This Haunted World Book One: The Venetian: A Chilling New Supernatural Thriller

by Shani Struthers

  She strived to keep her voice steady. “I heard someone screaming, a woman I think. The sound came from here. Catarina isn’t in her bed. Is she behind the curtains? Let me see her.”

  Even though she couldn’t see Dr Gritti’s face behind his mask, she had a feeling he was smiling. “Ah, Catarina has been talking, filling your head with nonsense. Delusions and hysterics are all part of Catarina’s condition. A condition I will try and eliminate.”

  “Eliminate?” What a strange choice of word to use. “Eliminate her you mean?”

  Dr Gritti growled, glanced at Enrico. “Like Catarina, your wife is becoming a danger.”

  A danger? Why was Enrico standing by, accepting what his uncle was saying? Why wasn’t he defending her? Now would be the perfect time for him to step up. He wasn’t even looking at her anymore; he was looking away, staring at the ground. Instead, she was the one defending a woman that she barely knew.

  “I believe that Catarina is through there, Dr Gritti. She was screaming just a short while ago but now she is silent, probably because you’ve sedated her. Are you planning to operate too, to experiment?”

  As she said the words she made to dart round them but they easily blocked her. Fuming, she turned to her husband, “Enrico, what is wrong with you? It feels like you’re siding with your uncle against me. Surely that isn’t true.”

  “There is no side to take,” Enrico said, his voice muffled, his gaze still averted.

  “There is… this man… your uncle, there is something wrong with him.” She had to come clean and tell him what she knew. “I went to his office, Enrico, to use the telephone. I wanted to try and contact someone at home, I was tired of being fobbed off.”

  “You went to my office?” Dr Gritti raised an eyebrow.

  Charlotte nodded defiantly. “I failed to make a connection but nonetheless my time there proved fruitful. I found things.” Retrieving the letters from her pocket, she waved them in front of them both. “These are letters I wrote to my parents, to my brother. They were never sent; they were in a filing cabinet instead, just tossed in there. And,” she had difficulty swallowing, her throat was so dry, “in that same cabinet, I found a ledger, a list of people, I have no idea if they were all patients of Poveglia but they had one thing in common, they’re dead. That is what it was you see, a ledger of the dead and Luigina was in it – her death recorded as the 24th December 1938, Christmas Eve. The day,” – oh, God, she could hardly bring herself to say it – “the day that you didn’t come to help me, the day you and your uncle were busy,” she glanced at the hidden room, “operating.”

  Beneath his mask, Enrico was breathing heavily. “You failed to make a connection?”

  “Yes… I just said that.” Why had he singled out that fact, hadn’t he heard what else she’d said. What she’d implied? “Enrico, we need to make sure Catarina is safe and then leave, your uncle might have stopped my letters from leaving the island but he can’t stop me, stop us.”

  “Your parents don’t know you are here,” Enrico continued to mutter, his eyes darting between her and his uncle. “No one knows you are here.”

  “Enrico, listen, what’s happening on the island, the work that your uncle is undertaking, it isn’t right.” Catarina’s words about the plague victims and the shallow graves came flooding back. “There has been so much death here and yet still it continues.” Her voice hardened as she stared back at Dr Gritti. “Being mentally ill does not make a person bad and nor does it make them worthless. There are other ways to help people who suffer, effective ways – what I was doing for example, the simple act of communication. How can we even begin to treat the problem if we can’t talk to our patients, if we don’t allow them to talk back? That’s the only way to understand madness, to be able to stand a chance of curing it – we need to find out what’s at the root of it, what caused it in the first place, if it really is madness, or if it’s something else, grief for example, loss. There could be so many reasons. Your way, your methods, all it results in is death.”

  There was a groan from behind the curtain. Catarina was still alive! She hadn’t gone the way of other ‘lost’ patients – yet.

  Hope surged within Charlotte. “Catarina, I’m coming.”

  Dr Gritti closed the gap between them and seized her arms. “You are going nowhere.”

  “TAKE YOUR HANDS OFF ME.”

  When he began to laugh, she wanted to cry. He turned his head to Enrico. “She will make an interesting experiment, your wilful wife.”

  He couldn’t possibly mean it. “ENRICO!”

  “Enrico won’t help you,” Dr Gritti continued to taunt. “He is too ambitious.”

  Too ambitious? Yes, of course he was, but he was good. Ultimately he was good. She wouldn’t have fallen in love with him otherwise.

  “Enrico, help me!” When she got no reply, she tried again. “Please!”

  “We must get her into another room, Enrico.”

  Another room? What other room? “Enrico, we have to go home.”

  “Impossible,” Dr Gritti said, abruptly releasing her before walking over to where the shelves were and reaching up to grab something: a syringe. “You know too much.”

  Ice-cold beads of moisture began to erupt on her forehead. She had to try a different tack, not scream and shout, not goad him anymore. “I promise, you can continue, Dr Gritti, I won’t breathe a word. Just let my husband and I go. There will be no more fuss.”

  The doctor didn’t even deign to reply; he simply carried on doing what he was doing, calmly, casually – such arrogance in his stance. Flying to Enrico, her hands grabbed his face. “Darling, look at me, please. We can go. We can leave. He can’t make us stay.”

  Enrico brought his hands up to cover hers. “Amore – we are close, so close.”

  “Listen to me, please. I am your wife!” It was the second time she’d had to remind him of this.

  “I know.”

  “Then help me!”

  He screwed his eyes shut, looked physically pained.

  “Don’t you love me anymore?” she asked.

  “I do.”

  “Help me,” she repeated. Strangely their voices had lowered, become whispers – two lovers, a husband and wife with words only for each other. “We can put this behind us, we can pretend it never happened. Be happy again. I make you happy, don’t I?”

  “Amore…”

  Dr Gritti returned and, with one hand yanked her away from Enrico; the other hand held a syringe. “You do keep him happy, amore, in the bedroom particularly, but any woman can do that. There are many here as loose as you.”

  She was more stunned by his words than the sight of the syringe. “As loose as me, I… how dare you! What do you mean?”

  Releasing her, Dr Gritti removed his mask, revealing an expression that was wolfish. His nose seemed much longer than before, his eyes more beadlike, his mouth a cavern. “You are a whore,” he said simply. “Enrico tells me how wanton you are. He enjoys it, any man would. You are an attractive girl. But it is the strings attached that I tell him are no good, the demands you make, the attention you crave, how you use sex to manipulate him, to get your own way, to disrupt his career. I have taught Enrico many things since he has been on the island, one of the most important to think with his brain not just his balls.”

  At his words, she could only turn to Enrico, a silent question in her eyes. Is that the way you’ve described me, as wanton, as someone who only wants to manipulate you, to hinder? He provided no answers, but his shoulders slumped. Dr Gritti had defeated him. No, the truth was worse than that. He’d allowed himself to be defeated.

  Finding her voice again, she continued to appeal. “My parents will contact Enrico’s parents when they fail to hear from me and insist on a forwarding address.”

  “My dear sister and her excuse for a husband will obey my wishes, no one else’s,” Dr Gritti was clearly not concerned with any argument she could raise. “Besides, Europe will soon be a mess because of the war.
Communications will break down between countries, between people. It will be hard to find loved ones, impossible in some cases.”

  What was he saying? That she’d never see Albert or her parents again? He couldn’t do that, he couldn’t! But, as the dream-like scenario she was caught in continued to unfold, she realised he could. “Enrico, did you know your uncle had intercepted my letters?”

  Again, it was Dr Gritti who replied. “Of course he knew. I was honest with him.”

  Still she addressed Enrico. “And… did you plan this all along, you and your mother?”

  Enrico rallied. “My mother is innocent!”

  So he was capable of defending someone, although there was cold comfort in it. “Answer me, did you plan it?”

  “No.” All fight left him. It had been so fleeting. “I planned nothing.”

  “So it’s for the sake of ambition that you’ll kill me?”

  Dr Gritti roared with laughter, a sound that hurt her ears. “We have no intention of killing you, Charlotte! You too are suffering from hysteria. Contrary to what you think, we are not murderers, we are pioneers.” He paused briefly. “Although accidents of course happen when trying to achieve great things, and so many of them. It is unfortunate, I agree. No, we will not murder you. Such a notion! We will do what we do with the other patients. We will treat you. Only if you break rank will we take more drastic measures, and a part of you, deep down, will understand that well enough. Comply, however, and there is nothing to fear. You will live, I am sure, to a grand old age on the island.”

  So, one way or another, they’d get her. She’d die here, on Poveglia, cut off from the rest of civilisation, from her family and her beloved Albert. Enrico had also removed his mask, his normally olive complexion pale. He reached out but only to hold her steady whilst his uncle force-fed whatever drug was in the syringe into her system. As the needle pierced flesh, as consciousness, true consciousness began to fade she made one last vow. If Catarina was right about the dead and they were waiting to wreak revenge, she’d lead them. And then she’d leave this island, even if she was dead herself. She’d go home.

  Part Three

  Poveglia

  Chapter Twenty-One

  There was a gentle rhythm to the waters beneath Piero’s boat that lulled her, the effect soporific, compounded by the thick layers of mist that surrounded them. Passing the raggedy stick men again, as she thought of the wooden pilings that rose out of the water to guide the way, Louise felt caught between this world and the next – unsure what was real and what wasn’t. She was in a dream again, although this was a waking dream at least. Last night she’d only realised she’d been dreaming when she’d woken up, the images crowding her mind so vividly and lingering until she’d forced them from her mind. Trembling at the memory, she squeezed Rob’s hand. He squeezed back, adding a quick smile before scanning the horizon. The veiled lady had been in the dream.

  There’d been mist too. She was somewhere strange; somewhere she didn’t recognise but, even so, she knew it to be a stark and barren place, the ground beneath her feet soft but not fertile, far from it. She’d been playing a game, a child’s game, even though she wasn’t a child in the dream and neither, it seemed, were the people that surrounded her.

  “Spin around, spin around!” The shadow figures were saying, their voices high-pitched and bursting with excitement. “Spin around, spin around!”

  At the same time hands were reaching out, twisting her, turning her, ethereal fingers that were cold to the touch. She’d been told to close her eyes, was trying to concentrate, to stop her head from spinning. Suddenly she understood the objective of the ‘game’ – when they finally stopped spinning her, she had to reach out and – still with eyes closed – catch one of them. Then, whomever she caught, it was their turn to stand in the circle, to take her place. She remembered enjoying the game, finding it fun, and then the atmosphere had changed, becoming as cold as the hands that touched her. The voices continued to chant, but their pitch changed too, becoming higher, faster, beginning to grate, to hurt her ears. Stop it! Stop it! Despite her irritation, she was determined to make it to the end of the game and then, abruptly, all voices had died away, hands had stopped clawing. Did this mean she could stop, lunge forward and catch the next victim? Relief had surged through her; she’d even smiled. Taking a few steps, she started grabbing, arms waving randomly in front of her, grasping nothing but thin air, big armfuls of it. Slippery as eels, but I’ll catch them. I’ll catch someone. But still the others in the game proved elusive. How much longer should she keep this up? She was getting tired, so tired, which struck her as odd: how could you be tired when you were already asleep? She’d give it just a short while longer; try to be a sport about it.

  “Hello, is anyone there? Let me know if you are. That I’m not alone.”

  She was met with silence – a wall of it. Had her playmates abandoned her? She stopped searching and came to a standstill. God, it was arctic, the very air she breathed solidifying around her. She was going to have to open her eyes and ruin the game. But she had no choice. It needed to come to an end anyway. It had gone on too long. Before she could change her mind, her eyelids sprang open and that was when she’d seen her, the veiled lady standing close, so close, ready to claim her…

  “Oh shit!”

  Rob turned, a look of surprise on his face. “What’s the matter, Lou, do you feel sick?”

  “No, no. I… I was remembering that’s all, something I saw in a dream last night.”

  And it had just been in the dream she’d seen her – just the dream. How often had she had to remind herself of that this morning? When she’d opened her eyes for real there’d been no one in the room but the two of them, no sound but that of Rob’s gentle snoring.

  “Yeah, you were thrashing around a bit. Woke me up a couple of times. You were murmuring too. Was it a nightmare? Must have been. All that drink and…” he paused, looked away but only briefly, “I don’t suppose the argument helped either.”

  She was amazed. He never normally acknowledged their arguments – once cross words were over between them they were never referred to again, and she’d learnt long ago not to press him either, as it got her nowhere, and only led to a fresh argument. Strangely, the fact that he was acknowledging their argument now embarrassed her. She still felt terrible about how she’d laid into him, blaming him for everything, telling him she hated him, hitting him across the face; something she’d never done before. She’d lost control. She couldn’t bear to think of the hurt in his eyes, felt so ashamed about it. But she’d gone someway to redeeming things hadn’t she? She’d agreed to this at least.

  Looking at Rob, he clearly expected some sort of response. “You’re right, the argument didn’t help. I’m so sorry, I don’t want us to argue again.”

  He shrugged. “We’re going to argue, Lou, it’s inevitable, couples always do, but yeah, let’s make more of an effort to chill out in future, both of us.”

  She could only agree.

  Piero and Kristina were sitting in front, Piero steering the boat. He turned his head round to speak to them. “The mist will clear soon, the sun will burn a hole through it.”

  His wife nodded sagely as though he were speaking the words of a prophet. Louise didn’t have as much faith but she nodded too. They were only trying to be kind. Even so, she couldn’t help but wish they’d never gone to that restaurant again last night; had never met the people in front of her; that the question of visiting Poveglia hadn’t arisen. But Rob seemed excited, that was the main thing. He’d been thrilled when she’d told him this morning that she’d texted Piero and that he’d replied back, saying the trip was on. He’d even leant across and kissed her – a ‘make-up’ kiss, tentative as opposed to passionate, but something to show they were on the mend, that another storm had been weathered.

  Continuing to glide, leaving one island behind to encounter another, she looked at her watch. It was noon. If the sun were going to burn through the mist surely
it would have done so by now? She found herself praying for sunshine, even though she hadn’t seen any so far this weekend. The island wouldn’t seem so frightening in the brightness of day. She rolled her eyes. It’s not frightening anyway! But the thought had no impact. The veiled lady might be a figment of her imagination but she’d succeeded in unnerving her. Venice had unnerved her, and now Poveglia. She never thought she’d think it, not considering how much she’d wanted to come to this part of the world, but she was looking forward to returning home in the morning, to normality. Perhaps they’d book a beach holiday next time instead of a city break, head to Ibiza, an island saturated in life not death.

  “There you are, can you see it,” asked Piero, “the bell tower?”

  Despite the mist, they could. It was not an unattractive structure – on the contrary, it was even more impressive than when she’d seen it in photos. Tall yet elegant, and with a legend attached to it, a legend she’d read about and which Piero elaborated on.

  “They say that one of the island’s doctors jumped to his death from that tower,” he told them, “the ghosts of so many dead rising up and compelling him to do it. The legend is that he was complicit in employing… erm…how do you say it, immoral methods when treating his patients. He used to experiment on them, torture them even; show them no mercy. The people that died, his patients, wanted revenge.” He laughed suddenly, as if highly amused. “Ah, the rumours, there are so many here who want revenge apparently, both victims of the plague and the asylum. After his suicide, the bell tower was bricked up, and it remains that way to this day. That’s one building we won’t be able to visit.”