The Visitant: A Venetian Ghost Story

by Megan Chance

  “Laura’s accident must have made it all so much worse,” I said.

  Samuel stiffened and glanced away, a little too quickly, as if he meant to hide something.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Nothing.” He looked at me again, and I noticed the deep lavender shadows beneath his eyes, his pallor that only made the scars on his face more evident. His hair was lank and tangled, unbrushed. I remembered what he’d told me about his dreams trespassing into his waking hours. I remembered my own resolution to help him.

  “Did you have nightmares again last night?” I asked.

  “They never leave me,” he said.

  I said firmly, “Meet me in your bedroom.”

  “Oh? That sounds promising. Have you been reading? Do you mean to take me up on my offer?”

  I must learn to control my blushing. “Liniment. I think you’re ready for it.”

  “So you intend for me to be in excruciating pain.”

  “I hope not excruciating.”

  Samuel sighed, and I went to my room and gathered the things I needed. When I returned, he stripped off his coat and shirt and flannel vest to reveal the edge of the bruise still lingering on his hip, lying on his stomach on the bed. I rubbed in the burning liniment down either side of his spine. I had gloves on, so I couldn’t feel his skin, but I was acutely aware that he was lean and powerful, and I felt his every gasp, every twitch of his muscle, every dip and valley in his spine. I tried not to think of how it had felt to be trapped in his embrace.

  Suddenly I was freezing. Icy fingers touched my neck where it was bared above the collar of my gown and below my chignon. His skin turned blue, then white beneath the pink irritation of the liniment. He was a statue carved from ice beneath my hands, hard and slippery and cold even through the fabric of my gloves. I shivered, drawing away, confused and disoriented, my breath only frost. He was no statue, but a man trapped in ice. Dying, freezing—No, not dying. Not ice. I stared at him, blinking, trying to right my vision—for a moment my imagination had been so vivid—until he turned his head and said, “Are you finished?”

  Whatever daydream I’d slipped into slipped away. Madame Basilio’s words about ghosts manifesting in cold breezes taunted. I didn’t believe it, of course, but I couldn’t help shivering. The smell of the liniment was dizzying, nauseating. Pungent and piney, sharp and peppery, nearly wiping away the constant, acrid scent of the dyer’s canal. And beneath it all . . . Laura’s scent, that haunting perfume that clung to everything in this room.

  I covered him with a blanket and told him to stay still for a time, then left him to put everything away. The vision of him dying in ice had shaken me, the wintry kiss on my neck, that plunging cold . . . I needed a breath of fresh air to clear the stink of the liniment from my head. I needed a moment to gather my thoughts. I went to the sala. The sun had beaten back the clouds of morning, though a line of heavy gray still threatened in the distance. Sunlight shone brightly through the balcony doors, slanting in glowing panes across the floor, sending rippling, dancing shadows and reflections over the ceiling, so it looked in constant motion. But as beautiful as it was, it did nothing to alleviate the uncomfortable, moist chill that breathed from stone and plaster. I unlatched the balcony door, which was nearly as swollen into its frame as that of the cupola. It had to be dragged open. I opened it only enough to ease out onto the stone balcony.

  The breeze was cold and laced with the scents of salt and wet stone and the tannic stink of the dyer, along with something rotten. My gaze felt dragged to the canal below. For a moment, I suffered that nauseating rush. The canal was choppy and dark, bobbing with bits of fast-moving flotsam, at one point a broken crate and several drowning, dancing lemons following it like ducklings. Something that looked like a shirt, bloused by the water and the breeze, lost laundry tumbling in the current. A dark, furry dead thing that made me wince.

  The glancing of the sun off the white stones of the palazzo across was almost blinding. I gripped the balustrade, the chill of it radiating into the fine bones of my hands as I leaned over. The narrow walk below was hidden by the balcony of the second floor, the railing of which was just visible. From this vantage point, I could not see onto the balcony at all. The water of the canal rippled and sparked, sun glinting on shadow, deeply blue. I found myself mesmerized by it, entranced, staring at the currents and the constantly changing surface, the sun piercing the depths fleetingly and then withdrawing, leaving it mysterious again. So beguiling, beckoning, singing Come to me. Come and let me take you. Cajoling. Come to me now. I knew this song, and how to answer it. All I must do was lean out just a little bit, like this, loosening my grip, a bit more, off balance, and I would fall into air, into water, plunging below, deep and deep and deep, until all light was gone, all air, nothing but darkness, and it was where I should be, where I wanted to be, to drown, to sleep, all mistakes forgotten, nothing to redeem or remake, oh, how peaceful, how perfect and right, impossible to resist.

  A seagull dipped and cawed, so close and loud that I started, feeling as if I’d awakened from a dream. I was on my tiptoes, at the edge of my balance. I clutched the balustrade, and jerked back, disconcerted at the too familiar turn of my thoughts, the past mixing with the present. I stepped to the middle of the balcony, safe again, shaken by memory—my hand on a window latch, snow shining like diamonds, the song in my head. I thought of Laura Basilio falling just as I almost had. What had she been thinking as she leaned to look at water churning a Venetian scarlet? Wrapped and waiting like a pretty package, her life closing in, doors slamming shut, no other choices. But no, that was me. She had only slipped. It had been an accident.

  I shuddered and hurried back inside.

  I did not go back to Samuel. I went to my room and busied myself emptying the medicines from the case and then putting them back in their careful order, concentrating on the puzzle of it until my mind had settled, and I could put those thoughts back into their own boxes and shut them tightly away.

  That night, I was sound asleep when the light woke me. A sudden blaze, blinding and painful, inches from my face. I cried out, covering my eyes with my hand. When I lowered my hand, I saw it was a lamp turned very high, and behind it stood Samuel Farber, bare chested, barefoot, his shaggy hair falling into his face.

  I sat up, pulling the blankets with me to cover my nightgown. “Samuel?”

  He blinked and stepped back, but his gaze was blank, he was not there. Sleepwalking again, but he’d always kept to his own room before. I didn’t like that he’d found his way to mine. Giulia’s warning to lock my door returned, bringing with it a twinge of panic.

  I swallowed my fear and got out of bed slowly, and cautiously, not wishing to alarm him, remembering the seizure that had overtaken him when he’d awakened the last time. As soothingly as I could, I said, “You’re dreaming. Come, let’s get you back to your room.”

  He stared down at his hand, opening it, flexing it, as if he’d expected to find something there and was surprised that it was empty. “I don’t want to,” he said in an anguished whisper, not to me, but to someone in his dream.

  Gently, I took the lamp from him, my hand at his back, guiding him to the door. “It’s all right. Just a dream.”

  I maneuvered him into the hall. The lamplight bounced over the floors, clambered up the walls in swinging reflections, making the cracks in the plaster look wide and gaping and the long, curling shadows of peeling wallpaper drip eerily. “You’ll feel better when you’re back in bed.”

  We were nearly to his door. He stopped short, jerking back. “No.”

  “Shhh. It’s all right.”

  His eyes were wild, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was staring at the open door of his bedroom. “No. No! I won’t do it!”

  “Samuel—”

  He wrenched away from me, spinning around, tearing back toward the sala, disappearing around the corner before I
knew what he was about. I had not thought he could move so quickly, not with that knee, even in a dream state.

  I hurried after him into the sala, the lamplight careening crazily over the walls. The moon was setting, its fading light chased by clouds. Samuel looked like a ghost where he stood at the windowed doors, his skin glowing palely, his hair disappearing into darkness. His breath pulsed in puffs of frost, as did mine. The floor was a sheet of ice beneath my bare feet. “A whisper in your ear . . . a cold breeze where there should be none . . .”

  I pushed the thought away. Madame Basilio’s inanities.

  “Samuel,” I said, stepping up beside him. “It’s time to go back to bed now.”

  He stared blindly out the window. He didn’t seem to hear me.

  I touched his arm. “Come along now.”

  He turned on me suddenly, grabbing my arms. I dropped the lamp. It crashed to the floor, shattering, shards of glass everywhere, oil scattering, little flames across the stone. Samuel propelled me backward, slipping through the oil. Tiny bits of glass stabbed into my feet. I cried out in pain, “Samuel, please!”

  But he didn’t release me. He pushed me against the wall. His gaze searched my face; I didn’t know what he was looking for, but it wasn’t me he saw. He was still in his dream, and he was so close his clouded breath was warm and moist on my face, his mouth inches from mine. If I had not been afraid before, I was now. More so when he brought up his hand, when his fingers lit upon the pulse beat in my throat, a soft, soft touch.

  I froze. He smiled, but it was cruel, nothing to reassure. “How fast your little heart is beating,” he said, and there was mockery in his tone, a nasty edge. “Corexin de conejo.”

  It was not his voice, and yet it was.

  He said, very softly, “Mé viscara,” and then words I could not distinguish; I felt only the malice in his intention.

  He gripped my shoulders, pulling me toward him, then slamming me back against the wall. Little bits of plaster crumbled over my shoulders.

  “Samuel,” I gasped, no longer trying to wake him slowly, no longer caring about anything but getting free. His grip was so tight, he was so much stronger than he should be. “Samuel, wake up! Wake up!”

  He was deaf to me, pushing, shoving, the wall a barrier he could not budge. I don’t think he even saw it. I don’t know what he thought he was doing. And his eyes, what I saw in them terrified me. Ill will, aggression. Anger.

  “Let me go!”

  I saw behind him a flash of white, the shroud I’d seen before. Stars burst before my eyes, tangling in Samuel’s hair, in the air all around him, scattering as he slammed me back again.

  I couldn’t breathe. The air had been sucked away. I was suffocating, and the stars were dancing all around, so beautiful and terrible, spinning and twirling in a mesmerizing rhythm set to the drum of my racing little heart.

  Chapter 16

  “What the hell?”

  The voice came from the doorway. The stars blinked away; my vision cleared in time to see Nero Basilio slide to a stop. He took in the flames across the floor, the glitter of glass, Samuel and me.

  I tried to cry for help, but Samuel slammed me into the wall again. Mr. Basilio raced across the room, launching himself at Samuel. I was caught between them, unable to get free, my nightgown tangling around my legs and Samuel’s, their arms locked about me.

  Basilio grunted, Samuel pulled back to hit him, and I grabbed his arm to stop him, throwing him off balance. His weak knee buckled; we all went tumbling to the floor, a knot of arms and legs.

  The fall seemed to release Samuel from his dream. He stilled, and then shook his head as if to clear it, blinking, frowning. “What?”

  I was lodged firmly between them, the warm solidity of Nero Basilio at my back, my hands pressed to Samuel’s bare chest. I tried to sit up, but my nightgown was caught beneath Samuel’s legs, and I couldn’t move.

  “How familiar,” Mr. Basilio said drolly. “Except I believe the last time we were so entangled, you weren’t trying to kill the lady involved.”

  “I was what?” Samuel moved now, freeing my nightclothes as he sat up.

  I scrambled away. “You were sleepwalking.”

  The tiny fires of the shattered lamp were flickering out, one after another, as they consumed their drops of oil. “I was sleepwalking and I . . . I tried to kill you?” Samuel slid back until he sat against the wall. He looked terrified and confused and so bleak that I forgot how frightened I’d been only moments before.

  “You came to my room,” I told him. “You said something about not wanting to do something? I don’t know what exactly. I was taking you back to the bedroom when you bolted. Do you remember any of it? Any of what you were dreaming?”

  He looked away at the question, but I felt the tension that came over him. “No.”

  I thought he lied. But then, perhaps it was better not to question him now, not with Nero Basilio here to witness anything he might say.

  Mr. Basilio sat up. His feet were bare. He was in his shirtsleeves, the placket unbuttoned as if he’d thrown it on hastily, untucked and hanging to his trousered thighs. “I heard a crash. The lamp, I suppose. When you do something, you do it well, my friend.”

  One of my feet began to hurt. I reached down to feel, my fingers slipping through either blood or oil—probably both—brushing away prickling shards of glass, nothing large, but it smarted enough that I knew I’d been cut. I thought I should ask Samuel if he was hurt. I thought I should check his feet. But I was reluctant to touch him, even though he was obviously himself again.

  Samuel buried his face in his knees. “Christ. I am a madman.”

  I threw a quick glance at Nero Basilio. “No, you were—”

  “You certainly looked to be,” he said.

  “—sleepwalking,” I finished.

  “That excuses nothing,” Samuel said.

  “For once, I agree with him. When I came up here he was trying to pound you into sausage.” Mr. Basilio rose, offering me a hand, hauling me to my feet. My cut foot stung. I pulled away and braced my hand against the wall. “Has this happened before?”

  “His head injuries. And the medicine sometimes has this effect,” I said. It was both the truth and a lie. The bromide and epilepsy could cause visions. But what I’d seen in his eyes was like nothing I’d seen before.

  “Medicine? What kind of medicine would do this?” Mr. Basilio asked.

  “It takes weeks to stabilize.”

  “Weeks where he’s trying to throw you off a bed or through a wall? There must be something else. Something that doesn’t cause him to sleepwalk, or to hurt you.”

  “Laudanum?” Samuel suggested hopefully from his place on the floor.

  “No. And I’m all right now. I’m used to such things.”

  Mr. Basilio looked horrified. “Used to such things? How could that be?”

  I cursed myself inwardly at my carelessness. Yes, by all means tell him about all your epileptic patients at the asylum.

  “You should leave, Elena,” Samuel said softly. “I’ve told you before. I’m not fit for—”

  Firmly, I said, “I’m not leaving. There’s no point in discussing it.”

  Samuel said, “I promise I’ll do what I can to . . . to help you.”

  I was aware of how intently Nero Basilio was listening. Samuel Farber was ostensibly healing from a beating and being readied for a wedding he didn’t wish to attend, and that was all. But Basilio must hear the deeper currents of what was being said. All I could hope was that my comment about the medicine’s side effects would stop him from asking questions I couldn’t answer.

  “I find I must agree with Samuel,” he said. “He meant to hurt you.”

  “He didn’t know what he was doing,” I said, and though I believed that, it didn’t make anything better. I had seen the menace in his eyes.
I’d heard it in his words. I’d felt his hostility, that same hostility I’d felt before, I remembered. That evening in his bedroom, as he’d stared at whatever vision assailed him.

  And then I felt a deeper fear. Nightmares moving into his waking hours, he’d said. Visions. Caused by the medicine, I told myself.

  Or ghosts.

  Or madness.

  I didn’t want to follow either thought. The first was just ridiculous. Had Madame Basilio not said it—a woman still deeply grieving her daughter—it would never have occurred to me. But the second . . . empty eyes and restraints and men who shouted at things that were not there. Those at Glen Echo who had been beyond hope. Beyond help. Keeping them quiet and placid was the most anyone could do.

  “That makes it even worse,” Mr. Basilio said. “Tell me you weren’t afraid just now.”

  I insisted—as much for myself as for him—“Once the medication is stable—”

  Samuel laughed bitterly. “It won’t matter.”

  “It helped before,” I said before I thought.

  “Before?” Basilio’s voice was sharp.

  Another misstep. I didn’t know how to explain. I was too rattled to come up with a lie. “I have to sit down.”

  “You’re hurt,” Mr. Basilio said.

  Samuel’s head jerked around. “Are you? How badly?”

  “My foot,” I said. “The glass. It’s nothing, I’m sure.”

  Nero Basilio was at my side in a moment, taking my arm to help me to the settee, skirting the scattered glass and oil. “Is there another lamp?” he asked.

  “Hanging near the doorway.”

  He released me to the settee and went to get the lamp, the flame flaring to life, gilding the planes of his face as he brought it over. He set it on the floor at my feet, kneeling beside me, taking up my foot in a gentle grip. He leaned close, one hand moving up my ankle to hold my foot steady, his curls brushing my bare calf as he looked for wounds. I struggled to keep from jerking away. His touch seemed far too intimate. Even more intimate than Samuel’s kiss, though how that could be, I didn’t know.