by Rita Vetere
Serafina could not breathe. She could not find her voice to respond.
Massimo let himself out, closing the door behind him.
Chapter 24
“Let me play with it now... It’s my turn,” little Vittorio cried.
Julia held the rag doll just out of reach of her brother’s outstretched hand. “It’s a doll. Boys aren’t supposed to play with dolls,” she teased. Her brother’s eyes filled with tears, and she relented. “All right.” She handed her favorite toy over to him. “But don’t ruin it,” she warned.
Vittorio smiled up at her. “I won’t.”
Julia turned away to fetch another toy when she heard a sharp intake of breath from behind her. Something wet hit the back of her head. “Vittorio! What—”
As she whirled around to chastise her brother for spitting, something red and wet splashed across her face and she almost cried out in surprise. But then she saw Vittorio. He was up in the air, being tossed around like the rag doll she’d just given him, by...
She gasped in fear. The monster. The same creature she had seen two nights ago had returned. Its back was turned to her, but she instantly recognized the tattered, filthy dress. In the light of day she could clearly see its rotting flesh, riddled with sores, and the straw-like hair standing out in all directions.
Vittorio was off the ground, his arms and legs thrashing wildly. The creature had him by the throat. Julia could see the ugly gash on Vittorio’s neck, but only in the periphery of her vision, because at that instant, the monster turned and Julia saw its face. Most of it looked as if it had been eaten away. Bone glistened through the remaining grey-black flesh. When the thing trained its glazed eyes on her, Julia froze. She watched as it opened its rotting mouth wide before turning back to her brother. She heard the sound of its low growl, smelled its sickly sweet scent as it bent over Vittorio.
Shock set in, paralyzing her. Her eyes opened wide, wider as she stared at the monster feasting on the blood gushing from Vittorio’s neck. A tiny gurgling sound escaped Vittorio before his body went limp in the creature’s hands.
Julia tried to drag her eyes away from the shocking spectacle. She tried to scream, wanted to, but could not. She could only watch in horror as the creature lapped up the blood gushing from her brother, could only listen to the disgusting smacking sounds coming from the monster as it hunched over Vittorio’s motionless form. When the sounds ceased, the creature dragged her brother’s limp, pale body to the playroom’s open window. In one swift movement, the monster lifted her brother’s body and tossed him outside. A second later she heard a thud as he hit the pavement three floors below.
The creature turned its ghastly eyes on Julia again. She shuddered violently, but shock had rendered her mute and she made not a sound. It would come for her now, her mind screamed at her. She would be its next victim. Instead, a second later, she registered the fact that the creature was gone. It had disappeared into thin air.
Julia remained perfectly still on the floor, covered in her brother’s blood. She did not move, even when she heard her mother’s screams coming from outside. She was still sitting that way when, sometime later, they found her.
* * * *
On a drizzly and grey November morning, Serafina buried her son. Damp fog shrouded the ancient cemetery on San Michele Island as she and Julia followed the workers bearing the tiny casket through a maze of narrow passageways and marble headstones. They stood silently next to the open tomb in the misty rain. Only the two of them were present for Vittorio’s burial. Rumors about her husband’s murderous activities had spread like wildfire over the past several days and no one had seen fit to attend the service for the son of a murderer. She looked down at Julia who, pale and unmoving, clutched her hand tightly. Together, they watched as Vittorio’s coffin was placed into the tomb and the stone lid sealed shut.
What her poor daughter must have gone through watching her brother die, she could not imagine. Serafina drew her daughter close and mourned her dead son.
In the aftershock of finding Vittorio dead on the street outside their house, she had not reached Julia for some time. Her daughter, when she had found her, appeared to be in shock, unable to speak. It was not until the following day that Julia had begun to shriek hysterically, screaming that the monster had returned to kill her brother.
Still numb over Vittorio’s death, Serafina did not know what to believe. Julia was not in the habit of lying. Her daughter had seen something that, to her young eyes, had appeared to be a monster. Had someone entered the house, seeking retribution for her husband’s deeds? The family of one his patients who had ended up dead, perhaps? Serafina did not believe that to be the case. For one thing, no one had been able to explain the absence of blood in her son’s body to her, had they? She shuddered, remembering the unnaturally white flesh of Vittorio’s tiny, lifeless body lying on the pavement outside their home, and the bloodless gashes on his neck. Not a drop of blood had been found on or near him, even though Julia and the playroom had been covered in it.
And what of Alberto? Although she no longer cared what fate he’d met, the fact his body had not been found disturbed her.
Serafina did not consider herself a superstitious person, but the unsettling thought that her dead husband had somehow reached out from beyond the grave to harm them kept haunting her. She could not seem to shake the feeling.
Julia shivered next to her in the dampness again, and Serafina pulled her closer as the two of them said their final goodbyes to Vittorio.
Early that morning, she had arrived at a decision. Within the next few days they would begin making arrangements. The house would be sold. She intended to leave the country with her daughter. They were, she believed, no longer safe here. Losing Vittorio had nearly finished her, but there was Julia to think about. She had no intention of allowing any harm to come to her daughter.
* * * *
Venice
May, 1928
Lieutenant Carelli stared at the reports on his desk in dismay. The unsolved case of Dr. Rossi had weighed heavily on him for the past six months, and the latest accounts he’d received regarding Poveglia had done nothing to put his mind at ease.
After Rossi’s disappearance, he had interviewed the night staff himself, as well as the patients who were coherent enough to speak to him. Several of the patients claimed to have seen the doctor fall from the bell tower on the night he went missing. It corroborated the blood he had seen on the ground in front of the hospital, and that found on the stairs and in the open tower. Some of the patients had also claimed to have heard screams and, to his amazement, had told him they had seen Rossi’s body being borne away—by rotting corpses.
The employees had come clean about the fact that the good doctor may have been murdering his patients, and the remains of the woman in the crematorium confirmed the fact—not to mention the jars containing human brains they had discovered.
But the mystery of the missing doctor and the unanswered questions as to what, exactly, had taken place on the island that night had caused him many sleepless hours.
The asylum doors had closed on the day Rossi disappeared and the institution was officially shut down a month later. The island had remained deserted since then, which brought him to yet another conundrum. Although no one had set foot on Poveglia since the official closing of the asylum, reports had trickled in from citizens traveling by boat at night of the bell tolling on the island. Rumors that the island was haunted began to spread, and Carelli had acted to put a stop to them, believing pranksters responsible. He’d obtained permission from the city to have the bell removed from the tower, hoping to put an end to all talk of ghosts.
Carelli himself had accompanied the workers who had been conscripted to remove the bell from the tower on Poveglia. He’d watched from the ground below as the men lowered it from the open tower and dragged it to the waiting barge. He had seen the boat return to the mainland.
And yet, since its removal from the tower three months ago, h
e’d received no less than twenty-five reports from citizens traveling by boat through the lagoon at night, reports of the bell tolling on the island—even though the bell was no longer there. Some also insisted they’d heard screams coming from the island.
Carelli removed a rubber stamp from his desk drawer and stamped the front of the folder “closed”. He got up and placed the file in a metal cabinet in the corner of his office. Then he turned his attention to the other matters on his desk, telling himself he would do well to try to put the matter of Poveglia behind him. Some things, he decided, were better left alone.
Chapter 25
Poveglia Island
Present Day
Anna crawled on her hands and knees through the bushes as the storm screamed all around her. The slamming rain turned the ground to white muck, and she was covered in it. She inched her way toward the office, trying to become one with the ground, consumed with worry for Alejandro and frightened to death that the demon child would return.
Through all this, her anger at Falcone burned brightly. He must have known something about the island’s history and the place being a virtual hotbed for paranormal activity. It went a long way toward explaining why only foreigners were involved in the hotel project. She swore to herself that if she found Alejandro and made it off this bloody island alive, she’d find a way to put a stop to the proposed construction of the hotel. But right now, she had more important things to worry about, like finding Alejandro and staying alive until the boat arrived.
All this flashed through her mind in a matter of seconds. Wiping the muck from her watch, she saw it was almost one o’clock. She still had a chance. All she had to do was locate Alejandro, make it through the next five hours, and get to the landing when the boat arrived. Surely the storm would be spent by then. She shivered, only in part from the rain beating down on her, as she dragged herself along the muddy ground. All things considered, five hours seemed an eternity.
Focused on reaching the relative safety of the office, she did not see what was lying on the ground in front of her until she stumbled on top of it. Anna let out a frightened sound of surprise when she looked down to see what she’d tripped over. Shock and dismay mingled with fear as she stared at the lifeless, mutilated body sprawled on the ground before her. She had found Alejandro at last.
Oh God. Alejandro. Rain fell into his open eyes. Even before she saw the ugly gashes, she knew he was dead. His body had been torn to shreds, as if something had...eaten him. The world seemed to grow smaller and smaller as she surveyed his mangled corpse until there was nothing but the two of them and the rain. Why was this horror happening to her? She rested her head on his ravaged chest and wept. Minutes passed and she continued crying until, finally, some instinct rose, reminding her she would meet the same fate unless she got moving, and quickly. As she took her last look at Alejandro, her fear and sadness transformed into a different emotion. Anger welled in her at the unfairness of what had happened, a resentment which slowly built to a rage she could not control. With it came the desire to destroy this terrible place and everything on it.
As her anger crested, her mind spat out a single word. Fire. The thought turned over and over in her mind, and it felt right. It felt good. Suddenly, she knew what she had to do. She was going to set fire to the island.
Her mind raced with the idea, as her hand moved to the front pocket of her jeans, feeling for the cigarette lighter and finding it still there. Her biggest obstacle would be the heavy rain, which showed no signs of abating. She would have to set the fire indoors. Anna focused on the office door ahead of her. Setting a fire in the office might distract the creatures roaming in the field long enough for her to get to the hospital and set a larger one there. She remembered the small staircase off the vestibule leading up to the open bell tower. A large enough fire in the vestibule would cause the smoke to travel up the open tower, where it might be seen from the mainland. If so, maybe help would arrive. She didn’t think she could survive another five hours on the island.
Anna looked down at Alejandro again and ran a hand over his eyes, closing the lids. She whispered a quick prayer for his soul. The thought of leaving him like this in the rainy field tore at her heart, but there was no choice. “I’m sorry,” she whispered as she crawled around him, continuing on her way. “I’m so sorry.”
Reaching the edge of the overgrown field, she hunkered down. The office stood a mere ten feet away, but she would be in full view while running from her hiding place to the door. Poking her head up over the bushes, she spotted the walking dead, most of them approximately twenty feet to the northwest, near the trailer. She waited several minutes, until the slow-moving corpses appeared not to be facing in her direction, and made her move, hoping the heavy downpour would provide her with enough cover in case one of them turned around. She bolted for the door and uttered a quick prayer of relief when it opened without problem. Anna slipped inside, latching the door behind her, trembling all over from her latest encounter on the island of death.
A second later, her heart turned over as she stared in dismay at the apparition at the other end of the room. The doctor she’d seen earlier at the hospital sat motionlessly on the edge of the bed, his head lowered. He was cradling something in one arm, holding it close to his chest.
She didn’t move a muscle, barely breathing, as her panicked mind tried to determine what to do. Outside the walking dead waited; in here, the apparition. Seconds passed and nothing happened. The man appeared unaware of her presence, as he had back at the hospital.
Ever so slowly, she began to inch her way along the wall to her left, not taking her eyes off the man. If she could just make it to the wall of windows, maybe she could break one and escape along the back of the building.
The man suddenly began to speak, and she froze halfway along the wall.
“Tomaso. You must speak to me. Tell me what I am to do. Why do you not speak?” He held out the object he’d been cradling in front of him and looked at it as he spoke. Shock ran through her when she recognized what he held in his hands—the skull she had unearthed earlier near the shore. The man was talking to it as if it could hear him.
“You killed her, Tomaso, but you did not kill her enough. She still walks.” His voice turned sly. “Tell me, did she suffer? Did she beg for her life when you buried her alive?”
Anna watched as the apparition placed the skull next to his ear, as if waiting for it to speak. The words he had just spoken drilled through her fear. ...Did she suffer? Did she beg for her life when you buried her alive? The appalling vision shown to her by the creature came slamming back. The skull—the remains she had dug up. Had it belonged to the masked man she’d seen in the vision, the one who had carried out that brutal deed?
The apparition on the bed spoke again, his voice petulant, as he scowled at the skull. “Why do you not speak to me, Tomaso? We are kin, joined by blood. I tell you she is still alive. We must kill her again.”
She remained perfectly still, hoping he would lower his head once more so she could get to the window. Her luck wasn’t in. The apparition suddenly looked up from the skull, his eyes trained directly on her. This time, Anna knew he was seeing her.
“Serafina! What are you doing here? How many times must I tell you to stop interrupting me? It appears you need to be taught a lesson, once and for all.” The apparition glared at her, his face a mask of murderous rage.
Anna remained frozen in place against the wall when she heard the name by which he had called her. Her heart began to pound as understanding shot through her all at once. Oh, dear God, could it be possible?
Anna raced for the desk, ignoring the apparition as he rose from the bed. She had to know if it was true. Grabbing the framed photo from the desktop, she brought it close to her face to scrutinize it. Looking at the picture with fresh eyes, she understood instantly why the woman in the photograph had seemed familiar. How could she have missed the resemblance? The evil doctor had called her by the name Serafina—her gra
ndmother’s name.
The apparition moved toward her and Anna backed away, still clutching the photo in her hand.
The man placed the skull down on the desk and stopped to pick up another object before advancing again. Tears streamed down Anna’s face, her mind in turmoil, as she watched his approach. In his hand, he carried a large scalpel.
The woman in the photo was her grandmother, there could be no doubt. The young girl in the picture must be Julia, her mother... And that meant the man towering over her, about to plunge a scalpel into her, was her grandfather.
Anna dropped the photo and backed away in the general direction of the window, just as he slashed out at her with the scalpel, missing her by a fraction. Her back hit the wall and he closed in. She raised her arms to shield herself.
When seconds passed and nothing struck her, Anna looked up with frightened eyes. The hand holding the scalpel was still raised high, but the apparition, my grandfather, her mind screamed crazily, was no longer looking at her. He stood staring at the door, as if listening for something, his face painted with fear.
Anna watched in disbelief as he began to dissolve before her eyes, becoming transparent. Seconds later, he disappeared completely, just as the wooden door to the office burst open with a bang.
Chapter 26
Poveglia Island
Present Day
Isabella crawled restlessly back and forth in her lair beneath the forest floor. Anyone paying attention might have noticed the poplar trees above Isabella’s underground haunt were diseased and withered, the earth poisoned by her presence.
Over the past several years, Isabella had begun to notice small changes taking place in her state of being. Her appearance had slowly begun to alter. Little by little, she seemed to be shriveling. Her diseased flesh had begun to dry up. And, of late, the deterioration seemed to be progressing more rapidly, so she was now little more than a blighted bag of bones and hair. Her decomposition seemed to portend a culmination. She could sense her purpose of being winding down, and knew it could only mean one thing. The final fulfillment of the curse approached.