The Haunting of Isola Forte di Lorenzo

by Sherlyn Colgrove

  “I see it, and will do,” she said. “Anything else?”

  “Nothing so far, but I’ll let you know if that changes,” Tony said.

  “All right then, be safe and give me a call if you need anything else.”

  “You know I will,” Tony said then clipped his radio back on his belt. “All right,” he said to Saph, “let’s get back to our vigil in the atrium.”

  It was strange to think that not even a half hour ago Saph was bored to tears and wanted to be walking around and investigating, but now sitting in the atrium seemed like the best place to be if she couldn’t get back to the cottage. She only hoped that it stayed quiet in there for the rest of the night.

  2:45am…

  For the last three hours, since Jesse and Nigel arrived, the third floor had been quiet, though not a lot of activity had been reported over the radio from anyone. Still, Jesse remained on guard. It was on this floor that one of the proxies was found and he didn’t want to be too lax in their investigation. Even though Matt and Jorden already searched the building from top to bottom after Jonas confessed his colleagues’ sins, he wasn’t going to take it for granted that they didn’t miss something. Anything they heard or saw would be reviewed from every available angle and in every form before it was accepted as legitimate. Of course, so far that hadn’t been a problem. Not only was there nothing happening, Nigel hadn’t said a word and Jesse found himself counting the hours and minutes until four-o’clock when they would wrap things up for the night.

  Unable to bear the silence any longer Jesse finally asked, “What has you so quiet tonight?”

  “Hmm?” Nigel grunted as if he’d just been awakened from a light sleep.

  “I can’t remember the last time you were this quiet about anything,” Jesse said, “and that’s not a complaint,” he quickly added when he realized that he’d just implied that Nigel tended to talk too much; which he did but it never bothered him any. “But you’ve been uncharacteristically quiet since your encounter at the bell tower. I was just wondering if something was on your mind.”

  “Nope. Nothing at all,” Nigel said briefly and in a quieted tone.

  Jesse grew even more confused. “Are you sure that-”

  Jesse’s words cut off abruptly when he thought that he heard whispering or mumbling of some kind from behind him near the nurses’ station.

  “Is something wrong?” Nigel asked.

  “I thought I heard something behind me,” he said then held his recorder out. “Is someone here with us?”

  “I doubt it,” Nigel scoffed.

  Nigel’s interjection was so unexpected and out of character that Jesse wasn’t sure that he’d heard him right. “What did you say?” Jesse questioned.

  “Are you talking to me or your ghost?” Nigel questioned in a snide tone.

  Jesse couldn’t believe Nigel’s behavior. “What’s your problem?” he questioned. “You’ve been acting weird ever since the bell tower. Isis said that you’ve been shutting her out.”

  “Isis is just as crazy as the rest of you. There are no real ghosts here or anywhere else. It’s all a lie,” he argued. “You all sit around with your cameras and your recorders and wait for someone who died years ago to answer you.”

  Jesse could hear Nigel walking around by the sound of debris crunching beneath his feet. He flashed his handheld around to try to get a look at his friend’s face, but it remained hidden behind his long hair. But then Jesse didn’t need to see his friend’s face to know that something was wrong. It was in his tone, which seemed somehow darker than usual, and in the way he moved; as though he felt nothing but anger and disdain for everything and everyone around him.

  “Look,” Jesse said calmly, hoping that he could reach his friend, who for some reason was very angry at the world at the moment. “I know that you’ve wanted to experience something paranormal first hand, and the way things are going here I think that you will, but you have to be patient.”

  Nigel laughed from somewhere behind Jesse. “You don’t understand. There is nothing here. There is nothing anywhere,” he grunted.

  Again Jesse thought he heard the whispering and mumbling, but this time it was off to the side near the southeast corner of the room. “There it is again,” he said.

  Nigel laughed sharply. “It’s probably just another one of Jonas’s proxies.”

  “Is that what this is about?” Jesse questioned. “What Jonas’s partners did?”

  “They’re all liars,” Nigel said.

  “Not Matt and Jorden,” Jesse defended. “They may not have told us everything when it was happening, but they never lied to us, nor would they.”

  Again Nigel laughed. “You really are too easy,” he sneered. “You’d believe anything they told you.”

  And he would. It wasn’t that he was naïve, but he knew deep down that no matter what may have happened in the last couple of days, he could trust Matt and Jorden with his life.

  “Whatever,” Jesse muttered then stood and started walking around, eventually ending up in the corner of the room where he’d heard the whispering and the mumbling, and he stood there.

  Nigel didn’t speak to him the rest of the night and for that Jesse was thankful. He never thought he would ever admit such a thing, but he was suddenly glad that Nigel didn’t feel compelled to rattle off everything that came to mind. If he didn’t speak another word the rest of the night it would be fine with him, and in the morning, Jesse would make sure that he told Matt not to team the two of them up for the rest of the investigation.

  3:30 am…

  “It seems kind of silly to me to have a trauma department on an island that didn’t really serve the public but rather the mental, plague and tuberculosis patients confined here,” Isis pointed out.

  “You forget that there was a village on this island that we have yet to check out and from what I understand was still, at least for a while, somewhat populated when the hospital was here. Many of the villagers relied on this hospital for their health,” Matt explained briefly.

  Isis understood, she guessed, and to be honest the trauma department wasn’t that large, just a few rooms at the end of the hall. The rest of the first floor was dedicated to a surprisingly extensive wing of labs along with offices, a doctor’s lounge, a nurse’s lounge and the cafeteria, along with smaller, miscellaneous rooms such as closets, restrooms and storerooms.

  With Syd and Ana investigating the west wing where the offices were located along with the wing of labs and the crematorium outside, Matt and Isis were also taxed with investigating the second floor as well. Unlike the trauma ward and the lounges, the second floor looked promising. In its day it housed both plague victims and TB patients, and with tragic and painful deaths like those, there were bound to be some restless spirits hanging around. Still, when they stepped out onto the second floor landing, Isis felt nothing out of the ordinary; just empty space.

  The lack of energy, however, did not keep either Matt or Isis from doing their jobs. And with so little going on, Isis thought it might be the perfect time to talk to Matt. “So what’s going on between you and Jorden?” she asked innocently enough.

  “Huh?” Matt grunted more than questioned.

  “The two of you seemed rather close at the docks the other night and then when we stepped out on the porch earlier tonight it seemed as though we were interrupting something,” Isis explained. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” Matt grumbled.

  Isis didn’t believe him for a moment. For years Matt and Jorden had been dancing around each other; neither one of them with enough courage to make a move, and now that they have, Matt was shut down. “What happened?” she pressed.

  Matt exhaled sharply to indicate his irritation and if she could have seen his face she knew that it would have been red with frustration. “I’m not discussing this in the middle of an investigation, and that is if I were so inclined to discuss it at all.”

  Isis knew then that the conversation was over and if
she wanted any information she would have to get it out of Jorden.

  “What about you and Nigel?” Matt asked out of the blue.

  Taken somewhat off guard Isis stopped and looked at the shadow Matt made in the glow of his IR handheld display. “What?”

  “Jorden told me that you didn’t make it to bed last night, and I know that you weren’t downstairs or I would have seen you. Then there’s the way the two of you have been looking at each other the last couple of days. One plus one…”

  Isis started following Matt again. “I’ll tell you what’s going on between Nigel and me when you tell me what’s going on between you and Jorden. Until then, you can mind your own business.”

  It wasn’t that Isis was opposed to talking about the turn her relationship took with Nigel, but after Matt had been so snarky towards her when she tried to talk to him about Jorden, she wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of getting any information from her. Of course there was also the fact that she didn’t know where, if anywhere, her relationship was going with Nigel. For Matt and Jorden she could see a real future there, assuming they got off their asses and admitted that they wanted each other. She’d already seen a future for them, though it was cloudy and uncertain beyond their investigation of the island, but if they got through this investigation unscathed she had no doubt that they would end up married. But for her and Nigel, things were different. She had no idea if they had a future, or even if she wanted one beyond the next few months or so.

  Matt stopped ahead of her and she ran into his warm, strong back.

  “Sorry,” he whispered. “I thought I heard something up ahead.”

  “What?” she asked, keeping her tone low but just above a whisper.

  Matt hesitated a moment. “I don’t know. A voice maybe.”

  Isis looked down at her own thermal camera and couldn’t see anything beyond the nondescript walls, ceiling and debris in the hall. “Well if there’s someone down there, they’re not in the hall. They’d have to be in one of the rooms.”

  “Then let’s go take a look, shall we?”

  Matt led them slowly and cautiously through the hall, checking every room they passed while holding out both cameras, an EMF reader and digital recorder. They wanted to miss nothing.

  “Do you know whereabouts you heard the voice?” Isis questioned in a continued whisper.

  “No,” Matt said quickly.

  “Is there someone here with us?” Isis asked out loud. “Either human or otherwise?” she added for good measure, just in case it was one of the other teams, but no one answered. “This building is condemned and you shouldn’t be here whoever you are. You need to leave,” she continued. “If you are a disembodied soul, let us know and we’ll do what we can to help you crossover.”

  There were no replies either vocal or otherwise.

  “Maybe I was hearing things,” Matt said when they got halfway down the hall with nothing to explain what he thought he’d heard.

  “When was the last time you heard something that wasn’t there?” Isis questioned, already knowing that the answer was never. “Besides, we’re not through the hall yet.”

  No sooner than the words were out of her mouth they both heard a voice, though it was behind them.

  “Tell me that you heard that,” Matt whispered.

  “Yeah,” Isis confirmed, also in a whisper.

  “Two rooms back on the left,” Matt said and headed back the way they’d already come. Though when they reached the room where they were certain the voice had come from, there was nothing. In fact, it was probably the cleanest room in the hospital; with no debris of any kind. “Looks like the caretaker made it up here after all,” he pointed out. “There’s no way that this room is cleaner than the rest of the hospital without help.”

  “But why just this room?” Isis questioned. “Why not a set of rooms or the entire floor? Or why any room in the first place? It isn’t as though it needs to be kept clean for guests or for sanitary purposes.”

  Matt spoke up after a brief pause. “Maybe a ghost of one of the housekeeping staff is still hanging around,” he commented lightly.

  Isis felt herself smile but it didn’t last. The situation was strange and it made her uncomfortable, though she wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t as though the thoughts of a ghost of any kind ever gave her the willies, but this room bothered her. “Mind if we leave?” she asked evenly.

  “Is something wrong?” Matt asked; concern in his tone.

  “Not yet, but I have a bad feeling about this room and I don’t want either one of us to stay any longer than we have to,” she briefly explained.

  “What kind of feeling?” Matt asked as he panned his camera around.

  Isis rolled her eyes and grabbed his arm. “We can discuss this in the hall,” she said then gave his arm a tug.

  Matt didn’t fight her, but instead followed her out into the hall where the feeling of dread lifted, albeit only slightly. “Well?” he questioned.

  “I can’t explain the feeling. It wasn’t the same as the bell tower, nothing evil.” She thought for a moment when it hit her exactly what she had felt. “It was despair. Strong despair and loss. The sadness was overwhelming, the kind that makes you want to grab onto the one you love and hold them as tight as you can without ever letting go.”

  Matt was quiet for a moment. “Anything else?” he finally asked.

  “If you’re asking if I felt the presence of anything I can’t say for certain. Just the strong emotions,” she said then thought a moment. “You might think about having Jorden come up here tomorrow night to see what she can pick up, if anything.”

  She heard a sharp exhale from Matt. “You don’t honestly think she’s…sensitive…like you,” he stated mockingly. “I’ll admit that she’s been a bit off throughout this trip, but I wouldn’t call her psychic.”

  “Neither would I. I might just call her a medium and a borderline empath though.”

  “She’s never said anything-”

  Isis was suddenly left with the feeling that she shouldn’t have said anything, especially knowing Matt the way she did. It wasn’t that she thought he didn’t believe in extra sensory abilities on some level, but rather thought that he was afraid of how to deal with them. It was bad enough that Isis had the gift but it would likely bother him on a much deeper level if he thought that Jorden could read his mind or emotions. “I don’t think she knows, and if she suspects she’s trying hard to convince herself otherwise,” Isis said evenly. “And if I’m right and she is at the very least…sensitive, I don’t think that it’s anything you need to worry about. At best I think that she’s only sensitive to the energy of the spiritual world. I doubt that she could read your mind.”

  She heard Matt suck in a breath.

  “No I didn’t read your mind, you know that I can’t, but it doesn’t take a psychic to read your thoughts to know that you are freaked out at the idea of being in love with a woman who knows it before you do.”

  “I’m not-”

  “In love with Jorden?” she cut off before he could get his tirade out. “Give me a break. You might as well admit it and stop making the rest of us miserable while you try to figure out how to get your head out of your ass.”

  Matt was quiet and for a moment Isis thought that she might have gone a bit too far, but instead of anger all she felt from him was confusion.

  “Matt,” she said in the same sisterly tone she used whenever she wanted him to listen to her and take what she said to heart, “this will work out as long as you don’t try to run from it.”

  “I’m not the one running,” he said finally. “Jorden-”

  His words abruptly cut off when they heard a scuffing of feet against the floor in the empty room behind them.

  Immediately Matt panned the camera back to the room and led them back inside where they found nothing.

  “You did hear it…right?” he asked as he slowly moved the camera around the room.

  Isis panned the thermal ar
ound the room as well and kept a close eye on the screen, though nothing really stuck out. “Yes,” she said finally.

  A sudden, cold blur moved across Isis’s screen. “Matt!” she addressed in an urgent whisper. “Look at this!”

  Matt leaned closer to her and looked at the screen. “What is it?” he asked, also in a whisper.

  “I don’t know. Turn the IR on it,” she said, and he did. “Do you see anything?”

  Matt was silent for a moment and she thought for a moment that he hadn’t heard her, but he finally spoke up. “There,” he said. “Near the busted window.”

  Isis saw what he was looking at and could only describe it as a mist of some sort.

  “It’s almost identical to what we saw in the refectory,” he said quietly.

  A sudden scream filled the room followed by a gust of the wind that sent both Isis and Matt back into the hall, and then the mist disappeared out the boarded up window.

  “What in the hell was that?” Isis blurted once she regained her footing.

  “We’ll have to take a look at it in the morning,” Matt said after a brief pause. “In the meantime let’s finish the sweep of this floor before it gets too late.”

  Isis knew what that meant; it meant shut the mouth, no more irrelevant talk and do their jobs. But this wasn’t over. Isis was going to get through to Matt if it killed her.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Caretaker’s Cottage – 7:45 am…

  Jorden couldn’t sleep but for a couple of hours and instead of laying down in futility, she decided to get some work done. The night before seemed to be pretty good as far as personal experiences were concerned and she hoped that the teams got something on video and/or audio.

  She sat alone on the sofa with her headphones on while she listened to each digital recorder submitted for the evening. She had started with the fourth floor, simply because Tony was the only one the night before to contact her and let her know that there was something peculiar going on. For the first few hours all she heard was the mundane conversation between Tony and Saph and she could understand Saph’s attitude. Of course activity picked up, as Jorden suspected it would, and she logged each event into her notebook for further analysis. What bothered her was just after the activity started – when they entered the shock therapy ward – the feedback from the recording was almost unbearable. It didn’t last long, however, because the recorder died shortly after the EVP session started.