“Why they chase you?”
Brigham shrugged. “I could only speculate.”
The tall cop frowned. “What? I don’t understand.”
“I don’t know why. I could only guess.”
“What would you guess, signore?” asked the blonde, crossing her arms in front of her.
Now here was the dilemma. He thought he knew why he was being chased, but would the police believe that? Should he take them there and show them the blood? Of course not. The blood would be gone. And what if he told them about the man disappearing into the wall? He would end up in the drunk tank. On the other hand, he didn’t want to make a false report to the police. It wouldn’t be a lie to guess and tell the cops that he was guessing. He didn’t really know why he was being chased. Was it a lie to leave out a material fact? Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe he ought to just keep his mouth shut. Not wanting to go to jail and not wanting to spend the night trying to explain a cockeyed story, he proceeded carefully.
“My guess is that they were going to rob me.”
“But you do not know?” the blonde asked. He liked the blonde better, for some intangible reason.
“No,” he said, pulling the blanket tightly around him.
“Do you know who was chasing you?” the tall one asked, the blue light of the fire boat flashing in her glasses.
If he knew that, he would probably know why. But he just replied, “No.”
“How many were there?”
“Two.”
“So, you jump in canal to get away?” the blonde asked.
“It seemed like the best way to draw a crowd.”
“I see,” the blonde said in a tone of voice that indicated she might be pissed.
Although Venice had pickpockets, it was rare for people to be attacked in this way. But he was American, and Italians knew there was a lot of crime in America. Americans all carried guns and ate bacon and eggs every day for breakfast.
“Va bene,” the tall cop said, giving him back his ID. “You go home.” The two officers turned away.
Brigham considered for a moment whether to keep his mouth shut but decided against it. “There’s one more little thing,” he called after them.
“Yes?”
“When I was getting out of the canal my foot caught something down there.”
“There is much rubbish in the canals,” the blonde said.
“But I don’t think it’s trash.”
The tall cop motioned to the firefighters. They jabbered in Italian for a few seconds, then a fireman got a grappling hook from his boat. He fished around where Brigham showed him, and a corpse bobbed to the surface. The crowd gasped as the fireman pulled it out, missing, as it was, its guts.
“You stay in Venice, signore,” advised the tall cop.
OH FUCKIN’ BOY. It ought to be a barrel of goddamn laughs explaining this to Rose. And he hadn’t even had his drink yet. To mitigate the difficulty of arriving home after having been in a canal, and to correct his failure to have a drink, he went to his studio to clean up, have a martini or three, and then go home. Oh, the ideas that come into a man’s mind.
In the studio, the painting with which he had been struggling, the one he called Pink Jesus, stared at him as if asking, “What the fuck happened to you?” The pale blue bottle of gin, however, called his name in a less judgmental way. Preferring the blue gin to the Pink Jesus, he fixed himself a martini sans vermouth.
He stared into the mirror behind the sink. What reflected back was a living disaster. His hair and clothing were soaked, and he smelled of canal water; a strange mix of seawater, fish, and sewage. He could rinse and comb his hair, but there was nothing he could do about the clothes. These were not going to dry in any reasonable length of time, and he did not keep an extra set in the studio. He did have a small bottle of dish soap, so he could get some of the mess out of his hair, and he had a comb, but he otherwise would have to report home looking pretty much like he just crawled out of a canal.
The warm water felt good on his head and face. He frothed up the lemony-scented dish soap on his head, rinsed it, and washed his face with hot water. He combed his hair and then sat in a small wooden chair next to an easel, drinking the martini and contemplating his fate. What would he tell her? Maybe he could sneak in.
Emboldened, strengthened, and warmed by the gin, he started for home to face his scourging and crucifixion.
The corgi met him at the door with the usual stretch and howl of delight. Delight, however, was not the howl he heard from other quarters.
“There you are,” Rose said. She was at her desk writing on her laptop.
He tried to sneak to a small room where he had a wardrobe and a dresser. If he could just get these clothes off and into the machine…
“What’s that smell?” she said, getting up and coming into the room where he stood half-undressed.
The corgi followed and observed with an expression of concern.
Brigham, amid a pile of wet clothes, looked up, unable to speak.
“Oh my God, you fell into a canal! And you’ve been drinking. I smell it.”
“I didn’t fall into a canal.” He stepped out of the pile of wet clothes, past Rose, and into the bathroom. He grabbed a towel off the rack and started drying himself off.
Rose stood in the doorway, hands on hips. “Then what happened?”
“I jumped into a canal.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right.”
“And I didn’t have anything to drink until after—”
“Please, I know you, and I wasn’t born yesterday. Tell me what really happened.”
He told her. She expressed her disbelief of his story; it was clear to her what had happened to him. The courage from the booze had waned, and the canal-water-and-gin-soaked Brigham, though innocent, was lashed convincingly by the tongue of woman.
“You didn’t see anyone go through a wall”
“Okay,” was the only answer he could muster.
“And no one was chasing you.”
“Then who were they chasing?”
“They weren’t chasing anyone,” she said, her voice tight but not quite shouting. “They were just running. You are starting to see things. You need to lay off the booze. It’s going to kill you.”
He showered and then lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. There was no point in arguing. Who could blame her? He had been drinking and had fallen into a canal. That’s all she could see, because that’s all there was to see. They didn’t say anything to each other the rest of the night. For the first time in fifteen years they went to bed pissed at each other. She was right about the booze, but he did see people go through walls, and he was chased. And by God and by glory, he was going to find out why.
THE NEXT MORNING, the air still heavy with tension, he made coffee and tea, sliced strawberries, and scrambled eggs with scallions and served it to her in bed.
She smiled when she saw the tray’s contents. “Oh! This is beautiful. And it smells so good.”
“Hard to mess up scrambled eggs and onions.”
“It’s very thoughtful, and I accept your apology.”
“You’re right about the booze.”
“I worry about you. It could really affect your health,” she said, holding out her arms for him to come to her.
He moved toward her. “I’ll try to cut back.”
“That’s all I ask,” she said, giving him a hug and a kiss. “And forget about people going through walls.”
“That too.”
“Perfect.”
IX
At the studio, he made a pot of coffee from a new tin and started to work. He put a blank canvas on an easel, soaked a brush in turpentine, mixed it with black paint, and scribbled a few lines and curves across the barren white surface. He studied it, sipping coffee. It sucked.
“Tell me why I shouldn’t throw you into the canal,” he said to the painting. The painting didn’t answer but stared back innocently.
“Tell me
why I shouldn’t throw you all into the canal,” he said to all the paintings. They didn’t respond but sat quietly like wrongly scolded children. Good thing he wasn’t fucked up. He might very well have taken the whole bunch of them and tossed them into the water.
After staring hopelessly at the new painting for a few minutes more, he applied blue in the same manner as the black, resulting in numerous drips of turpentine-diluted blue paint. It didn’t look so bad, and he thought maybe he should stop there and declare the painting finished. He sat on the sofa. Tired, weak, and beaten from his labors, he soon fell asleep.
WHEN HE WOKE, a huge spider dangled from the ceiling and dropped toward him. He flew off the sofa, shouting in terror, landing on the floor on his rump. He scrambled backward to the other side of the room in a crab walk, knocking over a table, sending paint and turpentine crashing to the floor. When he looked back, the eight-legged son of a bitch had vanished. He moved the cushions of the sofa with a broom handle, flipping them up and jumping back. Nothing there. And for good reason: there was no spider.
“I fucking hate that,” he said. This wasn’t the first time the big ceiling spider had terrorized him. One of these days he was gonna get that cocksucker, though he knew the spider didn’t exist. “Whatever happened to pink elephants?” he wondered aloud. “Why does it have to be fucking spiders when I see shit that ain’t there? Why not a monkey or a fucking clown?” Well, maybe not a clown, those bastards were scary too. But please, God, no more fucking spiders.
PERHAPS HE SHOULD GO OUT FOR WINE. He went to the mirror to make himself presentable for the society of other humans. He looked like hammered pigeon shit. “You disgusting sack of meat,” he said to his reflection. “You’re an ancient, fat, ugly drunk, and you can’t paint.” He knew, though, he was neither fat nor ugly, but thin for a man his age, and handsome, in a rugged sort of way. He straightened himself the best he could, put on his least-wrinkled sport coat, and left the studio, looking like a fucking Gypsy.
Mid-afternoon sunlight glinted off the canal, reflecting the adjacent houses on its mercurial surface. He caught the reflection of his own ugly face and the upside-down image of the buildings, giving him the impression of looking down from a great height. Dizzy, he pulled back from the brink of the canal and again faced down the street in the direction he desired to go and resumed his journey.
In Campo dei Carmini, he counted his money. Not enough for a glass of wine. As he jiggled the change around to count it again, an old woman put a coin into his hand and continued down the street. She walked toward the afternoon sun, and Brigham couldn’t make out her features in the brilliant light. He now had enough to buy a glass of wine.
Bottles lined the shelves of the little wine shop in Campo Santa Margherita. He stood at the beautiful white marble bar, running his hands across its cool, smooth surface. This shop had excellent wine at a fair price, and the woman running the place was very nice, with a sweet smile. She greeted him with recognition, not commenting on the fact that he looked like someone to whom an old woman would give spare change, and poured him a glass of his favorite wine, a Sicilian Syrah. A short time later, she returned with a little sandwich, a different bottle of wine, and a glass.
“Let me offer you a sip of this wine, which we have just opened,” she said. “I know you like good wine.”
“Sure,” he said. “Thanks.” The key word being offer, as that meant “free,” and that was the only kind of wine he was going to get after the first.
She poured not a sip but a full measure. He tasted it. It was the most delightful he had ever had. It tasted of cherries and chocolate and leather, all covered in velvet. How could he ever drink cheap wine again?
He wondered what it cost but didn’t ask, and also what it would be like to be able to afford such wine every day. What would he give? What if the devil came to him this minute and offered all the kingdoms of the world and the means to have this wine in exchange for his soul? Throw in eternal life and he’d have a deal.
BACK AT HIS STUDIO, Brigham sat on the sofa drinking wine and studying Pink Jesus. After a few minutes, he went over to the easel.
“What do you need?”
Pink Jesus said nothing.
With white paint he brushed in an angel, or at least a series of strokes meant loosely to represent an angel, with one wing spread behind Pink Jesus in a sort of embrace.
The angel seemed to glow. Just what Pink Jesus needed. He sat back down on the sofa studying the painting, happy with the addition.
He put Brahms’s Requiem on the stereo, programming it to repeat the movement “Denn alles Fleisch, es ist wie Gras” (For all flesh is as grass), and sat contemplating the white angel, Pink Jesus, and death. The music brought tears to his eyes. After a time, the wine got the best of him, and he fell asleep.
Charles appeared in a dream, looking at first like a young man dressed in a tuxedo, white scarf, and top hat. When Brigham looked away and then back again, Charles was an old man with a beat-up fedora, raggedy coat, and worn shoes.
Old man Charles walked to the edge of a canal and stepped onto the water, walked a few paces, and then turned to Brigham. “Follow me,” he said as he walked down the middle of the canal without disturbing the surface.
Brigham followed him onto the canal, staying a few paces behind.
Pale eyes watched from the edge of the canal, peering out from skulls covered in dry, crackling skin.
“What do you see?” Charles asked.
“Skeletons. They’re watching us.”
“You see death. Follow me and see life.”
Charles turned and walked through a large doorway that had been sealed with bricks, and vanished. Brigham followed.
They entered a vast room. Before them on a table was a girl of about eighteen, bound and gagged, writhing and nude.
“Drink,” Charles said, and like a vicious animal tore out the girl’s throat with his teeth, which had become huge and animal-like, sending blood spraying into the air and into Brigham’s face. Blood bubbled at the wound as the girl tried to breathe.
Brigham watched in horror as the girl morphed into a young man, though still missing his throat and still gushing blood. Charles again commanded him to drink. With this, he woke, full of terror and disgust, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling. Thankfully, the spider wasn’t there.
AT AN OUTSIDE TABLE AT A CAFÉ on the Rio Terà Canal, Brigham ordered red wine and watched people go by. He was surprised to find that a large part of the population parading past seemed now to be the shroud-eating vampires the old woman had talked about.
A girl of about seventeen came to the café and sat at a table near him. She was slight of build with black hair and pale skin, wearing layers of black clothing and platform shoes with high laces. Exotic. Sexy. A vampire, perhaps. No, too stereotypical. Just an eccentric art-student girl, reading a book and drinking coffee. Another character walked past wearing clothes from the early nineteenth century: a light-colored top hat, vest, and long coat, walking like Groucho Marx, which he did because there was something wrong with him, not to be funny. Eccentric? Or vampire? Brigham couldn’t tell, although without the dream it never would have occurred to him to ask the question.
Oh, they could be legion, these shroud eaters, he thought as he returned home. Rose had gone out, so he went into the living room, shut the door, got a bottle of Scotch from the cabinet, and for the first time in his life drank alone behind closed doors to hide what he was doing.
THE NEXT MORNING, Brigham woke up to a pounding head. He felt like refried shit. His whole body ached. It was all he could do to move. He remembered that he had arranged with Mauro to go back to the herbalist that evening. She had a magic potion designed to deal with the shroud eaters. Brigham didn’t really want to fool with this hogwash, but Mauro had insisted, and Brigham had nothing better to do. On the other hand, the dream had affected his thinking. A rational and educated man starting to believe in vampires because of a dream? But people all over the world beli
eved in them. Couldn’t he? Nah. Snap out of it, dummy. The effects of the dream on his mind had faded in proportion to the pain in his head. The meeting wasn’t for several hours, though, so he had the day to recover. He went back to sleep.
X
A few old men stood at the bar talking loudly, laughing, gesturing, and drinking tiny glasses of wine the Venetians called ombre. Rose imagined they had known each other for sixty or seventy years. Grew up together, served in the army, went to each other’s wedding, were godfather to each other’s kids. Mauro was sitting in the rear of the room, a glass of prosecco in front of him. He got up and greeted Rose with a kiss on both cheeks.
She ordered a hot tea. “Thanks for coming out, Mauro.”
“No problem. Is there something wrong? You seemed worried on the phone.”
The waiter delivered a pot of hot water, a teabag, and a cup. She put the bag in the pot.
“I’m worried about Brigham,” she said. “Something’s not right.”
“How do you mean?”
She poured tea into her cup. The waiter had not brought milk. As she turned to say something, he appeared with a small pitcher and placed it in front of her.
“I’ve noticed a change in his behavior lately,” she said, pouring milk into her tea.
“Like what? Is he depressed?”
“No, nothing like that. It’s subtle, and maybe only I would notice it. But he’s also drinking a lot more than he used to.”
Mauro motioned to the waiter for another glass of prosecco and a bowl of potato chips. “I did notice that he drinks a lot.”
“Did you know that he sees things when he wakes up?”
“Sees things? You mean like hallucinations?”
“Yes. For example, he sees spiders and snakes. When he wakes up from a nap, he flies off the bed or sofa screaming because he sees a big spider falling from the ceiling toward him.”
A Beast in Venice: (Literary Horror set in Venice) Page 6