by Gigi Pandian
“Fascinating,” I mumbled.
Mahilan set down his utensils and shook my shoulders. “We’re on vacation, JJ. Cheer up. I know it’s a working vacation for you, but still.”
“Let me show you how to eat pasta like a European,” Ava said, placing her hands on Mahilan’s. “An Italian would never twirl like that.”
Neither of us joined her forced laugh.
“Your risotto is getting cold,” Mahilan said.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Are you still upset about—” Ava began.
“Lazzaro Allegri had another sketchbook,” I cut in with a sharp look at her.
She mouthed sorry to me. I should never have opened up to her about Lane. But to be generous to my maybe-future sister-in-law, she didn’t know why it was such a big deal for me to keep it a secret.
“I’m in a funk,” I said, “because I learned that Brunella and Enzo Allegri lent Lilith four sketchbooks, not three.”
“I thought you said she bought them,” my brother said.
“There’s that too.” I pushed my risotto aside and went over my meeting with the Allegris.
“Most of the time,” Mahilan said, “a missing item is simply a misplaced item. I can’t tell you the number of times a lawyer has mislabeled a box. Depositions all look alike. She probably misplaced it and found it when cleaning up. You said her house was crammed full of books.”
“You’re forgetting she was killed over this research,” I said.
“You think you know better than the police?”
I glared at my brother.
“Why don’t we order dessert?” Ava suggested.
“The police,” I said, “don’t know as much as I do.”
“What do you know, JJ?” The tenor was light, but it held a hint of the patronizing tone I remembered from when he used to lecture me before I found direction in my life. “I gave you the benefit of the doubt before we left, but nothing has happened here in Italy.”
“I think your sister might be on to something,” Ava said.
“You do?” Mahilan and I said at the same time.
“I don’t know about the poor woman who was killed,” Ava said, “but the missing paintings from Lazzaro Allegri make sense. All three of us are examples of the small unrecorded cross-pollinations that go on across the world. Lazzaro brought different cultural art forms together almost five hundred years ago. His work is out there. Somewhere. Being here in this place, with all this history, can’t you feel it?”
Mahilan gave up. After espressos, he drove us to the Park of Monsters.
“I can see why this place is called the Sacred Wood,” Ava said as we stepped through the archway that led to the sphinxes. “I should take Carey here over his summer vacation.”
“This place is creepy,” Mahilan said, turning up his collar as he eyed a two-faced statue that towered over him. “A statue of a giant ripping a man in half, a stone elephant strangling a man to death, the mouth of Hell. What kind of man built this place?”
“Vicino Orsini,” I said. “A man nobody agrees about.” Was he a madman or an artistic genius? I imagined art historians asked themselves that question about many artists.
I spotted a man in a green shirt and asked him if he knew Francesco. He didn’t speak English, but recognized the name Francesco, and pointed me to a gray-haired man in a green shirt a ways down the path. It was the comedian from the day before. Now I understood what Enzo meant about him being a character.
I pulled Ava and Mahilan away from the leaning tower. Mahilan was trying to take her picture, but Ava was blushing and refusing. We approached Francesco. He was a mirror opposite of seventeen-year-old Niccolò. Once-black hair had turned almost completely white, he wasn’t much taller than I was, and where the teenager had radiated open-ended friendliness, Francesco wore a guarded expression. I guessed Francesco to be in his seventies. We introduced ourselves and he shook our hands in turn, with a surprisingly firm grip from such weathered hands. As he listened to us speak, his cautious face brightened.
“You are talent scouts from America?” He spoke English with a thicker accent than Enzo and Brunella’s. “You have heard of my performances?”
“Performances?” Ava asked.
“Oh.” His face fell. “Not talent scouts.”
“We heard you were the man to speak to if we wanted to learn the true history of this place,” I said.
His face brightened again. “I have a break coming up in thirty minutes. You wish to meet me inside the cafeteria?”
We spent the next twenty minutes wandering from one stone creature to the next. Ava’s favorite was the jolly dragon. Mahilan liked the Pegasus, perhaps the only statue in the whole park that couldn’t have been described as creepy even by a child.
I climbed onto the edge of the fountain.
“What are you doing?” Mahilan hissed.
“Keep a lookout for me.”
“Keep a lookout?”
“For anyone in a green shirt. I didn’t look at this as carefully before as I should have.”
Ava hopped up onto the wide edge next to me, but didn’t stop there. She stepped onto the mossy floor of the empty fountain.
“I don’t see anything,” I said, joining her.
“Neither do I,” Ava said. “I wonder if the moss is thick enough to hide anything beneath it.”
“I thought of that, but this used to be a functioning fountain. Wouldn’t it be a bad idea to have an art studio beneath running water?”
Mahilan nearly yanked my shoulder out of its socket as he pulled us from the fountain onto the path. It was time to make our way to the cafeteria anyway, and I hadn’t seen anything that looked like it could lead to a hidden grotto. I didn’t protest as Mahilan marched us to the cafeteria.
“How can you eat?” Ava asked.
“What?” Mahilan said. “This eggplant parmesan looks great.”
“We had a three-course lunch two hours ago.”
“We’re on vacation.”
“What do you think he was talking about when he mentioned his performances?” Ava asked.
“I saw him joking with some kids yesterday,” I explained. “I think he’d like the Park of Monsters to be more like an interactive theme park, like how amusement parks at home have actors jump out and scare people around Halloween.”
“This is certainly the place for it,” Mahilan said.
“Here’s Francesco.” I waved him over to the corner of the cafeteria where we sat underneath a giant black and white poster showing the Park of Monsters in the 1950s. In the photograph, sheep grazed around the stone monstrosities.
“Hello, my friends,” Francesco said with a warm grin.
“Can we get you anything?” Ava asked.
“Grazie mille, signora. You are too kind. But I have only venti minutes. What can I tell you?”
“My sister is a historian,” Mahilan said. “We’re here on vacation, but she can’t resist learning the local history.”
I wasn’t sure if Mahilan was purposefully being misleading because he was secretly worried that I was right about the danger. Or perhaps not showing his hand was simply second nature for him after practicing law for several years.
“There is much history in these parts. You have come to the right man.”
“Why won’t anyone tell us why nobody goes into this section of the woods?” I asked, showing him my crumpled map.
“Has nobody told you?”
“You mean you know? And you’ll tell us?”
He shook his head and chuckled. “If you really want to know, I will tell you. But…You must be certain you wish to hear it.”
Mahilan rolled his eyes, but he was sitting next to Francesco and outside his field of view.
“We do,” Ava said, giving Francesco a winning smile.
“It is the ghost,” he said. “And if I tell you the story, the ghost will know. Then you, too, will hear her mournful wail.”
Chapter 24
“You don’t seriously believe—” Mahilan began.
“We’d love to hear the story,” Ava said, smiling coyly. Was she flirting with the elderly actor?
Francesco turned from us and looked out the window to the lush greenery covering the hills and canyons that surrounded us. The vegetation was so thick that it was impossible to know what lay beneath the treetops.
“The history of my province of Viterbo is filled with tragedies. The Italians truly savor life because of our collective memories of the pain that came before us. Peasants died of starvation in spite of the rich land, wars called our men from their families, families fought for power and land.”
Mahilan stirred restlessly. He looked as if he wanted to speed Francesco along, when our elderly companion whirled around from his contemplative view and met each of our eyes in turn.
“There is perhaps no greater tragedy than not knowing what happened to a loved one. This is why there is such power behind our ghost.”
In spite of myself, my skin prickled.
“The story begins with noblewoman Marguerite Allegri.”
“Allegri?”
“Sì. I do not know her maiden name. She married a son of the Allegri family who owned much of this region.”
“Lazzaro?” I asked.
“No, signora. Lazzaro Allegri was a man of ill repute who never married. This would have been one of his many cousins. Marguerite was a woman who loved her husband as passionately as only an Italian can do. Marguerite begged her husband not to go to war. We don’t know if she had a vision of the future, or whether she simply loved Antonio too much to part with him. Especially under such dangerous circumstances. The danger was known, you understand. Vicino Orsini was held captive during the French-Spanish Wars for three years, before a ransom was negotiated to bring him home.”
Francesco paused, shaking with emotion. “Marguerite pleaded with her husband not to go—and she was right. For seven years, she waited for her beloved Antonio to return. She received no word from him, yet she waited faithfully. She was a beautiful woman, with lush lips no man could resist, and seductive black hair that flowed beyond her full hips.” Francesco pantomimed the shape of a voluptuous woman as he spoke. “She had a strong personality uncommon for many women of that time, and would not consider any of her multiple suitors. She waited. And she waited. Her silky hair turned brittle and gray. Her smooth skin shriveled. And her engaging manner dried up and blew away as if dust in the wind.”
His lip quivered. “Excuse me. I must have some water.”
Ava handed him her bottled water.
“Grazie.” He drank the water, gripping the bottle with a shaking hand. “Marguerite spent her fortune sending men to search for her husband. It was a rainy night almost seven years to the day that Antonio had departed when Marguerite received news of him. The messenger, soaked to the bone by the heavy rain, brought the remains of her beloved. That night, Marguerite’s mournful wail was heard across the land. Nearly a skeleton herself after years of waiting for word of her husband, she took to her bed and died of pneumonia—or was it grief?—a few weeks later.”
Heartache overcame me. Both for Marguerite and for myself. I didn’t know what had become of Lane Peters. Would I ever learn what had happened to him? I groaned inwardly. I was falling prey to Francesco’s theatrics. My thoughts weren’t usually so melodramatic.
“The poor woman,” Ava whispered. She held Mahilan’s hand tightly in her own.
Francesco squinted at her. I believed he’d forgotten we were there. “The villagers learned of her death in a most unusual way. She had sent the servants away and refused to see anyone. Yet night after night, as the rains continued, the villagers heard her woeful cries. A small group went to her home to check on her.”
“She was there alone?” Mahilan asked.
“Yes and no,” Francesco said. “They found her body there, but she had been dead for many weeks.”
I shivered.
“Then who—” Ava began.
Francesco’s eyes locked on mine. “Signora Jaya understands what I’m saying.”
“The ghost,” I said. “The wail the villagers heard was believed to be her ghost.”
“Not ‘believed to be,’” Francesco said. “It was the ghost.”
I unfolded the map I’d been given. “Francesco, is this where the ghost supposedly roams?”
Francesco squinted at the map and nodded.
My brother snatched it from my hands. “You have a ghost map, Jaya? Where did you get a ghost map?”
“Until a minute ago, I didn’t know what I had. All I knew was that nobody wanted to talk about why I shouldn’t go running there.”
“Yes,” Francesco said. “Is bad luck.”
“What’s a ghost going to do to her?” Mahilan asked.
Francesco balked. “You care for your sister, yes? Then you must not let her go there.”
“I’m curious,” Ava said. “Do people emerge from that section of the woods with white hair or something?”
“It is much worse, signora. The ghost has killed before.”
“You’re kidding,” I said. “Right? You’re a comedian. I saw you joking with the kids at the park.”
“Sì, but I am not joking now. I tell you I am an actor. Many years ago, when I was a young man, a film crew came to film a movie inside the Park of Monsters. This was the 1960s, not long after the forest was cleared away for the park to reopen after centuries. There was still much to be discovered.”
“Let me guess,” my brother said. “A horror movie.”
“You make fun,” Francesco said. “But you should not. Yes, it was a horror movie. There was not much budget. American actors were the stars, but local men like me played small parts.”
“Can we find it?” Ava asked. “What was it called?”
“Sadly, the film was never completed.”
Mahilan shook his head. “They didn’t get the proper permission from the owners of the park? Such a common problem. People never think to consult a lawyer until it’s too late to—”
“This was not the problem,” Francesco said. “The actor playing the lead in the film heard the ghost one night when it was raining. As a foreigner, he was intrigued. He went out looking for her.”
“Where does one look for a ghost?” I asked.
“Between Orsini land and Allegri land. This same area on your map. Neither of the families wishes to claim it. Not with the ghost.”
Mahilan rolled his eyes.
“He found her,” Francesco said.
We all gasped. Even my brother.
“When the actor returned from the woods, he was bloodied. He did not tell us what had happened, but from that moment on, we could tell he was possessed. He began acting secretively and missing his scheduled shoots. A few days later, he could no longer contain the ghost. He began to have fits. His spasms became so great that he was unable to breathe. When he died in front of us, he had a frozen look of fear on his face unlike anything I have ever seen. It is something I will never forget.”
Francesco wrapped his arms around his chest. He looked like he might be about to have a fit himself.
“That poor man,” Ava whispered.
Francesco shook himself. “It was many years ago. But yes, it affected many of us. This is when the Castello del Fantasma winery closed. Even though it is not on the land where the ghost can be heard, nobody wished to offend the ghost who kills.”
“That’s why nobody will buy the ruins,” I said.
Francesco chuckled. “The brave men who opened the bar do not pay rent. It means it is the cheapest place to buy caffè in the morning and vino in the evening.”
“W
hy exactly does a ghost want to kill people?” Mahilan asked. He’d recovered from his captivation of a minute before, and a smirk now showed on his face.
“She is angry. Confused. She felt, more than anything, that she was betrayed. Antonio promised to return to her, yet he did not. He was killed by foreigners in a foreign land.” Francesco’s tortured eyes looked past us into a point on the horizon that I could have sworn was in another century.
We all followed his gaze in silence. He was one hell of a good actor. When he spoke of betrayal, I felt as if a knife was twisting in my own gut. Had Lane betrayed me? Was I doomed to go on with life not knowing what happened to him?
“It’s a great story,” I said, breaking the spell. “And you’re a superb storyteller, Francesco. You tell it as if you were there. Not only in the 1960s, I mean, but in the 16th century when the ghost story came to be. Did you find this information in local archives?”
“There are no archives that I know of, signora.”
“Then how—”
“I may not have been completely truthful with you, I must admit. I know so many details because I was there. It is the reason I wish to remain here in these gardens. You see, I am the reincarnation of Pier Francesco ‘Vicino’ Orsini.”
Chapter 25
“You always find the crazy ones, Jaya,” Mahilan said. It was an hour later and we were back at the villa, sitting on our suite’s balcony. Mahilan poured us each a glass of a sweet wine made from Aleatico grapes, a necessary form of sustenance after our talk with Francesco.
“I thought he was a darling man,” Ava said.
“I would have too,” Mahilan said, “if his stories hadn’t been so creepy.” He gave her a kiss on the top of her head and handed her the glass of wine.
“To eccentric history buffs,” I said, raising my glass, and clinking it with theirs. “It doesn’t matter if he’s crazy, you know. His belief that he’s the famous Orsini who built the Park of Monsters is why he studied the local history that everyone else had forgotten. And now we’re one step closer to finding Lazzaro’s studio.”