The Spider Dance

by Nick Setchfield

  * * *

  Venice was possessed by water. It permeated the city, infiltrating bricks, staining stone. It hung in the salt haze of the air and it slapped against the mossy quaysides, the rhythm of the waves calm but determined, content to wage a long war against the terraces and trattorias.

  It was dusk now and the streets were lit by gas lamps, casting the canal’s shadows across the walls. The undulation of the water made the city itself seem shifting, insubstantial. Church bells rippled as the evening cooled, the mosquitoes swarming in the grey light.

  Winter and Alessandra crossed a succession of rust-withered bridges to the Dorsoduro district. It was a warren of shabby, half-shuttered houses with damp little alleys that ended at odd angles, hinting at adjoining streets instead of revealing them outright. Winter imagined those streets had formed like water, spilling through cracks to find a path.

  The café they were looking for was situated between two terracotta-tiled houses, the light through its window the brightest point in the alley. There were people inside, a handful, no more, sat at lopsided wooden tables, picking at plates of prosciutto and olives. The place was dead, the chalkboard menu outside still offering yesterday’s specials. Winter glanced at the name on the cracked plaster of the frontage. Café Casanova. No, he couldn’t quite see the old rake tucking into the bruschetta.

  Alessandra entered first. The solitary, under-occupied waiter turned to meet her, his fine-boned features breaking into a smile of recognition. Winter saw that he had the exact black eyes that she did.

  ‘Alessandra! My God, how long…?’

  She put a hand to his cheek. ‘Ciao, Franco. How are you?’

  ‘Never busier,’ he smiled, with a charming flash of teeth.

  ‘Still the greatest gigolo in Venice?’

  He gave a mock bow, a grease-spattered tablecloth slung over his arm. ‘The greatest gigolo in Europe, the ladies insist.’

  He was one of her kind, Winter realised, trying to recall the word for the male equivalent. It was there in Hart’s attic. An incubus. That was it. Another bloody demon, for all his easy smile and patter.

  ‘What brings you here?’ asked Franco, his eyes on Winter though he was speaking to Alessandra. ‘It can’t be the house red.’

  ‘Business,’ she replied. ‘Always business. You know how it is.’

  Franco nodded, clearly at ease with her evasiveness. ‘La sala privata?’

  ‘Naturalmente, Franco.’

  He laid a bill on one of the tables, winked at a clearly smitten woman in her sixties, then turned and led them out of the main dining area, past the steam and clatter of the kitchen. Here the dark timber walls were decorated with framed portraits of Sinatra and Gina Lollobrigida, hung at a tipsy angle but smiling just the same.

  Franco opened a heavy, silver-handled door and ushered them into a private function suite. It was a larger space than Winter was expecting: nine sets of tables and chairs arranged around a softly lit room. What struck him immediately was the sheer amount of glass in the space. Not just the octagonal mirror that dominated the back wall or the polished wine glasses gleaming on the tables but the array of vases that filled every corner, set upon stools, placed in alcoves. Some of the vases were tall and lean, others swollen, engorged. Some were fluted, some were intricately patterned, a few were perfectly plain. They were all exquisite examples of the glass-blower’s art. The room looked ready to shatter at any moment.

  ‘And to drink?’ asked Franco, taking a pencil and a pad from the zippered pouch at his waist.

  ‘Ombretta,’ said Alessandra, taking a seat.

  Winter wiped a fine layer of dust from the menu. ‘Whiskey and ginger. Thank you.’

  Franco almost contained his disdain. ‘A very British choice, sir.’ He bowed again and left the room, jingling with an evening’s worth of tips.

  Winter pushed the menu away and looked around him. The vases caught the light from the wall-mounted lamps, cutting it into countless reflections. It shone in each piece of glass.

  ‘Nice place.’ He inspected the dust on his fingers. ‘And that’s certainly a romantic touch.’

  Alessandra took a vase from the alcove behind them. ‘I’ve always thought glass is remarkable.’

  She turned the vase in her hand, admiring its curvature. A sliver of light rolled across its surface. ‘You shape it with heat. Make it molten, pliable. And glass has a memory. It knows it can change. It remembers. Just like water.’

  She brought her other hand towards the vase. The tips of her fingers slipped straight through it. She smiled and pulled them out again. The glass clung to her hand like saliva. Alessandra stretched the glistening strands and then shook them from her fingers. The vase became solid again.

  Winter was astonished. ‘How the hell did you do that?’

  She returned the vase to the alcove. ‘Some things are easier in Venice. It has a fluidity, shall we say. Water and glass. The world has a different consistency in this city.’

  Winter thought he detected movement in the room. He glanced to his left. Each vase now held the image of a face. He saw eyes and mouths, caught in glass like specimen slides. The large mirror at the rear of the room also contained faces, thrust against the silvered surface as if searching for entrance.

  ‘And some parts of this city are more pliable than others. This room, for instance.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Winter, uncomfortable now.

  ‘Ombretta for the lady,’ said Franco, placing a glass in front of Alessandra. ‘Whiskey and ginger for her discerning British acquaintance. And for you, sir?’

  ‘Yes, how awfully amusing,’ sighed a new voice.

  Winter turned. There was someone else at the table now. Not that they were entirely there, not in any real physical sense. It was as if particles of dust and glimmers of light had conspired to create a man.

  ‘Hello, Gideon,’ said Alessandra, raising her glass of wine.

  Gideon Jukes – or some kind of spectral approximation of him, at least – appeared to be in his thirties, with a spill of ash-blond hair across a broad forehead. He wore a tan summer suit, though the colour had paled, just like his flesh tone, and it was cut in an old-fashioned style, the collars rounded, the buttons high on the jacket. A rumpled wing-tip shirt was open at his throat.

  ‘I take it you’re a ghost,’ said Winter, surprising himself by quite how conversational that sounded.

  ‘Please,’ said Jukes. ‘I prefer shade. It has a certain elegance to it, at least. I’ll even accept wraith, if I’m in a forgiving mood. But ghost? Dear God, man, you might as well call me a spook. It’s just a bit vulgar, don’t you think?’

  ‘I’ve met… people like you before,’ said Winter.

  ‘Have you really?’ replied Jukes, unimpressed. ‘Good for you. There’s a lot of us about. The dead, you know. We do tend to accumulate.’

  Winter struggled to focus on the apparition and not the chair. It was like trying to keep his eyes on vapour.

  ‘So how do you two actually know each other?’

  ‘She killed me,’ said Jukes, casually. ‘That creates rather a bond.’

  ‘You were trying to kill me,’ added Alessandra. ‘Wasn’t that your great heroic quest, Gideon? To tear the accursed black heart from my body?’

  ‘You overdramatise, as ever. But yes, that was the general thrust of our relationship.’

  Alessandra turned to Winter. ‘Gideon hunted me for many years, across continents. He saw himself as a Christian knight. A slayer of darkness. The scourge of demons…’

  ‘Oh, you do make it sound like a sixpenny shocker, Alessandra. I’ll admit I considered you an abomination against God’s work…’

  Alessandra’s eyes glittered. ‘I think you were just a little besotted with me.’

  Jukes considered this. ‘Well, you may have a point there.’ He allowed himself a smile, and it was a fond one.

  Winter sipped his whiskey and ginger, watching as dust motes moved in Jukes’s face. ‘When w
as this?’

  ‘I died in 1913. She killed me here, in Venice. I missed the war, at least.’

  ‘1913?’ Winter glanced at Alessandra, taken aback. ‘How old are you, for God’s sake?’

  ‘She’s as old as sin, dear boy,’ said Jukes, expansively. ‘Are you her latest fancy, then? Believe me, it won’t end well. Her kind don’t really do happy endings. Everlasting damnation’s more their game.’

  ‘Perhaps a starter?’ enquired Franco, still hovering by the table. ‘I recommend the ricotta…’

  Winter dismissed him. ‘What happened to you?’ he asked Jukes.

  ‘Locked in glass for all eternity, just like these desperate souls.’ He indicated the mirror, still filled with imploring eyes. ‘It’s an old demon’s curse. First recorded in Mesopotamia, some three thousand years before Christ. They’ve had a while to practise this particular parlour trick.’

  ‘She trapped you in a glass? Like a jar? A bottle?’

  ‘The medium of glass,’ Jukes corrected him. ‘All glass, everywhere. Banished, but free to move within that medium. You’ll catch us sometimes. A glint in a pane, perhaps. A chink of light on a brandy tumbler. So like a face, just for a moment. And then we’re gone. It’s no life.’

  ‘I gave you a living death,’ said Alessandra. ‘Because I liked you.’

  ‘Forgive me if I don’t consider myself living la dolce vita.’ Jukes shot a jealous glance at Winter’s drink. ‘I could murder that bloody whiskey, for a start…’

  Alessandra leaned across the table. ‘We need to find a house in Venice.’

  Jukes didn’t blink. ‘Do I look like an estate agent?’

  ‘You know this city. You know its history. We need to find a house known as Il Portone. Have you heard of it?’

  Jukes mulled the name. ‘Yes, I know it. Cannaregio district. It was Franzeri’s place.’

  ‘Franzeri?’ pressed Winter.

  ‘Eugenio Franzeri. A student of the occult. This city’s always attracted them. The Comte de Saint-Germain, Guillaume Postel… even Casanova was inclined, though Lord knows how he found the time. There’s a structural weakness in the soul of Venice, you see. It allows things through.’

  He nodded to Alessandra. ‘It’s how her lot had their fun in the seventeenth century. Il Carnevale? That was a pact with the Venetians. The people surrendered their bodies for weeks on end. They allowed themselves to be possessed, their faces hidden by masks. They became willing avatars for higher forces. The demons savoured the experience of the flesh, the people persuaded themselves they weren’t responsible for their actions. It was a mutually beneficial party.’

  ‘It was glorious,’ smiled Alessandra.

  ‘I knew Franzeri,’ Jukes continued. ‘He dabbled in demon hunting. Bit of a dilettante, to be honest. The undead were his true calling. Vampiri.’

  ‘Could he still be alive?’ asked Winter.

  ‘I doubt it. He was getting on when I knew him. I imagine 1913 is quite some time ago, isn’t it?’

  Winter nodded. ‘I’m afraid so. Can you remember the address?’

  Jukes delved into his jacket pocket, extracting a goatskin wallet. ‘I’ve got his card here somewhere. Yes, here we go…’

  He made to hand the card to Winter, then caught himself, aware that it was as insubstantial as he was. ‘On second thoughts you’d better just write it down, old man.’

  Winter squinted at the ghost of the card. He pulled out a ballpoint and began scribbling on a napkin. The spirit of Gideon Jukes turned to Alessandra. There was affection in his voice. ‘I suppose there are worse fates than this.’

  Alessandra reached through his chest and took the vase from the alcove. ‘Believe me, I considered them.’

  ‘Back in the box I go, then. What larks.’

  She rolled the vase in her hand, seeing the faces turn. And then she hurled it at the tiled floor, letting it shatter.

  Jukes was no longer there. The mirror was empty. An eye lingered in a splinter of glass, then that too was gone.

  10

  It was dark by the time they reached Cannaregio, the sky like oil above the old wharves. Now the quays were lit by a hundred boundary lights. The reflections of waterside lamps twisted across the canal as sea birds hunted.

  Winter and Alessandra stepped from the vaporetto, its deck lurching as a handful of passengers disembarked. This was the northernmost district of Venice and it had a mournful, abandoned air. San Michele, the city’s island cemetery, lay beyond its edge, and to Winter this faded quayside felt like a staging post to the dead. It belonged to the funeral barges, taking their cargo to the grave.

  A solitary gondola was lashed to a mooring post by a briny hank of rope. The boat’s bow scraped against the bricks, lulled by the sway of the lagoon. The owner made a half-hearted appeal for business before returning to the private pleasure of his cigarette. The canal continued to lap the jetty, unconcerned. The smell of salt and diesel drifted downwind, blending with the sulphurous rot of vegetation from the mudflats.

  Nowhere in the world sounded quite like Venice. With no cars there was none of the background drone of a modern city. Other sounds became amplified, especially after dark: the steady clasp and retreat of water, the shuttering of windows, footsteps. And always the bells, like a rumour through the backstreets.

  They left the water’s edge and followed a long, dim alley, its walls converging to a slit of light that led to another, equally tight street beyond. Il Portone stood four doors down. Like all the palazzi in Venice its more elegant side faced the Grand Canal, built to be shown off. The landward approach was plainer, at least by Venetian standards.

  Winter gazed up at the home of Eugenio Franzeri. Three storeys of pale Istrian stone were stacked, cake-like, upon one another, the façade flaking where centuries of rain and sun had passed across the exterior. There was an abundance of windows, narrow and arched, Palladian style. Some of the frames were smashed, the remaining glass revealing only darkness inside. The house had clearly been abandoned for some time. Its emptiness felt solid.

  He knew this building. At least for a second. And then that clear stab of recognition was gone.

  He was about to move forward when he sensed Alessandra’s hand on his arm.

  ‘There’s magecraft here.’

  Winter’s eyes searched the broken windows. ‘Somehow I don’t think Signor Franzeri is at home.’

  ‘Listen to me. Magic leaves a mark on the world. This building is wrapped in scar tissue. I can sense it. It lingers, even in a city as enchanted as this one.’

  Winter considered this. ‘If there’s trouble all I’m really qualified to do is shoot at it.’

  Alessandra sighed in sudden frustration. ‘God, I miss the man you used to be. He had imagination.’

  Winter took the gun from his holster. ‘Good for him. Here’s my redeeming quality.’

  A thin pathway led to the door. There were weeds between the cracked parade of flagstones. It took Winter the length of the path to realise what was so odd about them. They were growing away from the light, craving the long shadow of the house instead.

  He looked up, studying the carvings in the stone above the porch. A king’s head, crowned in fire. The moon, broken in two, the twin fragments held by a woman’s hands. Foliage, intricately sculpted. And there were chimera, too. Impossible animals peered down at him in a silent, frozen bestiary. A lion with a serpent’s body, its jaw chipped away by age. A hollow-eyed bird with a panther’s paws. Something that looked like a winged goat.

  Winter was about to test the lock when he noticed that the weed had also insinuated itself into the doorframe. It crept out of the breaks in the wood, clinging to the arch in a scrawny tangle. Up close it looked black and brittle, as if long dead, but when Winter took it between his fingers it refused to break. In fact he was convinced he could feel it pulse.

  Grimacing, he tried the door, twisting a pewter handle decorated with a mermaid. The figure curved in a perfect, spine-defying circle, the tail cha
sing the head. To Winter’s surprise he felt the old wood shift on its hinges. The door allowed an inch of darkness.

  He stepped back and put his shoulder to it, grunting as he slammed into the mullion. On a second attempt the door swung from its latch. With the heel of his shoe he kicked it wide.

  The light from the street fell upon an interior courtyard, broader than the entrance to the house suggested. The floor was studded with a Moorish array of precious stones. The majority of them had been dulled by the passing years but a few still glinted here and there. They formed complex, inscrutable patterns that Winter instinctively knew were occult geometries.

  He hovered by the door, Alessandra at his shoulder. He was certain that the weed in the jamb had just twitched.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘There’s something here. Even I can sense it.’

  ‘Of course you can, darling. Bone is memory. Blood is memory.’

  Winter bristled. ‘Not now.’

  He knew she was smiling at the back of his head.

  They stepped inside. More of the weed infested the courtyard, reaching through cracks in the jewelled slabs and opening into serrated black petals. It grew taller and thicker in the corners, as if it had fed on shadows, not sunlight. The weed was everywhere they looked, climbing walls and twining around columns. Its taproot had clearly sunk into the foundations of the building, deep into the mudflats below.

  ‘Do you know how houses like this get their power?’ asked Alessandra, casually, as they crossed the gemstone sigils.

  Winter had his gun raised now. ‘No idea. Do tell.’

  ‘People used to believe it brought luck to brick up an animal in a house. If they were alive at the time, all the better.’

  ‘That’s just superstitious cruelty.’

  ‘Some magicians took the tradition a step further. They’d steal a house from another sorcerer. A rival magician. And that’s who they would brick up. Alive, preferably. But even in death the corpse of a magician confers power on a property.’

  Winter kept his eyes ahead of him. ‘You really have a gift for small talk.’