A Beast in Venice: (Literary Horror set in Venice)

by Michael E. Henderson

  He didn’t hear the men coming up behind him, but he felt them as they shoved him into the pavement. He rolled over. One of them, a big dopey fuck, held him down with an over-sized shoe on his chest. The one not holding him down bent over and began talking inches from his face, spewing putrid cigarette and fishy sardine steam in a gravelly voice and an unpleasant tone, the meaning of which was masked by the gibberish-laden tongue of the Venetians. He didn’t understand a word. Sardine Breath stood erect and motioned to Bigfoot to get going. Bigfoot pushed down hard on Brigham’s ribs with his large hind leg as a last ‘fuck you,’ then the two of them disappeared into the mist.

  Shaken, Brigham got up and brushed himself off. No apparent injuries. Why would anyone want to push him around? He walked toward his studio. Mistaken identity? Maybe Mafia thugs got wind of his conversation with Alberto about trying to get into a gallery? No way to know. He didn’t understand what they had said to him.

  Instead of going to the studio, he changed course and headed home.

  IN SPITE OF BEING QUITE RATTLED, Brigham prepared himself to look as though nothing had happened; he wanted to deal with this in his own way, whatever that was. He didn’t want to worry Rose or get her involved. But the woman was too perceptive.

  Rose sat on the sofa reading. Without looking up she asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” he said, trying to look and sound nonchalant. But there was a waver in his voice, his mouth tight and straight, and he didn’t meet her eyes but stared ahead, unfocused. “Why?”

  She removed her glasses. “You look upset.”

  “No, I’m good.” He continued to avoid eye contact.

  “Come here, let me look at you.” She put her book down and pulled back the hair on his forehead. “You’ve banged your head. What happened? How much have you had to drink?”

  It occurred to him to object to being asked two questions at once, but he wasn’t sure the situation called for humor, so he simply said, “Nothing.”

  She placed her glasses on top of her book on the coffee table. “You went out at night and had nothing to drink?”

  He shrugged. “Didn’t get around to it.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You had better tell me what happened.”

  “You won’t believe me.”

  “Give it a shot.”

  Rose was smarter than he was, and strong, though he reckoned he could take her in a fair fight. She knew bullshit when she heard it. There was no way out for him now. But why was he worried? He hadn’t done anything wrong and hadn’t had anything to drink. He didn’t want her to worry, that’s all. He had no choice but to tell her.

  “You were attacked? Oh my God! Who was it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Here, sit down,” Rose said, escorting Brigham to the sofa. “Maybe you should go to the hospital.”

  “No, I’m all right. I’ll sit down in a minute. I want a martini.”

  She followed him into the kitchen. “Did you call the police?”

  “Where’s my shaker?”

  “Right there on the counter in front of you.”

  “Ah.” He opened the freezer. “We’re almost out of ice.”

  “I don’t use ice.”

  “I don’t have enough to chill the glass.”

  “Rough it.”

  He shook the martini.

  She put the kettle on. “I think you should file a police report.”

  “Police report? You know I don’t like the police.”

  “You were assaulted. You’ve got to report it.”

  “I think it was a mistake. Why would anyone want to push me around?” He poured the drink into a martini glass.

  She put a teabag into a cup. “Let’s think about it. For one thing, you’re an outsider trying to get into a gallery.”

  “Yeah, but that doesn’t warrant getting beat up.”

  “Maybe not where you come from, but here they may take exception to it. It’s called ‘protectionism.’”

  He skewered three olives and put them into the drink. “Seems like a rather radical response to talking to a gallery owner and taking him to lunch.”

  “Just brainstorming,” she said.

  It occurred to Brigham that it might have something to do with the man going through the wall, but it was better to continue to keep that quiet, for now, at least. “I’m going to ask around.”

  “You? Please, call the police.”

  “No reason to trouble them with this. They have enough to do making sure café tables don’t go too far into the campo.”

  VII

  Mauro called Brigham and told him to meet him at the herbalist in Campo Santa Margherita. The old woman who ran the shop would know whether there was a connection between the dead bodies and the man going through the wall.

  Wide shelves filled with ancient ceramic jars lined the walls of the shop, unchanged for two hundred years. Bottles containing dried herbs and strange liquids covered tables and sat in bunches here and there on the floor. Stacks of books and papers as tall as a man held up the corners. Afternoon light sliced through the hazy air.

  The proprietor could have been a witch at any Halloween party, lacking only a hat and a broom. She walked stooped over with a cane, her spindly legs struggling to hold her up and move her forward. She closed the shop so they would be alone. Brigham let Mauro do the talking.

  She gazed at them with small, red eyes. “ What can I do for you?”

  “The bodies in the canals,” Mauro said. “Have you heard about them?”

  “Sì. Horrible. I’ve never seen anything like it in Venice. Must be foreigners. Calabrese or Siciliani.”

  Brigham smiled. She referred to other Italians as foreigners, which to her they were.

  “There’s something else,” Mauro said. “My friend here saw a man walk through a wall.”

  The woman crossed herself while looking at Brigham. “Oh Dio. They’re back. This has been foretold. God help us.”

  “They?” Mauro asked.

  “In Venice they’re known as Nachzehrer, or ‘shroud eaters.’”

  “Right, that’s what I was telling you,” Mauro said to Brigham. “The skeleton with a brick in its mouth.”

  Brigham nodded. He was now in the world of superstition and wives’ tales, and this old woman wasn’t likely to be a font of enlightenment and reason.

  “You know about the shroud eaters?” the woman asked.

  “Yes,” Mauro said.

  “You said they have returned,” Brigham said. “Returned from where?”

  The woman narrowed her eyes and spoke in a mysterious whisper. “Nobody knows. They have not been here since the plague of 1630.”

  “So,” Brigham said, “because of the bodies and the man going through a wall, you think these creatures have returned?”

  The woman raised a crooked finger. “That’s not all. The condition of the bodies. The fact that they had been crucified. The shroud eater would often store victims by nailing them to wooden beams, take their blood for a period of time, and then consume their flesh.”

  Brigham didn’t believe any of it, but Mauro was nodding, saying, “Oh, I knew it! I knew it!”

  “Good Lord,” Brigham said.

  “We must do something. What can we do? Can they be killed? Where are they hiding?”

  The old lady squinted as though to tell a great secret. “Yes,” she said in an excited whisper, “I think they can be destroyed. Give me a day or so.”

  “WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH YOU?” Brigham asked.

  “What do you mean?” Mauro said.

  They passed a little girl of about three, dressed as a bear in a pink tutu, throwing confetti while a little dog ran around her barking.

  “You know, after you told me about the shroud eaters, I did some research. It all can be explained. They dug up bodies in the early stages of decomposition with blood at the mouth, their hair and nails had grown, and the shroud at the mouth appeared to have been eaten away.”

&nbs
p; “How do you explain them eating the shroud?”

  “It was bacteria. For the love of Christ, it’s all superstition and can be scientifically explained.”

  A firecracker banged behind them.

  “No, Brig. They’re real,” Mauro said in a tone of near desperation.

  “You can’t be serious. What if she gives us some kind of magic potion, such as rat poison, and we end up killing the wrong guy, or worse, ourselves? You don’t really believe all that shit, do you?”

  “Of course, and you should too.”

  “I think the hair gel has soaked into your brain. The woman is as wacky as they come, and so are you for believing it.”

  “No, she’s right. And we have to try to stop them.”

  “Why we? The only thing worse than there being a homicidal nut on the loose in Venice is if this nut were supernatural. Either way, we’re out of our league. Guys like this are why God invented cops and the military. As with all killers amok, we keep our heads down and let the cops do their job.”

  Mauro stopped and looked at Brigham. “I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “My family has been in Venice for nearly a thousand years. Many of them died in the plagues. One of my ancestors was actually killed by a shroud eater that had turned into a vampire.”

  Brigham sighed. “Fine. Maybe I can see why you’d take a personal interest in the subject, but you still can’t believe in such things, can you?”

  “Yes, I do. And so will you. You’ll come around. Let me buy you a beer. You’ll change your mind.”

  The brass taps at the beer tent gleamed like golden fountains of knowledge.

  “There you go arguing with reason and logic. Beer might work.”

  “Two,” Mauro said to the girl pouring beer.

  VIII

  Brigham stood near the stove, wearing a chef’s hat, holding a baton in one hand and a glass of red wine in the other, conducting Pavarotti singing La donna è mobile from Rigoletto, which blasted forth from the stereo.

  Rose laughed. “You’ve made quite the little mess. And you should see yourself.”

  “You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs,” he said, using the same stupid phrase he always used when she said what she always said when he cooked. “And you don’t see any mirrors in here, do you?”

  “Why can’t you clean as you go?” she asked, surveying the damage.

  “I do. You’d have to come in here with a bulldozer if I didn’t.”

  Rose peered into a huge sauté pan sizzling on the stove. “What’s cooking?”

  “Penne with tomato sauce and Italian sausage.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “You know, you can’t buy Italian sausage in this town. They have sausage and they have fennel seed, but they don’t mix the two. I gotta do it.”

  She put her arms around his waist from behind. “And you do a fine job.”

  “Don’t fool with the chef. I still have to make the salad.”

  He shuffled toward the sink with her clinging to him.

  “What kind of salad?”

  “Greek. Cucumber, red onion, cherry tomatoes, black olives, and feta cheese, all drizzled with a good olive oil, a pinch of salt, and freshly ground pepper.”

  “Yum.”

  “Now, stand back, I gotta cook. And you’re interfering with my conducting. You can set the table.”

  “LOOKS DELICIOUS,” ROSE SAID, unfolding her napkin. “What’s the wine?”

  “A Syrah from Sicily.”

  “Ooh, my favorite.”

  He poured them each a glass.

  “What’d you do today?” she asked. “You were out for a while.”

  “Mauro’s serious about this shroud eater thing. We went to the herbalist in Campo Santa Margherita to talk to her about it.”

  “This salad is delicious,” Rose said as she chased an olive around the plate with her fork. “Did the woman think you were nuts?”

  “To the contrary. She believes the shroud eaters have come back.”

  “Back from where?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  Brigham served the pasta.

  Rose took a forkful of pasta and sauce, with a bit of the sausage. “So what did she say?”

  “She knows what to do.”

  “This pasta is great. Where did you get the recipe?”

  “I made it up.”

  “You should be a chef.”

  Brigham shook his head and through a mouthful of sausage and penne said, “Too much work. I’m lazy.”

  The candles threw dim and cozy light around the room and lit Rose’s face in a warm glow, like an angel from a painting by Caravaggio. How did he deserve her?

  “You know,” she said, “you and your gondolier friend are going to get yourselves into a lot of trouble.”

  He swallowed a mouthful of wine. “Nah, don’t worry. It’s all a bunch of crap. I’m only going along with it because it’s a form of entertainment. And to keep him out of trouble, I suppose. He’s so funny when he’s serious.”

  “Well, watch yourself. You’ve already got people pushing you around.”

  “Not related.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  No, he didn’t.

  AFTER CLEANUP, which was her job whenever Brigham cooked, Rose turned on the television to watch the Italian version of some reality TV show.

  “How can you watch that bullshit?” he asked. “It’s just a lot of horrible young people sitting around fighting with each other. You’re above that. Write a treatise. Read some Schopenhauer.”

  “Watching TV helps me learn Italian,” she said, curling her legs up under her on the couch.

  “But they’re not speaking proper Italian. They have to bleep every other word, and you’ll end up talking like that. Ciao, bleeeep, come bleeeep, va?”

  She laughed. “I know, but I learn a lot from it. Now be quiet.”

  “You know I can’t stand it. I think I’ll go to a café and have a glass of brandy.”

  “Good.” Rose said, motioning for him to get out of the way. “Are you taking the mutts?”

  He kissed her forehead. “Not yet. I’ll do that later.” He put on his coat and walked toward the front door.

  “Don’t fall into a canal.”

  BRIGHAM STROLLED THROUGH THE DARK STREETS, not far from where he had been attacked. As he approached the Church of the Mendicoli he came into a small square, along which ran a garden wall with a beautiful doorway flanked by marble plaques with relief carvings; one of a Greek or Roman soldier, the other a vase. The doorway had been filled in with brick. The beauty of the wall, its rustic and crumbling bricks and the ancient plaques, had always fascinated him.

  A man labored to drag a large burlap bag containing an irregularly shaped mass across the stones, leaving a trail of red that glistened wet under the streetlights. The man dragged it to the old garden wall, whereupon he and his cargo disappeared into the brick-filled gate.

  “Fuckin-A,” Brigham whispered. “Not again.”

  Blood streaked the paving stones, ending at the wall. The sound of wooden heels running on the pavement echoed from the surrounding buildings, making it impossible to tell where it was coming from. After a few seconds, Brigham realized someone was running toward him from around the corner. Although unusual for anyone to be running there, he had no reason to be concerned. Then two men appeared. One pointed at him, the other bore a police baton. They strode toward him. He sprinted over the bridge in front of the Mendicoli, then to the right. At the next bridge, another man came toward him from the left. Brigham crossed the bridge and dashed toward Campo San Barnaba. Simply running into the campo yelling for help would do no good. The city was packed with crazies for Carnevale, and one more person yelling would be ignored, even by the police.

  At Campo San Barnaba he ran for the canal, did a cannonball, and landed with a great splash in the middle of it. He gasped for air in the icy water. People hurried over to help him get out
. His assailants had vanished.

  A couple of police officers trotted over. Within a few minutes a fire boat arrived, followed by a police boat. This was why he jumped in. Although the city was crisscrossed with canals, to hear the splash of a person hitting the water was unusual. It always drew a crowd and got the police involved as well as firefighters and an ambulance.

  The tide was low, so he was able to stand up. The murky water came to just above his waist. As he waded to the steps, he bumped something floating just out of view under the surface. Whatever it was, it seemed to be secured to the bottom by a weight. A couple of firefighters helped him climb out of the frigid water and gave him a blanket as the police came over to investigate. Thankfully, he wasn’t the first American to find himself in a canal in Venice, so they didn’t act as though it were a federal crime, simply an inconvenience.

  “Documenti,” one of the cops said, holding out a hand.

  Brigham didn’t relish being the subject of a police investigation, but he liked being alive, and causing the ruckus was the only real choice he had. The police in Venice were not the heavy-handed brutes one encounters in the US. These two cops were actually attractive young women. One was tall with shoulder-length dark hair, and the other had long hair, dyed blond. They examined his soggy identity card.

  “Why you jump into canal?” the tall one asked.

  “Some men were chasing me.” Brigham wrung water from his coat.

  The cop pulled her head back in disbelief. “Chasing you?”

  “Yes, I was back by the Mendicoli, and they started to come after me.” Just as he had started shivering, he gladly accepted a blanket from one of the ambulance folk.