The Visitant: A Venetian Ghost Story

by Megan Chance

  He opened his eyes and frowned at me. “That’s what you said yesterday. But then you told me that Nero convinced you to stay.”

  I tried to ignore the flutter at the sound of his name. “Yesterday you seemed to be fine. But today . . .”

  “You’re giving up.”

  “No, I . . . I . . .”

  “Be honest with me, Elena,” he said, straightening. “Tell me the truth, whether or not you think it will upset me.”

  His gaze compelled honesty, so I told him what I thought. “I don’t know how to help you. This is beyond me. I wonder if you wouldn’t be better served by returning to”—I lowered my voice—“Glen Echo.”

  His expression didn’t change. “This is what you want. For me to go back there.”

  “The bromide isn’t helping. You said yourself the cold baths aren’t. Nothing I try . . . your wounds are getting better, but your hallucinations are worse than ever, and you’ve had two seizures since I’ve been here.”

  “Three,” he corrected. “The petit mal the other night. That’s three.”

  I only looked at him.

  “It wasn’t a petit mal,” he said tonelessly.

  Reluctantly, I said, “No, it wasn’t. Not like any I’ve seen.”

  “So it’s true then. I am going mad.”

  “I don’t know, Samuel. I haven’t enough experience—”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t know madness when you see it.”

  “I could be wrong. It could be the medicine. And the epilepsy.”

  “You don’t believe that. If you thought there was any hope at all, you would keep trying. Otherwise you lose everything and so does your father.”

  I could not bear to think of that. I had been attempting not to.

  He snorted derisively. “You’ll have to marry your cousin. The Rialto will be all of the world that you ever see.”

  I flinched. “I wish you wouldn’t paint such a vivid picture.”

  “It’s no better for me,” he pointed out. “I’ll be locked up and surrounded by attendants who are a little too fond of restraints. I can’t even ask you to run off with me. I can’t trust myself not to hurt you.”

  Running off was not really a choice, of course. I could not just leave my parents to the wreck I’d made. And he was right; I couldn’t trust him. More than all of that: when I dreamed of touring the world, he was not the one beside me.

  “There’s still time,” I said. “It’s only the twentieth of December. There’s no need to return until January, if you don’t want to. We can see what happens.”

  “And if it grows worse?” he asked. “If I do hurt you?”

  “We’ll decide what to do then.”

  “What if I don’t want to take the risk?”

  “Then we’ll return now,” I said, more confidently than I felt. “I’ll tell your parents we couldn’t help you. I’ll marry my cousin. The Rialto will be all of the world I’ll ever see.”

  He laughed—short, explosive. “My God. You are something. You truly want to take the risk of staying?”

  I was afraid for him and for myself. Yet there was still a chance for this to end how I wished, wasn’t there? To spend a few more days hoping that Nero Basilio might look my way. I thought perhaps I could face my wedding with equanimity if I had a kiss to remember, a touch to hold close in the deepest parts of the night.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m willing to stay. Until we cannot.”

  “Very well. How do we decide when that will be? I think it best that we agree. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I hurt you. So I say you take me back the moment I become violent.”

  “You’re often violent. I have morphine.”

  He sighed. “Then you tell me. What would be more than you could bear?”

  When you frighten me, I thought. But no, because he pushed, he prodded, he was too intimate and too insistent, and all those things frightened me. His violence frightened me, but if I just kept the morphine with me, and the knife, I thought I could manage that. Finally, I said the thing that frightened me most. “When I can no longer find you in your eyes.”

  His face fell. “Christ. Elena.”

  “I won’t let you forget who you are,” I promised.

  “You may not have a choice.”

  “If I can’t bring you back, that’s when we return. Are we agreed?”

  “If I’m that far gone, I won’t know to agree.”

  I put my hand on his arm. “I won’t leave you, Samuel. I promise. I’ll make sure you’re taken care of. I won’t leave you to restraints and sedation. Whatever happens, even if you don’t know who I am, I’ll see you through to the end. Maybe a part of you will remember that, and find comfort in it.”

  He said in a whisper, “You don’t owe me that.”

  “I want to do it. I want to make the promise.”

  “I never thought to meet anyone like you.” He put his hand on mine, his fingers curving, holding me in place. He bowed his head, his hair falling forward to half hide his face. Then he raised his eyes to me, and I saw within them an admiration that startled me, and beneath that, a starkly evident hope. He pulled me closer; the sun touched his hair with honey, a misty, luminous fog around his head like a halo, and I became lost in that as he bent his head to kiss my throat, the throb of my pulse. His mouth was moist and warm, the touch of his tongue sent a shiver coursing through me. He moved to my jaw, and I thought, stop this. My own breath came fast, a cloud of fog, and then a rush of brutally icy cold, my skin pimpling with gooseflesh, the hair on the back of my neck rising.

  Her perfume teased my nose. Samuel made a sound deep in his throat that made my heart falter. Stop him. But I felt helpless to do so, held in place, confused and disoriented. I could not tell—was that his breath I heard, rushing and short, or my own? His hands skimmed my breasts. He murmured something against my skin; I felt him tense, a broken breath, and then, before I knew it, before I had time to react or to stop him, his hands were around my throat, a gentle touch at first, and then he began to press, and I realized numbly that he was strangling me. In panic, I pushed at him, but he was immoveable. He was no longer kissing me, but staring at his own hands. Spellbound. I pried at his fingers, trying to break them loose.

  “Samuel,” I gasped. “Stop!”

  His eyes were black, and fathomless. I did not see him behind them. He squeezed; I began to see stars.

  He whispered, “Chi comincia mal, finisse pezo.”

  The stars turned black. His breath was a frosty cloud. It was freezing. The scent of vanilla, fetid canal water, and acrid dye filled my nose.

  His eyes flickered. I didn’t see Samuel within them, but someone else, not the dead look of madness but someone. Consciousness and intention and jealous anger. But that was absurd and I couldn’t breathe, and everything took on dark edges, and he was still squeezing as I scrabbled at his hand, scratching now, digging my nails in. He was so strong. I was going to die, and so soon after I’d made him the promise to save him, and where was someone to save me now? Where was Nero?

  The knife. I had the knife in my pocket. Desperately, I pawed at my skirt, trying to find it within the folds of fabric. Samuel’s teeth were clenched, his expression intent and furious. Not Samuel. Everything exploded before my eyes, red and black. Finally, I felt the knife, the hilt. I gripped it and tore it loose, the dagger sliding from the sheath, in my hand, and I couldn’t think what to do with it—what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t make my thoughts obey, or my hand. It was only instinct now, only the pure will to survive that brought my hand up and then down, and I heard his cry of pain, and he jerked away.

  I gasped for breath, nearly swooning as air rushed into my lungs again, choking, scrambling away even as I struggled to breathe, dropping the knife, everything going white before my eyes, the world spinning and then, finally, settling, and I coul
d see again. Samuel with his hand pressed against his shirt, his ribs, red seeping between his fingers, staining his shirt. He looked at me in disbelief, and there—there he was—Samuel again, and I thought how strange it was that he should be there when before he had been someone else entirely.

  “Elena,” he said, a wretched sound, torn from his lungs, horror and fear. He reached for me.

  I wrenched away. “Don’t touch me.”

  “Elena, my God . . .” How terrible he sounded, racked and hopeless.

  Blood dripped over his fingers. He took his hand away to look, and then grabbed the edge of the chair as if he might faint. He pressed his hand back again.

  Warily, I rose to my knees. He looked so lost, like a child who had done something wrong without knowing what it was. His eyes glistened.

  “Samuel,” I whispered, my voice raw; I could not make it louder. “Look at me.”

  Whatever I had seen in him was gone, but I was still cautious as I went to him, and I felt the way he held back too, his reluctance to let me touch him, even as I pulled his hand away from his chest so I could look at the damage I’d wrought. It was not so bad as it looked. A slice, but not deep, bleeding profusely. “I’ll have to get bandages,” I said. “Wait here.”

  He grabbed my hand before I could leave. “Don’t. Don’t come back. Stay in your room. Lock the door.”

  “Not until I wrap this,” I told him.

  But when I was in the hall, I thought about doing what he asked. My throat ached; I had trouble swallowing. I knew there would be bruises. And what about my promise now? He had not wanted to hurt me, and I had told him I would not condemn him until I saw madness in his eyes. Surely that was what I’d seen. Hadn’t it been? Samuel Farber gone, and someone else in his place. Someone else . . .

  But no. He’d been strangling me. Who knew what it was I’d seen in him? Or if it had been anything at all? I ran to the bedroom and grabbed my medical case. When I returned, he was at the balcony door, struggling with the latch.

  I went cold. “What are you doing?”

  “It’s calling me,” he whispered. “Don’t you hear it?” He jerked open the door. The chill air rushed in, that molten, misty sunlight. He stepped out.

  I stared at him in horror.

  “Good-bye,” he said.

  I dropped my case and rushed over, grabbing him around the waist. “No, Samuel. No. Stop!”

  He struggled to get free. “Let me go.”

  I felt the wet, warm stickiness of his blood on my hands. I dug my fingers into his wound. He gasped, crying out in pain. I dug harder, and it was enough to weaken him, enough so I could drag him back inside. He crumpled onto the floor, and I closed the door and locked it, leaving bloody fingerprints.

  I was trembling when I turned to face him, sick with what he’d tried to do, not just to me, but to himself. “No. You won’t do this. Promise me you won’t.”

  His hair fell into his face. “My fingerprints are on your throat.”

  “You won’t do this.”

  “I can’t be in restraints again. I’d rather be dead than in an asylum. At least give me that peace.”

  “No,” I said again. “No.”

  “I just tried to kill you. I wanted to kill you. I would have done it too, if not for that knife.” He looked at it where it lay on the floor. “Nero’s.”

  “He gave it to me in case I needed to use it against you,” I said.

  Samuel buried his face in his hands. “We’ll return to New York tomorrow. Pack your things. Perhaps I can convince Nero to come along. To keep you safe.”

  Yes, I thought, and then no. What I’d seen in Samuel’s eyes nagged at me. It had been so strange. Not like any madness I’d seen before. “I brought you back, Samuel. You’re here. We agreed. We don’t have to leave yet.”

  He looked up. “All I had to do was lean out too far over the railing.” His voice lowered; he spoke as if in a trance. “To dream, to sleep, all mistakes forgotten . . .”

  I froze at the echo of my own thoughts. Not just mine. Laura Basilio too had felt such temptation. Had surrendered to it.

  “Nothing to redeem, nothing to remake,” he went on. “Only peace.”

  I did not believe in ghosts. Damn Madame Basilio for even suggesting it. I do not believe. But I heard myself ask, “Samuel, did you see your angel?”

  He frowned as if trying to remember.

  “Just now, when you were . . . kissing me and then . . . did you see her? What do you remember?”

  “I wanted you, that’s what I remember. I was—am—mad for you.” A bleak look.

  I ignored the tiny thrill I felt, wrapped as it was in regret and a wish not to disappoint. “And then?”

  “And then . . . yes, the light. Her. I felt this rush and . . . I wanted to hurt you. I wanted to kill you. Then everything went dark. I didn’t come to myself again until you stabbed me.” He looked down ruefully at his chest. “Well done, by the way. It hurts like the devil.”

  “Not like a petit mal.”

  “No, nothing like.”

  I grabbed my medicine case and moved closer, reaching to unbutton his shirt. Samuel jerked back, paling, raising his hands. “Don’t.”

  I rolled my eyes and pushed past his hands, feeling the warmth of him beneath my knuckles as I unbuttoned. A long cut, crossing browning bruises, stretching from below his nipple, slashing diagonally across his ribs. I cleaned it, ignoring the harsh jag of his breath.

  “Tell me about this rush you felt,” I said, wrapping the bandages around him.

  He hesitated. “It was like morphine when it’s injected. Like a surge in the blood, I suppose, but one you don’t cause or control.”

  I finished tying the bandages and sat back. It all battered about in my head, things locking together now, beginning to make a sense I did not want to contemplate. Laura Basilio’s favorite song and her handkerchiefs flying. Samuel lunging for the balcony and Laura’s suicide and Madame Basilio’s belief that her daughter’s spirit had returned to deliver a message. Demons. Angels. Ghosts. In New York, I never would have countenanced any of this. But here, in Venice, everything seemed possible.

  The preternatural cold. Her scent. My sense of being watched and the shrouded figure. That consciousness I’d seen in Samuel’s eyes that wasn’t his own, but wasn’t emptiness either. Hatred and jealousy. Not his, but someone else’s.

  Laura’s?

  Ridiculous. Impossible. Madness even to think it, wasn’t it?

  “Why are you asking these things?” Samuel asked. “What are you thinking, Elena?”

  “I don’t know.” I put the bandages back in the case and closed it. “Not yet. But I think it’s time I asked some questions.”

  Chapter 23

  I was a rational being. I’d never believed in ghosts. But I had no other way of explaining the things I’d seen here, and my questions and rationalizations snarled into an impenetrable knot. I was afraid to leave Samuel alone now, so I did what he asked and sedated him. The morphine had become a blessing; when I left him, he was safe in bed and sleeping, and I went in search of Nero.

  There was no answer when I knocked on the door. Zuan was in the courtyard below, cleaning out a barrel, puddles of murky water about his feet and the sleeves of his coat dark with wet. When I called to him about Nero, he jerked his head to the kitchen. “There, mamzelle.”

  I hesitated. The chances that Giulia would be there too were high, and I had no wish to speak with her or to interrupt whatever they were about. I had no right to feel jealous over that either, I reminded myself. What mattered now was Samuel.

  But thankfully, when I went into the kitchen, I saw no sign of Giulia. Only Nero, lounging on the bench, drinking wine and idly mangling a piece of bread into a pile of crumbs. He looked louche and lazy and lovely, those tousled curls, the coat over his shirtsleeves, no collar
or vest or tie. When I entered, I said, “There you are,” but I got no welcoming smile from him.

  He frowned. “What’s that on your throat?”

  I tried to cover the forming bruises with my hand, wondering how bad they were. “Isn’t it a bit early in the day for drinking?”

  “I told you before, in Venice it’s never too early. What happened? What are those red marks?”

  “They’re nothing. I need to talk to you about your cousin.”

  His hand tightened on the glass. “I’ve no wish to talk of Laura.”

  “I think you need to. I know this will sound bizarre. I don’t know if I believe it myself, but I can’t quite discount what your aunt says about her ghost.”

  I expected laughter. Outright disbelief. Even scorn. Instead, he rose from the bench in a fluid motion and grabbed the pitcher of wine, the glass. “We can’t talk here. Anyone could come in.”

  “Wherever you say,” I told him.

  “The cupola. No one will find us there.”

  I nodded and followed him out, neither of us speaking until we’d gone up the stairs and skirted the tiles of the roof, wet with mist, and slippery. Once we were inside, door safely closed, he poured wine into the glass and turned to me. His gaze went directly to my throat. When I made to cover it, he brushed my hand away, his expression one of horror and fear—for me, I realized gladly. “Santa Maria. He tried to strangle you.”

  “He wasn’t himself. And I’m perfectly fine. I used your knife. He’s asleep now. I sedated him.” I took a breath, then, “I’ve promised to stay.”

  “Elena, don’t be a fool.”

  “He’s not himself,” I said again. “He says an angel tells him to do things.”

  A flicker in his eyes. Terror, I thought, and something else, a dawning awareness that told me he was going to believe me. But he shook his head. “An angel? Do you hear yourself?”

  “He sees a man putting a pistol to his head. A drunk woman falling. I think they must be visions of your parents’ deaths, but I don’t know. Is that what happened? Is that how they died?”

  Nero frowned. “Yes, but—”