This Haunted World Book One: The Venetian: A Chilling New Supernatural Thriller (20 page)

She walked as if in a haze, her mind perhaps not losing its grip but certainly trying to shut down, to protect her as much as possible. From somewhere far behind she could hear her name being called –
Louise, Louise
. Piero hadn’t given up, despite having to continue his search for her alone. Perhaps his sense of responsibility was well developed – a point in his favour if she could bring herself to think charitably of him. So what? Let him call her. Let him strain his throat yelling. Right now she knew it was in vain.

Another noise caught her attention: a door banging repeatedly, as if someone was standing beside it, opening it and closing it. Maybe they were, or it could be the wind, snaking its way inside and finding a playmate. Did the mind ever stop searching for logic? Either way, it was too far off to worry about. All the rooms she was passing – some doors closed, others with no doors at all – contained an energy. Although she refused to look, she had no doubt about it – the asylum was wide-awake. The weather seemed only to mourn that fact – continuing to beat at the walls in protest. Bypassing a window, a flash of lightening signalled more thunder to come. The brief illumination caught her eye. Half-expecting there to be figures outside, she saw only towering trees, bunched together, either in a gesture of defence against what was still on this island, or as protection, guarding what lay beneath. Secrets. That’s what lay beneath. The island was full of them; secret lives and secret tragedies, layer upon layer upon layer. And lies too. Dr Gritti was the Father of Lies – a pseudonym for the devil, but appropriate, because that’s what he was, the devil incarnate. Abusing his profession, his position of trust, experimenting on patients for the purpose of vainglory, then burying their spent bodies in unmarked graves, from which the bones were now being extracted – the dead rising in more ways than one.

“I hope you’re the one to rot in hell, Dr Gritti.” Although her voice was a low whisper, she was surprised at the venom it contained. Did the burning hatred she felt towards him belong to her or to the veiled lady? Did it matter? He deserved to be hated, to burn.

And he will, he will
.

More words, being written in her mind.

Keep walking
. That thought was hers at least.
Get this over with
.

As she turned another corner, coldness seized her; different to the cold she was used to. This was able to penetrate, to worm its way deep inside, treading the pathways that led to the very centre of her. It was a dangerous cold, growing claws and squeezing the life from her, but before that, it would feed voraciously.

Follow me!

The words were urgent, more than before – but an urgency borne of what? Was the veiled lady afraid of something? Could this new presence – this
coldness
– harm her too?

Louise looked behind her, expecting to see a multitude of spirits following still. There was nothing but darkness – the doors she’d passed, and the windows, none of them were visible anymore. She stared, willing her eyes to adjust, finally noticing something, some kind of movement. Was it Piero? No, it couldn’t be. This thing was writhing, even darker than the blackness and it was cold, so damned cold.

Not wanting to fall into its clutches, she turned back round and her heart almost stopped. The veiled lady was no longer in the distance. She was standing in front of her. There was barely a foot between them. But for once, she was looking beyond Louise, those veiled eyes boring deep, as deep as the cold ever could. Louise swallowed, felt helpless. She was caught between them – the two warring factions – like a pawn in a battle she didn’t understand. Tears sprang to her eyes.
I just want to go home
.

FOLLOW ME!

Silent words but she could hear them well enough. They were screamed at her, causing her entire body to jerk. She screwed her eyes shut against the sensation but couldn’t stay that way for long. Someone was tugging at her hands, pulling her along, forcing her to move. She had to look, to see what was happening – if it was the veiled lady responsible. But there was no one there – at least no one she could see and the veiled lady was in the distance again. All that was close was the thing behind her, coming closer. As it did, an overpowering stench caused her to retch – the scent of a charnel house, she imagined, the reek of death. Snatching her hands back from whatever it was that held them, she raised one to cover her nose and ran, not needing to be pulled anymore, propelling herself well enough down the corridor, the endless corridor. How long could it go on for? In a nightmare, she supposed, forever. And that’s what this was. A nightmare. In it there were no rules, no limits, and no boundaries. She was in the domain of the dead, at their mercy.

Whatever was behind her – the cold, dark thing – had picked up speed too. She didn’t want it to touch her. If it did it would drive her all the way into madness.

“Help me!” Her voice was as cracked as the windowpane she’d glanced out of earlier. Who she was appealing to she didn’t know. The veiled lady? Piero? God?
But this place is Godforsaken, that’s what you said
. She had, but still she found herself hoping.

There was another door banging. Was it the same one she’d heard before? If so, she hadn’t come as far as she thought, although it seemed like she’d journeyed for miles and miles, had been apart from the others for hours, or more than that… a lifetime.

The asylum does that. It distorts everything.

Was that her or the veiled lady?

It’s a world within a world.

Yes it was. A world
between
worlds, even.

It’s a nightmare.

One she couldn’t wake from.

It’s hell.

And always had been.

The door was close now, so close. Should she go in? Is that what the banging indicated? And if not, what was the alternative? Soon she’d be trapped, her back against the wall with nowhere further to run. What was behind her could then feast as much it liked, she’d be powerless to prevent it – its quarry cornered. Keeping the phone’s torch shining ahead she hurled herself into the room. Louder than any thunder, the door banged shut. If she was wrong about this being a sanctuary, there was nothing more she could do about it. The decision had been made. She spun round, half expecting the door to cave in, with what was outside to smash its way through, to claim her. But it remained rigid… for now.

Standing still, she shone the torch around the walls, trying to make sense of where she was: a room, a window on the side wall, with bars across it, some of them intact, some broken. This was a prison that doubled as a home. She was drawn towards the window, and, as she walked, there was a rustling beneath her feet. She shone the torch down, she was walking on pages she realised, pages torn from books, countless books, as if they’d been ripped from their spines in a fury and thrown around. The room was covered in them, half an inch thick in places, forming some kind of curious carpet. She checked the walls again, yet there was nothing on them, no graffiti, no writing. Instead they were relentlessly bare, and above, a cord hung noose-like from the ceiling, all that remained of a light fitting.

This room… she’d seen it before. Not in dreams but on her iPhone. This was the room from a website article about Poveglia, which had been photographed alongside many others, as the person behind the camera chronicled his visit to the island. And the window with blue shutters either side of it, clattering slightly in the wind – the one she’d been drawn to – she recognised that too. It was the window that had framed the veiled lady, just as the window in the house over the archway had framed her. That had been her house. And this had been her room. There was no doubt in Louise’s mind. She’d been a resident of both, ending her days on the island, because once confined, you never left. Still unsure whether this was sanctuary or not, she was tempted to run back towards the door, to yank it open, and had to force herself to remain still. What was the point in running?

She knelt and picked up one of the pages. She was surprised to find not Italian text but English – these books were in English! Although the pages were in varying states of decomposition and much of what was written on them faded, she managed to make out a few sentences. It was a formal, old-fashioned style of writing, the author perhaps dating back to a time even before the asylum was built. She dropped that page, chose another and continued trying to decipher what was written, to see if it was all in English:

… beckoned her … close … took up a jewel … tried its effect…

The rest of the paragraph was illegible so her eyes travelled to where words once again became clear.

“Why… a common labouring-boy!”

“… You can break his heart.”

“What do you play, boy?” asked Estella … with … disdain
.

Estella? This book was
Great Expectations
, by Charles Dickens! And the words belonged to Miss Havisham and Estella, the former a woman who’d shut herself off from society because of a broken heart and who was now urging her adopted daughter to break Pip’s heart, the ‘common labouring-boy’, thus seeking vengeance by proxy. A woman who repented for her actions in the end but too late, sitting so close to the fire, too close, and setting herself alight; her regrets a burden she couldn’t endure.

There was a noise from behind her, another rustling, but different to the first. She had to acknowledge it, but not yet. Instead she frantically scanned more pages, searching until she found something more substantial: a cover. Greedily she looked at the title, it was
A Tale of Two Cities
– a tome she’d studied at school. If this room belonged to the veiled lady had she been English not Italian? And had her love for Dickens turned to fury at the end, hence why she’d ruined every page? If she hadn’t done it then who had? Someone trying to destroy what she loved? Or trying to destroy her?

Still playing for time, she shone the light on another page.

An Italian Dream

I had been travelling for … days … the greatest confusion through my mind … a solitary road … it would dissolve… melted into something else
.

So many words she couldn’t read and what she could didn’t make sense, only the sentiment did, the words as broken as the mind that had obliterated them. But she knew the book from which this had been torn too. It was
Pictures from Italy
, and this chapter described Venice. But had he ever ventured through the Lagoon to Poveglia? Had he known there was a flip side of the coin? And this woman, what was her story? How had she ended up here, in this room – this cell? Her name was etched on the inside of the cover she was still holding –
Charlotte Evans
. Not faint at all, but boldly scribed, because Charlotte was precisely that, she understood, a bold woman, strong, unashamed of who she was, with a will cast in iron. A woman who, unlike Miss Havisham, refused to repent – to make
amends
. Perhaps the reason for that was she had nothing to be sorry for.

Letting the cover fall to the ground, she stood and took a deep breath as she squared her shoulders. She knew exactly who was behind her and also that the dress she’d seen her in so many times wasn’t a dress at all, not something made from the finest lace but a shroud, thrown over her in death, before she’d been buried – her grave unmarked too.

She’d find out now – what had happened.

As she turned, Charlotte was in front of her again, her hands wide, then coming together behind Louise’s back and, like the corridors, drawing her in, their minds melding.

For so long I was lost – my mind turned inwards, sought out place after place to hide from the starkness of reality – or what had become my reality. I lost count of the weeks, the months and the years. Time is nothing here; it’s meaningless and perhaps it always was. In some ways this hinterland I reside in is more honest than the wider world. You are what you are. You’re raw. Only a few amongst us wear masks.

Occasionally I see a face float before me – one that I recognise – a young and handsome man wearing an army cap. I see a woman too, her expression pained as if something is worrying her; yet another man, his hand rubbing at his chest, his lips curled in a grimace. Regarding the young man, I almost guessed his name once, something beginning with an A… I tried to sound it out, A… Al… Alb… but that was as far as I got. I see other faces too, faces at the window, crowding around my bed, their hands reaching outwards, ever outwards. Their expressions are so sad – as if they’re lost somehow, and in need of comfort. I try to comfort them, I’m willing to, but I simply can’t raise my hands in return. I’m too weak and too sad as well. What help could I possibly be?

And then there are the frightening faces, those that wear the masks, their true nature hidden. There are two of them, peering down at me, one man always behind the other as though he’s ashamed. What’s he got to be ashamed of, I wonder? But the other man, there’s no shame in him. He examines me, prods me, makes sure I continue to lie, just lie, doing nothing, seeing nothing but floating faces, or the cracks in the ceiling, or the light bulb as it swings above me, backwards and forwards, incessantly. That’s all he wants me to see. But he cannot control me completely. He thinks he can but he’s wrong. I still exist. I’m still here, somewhere deep inside, cocooned. And one day the haze will lift. Maybe that’s what he’s frightened of. Because there is fear in his eyes – he tries to disguise it, but it lurks beneath the arrogance and the bluster. He knows what he’s doing is wrong. Should that be a comfort to me – that at least he knows? No, because he carries on regardless. I’ll tell you what else I see in him, sitting alongside fear like they are the best of friends; I see madness, utter madness. Of all of us on Poveglia, he is the maddest by far.

“Charlotte, my darling Charlotte, let me hold you, be with you. There,
amore, amore
, do you see? It is not so bad. We can still be together. It is not so different.”

She’d been sleeping when Enrico had woken her – so many hours she slept, but then he’d come and shake her awake, whisper into her ear that he loved her, that she was still his wife, that he didn’t want anyone else, that he had a ‘right’ to her. She wondered sometimes if she should be grateful for this? At least she was being touched still, held and stroked. So many within these walls were touched only when it was absolutely necessary, when they needed to be cleaned or fed, and even then with hands that retracted as soon as possible, as if they were vermin, the lowest of the low, barely tolerated. Perhaps they were supposed to be grateful for that too? Being tolerated. There were those who wouldn’t give them that much, who’d expunge them from society; eradicate them.

She used to work the wards; she remembered that, her brain coming into focus every now and again. Was that because her body was getting used to the drugs or was she being given less, on Enrico’s orders perhaps? He certainly liked her more responsive during his visits, hated her lying there like something cold and dead already. If she did, he’d get angry, even though it wasn’t her fault, he’d pinch and he’d slap her, tug at her hair. Yes, her dosage was lower, she was sure of it: Enrico still wanted at least a semblance of his wife, as she’d been in the marital bed. That was another thing she was supposed to be grateful for – her room. ‘We will have privacy, Charlotte, the kind of privacy a man and his wife should have. And look how pleasant it is. It has a window, a view. If you are good to me you can stay here, away from everyone, from
them
.’ He’d uttered that last word so scathingly, but he was more like ‘them’ than he realised.

She ached inside as much as her body would ache outside when he was done with her. Where had he gone, her handsome husband, the one with the dark soulful eyes and the shy smile? The man she’d fallen in love with at first sight? Was he always a monster deep down? Or had this place – Poveglia – driven him mad alongside his ambition? He wanted to cure madness – she remembered that too – he and Dr Gritti. But you couldn’t cure madness; they were living proof. Since he’d been on the island, he’d changed irrevocably, his ideals becoming too extreme. But then she’d changed as well, her naivety gone.

“Charlotte.” Enrico was whispering again, his breath hot against her ear and with a smell of something strong on it. Was it tobacco or alcohol? Possibly both. Risking his wrath, she turned her head away and breathed the air on that side but it was no better. The smell of disinfectant was rife, its use obsessive. It burnt her eyes and stung her throat, as the orderlies did their utmost to cleanse what was rotten here – a fruitless task. It was too ingrained, a part of the building, as much as the walls, the floor, the roof, and the very foundations it was built on. A site cursed even before the first brick had been laid.

At first during his visits, Enrico would sit by her side and talk to her about his day. He’d mention how many patients he’d tended to, how smoothly the asylum was running under his and Dr Gritti’s care; everyone kept in check, the atmosphere peaceful. That was the word he used – ‘peaceful’ – prompting a memory of when she’d thought it peaceful too. But she’d been wrong. Catarina had been the one to open her eyes to what was really happening. An Italian woman who could speak English, she’d told her that the island was home still to so many who’d died here; the plague-ridden who’d been banished and not just them, but asylum patients too, the ones taken from their beds and experimented on, that experimentation leading to one thing – death. She hadn’t believed her at first, had challenged Enrico, who’d dispelled her fears. And then she’d found the chronicle in Dr Gritti’s office. She’d believed then, but too late and Catarina had been taken as well. Challenging Enrico again as well as his uncle, she’d ended up here, at her husband’s mercy, her
mad
husband’s mercy.

She had turned away but Enrico pulled her face back with his hand, insistent that she looked at him whilst he was speaking, as a good wife must.

“Because you have not been a good wife have you? Not always.”

Even if she could, she wouldn’t answer him, she’d refuse to.

“You have been rude to my mother, wilful. And in the bedroom you were not demure.”

Demure? What did he mean by that?

“I have discussed your case with my uncle in great depth, Charlotte. He is right when he says your morals are too loose and that you know no boundaries. Perhaps it is my fault, what has happened. I should have been stricter with you from the beginning.”

So she was his patient now, as well as his wife? That was new. And her morals were too loose? Why, because she enjoyed sex, because she often used to initiate it? He didn’t seem to mind at the time, he’d embraced the way she was. Right up until they’d arrived in Venice. His mother, Stefania, was a monster too, the way she’d wielded her influence over him.

But he is weak… he is weak…

She couldn’t move her head only her eyes – the others, the ones she saw crowding around her bed sometimes were in the room with her, speaking to her. She was surprised. They only ever visited when she was alone. Could Enrico see or hear them too?

Her eyes on him again, she realised he was oblivious. He was still talking, taking the blame for her plight, because he’d failed to make her into a decent housewife, one that was content to be told what to do. A shadow wife was what he truly wanted. And now he’d got one. Or so he thought.

He is weak… he is weak…

Still the voices were insisting. He hadn’t stood up for her against his mother, and he hadn’t defended her against his uncle either. But he did love her – she knew that – in his own twisted way. He had stopped talking, wanted to
show
how much he loved her, had risen from the chair and drawn back the thin blanket that covered her. Mentally she braced herself as his hand reached out, parted her legs and trailed a path upwards.

She wished she could scream but it was all she could do to struggle, wriggling her hips from side to side, trying to shake him off.

“Ah, you are enjoying this.” Enrico said, seeing what he wanted to see. “Oh, Charlotte, you are so beautiful. Have I told you how beautiful you are? How I love you? You are perfect now, Charlotte. I tell my uncle all the time how perfect you are, that you will not challenge us anymore or put obstacles in our way. Because we are doing nothing wrong, my uncle and I. We are trying to help. And one day the world will realise that.”

She hated the way he tried to justify what he was doing, but she hated it more when he started to undress too, unbuttoning his trousers, kicking them off, climbing onto the bed to lie beside her. And still he’d murmur her name, whisper such platitudes of love. But it had nothing to do with love; it was rape. She’d never willingly succumb to him again. He’d push her legs apart, climb on top and force his way inside her, pounding so hard that the metal railing of the bed crashed against the wall in a diabolical rhythm that would continue in her head for hours afterwards. If she closed her eyes, tried to block him out, he’d beat her afterwards, his hand striking her face and bruising her. Sometimes he’d beat her anyway. Or he’d do something worse, much worse. This was one of those times.

Satisfied, he heaved himself off, quickly pulling up the blanket again as if concerned for her modesty. The irony of which never failed to register.

Dressing himself, he made his way over to a table on which her books had been placed – the only personal effects he’d allowed her to keep aside from her wedding ring. He
insisted
she still wear that. He selected one and walked back, his smile so like the one he wore in their early days together. At the sight of it, she had to close her eyes to stop the tears there from pooling. When she opened them he was sitting in the chair, a cigarette dangling from one side of his mouth. The others had come close again too. They’d disappeared during the abuse and she knew why. They didn’t want to see her shamed further. But now they were as furious as she was, as sad too.

“The Old Curiosity Shop, Chapter Eight,” Enrico grandly announced between puffs. “Business disposed of, Mr Swiveller was inwardly reminded of it being nigh dinner-time…”

On and on he went, the old English words so wrong on his lips. She wanted to scream at him, tell him to stop, she didn’t want to hear it, not the words she’d longed to read herself, the words she’d read to the women on her ward, that had ultimately led her to the truth about what was happening here, and the horror of it. The words she’d brought with her because they reminded her of home, of England, of her parents and her brother. They were
her
books,
her
words but he’d taken them over, just as he’d taken her over. A tear fell anyway as he continued to mispronounce. Thankfully, he didn’t notice.

He is weak…

Yes he was, of course he was, weaker than her, even in the state she was in.

And together we are strong…