by Rita Vetere
They climbed on board. The Romanian driver appeared as sullen as ever, acknowledging them only with a curt nod. The boat pulled away and Anna looked back at the island, now shrouded in a drizzly fog. She could not get the image of the dead child out of her mind. The mere thought of it started her trembling again. She didn’t like this place, she decided. Not at all. The apparition aside, something about the island just felt...wrong.
A moment later, a small beep sounded, followed right away by another. She pulled her cellphone out of her bag and saw Alejandro retrieve his as well. Both phones had jumped back to life.
As the boat carried them away from the island, she spoke little, glancing occasionally at Alejandro. He didn’t appear to share her apprehension about the island, and she debated whether to tell him what she’d seen. The apparition had frightened her badly, but Anna didn’t know how to explain it without sounding crazy. Maybe she’d find a way to bring the matter up before they returned the following day.
Just thinking about going back there set her nerves on edge. She did her best to convince herself she’d be all right the next day. She’d been hired to do a job, after all, and would have to see it through.
Chapter 12
Venice, Italy
1927
Dr. Rossi sat in his office, his desk littered with paperwork from the files of the nine patients whom he had spent the entire morning examining. Leaning back in his chair, he stared out the bank of windows overlooking the field. For the life of him, he’d not been able to come up with a single explanation to account for the symptoms displayed by the six male and three female patients he’d placed in quarantine yesterday.
Starting with Carbone, the man he’d first noticed while making his rounds, he conducted a thorough examination of the patients, separately. Each of the nine displayed symptoms of schizophrenia, a fact not unusual in and of itself. What was unusual, though, was that none of them had displayed any such symptoms prior to having arrived at the hospital. They had only begun to show symptoms of the disease, including extreme delusions, within the past several months, even though all had been confined to the hospital for at least a year. Confounding as that was, something else disturbed Rossi even more. Each of them—male and female alike—appeared to be suffering from the exact same delusions. They claimed they were being tormented by spirits—apparitions of rotting corpses who wailed incessantly, day and night, giving them no rest.
Rossi removed his spectacles and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He knew very well schizophrenia, being a mental illness, could not be transferred from one patient to another. And yet, for all intents and purposes, that is exactly what appeared to be happening. His inquiries had resulted in information that none of the patients affected appeared to have spent much time interacting since the delusions began. Most of the time, they’d been kept in restraints, confined to their beds. That seemed to rule out the possibility they were merely feeding off each other’s paranoia.
Rossi replaced his spectacles. It occurred to him this might be the reason he’d received the appointment of head surgeon. Fenelli had mentioned that the previous head surgeon had reported the patients’ conditions, stating he’d been unable to determine the underlying cause. Shortly after, the man had been dismissed and Rossi appointed to the position.
He returned his attention to the files. There had to be an explanation for the phenomena. He decided to review his notes again, from the top. Perhaps he’d missed something the first time around, a common thread that would explain the strange similarity in the patients’ behavior.
* * * *
“Come. You must try to eat something. You cannot go on like this.”
“Go away,” Rosaria said from beneath the bedcovers. She knew her mother-in-law meant well, but wanted nothing more than to be left alone, as she had since birthing her dead son.
Her mother-in-law placed the tray of food on the night table and sat next to her on the bed. “It’s been over a month,” she said. “It’s not healthy, what you’re doing. You cannot hide in bed forever. And Massimo is very worried about you. He’s suffering, too, Rosaria. The child... It was his as well. You are not the only one in pain.”
At the mention of her husband’s name, Rosaria shrieked, “Leave me alone. That’s all I ask. Just go away.” Her mother-in-law, normally the kindest of women, had just placed a dagger in her heart by reminding her she had failed Massimo yet again. She’d not been able to so much as look at her husband, at any of them, ever since.
She heard the woman’s footsteps as she left the bedroom. Rosaria burrowed deeper under the covers, wanting only to sleep so she would no longer have to think.
Several hours later, she awoke to Massimo’s voice as he gently shook her. She looked into his pain-filled eyes and turned away.
“We have to talk,” he told her. “I can’t bear to see you like this any longer,” he said, stroking her hair gently.
Why, she wondered, could they not just leave her alone? Such a simple request.
When she didn’t respond, Massimo said, “I’ve spoken to Serafina. She’s agreed to ask Dr. Rossi to see you again.”
“I won’t go,” Rosaria replied dully.
“You will. If you continue this way, I’ll lose you, and I won’t allow that to happen.”
Tears welled in her eyes. “I wish I had died too, with our son,” she told him.
“No. You will get help. You will recover, and then we will get on with our lives.”
Rosaria detected the underlying pain in Massimo’s voice, yet she could not console him. The terrible emptiness that filled her soul since the day she’d delivered their dead son had drained her of all compassion.
Only after he lay down in bed next to her and put an arm around her did she say, “Fine. Whatever you want. I’ll go, but please leave now. I want to be alone.”
The following evening at eight-thirty, as Massimo sat in the drawing room of Dr. Rossi’s home making small talk with Serafina, Dr. Rossi examined Rosaria in his study. Almost an hour passed before he opened the door and Rosaria walked out. Rossi motioned for Massimo to enter, ushered him in, and closed the door behind them.
Rossi looked appraisingly at him and said, “Your wife is very ill, clinical depression. She requires treatment—medication and complete rest.”
“Can you help her?” Massimo asked.
“I can. Although I must insist she be admitted to hospital. I have many patients under my care suffering with similar conditions. She would be best treated at the facility on Poveglia, where she can remain under my constant supervision.”
“Is it necessary, Dottore, the hospitalization, that is? Can she not remain at home while undergoing treatment?”
Rossi stared at him for a long moment before answering. “Do you wish your wife to get better?”
“Of course.”
“Then this is the only recourse. She needs to be hospitalized, for her own sake. She told me she has considered taking her own life, and on more than one occasion.”
“I see.” Massimo remembered Rosaria had expressed the same intention to him the previous night, and ceased arguing. “Will I at least be able to visit her?”
“Not at first, although eventually, yes.”
When Massimo didn’t respond right away, Rossi said, “You must realize, Massimo, depression, especially the severe depression which your wife is experiencing, is an illness. You must disregard the stigma which many place on the mentally ill. If you want your wife to be healthy again, you must trust me on this.”
Massimo’s heart sank to his stomach at the prospect of admitting Rosaria to a mental institute, but the possibility she might try to take her own life frightened him even more. He got to his feet. “All right. When shall I bring her?”
“As soon as possible. Within the next day or two, at most… She will be in good hands, I assure you.”
“Yes. Thank you, Dottore,” Massimo said before shaking Rossi’s hand and taking his leave.
* * * *
Poveglia Island
One Month Later
Rossi placed a chloroform-soaked rag over Carbone’s mouth and nose and waited. Fenelli stood next to him, looking on at the proceedings with interest.
“And this will take no more than ten minutes?” Fenelli asked.
Dr. Rossi attempted to keep the excitement from his voice when he responded, “More like five or six minutes in total.”
After a month of observing Carbone and the other eight patients who had become more and more delusional with each passing day, Rossi had requested, and received, permission to conduct leucotomies on the affected patients. Carbone, now motionless on the stainless steel operating table, was the first.
“I’ve come up with a method that does not require holes to be drilled into the skull,” continued Rossi. “The transorbital method will result in far less discomfort to the patient as well as improved results. The procedure is simple, as you will see.” He raised the right eyelid of the now unconscious Carbone and placed the sharp point of an ice pick underneath so that it rested against the top of the orbital socket. “Hammer,” he said to Fenelli.
Fenelli handed him a small mallet from the instruments next to the operating table.
Rossi used the mallet to drive the ice pick upward through the thin layer of bone into the brain, following which he moved the ice pick from side to side. “This will sever the nerve fibers of the frontal lobe from the thalamus.”
He glanced at Fenelli. The man had turned white as a sheet.
Rossi carefully removed the ice pick and repeated the procedure on the left side. As he worked, he said, “The only physical discomfort to the patient will be bruising around the eye area for a week or two.”
When he finished working on the left side of Carbone’s head, he removed the small ice pick from the man’s eye and quickly disinfected the area. “There. All done. The patient can be returned to the ward. If I’m correct, he’ll no longer be delusional when he’s conscious again, and will no longer exhibit violent behavior or require restraints.”
Fenelli appeared glad to have a reason to leave the room. “I’ll get the attendants.”
Rossi thought the man looked as if he would pass out. Not all doctors are cut out to be surgeons, he reminded himself. “And have them bring the next patient in,” Rossi called after him, anxious to complete the surgeries so he could begin assessing the results.
By the time he washed up in the anteroom, Rossi had performed leucotomies on all nine patients. Soon, he would know the results of his improved procedure, which he felt certain would be regarded as a medical breakthrough in the new field of neurosurgery.
* * * *
Lying on her cot in Ward Three, Rosaria clutched the sheets tightly around her and squeezed her eyes shut. Strands of moonlight drifted into the ward from the reinforced windows, and she had no desire to see them again. If she had wished herself dead before, it was nothing compared to the way she now felt in this strange place.
Rosaria knew she had lost her mind. She’d always thought the insane were not aware of their insanity, yet she appeared to be acutely cognizant of the fact she was no longer of sound mind.
She refused to open her eyes, even after the woman in the cot next to her began to sob. The woman cried every night, although quietly enough not to alert the night attendants.
Too sick at heart to care, Rosaria had permitted herself to be admitted to the hospital at Massimo’s urging, had even allowed herself to become encouraged by Dr. Rossi’s assertion that she would recover here. But when the apparitions had begun to appear shortly after her arrival, she understood she was beyond help. The phantasms conjured up by her feeble mind terrified her. They followed her everywhere. They were always there, hovering in the doorways and corners, wandering through the wards at night, sometimes even hiding under her bed--the hideous dead—rotting corpses that stared at her with waxy eyes, their diseased flesh stinking of death and the grave.
She took a deep breath, didn’t like the taste of it, and knew one of them was nearby. How much longer could she keep her insanity a secret before Rossi found out? She should have refused to come to the hospital. At home, she would have found a way to put an end to her miserable existence. Here, she had not the means to end her life.
She felt the air around her face shift slightly. The hair at her nape suddenly rose. Her pulse pounded loudly at her temples as she opened her eyes a fraction, unable to stop herself from looking. Rosaria almost screamed, but quickly shoved a fist into her open mouth to stifle it. She must not scream.
The pus-ridden corpse standing next to her bed leaned closer, staring at her with terrible, dead eyes. Don’t make a sound. She squeezed her eyes shut again, keeping her hand over her mouth to muffle the sound of her cries.
Rosaria did not fear death. What she did fear was that she would end up like those patients who had returned to her ward last week, their eyes blackened, unable to feed themselves. Whatever Rossi had done to them, it had the effect of turning them into imbeciles. No, she was not afraid to die, but the thought of ending up like those disgraziati was unbearable. Even though the minds of those poor unfortunates no longer functioned properly, Rosaria knew they could see them, too—the rotting corpses. She could not risk suffering the same fate, remaining alive, but unable to defend herself against the creatures stalking her.
A slimy finger ran along the hand covering her eyes and she pulled the covers over her head, burrowing down deep. Don’t scream.
* * * *
Rossi reviewed the daily charts for the nine patients on whom he’d conducted his new procedure last week. He mentally congratulated himself on the outstanding results. Out of the nine, eight had completely ceased behaving violently and no longer appeared to be suffering from paranoid delusions. Granted, their mental capacity had been somewhat diminished, in some cases by a substantial degree. In addition, three of them had become incontinent. On the whole, though, he felt they had effectively been cured by the procedure. The ninth, however, was another story. Carbone. His condition had, for some reason, worsened. He’d been transferred back to quarantine on the day following his surgery, after he’d begun ranting wildly and striking out at the attendants, posing even more of a threat than before. One of the attendants had been badly injured while trying to restrain him. He would need to keep Carbone under close observation before he submitted his report to the hospital officials in two weeks’ time.
Rossi glanced at his desk clock. With another half hour before his scheduled afternoon rounds, he decided he could use some fresh air and left to take a walk around the grounds.
The scorching mid-day heat prompted him to head for the grove of poplar trees beyond the field, a part of the island he’d not yet explored. As he made his way across the open area, his pace slowed. The undergrowth seemed to tug at his legs as he walked. He hadn’t traveled twenty paces into the field when dizziness assailed him. Rossi stopped and shook his head to dispel the lightheaded feeling that had come over him, but it only increased. Beads of perspiration formed on his forehead.
“Hnh. The heat.”
His vision doubled, trebled, and the next thing he knew, he was falling, the ground rushing up to meet his face.
When he opened his eyes, Rossi was lying face down in the field.
With a start, he got to his knees. Must’ve fainted... He leaned back, sitting heavily and bringing his knees up in front of him, then lowered his head to allow the dizziness still clouding his mind to pass. His clothes and hands were covered with the peculiar white, chalky soil of the island. He’d never seen whitish earth like this anywhere else, something which had struck him on more than one occasion since his arrival here. As he brushed the ashy dirt from his hands and trousers, a shadow fell across the ground in front of him. He glanced over his shoulder, thinking someone had come up behind him, but when he looked, no one was there. Facing forward again, he noticed the shadow had disappeared.
Rossi tried to stand, but before he could get his footing, he
heard a low, rumbling sound and the earth beneath him suddenly shifted, like the onset of an earthquake. He put his hands out for balance, to keep from falling. A moment later the ground stilled again and became silent. He looked wildly around the field. What was happening here?
Fear swept over him, an overwhelming sense that if he remained here, something terrible would happen. Sweating profusely from the heat and the irrational terror which had seized him, he hurried away on shaky legs in the direction of his office. Seconds later, he was running, gripped by the certainty he would die if he didn’t get away from the field immediately.
When he reached the safety of his office, he closed and locked the door behind him. Rossi leaned against the heavy wood and waited for his breathing to return to normal. He hoped no one had seen him running from the field like a woman. Once he regained his composure, he removed his pocket watch from the vest he wore under his lab coat, stunned to see that almost three quarters of an hour had passed since he’d set out. What the devil had happened to him out there?
Knowing he was already late for his rounds with Fenelli, he hurriedly brushed the remaining dirt from his clothes, unlocked the door and left, doing his best to dispel the remnants of fear clinging to him. He purposely avoided looking at the field as he headed for the hospital.
Chapter 13
Venice, Italy
Present Day
By the time they arrived back on the mainland, some of Anna’s apprehension had dissipated. She and Alejandro stepped off the boat into the drizzly rain and made their way to the square, where they would part ways to return to their hotels.
“I’ll meet you at the dock at nine tomorrow, okay?” she said to him before setting off.
Alejandro called her back, and she turned around.
“I was wondering...” He looked awkwardly at her. “I was wondering if you’d like to join me for dinner tonight,” he said. “Truth is, I hate dining alone.”
