how pink you are.” A kiss on the tip of my nose. “I want to explore every inch of you.”

  From the bed came a rustling, a restless movement.

  I pushed Nero gently away. “Samuel’s waking up. Go. I’ll be safe enough.”

  He glanced over his shoulder at Samuel. “Are you certain you’ll be all right?”

  “Shall I show you the knife?”

  Again that smile. “I wish you would. But probably it would be inappropriate just now.”

  I gave him a little shove. “Go.”

  “Very well. But, cara, be careful, yes? Shout if you need me?”

  I promised, and he left, looking back as he did so, clearly worried, and I felt warm and protected.

  I sat back down just as Samuel roused again. A murmur, a movement, quickly stifled by the restraints. His eyes flew open. He blinked at me, obviously confused, and then frowned as he tried to move his arms. The panic that leaped into his eyes made me want to loosen the straps immediately. But I was wary now, my throat throbbing again.

  “Elena?” he said my name uncertainly, testing his memory.

  “Don’t try to move,” I warned.

  The panic didn’t lessen. Now it was joined by fear. “What did I do?” His voice was gravel; the bruises on his throat seemed to pulse brightly.

  “What do you remember?”

  He closed his eyes; I saw his struggle for memory. “Umm . . . Nero’s shirt. You cut it.”

  “That was yesterday,” I soothed. “Do you remember anything more recent?”

  “Water. Cold, and . . . and struggling.” He opened his eyes again, frowning, perplexed. “I drowned.” Another movement, as if he tried to raise his arm, a hushed sound of frustration. “My throat hurts.”

  “You didn’t drown,” I said calmly. “The priest was here to do an exorcism. Do you remember?”

  He struggled against the bonds. “I can’t breathe. It hurts.”

  “I know. Be still or you’ll make it worse—”

  More struggling, another flare of panic. “Catch me! I’m falling—someone catch me!”

  I put my hand on his chest. “You’re not falling. Do you feel my hand? I’m right here. You’re in bed. You’re not falling.”

  “It hurts. It hurts . . . afraid . . .” He twisted, tossing his head on the pillow, hair falling in his eyes, which were full of pain and fear, but he was not here. Not with me, but in some other memory. “So much . . . red.” A garbled, ratcheted breath.

  I hated this. It was not unusual for patients after a seizure to not know where they were, to make no sense. All I could do was comfort and reassure and wait until his mind caught up with him again.

  “Stinks. So cold.” A shudder that racked his whole body. He looked at me, only bewilderment in his eyes, and then I saw awareness sneak back, recognition. “I remember. Falling and drowning, and I was afraid. You saved me.”

  “You were never falling or drowning,” I said. “There was a priest. Father Pietro. He said some words, a few prayers, and you had a seizure. You never left the sala.”

  Frowning confusion. “But I remember. I didn’t want to fall. I knew I was going to drown and I didn’t want to. My throat hurt. There was so much red.” He jerked, trying to escape the restraints. “Take these off. Please. You know how much I hate them. Take them off.”

  “Everyone feels you’d be better—”

  “Get them off me!” He flailed, bucking against the mattress. “Get them off!”

  I leaned over him, both hands on him now, pinning his shoulders. “Samuel, look at me. Samuel. You’re only making it worse.”

  “Get them off!” Stricken with terror, his eyes beginning to roll—and all I could think was that he was going to send himself into another seizure, and I couldn’t stand to see him this way. “You promised! You promised!”

  I felt sick and helpless. “I’ll take them off. But you must be still, can you do that? Be still. Tell me you won’t hurt me.”

  He nodded. “I can’t breathe. My throat hurts.”

  I peeled back the blankets. The straps had been wound tight. Carefully, I wrestled with the buckle of one of them. “I can’t get this without pulling it a bit tighter.”

  His face was white, but he nodded. I pulled the strap, trying to push the prong back through the leather hole. I felt Samuel tense, the rapid rise and fall of his breath.

  “Almost there.” I pushed it through. One strap loosened. Samuel relaxed infinitesimally. “Now another one.”

  There were four, one just below his shoulders, another across his chest, above his hips, and the last at his thighs. It took me a long time to undo them; the priest had been overzealous, especially given that he’d been shackling an unconscious man. I was on the strap that kept his hands well at his sides, and Samuel clenched and unclenched his fists so forcefully I said, “You must be still or I can’t do this.”

  “Your throat,” he said. “It looks worse.”

  I focused on the buckle, which was very tight, the strap so firmly lodged in the buckle frame that I could hardly budge it. “It’s nothing.”

  “There are new bruises there.”

  “They match your own,” I said, managing to ease the leather back.

  “I tried to strangle you again.”

  “Samuel, be still.” I pushed the prong through. Success. Another one loosened.

  But Samuel grabbed the strap as I tried to pull it away. “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Untie me.”

  I sighed in exasperation. “You’ve just been begging me to do so.”

  He flinched; I saw how much it cost him to say it. “Undo the restraints, but tie my hands to the bedposts. Loosely, though, so I can move, but tightly enough that I can’t reach you.”

  “You’re in no condition to hurt me.”

  “Do as I say, dammit.” His voice went hard, an order. “And tell me what happened. Exactly.”

  I explained it all to him as I did as he asked, looping one strap to his wrist and tying it to the bedpost, and then doing the same with the other before I addressed the final strap binding his hips. He sighed when I finished both the explaining and the buckle.

  “I would have sworn I drowned,” he said. “I can still see it. I can feel it. Like a memory. I know—I think I know—that it never happened, but it’s confusing. It feels like it belongs to me.”

  Slowly, I began to understand, to make connections that had eluded me before. “The dreams you had of Nero’s family felt like your own memories too. That’s what you said.”

  He closed his eyes. “Christ, so sad
. I felt . . . so sad. I still can’t quite believe I didn’t see them myself.”

  How strained he looked, shadows highlighting the fine chiseling of his long face. He’d lost weight since I’d been here; there were hollows in him where there had not been before. I studied him—arms stretched, hands dangling from wristbands of the heavy leather leashing him to the bedposts, the darkening bruises mottling his throat. I felt in him a surrender, a painfully acute exhaustion, and I ached so for him that I found myself dangerously near tears. He could not bear much more of this, I knew. I had to find an answer, and quickly, before he gave in completely, before he did go as mad as Nero believed he was, or worse, before he answered the call of the canal.

  I leaned over him, brushing his too-long hair from his face, and he turned his head, easing into my hand. “Don’t stop,” he whispered.

  I cupped his cheek and said quietly, “I won’t.”

  Such a small promise. Only a comforting touch. Something I could do without thought or consequence. But I realized in that moment that I was no longer here for the reasons I’d thought. I was no longer here for the reward of a Grand Tour, or to redeem the mistake I’d made, or to salvage my father’s name.

  This house had done nothing but wish me ill from the moment I’d set foot within it, and yet I recognized its pleas for help. I felt how they colored Samuel’s visions and his dreams like the dye in the canal. I felt them in the watchfulness of crumbling statues. And I knew, as I stroked Samuel’s hair, that to save him I needed to understand the house too. I needed to understand the secrets its walls had seen—Laura Basilio’s secrets—and somehow find a way to make all this misery a dream of the past.

  Chapter 30

  I roused when Nero returned that night. As he came into the room, I heard voices in the courtyard nudging through my half sleep, Madame Basilio calling, “Giulia!” and then a chatter of dialect, followed by the clang of metal against stone.

  Nero smelled of cold. His hair was flecked with icy droplets. “It’s snowing again,” he whispered as he crawled naked into bed beside me, fingers already at the buttons of my nightgown, drawing the muslin from my shoulders, pushing it down to nuzzle my breasts. “Warm me up, cara.”

  Which I did, with enthusiasm, until we were both sweating and languid, and then I fell back into sleep touched with disturbing dreams—wisps of spirit floating through the air, twisting in the currents, walls crumbling at my touch to reveal deeper, darker shadows that stretched so far back into time and terror I could not see the end, a canal pulsing red and churning with algae and flotsam, a woman falling from a balcony, chestnut-colored hair flying upward, white gown tangling about her bare legs, arms flailing.

  I woke in the middle of the night, gasping and frightened. I reached out to touch Nero, certain he was dead, panicked until I felt the steady rise and fall of his chest. I laid my cheek against him to hear his heartbeat, burrowing close; his arm came around me in sleep, and after that, I dreamed of nothing.

  But everything felt different when I woke to gray morning light and snowflakes falling intermittently and slow, melting the moment they hit the stones below. A seemingly benign scene, and one that should have been lovely, but the world felt weighted and somehow off, wrong, as if the snow were just a pretty stage set that hid something dark and dreadful behind the backdrop.

  I glanced away from the window. Nero was still sleeping, on his stomach, the blankets to his waist, his arm flung over his head. The light cast him in grays, dark hair and ashen skin against white sheets, so he looked like a portrait someone had drawn and put upon my bed. Nothing real. I could not quite remember the feel of his touch; last night came to me in bits and pieces, images against lamplight.

  I looked back to the courtyard and saw Giulia hurrying across to the kitchen, carrying something wrapped in paper. This was as good a time as any to speak to Madame Basilio. With Giulia in the kitchen and Nero sleeping, there was no one to stop me. I thought about waking Nero to ask him how his aunt had been, but I didn’t need him to tell me. I would know upon seeing her whether yesterday had affected her for good or ill.

  I closed the bedroom door quietly behind me, and went to check on Samuel. He was asleep as well, the straps jumbled together in a pile beside the bed—I had untied his hands immediately upon his falling asleep. There was truly nothing to stop or delay me, but I found myself wishing there was. That strange uneasiness. I forced myself to ignore it and went downstairs.

  When I knocked at Madame Basilio’s door, there was no answer. I knocked again, harder, and looked over my shoulder, half expecting to see Giulia racing up behind me. The courtyard was abandoned. I rapped again.

  Again, no answer. No sound of footsteps within. I wondered if Madame Basilio was ignoring me deliberately. Carefully, I tested the lever, expecting it to be locked, surprised when it gave way. I pushed the door open—only a few inches, not wanting to offend—and called softly, “Madame Basilio?”

  My voice fell on marble and stopped dead as if the house had absorbed it. I pushed the door open a bit farther. “Madame? Madame Basilio, are you here? It’s Elena Spira. I’d wondered if I could have a word?”

  Still nothing. The silence was profound, as if the floor was abandoned and had always been so. I stepped inside, closing the door softly, giving in to the impulse to not make a sound, careful, quiet footsteps, the hush of my breath. “Madame Basilio?” I tried again as I went down the hall, a whisper really, anything louder felt unnatural. I checked the sala. The room was empty.

  I heard a shuffle, a breath, and I started, spinning around, but there was no one there, and I realized I’d heard only my own movements. It was eerily quiet; the watchfulness from upstairs descended, needling. I knocked quietly at each closed door before peeking inside. The dining room held a massive table but only three chairs clustered at its end. The bedrooms were spartan; the beds simple and unadorned, velvet bed-curtains replaced with looped swaths of cheap yellowed mosquito netting.

  Again, I was aware of the ruined artwork, rotting, mildewed. The floor must have been beautiful once. As I went through the rooms, I realized how much was missing—like upstairs, there were empty spaces on the walls, shallows where frescoes had been removed. I remembered Samuel’s story about Nero’s promise to his father, his aunt’s steady whittling away at it, his resentment and his broken heart.

  But Madame Basilio was nowhere. When I emerged into the courtyard, Zuan was drawing water at the well.

  “Have you seen Madame?” I asked, and he frowned and shook his head.

  I hurried past him, into the kitchen. Giulia was the only one within. She was up to her elbows in some large fish, filleting it, her forearms dotted here and there with silver scales like sequins on a costume. She pursed her mouth, her brow furrowing in disapproval and dislike when I entered.

  “There is no polenta today,” she said defiantly. “Take him some cheese.”

  “Where’s your mistress?” I asked.

  “She is too tired to see you. Yesterday was very trying. She is sleeping.”

  “No, she isn’t. I’ve been looking for her. I can’t find her anywhere.”

  “You were in her rooms? Alone?” Giulia’s dislike turned to startled alarm. She withdrew her hands from the fish, wiping them madly on the apron about her waist, leaving flecks of scales and bits of grayish, translucent flesh. She pulled off the apron and flung it onto the bench. “I will ask Zuan where she is.”

  “I already did. He hasn’t seen her.”

  “She would not have gone somewhere without one of us.”

  Giulia hurried from the kitchen. I followed her to the courtyard, where she stopped before Zuan, her words a flurry. Though I could not understand them, I didn’t mistake the fear in her voice, nor the way Zuan froze, his face going pale beneath his black hair.

  Giulia turned to me. “Does Nerone know she is gone?”

  I said, “Perhaps she went up
there, and I simply missed her. I’ll look.”

  I ran back to the third floor, but I knew the moment I went inside that Madame Basilio was not there. It was as quiet as I’d left it. I reached the bedroom just as Nero stepped out, shrugging into his coat. His smile of greeting died the moment he saw my face.

  “What happened? What’s wrong?”

  “I went to talk to your aunt, and she has disappeared. Giulia and Zuan are worried.”

  “I haven’t seen her since last night,” Nero said.

  “Perhaps she’s with Samuel,” I said, but Samuel was alone, sitting on the edge of his bed, wearing only trousers and rubbing his face tiredly. He looked over his shoulder, frowning when I asked, “Has Madame Basilio been here?”

  “Why would she be?” he asked in a low, dull voice. “She was there yesterday, wasn’t she? The exorcism.” He shuddered, his skin pimpled with cold. “I’ve been remembering. Only bits and pieces.”

  There was no time to worry over that now. My sense that something was wrong grew.

  Nero said, “She’s no doubt gone to see Padre Pietro to arrange another bout of torture for you.”

  “Giulia said she wouldn’t have gone anywhere alone,” I said.

  “Giulia wants to believe she is indispensable. Aunt Valeria will return soon enough, I promise you, and all this worry will be for naught.”

  I could not banish mine.

  “You don’t think that’s where she’s gone, do you?” Samuel asked me in a quiet voice.

  “I can’t help it,” I said. “Something’s not right. Don’t you feel it?”

  “Yes.” Samuel’s gaze slid to the corner of the room.

  “Perhaps . . . don’t you think we should at least go to the church and see if she’s there?”

  Nero frowned. “Why are you so concerned, Elena? You don’t even like her.”

  “But she’s your aunt,” I said. “I know you would care if something happened to her. And I just . . . I can’t explain it.”