The Haunting of Isola Forte di Lorenzo

by Sherlyn Colgrove

  “We need to talk about Jonas,” she said evenly.

  In the moonlight she could see Matt’s expression tighten as he strained to hold back a curse. “What about him?”

  Jorden kept her gaze steadily on him. “After I left you and Tony today I headed to the hospital in Naples where the tourist who died on the island was taken.”

  “And?” he asked after a slight hesitation.

  “And I found out something rather interesting.”

  Matt looked at her, his face still strained with disdain, but also twisted within his expression was curiosity. “And that is?”

  Jorden took in a deep breath but never took her eyes off of Matt. She had known him for years and knew that he was good looking in spite of the hardness of his features, but in the moonlight he was striking and an unexpected shiver ran up her spine.

  “Jorden?” he addressed curiously. “What did you find out?”

  Jorden forced herself not to let on to her distraction and instead she continued, “The name of the tourist was Evangeline Harper…” she said, “…Jonas’s mother.”

  For a moment Jorden couldn’t tell if Matt was stunned or angry. His expression didn’t change for a short while and Jorden started to wonder if he’d even heard her. “His mother?” he finally asked.

  Jorden nodded in confirmation. “I imagine that’s why he’s here. As for not telling us from the start about it, that’s something you’re going to have to ask him.”

  Matt slumped against the wooden pillar beside him and looked out over the water in the general direction of the island. “Were you able to find out how she died?”

  “The records were all in Italian so I grabbed them and had Nigel take a look. A lot-”

  “You stole the records?” he interrupted.

  Jorden couldn’t tell if he was angry or amused, but neither option appealed to her. “Do you want to hear this or not?”

  A smile filled his face as he waved his hand at her. “By all means…continue.”

  The amusement in his voice was hard to miss, but she let it pass. “Anyway, Nigel didn’t understand most of it and suggested that we have Syd take a look, but from what we could gather it was sudden heart failure, though we couldn’t find any information pointing towards what might have brought it on.”

  “I suppose that would upset me too,” Matt said, “I can understand why Harper wanted to come out here and have this place investigated. What I don’t understand is why all the subterfuge? Why not just come to us and tell us the truth?”

  Jorden had already asked herself that question a thousand times and had yet to come up with a sufficient answer. “That’s something we’re going to have to ask him.”

  Matt agreed and nodded. “Besides you and Nigel, who else knows about this?”

  “Just Isis and I already asked both of them not to mention it to the others; that we would discuss it as a group back on the island with everyone present,” she said.

  “Good,” Matt said. “The last thing we need is for rumors and questions to start flying around and for tempers to flare.”

  Jorden agreed.

  A sudden silence fell over the two and when Jorden looked at Matt, she found him staring at her. “Something on your mind?” she asked.

  He gave her a slight smile. “Nothing much,” he said then scooted closer to her, so close that their legs were almost touching. “So aside from a trip to the hospital and dinner with Nigel and Isis, what else did you do?”

  She smiled. “Had a rather boring tour around the base of a rather grumpy volcano.”

  “Boring?” he questioned.

  Jorden nodded then donned a wicked little grin. “Boring tour, boring company…”

  She allowed her words to trail off and Matt gave her a friendly little shove, though when she swayed back in his direction, his face had grown serious and before she could inquire as to why, his lips were on hers.

  Her own volcano of thoughts and emotions erupted and while she was confused, she kissed him back. At first the kiss was gentle and tentative, but quickly grew to something deeper and it seemed to last forever.

  “Oh damn,” he said when he finally pulled away from her lips, but kept his forehead pressed against hers. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” she panted slightly, not knowing what else to say.

  “I-I don’t know why…”

  He didn’t have a chance to finish what he was saying. It was Jorden’s turn to make a move and this time it was she who pulled him to her.

  Jorden’s kiss equaled Matt’s and his response was every bit as passionate as it had been the first time, so passionate in fact that she ended up in his arms and practically in his lap.

  “Matt! Jorden!” Tony’s voice called from the other end of the pier.

  Both Matt and Jorden jumped at the sound of their own names being called and before she could catch herself, Jorden slid off the pier and plunged into the chilly waters below. Though they weren’t far from shore, the water was deep enough that she didn’t strike the ocean floor and she immediately kicked up to the surface.

  Just as her head broke the surface of the water she heard another splash and before she knew it there were a pair of arms around her. “Oh my God I can’t believe you did that,” Matt said breathlessly.

  “I didn’t do anything, you let me go!” Jorden argued.

  “You fell,” Matt countered.

  “Because you let me-”

  Jorden didn’t have the chance to finish the argument, and instead found Matt’s mouth on hers again. “I’m sorry,” he said when he finally pulled his lips off of hers. “I promise I won’t let go again.”

  Jorden looked into his eyes and could see so much emotion and a bit of confusion as well, which suited her just fine because things were happening so fast at the moment she didn’t even know which way was up…figuratively speaking anyway.

  “Hey!” Tony called from the edge of the pier above them. “Are you two all right?”

  “Yeah!” Jorden called back. “We’re fine, but we could use some help getting out of the water!”

  “I’ll send the boat around to pick you up!” Tony offered then ran down the pier to the boat waiting to take them back to the island.

  Once Tony was gone and Jorden and Matt were left alone to tread water, they both looked at each other. Jorden didn’t know what to say and judging by the look on Matt’s face he was equally clueless.

  “I think that once this investigation is over we need to have a talk,” Jorden said finally.

  “Why wait?” Matt asked as the sound of a boat’s motor starting up in the near distance filled the air. “I think that it’s pretty obvious that something’s been here for a while and I think that we’ve waited long enough.”

  It was possible that he was right, but at the moment she just wasn’t sure. She had always liked Matt; more than most men even, but that didn’t mean that she was ready for this kind of relationship with him or anyone else. “I just think that it would be wise to put all of our efforts into the investigation. With so much happening on the island I really don’t think that it would be a good idea to go in distracted, especially here.”

  Matt’s eyes grew dark and his face twisted into concern. “You have a point, but don’t think that I’m going to forget about this. I’ve want-”

  His words were cut off when the boat pulled up alongside them and two sets of hands reached down for them. Immediately both of them reached for the hands and were pulled up by the boat’s driver and Tony.

  “What in the hell were you two doing?” Tony questioned in a highly irritated tone that only somewhat blanketed the worry behind his words.

  “Nice night for a swim,” Jorden said as she accepted a towel from the driver. “And how was your day?”

  Tony glared at her and growled “Fine, you can tell me later.”

  It was not a request, and knowing Tony the way she did, she knew that there was no way she was going to get away without telling him everything. Since
nearly the moment they met he had been like a big brother to her and most times she appreciated the sentiment, but now all she wanted to do was get her mind back into the investigation and off of Matt.

  Once Jorden and Matt were wrapped in towels, the boat headed back to the slip where the others had finally started to gather. When they stepped onto the boat, each of them flashed Jorden and Matt a peculiar look but refrained from saying anything. Somehow Jorden knew that they all had a pretty good idea of what had happened and she had to wonder if all of them saw what went on between her and Matt just moments earlier.

  The trip back to the island didn’t take long, though Jorden felt like the driver may have slowed down before it was necessary to do so. When she looked at him she could almost feel his fear and the feeling overwhelmed her, so much so that she had to look away from him and find something else to concentrate on.

  Matt was sitting beside her and didn’t miss her reaction. “What is it?” he asked in a hushed tone.

  Everything that had gone on that night had been overwhelming and she didn’t want to talk to him about it so she shook her head lightly as though nothing were really bothering her. “Nothing. Just tired,” she only half lied.

  “L’Isola di morte,” the driver mumbled as they approached the looming shadow of the island.

  Matt turned from Jorden and faced the driver. “You’ve said that before,” he said just loud enough for both the driver and Jorden to hear, “what does it mean?”

  The driver looked back at him with a haunted expression. “The island of death, signore. It is the island of death.”

  It wasn’t something that they hadn’t heard before; the island was often referred to as the island of death or more simply “Death Island” during the years of the black plague. Most of the information they had on the island was in regards to the thousands upon thousands of men, women and children of all ages who were taken there while either dead or dying. It was rumored that many were buried alive, though there was never any evidence uncovered to prove the rumors true. There was a mass grave located on the island and according to what documents Jorden found confirmed that the victims had all died from the plague, though most of the victims from the plague were cremated. It was only when the dead bodies overwhelmed the morticians at the original hospital that they were transported to the other side of the island. Whether the bodies were burned or buried was still uncertain; conflicting stories stymied their investigation and until they found physical evidence, Jorden and the others would have to live with the mystery.

  But the way that the driver looked when he said “the island of death” seemed to have more meaning than a tragic history.

  Though they were less than a mile from the island the driver turned to face them. “There is evil there. You should not go back. You should stay away…if you stay, death will follow you.”

  The warning sent chills up and down Jorden’s spine, and they were not the euphoric chills she had felt with Matt earlier. These were chills of worry and even fear.

  Before either Jorden or Matt could respond the driver turned away from them and looked back at the island just in time to dock the boat and allow his passengers to disembark.

  “Beware signore, all that can come from your investigation is death. Leave while you still can.”

  That was the final warning the driver gave before he backed the boat away from the small dock and sped away from the island at a far greater rate of speed than that of their approach.

  “What do you think?” Tony asked from behind Jorden and Matt. “You think that the boat driver knows something we don’t?”

  Jorden turned with her brows raised. “I wasn’t aware that you were listening.”

  Tony gave her a smile that she knew was friendly but if a stranger had seen it he or she would have turned running and screaming and would never look back. “Very little gets by me,” he said then shot Matt the same smile, though with different meaning before he looked back at Jorden. “Well?”

  Jorden looked back at the direction of the boat to find that it was long gone and she shrugged. “I’m beginning to think that everyone knows more about this place than we do.”

  The comment wasn’t simply idle and meaningless…it was the truth. Every time they turned around someone was telling them just a little bit more about the island and it seemed that they hadn’t even scratched the surface, in spite of all the research they had done.

  “Well let’s get inside and get everyone together,” Matt said as he pressed his hand against Jorden’s back to encourage her to head for the cottage, “We have a lot to discuss before we get back to work tomorrow.”

  Matt wasn’t disappointed that Jonas was absent from the cottage when they returned from the mainland, but knowing that he was on the island and wandering around on his own and unchecked did have him worried, and when he told the others about what Jorden had learned about their guest they all seemed worried as well. Everyone but Jorden and Syd that is, and that bothered Matt even more.

  “He lied to us,” Nigel said, “I can’t believe that you think that he isn’t up to no good.”

  “Yes, he lied to us, but given the fact that he lost his mother here doesn’t make me think that he’s trying to deceive us, in fact I believe the opposite,” Syd said calmly. “I think he wants answers just as much as we do.”

  “Well I don’t give a damn why he’s here, it doesn’t change anything,” Jesse said. “The fact that he’s off on his own on this godforsaken place is enough to make me suspicious.”

  “He’s right,” Ana added. “He’s been back for almost four hours and we’ve seen neither hide nor hair of him. What in the hell could he be doing?”

  A thick silence fell over the room and hung like a dense fog for a moment before Jorden spoke up, “It doesn’t matter right now. If he’s up to something we’ll find out tomorrow when we set up the equipment,” she said. “Right now I’m more interested in finding out what Jesse and Saph learned on their trip to Rome.”

  Saph’s face lit up like a kid on her birthday while Jesse’s face grew sour, and no one understood more than Matt just how the guy felt.

  “We spent the day going through various libraries including the libraries at the three major Universities in the city and found quite a few articles dating back to the days when it was a preventative lazaretto for both persons and goods in fourteen-sixty-eight. It was abandoned in fifteen-seventy-five then a year later the original hospital was built to accommodate plague victims. Up to ten thousand victims occupied the hospital at any given time while even more were either buried or cremated on the north end of the island in a massive pyre. The glow from the frequent fires could be seen from the mainland and served as something of an omen for those on the mainland to stay away.

  “Eventually the island was abandoned and in sixteen-fifteen Father Lorenzo Santorini made landfall to reclaim the island from the dead and build his monastery…and we all know how that turned out,” she said then took a breath as she flipped to her second page of notes. “In nineteen-eighteen the hospital grounds were remodeled and additions were built where it served as an asylum under the direction of head surgeon and psychiatrist Herman Klaus. From nearly the moment patients started to arrive the ‘G’ word began to surface. Of course both Doctor Klaus and Doctor Alberto Santini insisted that the patients were crazy and they weren’t believed. The doctors increased the ranting patients’ medications and when that didn’t work Doctor Klaus started performing lobotomies and other evasive procedures on the patients to shut them up,” she said then looked up from the notes and at the others, “but without any medical journals being found and examined, those are just rumors emerging from the patients’ families and repeated over the years.” She looked down at her notes. “Anyway, in nineteen-twenty-nine it seemed the good doctor, Herman Klaus, went mad and hung himself in the arches of the hospital’s top floor.”

  “What else is there?” Jorden asked when she noticed that Saph was hesitating.

  “I f
ound a small article about Doctor Santini,” she said with less enthusiasm and swallowed hard. “It seems that just a year before Doctor Klaus hung himself, Doctor Santini jumped from the arches of the bell tower after a slow decline into his own madness.”

  The report made Matt’s heart jump and when he looked over at Jorden and Isis he found that both of them had gone white as sheets.

  Normally news like this would excite the group but not one of those gathered in the dining room of the caretaker’s cottage appeared excited, in fact quite the opposite was true. It seemed that many of them wanted to find the nearest toilet and lose anything they may have eaten that day.

  “Well if that isn’t a confirmation I don’t know what is,” Tony said grimly.

  “I think that before we lay it to rest we should take another team up into the bell tower and see if we can make contact, specifically with Doctor Santini,” Syd said evenly.

  Immediately Matt shook his head. “Absolutely not. Two teams went up and two teams were rushed out because of the negative energy up there.”

  “Yes, but now that we know what to expect our reactions shouldn’t be as severe,” Jorden argued then looked up at Syd. “I’ll go.”

  “Like hell!” Matt snapped with a loud growl that grabbed the attention of everyone in the room. “I said no more teams are going up there and that’s the end of it.”

  If anyone was going to jump on him it would have been either Jorden or Isis, but instead Tony stood. “Do you mind if I have a word with you outside?”

  Matt was a big man, but Tony was bigger and unless he wanted to make more of a scene, Matt had no choice but to nod in agreement and lead Tony out to the front steps.

  “I know that you’re not dragging me out here to tell me that we should send a third team up into the bell tower,” Matt said then instinctively looked in the direction of the structure and to the tip of the tower that stabbed out of the thick canopy of trees and into the dark sky. “Both Jorden and Isis came out of there violently ill and it wouldn’t do anyone any good to send either of them-”