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

by Michael E. Henderson

  “Are you ready, Mr. Brigham?”

  “Brigham nodded.”

  Through the curtain they entered a cavernous room with a high, vaulted brick ceiling, gigantic Persian carpets, and several groupings of large chairs and sofas arranged throughout. The only light came from numerous small table lamps, which gave the place a warm, glowing feel. Faint music hummed in the background, adding to the not-quite-of-this-world atmosphere. They moved slowly through the room. A number of people lounged on sofas and chairs, many partially or fully nude.

  A couple on a sofa engaged in carnal knowledge, the woman drinking

  blood from the man’s chest like a babe at its mother’s teat.

  “This is a more ... serious side of the club,” Francesco said.

  “I see,” was all Brigham could manage to push through his raspy, dry throat, like sandpaper over stone.

  “This is nothing. Only an anteroom. Follow me.”

  They approached what appeared to be a small closet. Francesco opened the door, revealing a stairway barely wide enough for one. Francesco went first and Brigham followed. As they descended, small lights flicked on from their motion, going out again as they passed. They entered a vast room of bare brick, lit only by a row of lamps along each wall, the air cool and moist. The smell was familiar but he couldn’t immediately place it.

  “Here is the heart of it all,” Francesco said, pointing to a group of figures at the end of the room.

  At first, Brigham couldn’t make out what they were doing. As they moved closer, he saw five crosses. Honest-to-God, life-sized, wooden, like-Jesus-was-crucified-on crosses, to which were nailed a like number of people. Under each cross a vessel collected slowly dripping blood. Two of the people had their heads down, apparently unconscious, while the rest were awake, eyes roaming about the room. None made a sound. He realized then that the smell was two smells in one. Canal water and… what was the other smell?

  Brigham froze. All he could say was, “Holy fuck.” Not for the victims of the crosses, but rather out of concern for his own up-until-now unviolated skin. The other smell was that of the butcher shop. Cold raw meat.

  “Are they really crucified?” Brigham whispered. Maybe it was an illusion and they were somehow otherwise attached to their crosses.

  “Real as it gets. Spikes driven through flesh, bone, and sinew into wood.”

  “But… why?”

  “They dig pain, and they like to bleed. I suspect also that they fancy themselves to be Christ, or Christ-like. Maybe atoning for some evil they have committed.”

  “But Goddamn, to have themselves nailed to a cross? Seems like that would leave a mark.”

  “Oh, it does. They’re never going to be the same.”

  “Then why do it?”

  One of those on a cross moved and cried out in pain.

  “I think they each have their own reason. You may get a chance to talk to one shortly.”

  “That would be interesting, but why show me this? I’m an outsider.”

  A young woman with a tray of wine approached them, and they each took a glass.

  “Everyone starts out as an outsider,” Francesco said. “I sense that you might make a good addition to our… society.”

  “Does anyone ever die here?” Brigham sipped his wine, but all he could taste was canal water and blood.

  Francesco hesitated. “Yes,” he said finally, nodding slowly.

  Although not surprised to hear that, considering the activities in which these people were engaged, Brigham still felt a twinge of shock. “What do you do if that happens?”

  “Let’s just say we dispose of the body… properly.”

  “Do you call the police? Or an ambulance?”

  Francesco shrugged. “No, we don’t bother the authorities with such… details.”

  “Details? Seems to me that’s more than a detail.”

  Francesco raised his hand. “You’ll understand in due time.”

  A couple of people climbed ladders at one of the crosses, took down a woman, and carried her over to a table, a marble slab. They tended to her wounds, then carried her to a sofa.

  “There’s someone we can talk to,” Francesco said, motioning to the woman on the sofa. They went over to her.

  She smiled as they approached.

  “Laura,” Francesco said, “how are you?”

  “I’m fine, Francesco,” she said. “I feel great. Such a purifying experience.”

  “Laura, this is my friend Mr. Brigham. He is new to our circle.”

  “Glad to meet you,” Laura said, holding out a hand wrapped in blood-

  soaked bandages, exposing only the fingers.

  Brigham shook her hand by lightly squeezing her fingertips. “Glad to meet you,” he said, otherwise struck dumb.

  “Are you a taker or a giver?” she asked.

  Brigham blinked. “I don’t understand.”

  “There are two kinds of people here,” she said. “Those who give blood and those who take it, although I guess there are some who do both.”

  “I am just an observer,” he said. “I don’t intend to give or to take.”

  “Mr. Brigham is interested in our culture,” Francesco said, “but he hasn’t committed to be part of it.”

  Laura smiled. “I hope you enjoy it. It’s like nothing else in the world.”

  “That much is clear,” Brigham said. “But tell me, why do you do it?”

  “The pain. It purifies the soul. Now, if you will excuse me, I must rest.”

  “Of course,” Brigham said. “I think that would be a good idea. Ciao.”

  The clang of a hammer hitting an iron spike and the agonizing screams of a person being nailed to the cross vacated by Laura split the droning of the music. The cross had been lowered, a man placed on it, and nails driven through his hands and feet with the sickening sound of metal being hammered into wood through bone and flesh. Blood flowed freely into a large bowl. A small winch lifted the cross upright and dropped it into place. The man howled.

  “Another satisfied customer,” Francesco said.

  The new occupant of the cross shrieked.

  Brigham felt weak with shock. Although a harsh judge of his fellow man, he still didn’t like to see a person suffer, even if voluntarily.

  “Might there be some gin in this establishment?” Brigham asked. “And I think I should sit down.”

  “Of course.”

  They entered a room with a bar and several tables, sat, and ordered drinks.

  “A shocking thing the first time you see it,” Francesco said. “Is it not?”

  Brigham could only push out an airy, “Yes.” The waitress delivered the drinks and Brigham took a gulp of ice-cold gin. He felt it go down, returning sense and reason to his mind, calming him.

  “You’ll get used to it.”

  “I might have seen enough,” Brigham said. “I’m not sure I’m coming back.”

  “Trust me, you will go home, you will swear you’ll never return, you may even think of joining a monastery, but you will come back. Soon.”

  Brigham bowed his head.

  When Brigham had finished his drink Francesco said, “We should get back now.”

  Back with Gloria, Brigham, shaken, though fortified by the gin, remained quiet. Francesco disappeared.

  “What were you two up to?” Gloria asked.

  Brigham cleared his throat. “Have you been to the other part of the club?”

  “No, but I’ve heard rumors, as I mentioned.”

  “Whatever you’ve heard is probably not as wild as it really is.”

  “What did you see?” she whispered, eyes wide.

  He glanced around, then said, “Do you know they crucify people there?”

  “I’ve heard that! But I didn’t believe it.”

  “Trust me, you can believe it. I saw them actually do it.”

  “Wow,” she said, drawing out the word.

  “But here’s a question: Why would they show it to me? They haven’
t shown it to you, and this is only my second time here. Why reveal it to me?”

  “Don’t know.”

  HE SPENT THE NIGHT again in his studio unmolested by his wife, and Pink Jesus had managed to keep his mouth shut. He rose early and made coffee. Perhaps it was time to take a serious look at the book on Venetian vampires.

  He sat at his small desk and examined the old, tan leather, running his hand over its ancient surface. The book crackled as he opened it, and he again breathed in the scent that had attracted him. The first chapter was a short history of the shroud eaters in Venice; it gave a general description of how they were detected and how they rose from their graves—essentially what the herbalist had told them. The next chapter had to do with witches, so he skipped it. The third chapter, entitled, Feeding Habits and Customs of the Shroud Eater Risen from the Grave, got his attention.

  There are and always have been, the book said, people who had a taste for human blood and flesh. These people aren’t shroud eaters but are people with a kind of disorder of the mind or spirit. The shroud eater, which is a corpse risen from the grave as a vampire, takes advantage of such people by creating secret societies to hide their activities and to provide a ready source of food, relieving them of the risk and labor of going into the world of men to look for it, though they will occasionally do so for sport.

  There are also people in the world who enjoy pain. The shroud eater is able to take advantage of this group by giving them pain in exchange for blood. They lure people to their societies, get them to trust the other members, and then, when they’re least on their guard, take them off to a place where they’re stored, often crucified, drained of blood, and disemboweled. The flesh, blood, and entrails are eaten. When finished, the balance of the corpse is disposed of, often by simply being thrown into a canal.

  Venice was a great place to store bodies, even live ones, as the city contained thousands of tombs located in churches. A person may remain alive for days in a tomb since they weren’t airtight.

  In spite of being dead, after consuming blood or entrails the shroud eater would look quite normal for several hours and could go out among humanity undetected, even during the day.

  Some shroud eaters were known to assemble a collection of people they found interesting and convert them to shroud eaters through a process that required the person to die and then be reborn.

  Brigham heated a couple slices of leftover pizza in the microwave. The plate became quite hot. He used a potholder to take it out of the oven, and carried it to his desk. The book had closed. He opened it, and used the plate to hold it open while he went to get a glass of wine. When he returned and moved the plate, one of the pages had SMV scrawled across it in large, light-brown letters that weren’t there before. The hot plate had caused the letters to appear. Someone had written a secret message in the book with invisible ink. He hadn’t seen anything like that since he was a kid, when he and his brother would write messages, then use candles to make them reappear. It was all fun and games until his brother caught his shirt on fire and in the process of putting it out burned a big hole in the rug. From then on, they had to use the iron under their mother’s supervision.

  He needed the even heat of an iron now. Heating a plate in the microwave was slow and inefficient, and a candle might burn the book. He didn’t have an iron in the studio, so he had to go to the apartment. Hopefully, Rose would understand.

  AT THE APARTMENT THE DOGS greeted Brigham by dancing around, barking, and shaking toys. He called for Rose. No response. The door to the garden stood open. Unusual. Rose was obsessive about keeping the doors and windows shut in winter. Maybe she had gone for milk and left the dogs out with the door ajar. They did that sometimes if the dogs were out and were slow to come in, and they were just going to the store up the street. The backyard was surrounded by a ten-foot wall, so there was little risk. He closed the door. No reason to panic. He would go about his business and see if she showed up.

  He had been gone for only a couple of days, but he felt like a stranger in the apartment, like he was doing something wrong or devious. But he had a right to be there, and anyway, all he was going to do was use the iron. Well, that and raid the fridge. He found a can of beer and went to work with the iron.

  Steam and the smell of warmed paper curled up from each page. Most had no secret writing on them, but some had it between the printed lines. One of the pages had a map drawn on it in the invisible ink. He studied it carefully. At first, he didn’t recognize the streets it depicted, but when he turned the book upside down it became obvious. It showed the location of the house where the vampire parties took place.

  He studied the writing. In between the printed lines of text someone had written a sort of diary.

  Written this last day of October, 1759. To he who comes after, be warned. The evil to which you will be subjected, and in which you must take part, is a high cost for the benefits, or imagined benefits, of eternal life.

  The hand that wrote it shook and clearly labored to scrawl the message, but it was still legible.

  Blood are the wages, and death the currency of your life. Pain and suffering of others is your legacy. Every day you live, someone else must die. You will tire of and lament your life, whether your conversion to this creature be done of your own volition or contrary to your will. I have for years now prowled the streets of Venice hunting and killing. Children were not outside my desire for blood. And not only blood. That is the worst of it. What one must do to his fellow creatures is beyond description.

  Writing by an actual shroud eater. Fascinating.

  Stay away! Better you should die than live forever as an animal. They come to you smiling, offering life eternal, particularly at a time in your life when you contemplate your own mortality, or when you know death is near. Resist them! Live your life and then die. I write this in a cell under the city of Venice where I have been locked away for many weeks. I learned the secret of undoing their evil conversion and was brought here, caught by them in the middle of the process. Know, however, that it can be undone by…

  The line of ink slid down the page as though the author had fallen asleep. Brigham searched the book for the conclusion of this sentence, but it wasn’t there. The only other thing he found was a couple of pages with lines and numbers on them. They made no sense to him. He would study it in depth later. Rose hadn’t returned, so he called her cell. It rang in the bedroom. Well, it wasn’t the first time she left her phone home. As for the door being open, sometimes the dogs were hard to get back into the house. If she were in a hurry, and didn’t plan to be gone long, she might leave the door unlatched so the dogs could get back in.

  He turned off the iron, packed up the book, and headed out the front door. As he was leaving he noticed Rose’s house keys on the hook by the door. Shit. She had left the back door open, left her phone, and left her keys. There was a reasonable chance that she might do one of these things if she went to the store, but to do all three was very unusual–not like her at all. She must have left in a hurry. Perhaps it was time to panic. On the other hand, maybe the big heavy front door fell shut behind her when she took out the garbage, or something. That happened to him, once. He had no phone, no keys, no nothing. He had had to go to Campo Santa Margherita and get someone to make a call for him. That must be it. Maybe she went to the studio and they crossed paths. There’s more than one way to go. If she went there and didn’t find him, she would definitely go to Campo Santa Margherita.

  He hurried there to look for her. Although she had judged him wrongly and harshly, he couldn’t leave her locked out of the house. She probably didn’t even have her coat.

  He ran from place to place. No one had seen her. If she were looking for him, there were two places in the world he would be: Campo Santa Margherita or his studio. Running around would do no good. Stay in one place. He went to his studio.

  HE PAINTED FOR A FEW HOURS with no word from Rose. He tried to call her, thinking that maybe she had returned home and so
mehow gotten into the house. Maybe she had another set of keys. No answer. He called Mauro, but he hadn’t heard from her.

  He went back to the apartment. Still no Rose. He decided to stay there and wait. If she came home he would be there to let her in. If something were wrong, she would find a way to call him.

  As it got later, panic overtook him. Her suitcase was still in the closet, and all the things she normally took on a trip were still there. He didn’t want to call her sisters or her mother because they would worry, and it was probably nothing. After a while he did call one of her sisters, but she hadn’t heard anything. At about 2:00 a.m. he called the police.

  A couple of officers came to the apartment. They listened to his story, took notes, and looked around briefly, but wouldn’t file a missing person report because it hadn’t yet been twenty-four hours. She probably got mad and went to a friend’s house, they said. Wait until tomorrow; she’d be back. They did make calls to check the hospital and the morgue, but there was no record of her.

  What could have happened to her? There was no note, and it didn’t look like there had been a struggle. Everything seemed normal in the house, as though Rose had gone down to get a carton of milk and never came back. All he could think to do was to call Mauro, who came to the apartment later that morning.

  “You sure she didn’t go to a friend’s house?” Mauro asked, as he sat in the kitchen.

  “No,” Brigham said. “Your wife is her only friend in Venice. And she’s been gone all night. Her phone and keys are still here. Doesn’t make any sense. I think she’s been kidnapped.”