The Haunting of Isola Forte di Lorenzo

by Sherlyn Colgrove

  “Which way first?” Jonas questioned with a sigh as he looked from one overgrown, dilapidated direction to the other.

  Neither direction down the main, and really only, street looked promising and Nigel shrugged. “You go that way and I’ll head this way,” he said as he pointed then held up his radio and gave it a quick wave. “Call if you find anything.”

  After a sneer of a grin from Jonas, Nigel headed south down the narrow street with little hope of finding anything. Most of the buildings were boxy and made of stucco with stone arches over doors and stone frames around windows. Such a building was on Nigel’s left. When he peered into the windows he determined that the building was once a market. There were even a few items still on the shelves, though he doubted that any of them were safe enough to eat – he certainly wasn’t about to try them out. Next to the market was another, smaller store with scattered shoes here and there and beside that was a shop with a chair ahead of a sink and mirror.

  He continued on down the narrow, stone street, passing several smaller abandoned businesses ranging from a clothing store, to a small corner cafe. Though the village was abandoned and overgrown with ivy, tall grass and weeds it still seemed to be in reasonably good condition and he had to wonder why anyone would leave. With items still on store shelves, the townspeople had to have left in a hurry.

  “Nigel!” his radio loudly squawked, which forced him to jump.

  Nigel was irritated when he tightly grasped his radio and jerked it up to his mouth. “You don’t have to yell,” he sniped.

  “There’s nothing here,” Jonas complained, completely ignoring Nigel’s protest. “I found the police station and there was little there but busted furniture and corroded, iron bars around empty cells, and there was even less in the local ministries office across the street. If there were any files of any kind here they either went with the villagers when they vacated or officials from Rome came in later to clean them out,” he continued. “Have you found anything yet?”

  Nigel didn’t want to agree, but in the half hour he’d spent there he had even less to report. But he knew that if there was nothing to find there, they needed to move on, but to where was anyone’s guess.

  At the same time, Nigel wasn’t going to leave until he checked out everything and he still had a couple more buildings to look into, as well as the homes that stretched up the hill behind the main street businesses. “I want to finish checking things out on this end before I throw in the towel, but if you want, I’ll understand if you want to head back to the car and rest. I know that the treks we’ve endured over the last couple of days have been a bit rough, especially for someone who is accustomed to sitting behind a desk and getting his workouts in a gym rather than the real world,” he goaded as much out of disdain for the man as for revenge for nearly making him wet himself a moment ago.

  There was a brief pause and Nigel could almost hear Jonas cursing him and mentally flipping off the radio. “Fine,” Jonas finally said. “I’ll keep looking, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. I don’t think that Matt is going to be happy with us flitting around out here for no other reason than satisfying your curiosity.”

  It was Nigel’s turn to silently swear and mentally flip Jonas the bird, but he didn’t retaliate. Instead he said simply, “Then you don’t know Matt all that well,” then placed the radio on his belt before moving into another building. When he found that he’d entered a saloon, he was almost giddy that he hadn’t quit.

  Unlike the other buildings, he hoped that he would find some stock, and this time he wouldn’t mind testing it out.

  When Nigel passed through the stucco archway and the rotted, wooden door, the musty odor of stale air, dust, mold and mildew was overwhelming, but he pressed on. In spite of the abandoned scent and appearance, he couldn’t help but feel that he wasn’t alone.

  Out of instinct his heart beat faster with concern. While he was certain that it would probably be a good idea to get out, he couldn’t help but step forward and cross to the bar. Suddenly, as he stepped behind the bar, all feelings of dread and uncertainty diminished when he found a dusty, half-full bottle of vodka sitting on a shelf beside a nearly full bottle of red wine. The glasses above were as dusty as the bottles themselves, but it wasn’t like Nigel to just drink out of the bottle. He looked around and when he found nothing to clean the glass with, he changed his thinking and suddenly drinking out of the bottle didn’t seem so objectionable, and he carried the half-full bottle of vodka to a table not too far from the bar.

  Out of habit, Nigel took the sleeve of his shirt and wiped off the lip of the bottle, then after a deep breath, he took a swig.

  “Oh damn!” he gasped as his throat burned, and he pushed himself back into his chair.

  “Cose buone,” a scratchy voice said from the back of the saloon.

  Once again Nigel was surprised and he jumped. When he looked behind himself towards a darkened corner of the saloon, he witnessed a shadow stepping out towards him. At first he thought that he might be seeing an apparition or shadow person of his own, but when the form stepped out into the streaky light of the dusty windows, all he saw was a short, hunched over old woman carrying a bottle of her own.

  While he was relieved that there was no threat in the bar, as he’d initially thought he’d felt, he was nonetheless disappointed that he had yet to have an encounter with the other side.

  “I’m sorry?” Nigel questioned, not really understanding what she had said.

  The woman paused a moment then shrugged and continued towards him, eventually plopping her stocky backside in one of the rickety chairs at Nigel’s table. She gave him a once over with narrowed eyes, then smiled, revealing her darkened, yellow and gray teeth…at least what remained of them. She raised her own bottle of unlabeled, amber liquid he thought might be scotch, “Salute,” she toasted then took a hearty drink.

  Nigel, not wanting to insult the woman, clinked his own bottle to hers and took a drink as well, which elicited another cough. When the bout was over he raised his radio to his mouth. “Jonas. Get to the far end of the street and come into the bar. I think that I found something.”

  “In the bar? I bet,” Jonas grumbled.

  Nigel rolled his eyes and thought about saying something snide but then thought better of it. “Just get your arse over here!”

  The woman continued to look at him suspiciously, though took another drink and nodded towards Nigel’s own bottle as if to order him to drink as well.

  Not wanting to insult the old woman, he took another drink, but wanting to keep his head about him, he made sure that it was nothing more than the slightest sip. Then hoping that the woman would be able to tell them something, he activated the digital recorder he kept in his pocket – a habit that carried over from his experiences as a reporter. It was his hope that the woman would be able to tell him something about the village or maybe even the island.

  When Jonas arrived, the smug look he often wore immediately vanished and he entered the bar with caution.

  Immediately, Nigel held up a hand up to soothe the old woman. “Il mio amico,” he said, hoping that he was telling her that Jonas was a friend while looking convinced that it was true – it was actually the latter that worried him most.

  The woman continued to stare at Jonas suspiciously but allowed him to take a seat at the table.

  “Have you asked her anything yet?” Jonas questioned through clenched teeth and a tense smile.

  “I was waiting for you,” he said then in broken Italian asked her what she could tell them about the village and Lorenzo Island.

  The woman’s eyes narrowed even further and for a moment Nigel thought that she might get up and walk away, but then she leaned in and waved for them to lean in closer. “Lasciarmi le dice una storia.” She offered to tell them a story.

  Caretaker’s Cottage – 2:30pm…

  In frustration and visual fatigue, Matt rubbed his eyes deeply. After hours of staring at endless video footage from the last few d
ays all he had to show for it were orbs of dust and an increasing headache. Even the enhanced video from the night they lost the camera in the living quarters showed nothing but dust followed by static.

  “Please tell me you found something,” Matt said as he slumped back on the sofa and rested his head back.

  “Not a damned thing,” Tony said, though continued to watch his own monitor. “You’d think that with all the personal experiences we’ve had so far we would have found something, but so far we’ve got exactly zilch.”

  “Same here,” Jesse said with even less enthusiasm.

  Matt then looked at Jorden, who kept her headphones on and continued to listen. When he looked at her face, it was filled with concentration and he knew better than to interrupt her. When she was in a zone, such as now, and was interrupted, she went into teacher mode; meaning she had a way of making Matt and the others feel like they were back in high school and facing detention for cutting class or flushing a nerd’s head down the toilet…not that he’d ever done either.

  Instead of pressing her for information, he watched her. He studied the lines of her face and admired her concentration. He knew that she was aware that he was watching her and she didn’t even shift with discomfort.

  Her green eyes remained fixed on the monitor ahead and by the display alone, Matt knew that she was listening to little more than static, though every now and then the lines on the screen would scratch up and down like a rapid, unruly arrhythmia and she would skip back and listen several times. Most times she was able to dismiss the sounds, though every now and then she would write something down on her legal pad. But for the most part, it appeared that she was having barely more success than the rest of them.

  After about another twenty minutes, Jorden finally removed the headphones and placed them down on the coffee table to the left of her laptop and she took a deep sigh of relief and release.

  For a moment, Matt could only stare at her as she rested back and he realized just how beautiful she was. It wasn’t that she had supermodel looks or a playmate figure, but the softness of her slightly tanned skin and the warmth of her eyes and the way her warm, brown hair caressed around her face gave her an almost angelic appearance, especially when she was resting. The lines of her body were tight beneath her snug, peach sweater and black jeans while her hair cascaded down in subtle waves over her shoulders and down to her breasts.

  It was at that moment that the image from his nightmares manifested itself and he had to quickly look away from her. The screaming, vacant face of a ghost that was Jorden forced him to take a deep breath and attempt not to draw attention to himself. It was only luck that both Tony and Jesse had headed to the kitchen about fifteen minutes earlier to grab something to eat otherwise he would have had a witness to both his ogling and his subsequent reaction to something that wasn’t even there.

  It wouldn’t be as easy to escape Jorden’s grasp. The moment he jumped at the unwelcome vision of the ghostly image she turned and looked at him with curious, and even worried, eyes. “What’s wrong?”

  For a moment longer he stared at her and he wanted to share with her the images that were going through his mind, but he simply couldn’t. Instead, he just smiled and shook his head. “Just tired.”

  He could see in her eyes that she didn’t completely believe him, but there was little he could do about that at the moment. He simply wasn’t prepared to talk about the image.

  “So,” he said to break the growing tension between them, “did you find anything interesting?”

  Her worry quickly turned to enthusiasm. “As a matter of fact, I did.”

  Matt scooted closer to her and was overwhelmed by the scent of her – honeysuckle. Almost immediately he put just the slightest amount of distance between them, but remained close as to not draw too much attention to himself or his uneasiness.

  “I finally finished with the EVPs and found a few that we hadn’t yet gotten to that are very intriguing. There are three of them, one from your second trip to the mausoleum, one from Isis and Syd’s trip to the bell tower and the last one is from the courtyard.”

  “Let’s hear ‘em.”

  With a nod, Jorden cued the first EVP. “This is the one from the mausoleum.”

  For a moment there was nothing more than Matt and Ana’s voices. It was about the time that Ana mentioned that she was getting cold and there was a voice that Jorden had missed the first time she listened to the recording. It was low, almost a whisper carried on the wind. “I actually had to listen to this one a couple of times before I realized that there was actually something there.”

  “I guess so, because I didn’t hear anything but the wind,” Matt said.

  He thought that she might have gotten frustrated but she just nodded. “I know, that’s what I thought too, but listen again and just to be clear, both of you had recorders that night and this one is yours,” she reminded then played the segment again.

  Once again, there was just the slightest whisper that sounded more like the wind than anything else, but at Jorden’s urging, he closed his eyes and strained to listen. This time, he thought that he did hear something, but wasn’t sure and he said as much to Jorden.

  “Now listen to this,” she said then played a second segment. “It’s Ana’s recorder.”

  This time the whisper was louder, but still sounded like a harsh wind, and there was a storm that night. “Maybe,” was all that Matt could say.

  This time her eyes narrowed and the slightest bit of frustration filtered through. “Listen again,” she said then looped the segment so that it would play over and over again.

  After enough runs, maybe a dozen or so, Matt finally thought that he heard something unnatural. “Any idea what it said?”

  Jorden shrugged. “I’m not sure. I need Syd to listen to it, but I think that it said ‘il mio bambino’, which I believe translates to ‘my child’, but I can’t be sure.”

  “My child?” he questioned doubtfully. “In the monk’s mausoleum? Doesn’t really make sense.”

  “It’s a disembodied voice,” she said and shook her head. “Since when are they required to make sense?”

  Matt had to nod and he rested back. Of course she was right, but something about this didn’t feel right, and coupled with the nightmares he’d had since the moment he stepped foot in the mausoleum, he was certain that there was more going on than a simple disembodied voice from a possible residual haunting. He was starting to think that there might be an intelligent haunting going on, but to prove it he was going to need more proof. In the meantime, there were two more EVPs to listen to. “All right then,” he said finally, “what about the other two?”

  “This one is from the bell tower. It’s similar to the one we heard from our visit there…someone asking for freedom, but this one has more.”

  Jorden played the EVP for Matt and he listened once again. Jorden was right; the words were similar, but this time there was more. There was the sound of a scuffle and grunting before the declaration for freedom followed by a scream.

  “And the third one, I think, is probably the most interesting. It’s Isis and Nigel in the courtyard on the second night. They’re talking about why Nigel got into ghost hunting and he’s questioning the afterlife. It’s then that you’ll hear something.”

  Jorden played the recording and like she said, the voices of Nigel and Isis could be heard. A sudden light breeze picked up, as mentioned in the conversation and a voice followed. “Sono qui…” followed by something that neither Matt nor Jorden could make out.

  “What does it mean?” Matt questioned.

  Jorden smiled. “I had Syd give me a generic list of phrases to listen for and this one was on it. Sono qui…means ‘I am here’.”

  Matt smiled as well and his heart skipped. “You think that the voice was answering one of Isis’s questions?” he asked.

  Jorden nodded. “It’s definitely a possibility.”

  Matt was almost giddy and he couldn’t stop himself from
giving Jorden a bear hug. Of course once he had her in his arms he could barely let her go.

  Caretaker’s Cottage – 8:15pm…

  The sun set on the far side of the island and it was nearly dark by the time Jonas and Nigel got back. Finally, the entire team was able to gather in one place and go over all that had been found so far. Of course, everyone knew about the EVPs in the bell tower and the mausoleum, though few had heard them until then, and the reactions were all similar – terrified yet exuberant. Smiles grew when they heard the conversation between Nigel and Isis, and the unseen and audibly undetectable voice. Syd confirmed the voice said ‘I am here’.”

  “More than that,” Syd added, “the words you couldn’t quite make out after it was a voice asking for help.”

  “Help?” Jorden questioned. “From whom?”

  Syd shrugged. “Most voices we pick up that seem to talk to us really aren’t. We often hear voices asking for help, but in all likelihood they are residual haunts.”

  “So you think that we’re reading more into this than there really is?” Nigel questioned, his smile fading dramatically. “That this person, whoever she was, wasn’t reaching out to me…I mean us?”

  Syd shook his head. “Of course not. I’m not saying that at all,” he said in a soothing, fatherly tone. “I’m simply reviewing the types of haunts for our guest,” he said with a nod in Jonas’s direction. “The other type of haunt is an intelligent haunt; a spirit that is aware of his or her situation and is reaching out to the living world, most often for help or simply looking to communicate.” He took a moment and looked at the anticipation of all those in the dining room. “I do believe that we’ve found our first intelligent haunt,” he said finally.

  A cheer rose around the room, but none were more enthused, or more confused, than Nigel. Since he was a child he wondered if there really was some kind of afterlife. Hearing the voice now, in many ways, begged to answer his question, but at the same time, he never heard the voice when it spoke to him. It was only after, when the recordings were being analyzed, that the voice became clear, and he had to wonder why.