A Beast in Venice: (Literary Horror set in Venice) (24 page)

“You had the same problem?” Brigham asked.

“Yes,” said Augusto, “but I didn’t find it as irksome as you did.”

“Neither did I,” Deborah said. “Although there was a bit of a learning curve.”

They were all silent for several minutes. “Do we just come and go at will?” Brigham asked, breaking the silence.

“You have the option,” Augusto said. “You can come here, or you can go into the streets, taking the unwary. It’s up to you.”

“This is safer, though,” Deborah said. “And much more civilized.”

“Can one just stay here?” Brigham asked. “Charles told me I would be part of an in-house collection.”

“It’s possible,” Augusto said. “Many people do, but it’s not necessary.”

“Then where do I find my clothes, should I want to leave?”

“
Over there,” Augusto said, nodding toward a set of doors on the far side of the bath.

XIX

What a beast he had become. Sure, he had been converted to a shroud eater against his will, and he resisted eating the girl, but that didn’t change his nature. It certainly didn’t absolve him of responsibility; his resistance was arguably halfhearted and due to physical revulsion more than any moral aversion. No different than having a taste for oysters but not snails. Sooner or later, he would have to do what he had to do and would develop a taste for both oysters and snails.

What had led him here was not the force of others but his own hubris. Or maybe it was better to say his own vanity or pride. It led not only to his destruction, but to that of his wife. He had no idea where she was, and he was not certain who was behind her disappearance, but one thing was clear: it was because of him. This was the part that would make it unbearable if anything happened to her.

He couldn’t bring himself to do any work. Good time for a drink and the mind-numbing and memory-erasing benefits of alcohol. Isn’t that why people drink? To make the unbearable bearable and the memories less vivid? He fixed a martini and sat on the sofa, studying Pink Jesus.

“Say something,” he said to the painting.

Pink Jesus didn’t respond.

“Fuck you, then!”

“You don’t look so good,” the painting said, finally.

“Well, well, well,” Brigham said, “we at last hear from his holiness.”

“So how do you like it?”

Brigham frowned and swallowed gin. “How do I like what?”

“Eternal life. How do you like eternal life?”

“I don’t know. I ain’t lived it yet.”

“You’re living it now. You had to kill a young girl to keep yourself alive. How does it feel?”

“It sounds so harsh when you say it.”

“It is harsh.”

“Anyway, I didn’t kill her. I resisted.”

He drank gin directly from the bottle. It tasted like pine-flavored aftershave—in other words, glorious gin. His beastly condition didn’t affect the taste of booze, thank God.

“Going a little heavy on the gin, are we not?” Pink Jesus said.

“What are you, my mother?” Brigham said, beginning to slur his words.

“No, Just curious.”

“Maybe I want to see whether my present condition affects how my system responds to booze.”

“You’re a regular scientist.”

Brigham scrunched up his face. “You’re a regular fucking clown. Go back to the circus. Why did I paint you with a sense of humor?”

Pink Jesus fell silent, and Brigham Stone, Esq., painter and shroud eater, fell over, full of gin. Venice would be safe—for now.

HIS HEAD FELT AS IF A BABOON were trying to hack its way out with an ax, and the normally pleasant but now vomit-inducing, piney smell of gin was everywhere. Eyes still closed, Brigham paused, hoping to reduce the chance that he would see a spider on the ceiling. He looked. No spider or snakes. Overcome by nausea, he ran to the can to puke. Feeling better, he went to lie down again. After a short time, he had to puke again.

This cycle repeated itself for a couple of hours until he had puked the garbage out of his system and felt well enough to go to Campo Santa Margherita for a cup of coffee and something to eat. His rib cage ached from barfing.

He spotted Gloria at a table outside a café, having tea and a pastry.

Her sandy hair glinted in the sun, and she wore a bright red, floor-length dress. They greeted each other with the Italian double kiss, and she asked Brigham to join her.

“Rough night?” she asked, smiling.

Brigham tried to straighten his hair, although futile. “You wouldn’t believe it.”

“I have time. Looks like it might be a good story.”

He put his hands over his face. “Do I look that bad?” he said through his fingers.

She laughed. “Put it this way: you could make a little money if you had a small plastic cup.”

“Fuck.”

“If you tell me about it, I’ll treat you to breakfast.”

“It ain’t pretty.”

“Do you think that matters to me?” She folded her hands on the table in front of her. “Start at the beginning.”

He glanced around and, speaking quietly near her ear, told her about Rose’s disappearance, about being turned into a shroud eater, about going through the wall, about what happened at Charles’s, and about his experiment with gin.

The color drained from her face, and she stared ahead with glassy eyes. After taking it all in, she whispered, “Your wife is missing?”

“Yeah, I haven’t seen or heard from her for five days.”

“I’m so sorry. I hope you find her and that she’s okay. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

“Thanks, I will.”

“As to the rest, I’m not shocked by it, frankly.”

“You’re not?” He kicked the chair opposite to shoo away a pigeon.

“No. I’ve seen some pretty wild things at the club, including a few characters I thought might come from the other version of it. Nothing would surprise me. There are also rumors of things like you describe going on at other, more radical clubs.”

“The club you go to is just make-believe,” he said, biting into his sandwich. “I’ve seen the real thing.”

“Nevertheless—”

“Have you ever opened the abdomen of a living, breathing person?”

“No,” she said, looking down at her hands.

“It’s a hideous goddamn thing to see. The inside of the human body is a stinking, steaming pile of filth. It’s enough to put you off your food.” 

“But—”

“You are in love with the trappings of vampirism. You like the colors, the clothing, the culture. And the whole thing has been romanticized, but the real thing is a filthy murderous business.”

They sat quietly for a few minutes drinking coffee and tea and watching passersby.

“I have to call my friend Mauro,” Brigham said. “He doesn’t know what happened to me, and we have to figure out a way to fix it. And we have to find Rose.”

“Let me help you,” Gloria said.

“No, that’s asking too much, and it’s going to be dangerous. If it’s the people I think it is, they don’t fool around. You’re likely to lose a little hair .”

“Look, I feel responsible. I got you into this. It never would have happened if I hadn’t taken you to the club.”

Brigham’s face reflected from her sunglasses, showing the disheveled fucking mess that he was. “It’s not your fault. It would have happened anyway. Apparently, Charles zeroed in on me to add to his collection.”

She frowned, wrinkling her brow. “Collection?”

“Yes, I am now a member of a collection of interesting people Charles keeps around him.”

“Fascinating ,” she whispered.

“Yeah.” He smiled. “I guess if there’s any good to come from this, it proves I’m an interesting person.”

“A collector of people,” she said slowly, looking off into the distance. “I never imagined it.”

“Aren’t we all collectors of people in a way?” 

“Of course. I never thought of it that way, but of course we are.”

“Anyway, I can’t let you get involved.”

“Too late.”

“What do you mean ‘too late’?”

“I’m involved. Not only in the vampire club thing, but now you’ve told me everything.”

He pursed his lips. “I see. Blackmail.”

She smiled. “Such a harsh word, but I suppose it fits.”

“Maybe you could be of assistance, but watch yourself. This ain’t the fucking Rotary Club.”

“Of course,” she said, peering at him over her sunglasses as she drank her tea.

BRIGHAM MET MAURO AT A CAFÉ at Campo Santa Margherita. He needed Mauro’s help analyzing the book, and he intended to go back to the herbalist there. First, however, Mauro needed to meet the new Brigham Stone.

“Brig, what happened to you? You look like I did after my brother’s wedding.”

Brigham smiled. “It’s not quite as… how shall I say it… fun as that.”

Mauro’s eyes grew large. “You spent the night in jail?”

Brigham laughed. “I wish.”

“Then what?”

Brigham suggested that they wait until their beers came. In the middle of the second beer, Brigham told him the whole story. Mauro didn’t say anything for a while, then asked what could be done. Brigham suggested visiting the herbalist to see if she had any ideas as to how his condition might be remedied, or at least made less unpalatable. After that, they would look at the book to see if they could figure out a way to find Rose.

THEY ARRIVED AT THE HERBALIST’S SHOP just as it got dark. Although it appeared closed, the door was unlocked, so they went in, straining to see in the darkness.

Mauro called out, “
Signora
?”

No answer.

“Maybe she went for coffee,” Brigham said.

Mauro shook his head. “She would have locked the door. Something’s wrong.”

They turned on the lights. Nobody there. The door to the back room stood ajar. They went in.

“I don’t think she’s here,” Brigham said, struggling to see in the dim light. “Where the hell did she go?”

He slipped on something wet. “Watch where you walk. There’s something slimy on the floor. Find a light.”

Mauro flicked a light switch. On the back wall hung the herbalist, suspended by a spike driven through her mouth, out the back of her head, and into the wall. A large pool of blood covered much of the floor.

“Oh, shit, that was her blood,” Brigham shouted, looking back to where he had slipped.

“Be quiet!” Mauro said in a loud whisper.

“Maybe we should call the police.”

“No, lock the front door,” Mauro said, “and turn out the lights in the front.”

Brigham did so and pulled the shade.

“Look around,” Mauro said. “Maybe there’s a clue as to what happened here.”

The place had been ransacked.

“There’s shit everywhere,” Brigham said. “What are we looking for?”

“I don’t know exactly.”

They searched, stepping carefully around the mass of blood. Brigham wondered why it didn’t appeal to him and concluded that in its black, gooey, coagulated state, it was no different than garbage to a human. But this was an awful lot of blood for one little old lady.

Something dripped on top of his head.

He looked up.

There, nailed like a crucifix to the large beams in the ceiling, arms outstretched, feet together, throat cut, was an old man.

“Fuuuck,” Brigham exclaimed in a whispery but nearly screaming voice.

“What?”

Brigham pointed to the ceiling.

“Jesus!” said Mauro in a loud whisper. “Whoever did this has a real sense of humor.”

“Yeah, bunch of regular fucking clowns. Old school—really old school. Like medieval fucking school. Roman, even.”

The door rattled as someone shook it, trying to get into the shop. They froze.

“Don’t worry,” Brigham said. “I locked the door. They’ll go away.”

The door shook more forcefully.

Glass shattered.

Brigham’s chest hurt from the beating of his heart. Mauro’s eyes were big, his face pale. They hid behind bed sheets the herbalist had hung like curtains from the ceiling as a room divider. On the floor, Brigham found a toolbox containing a wrench, which he handed to Mauro, and a hammer, which he kept for himself.

Mauro mouthed the word ”what,” holding his arms out slightly as if to ask: “What do I do with this?” Brigham motioned to indicate whacking the intruder over the head.

The door to the shop creaked open. A bell tinkled and the door closed. The intruder stepped into the shop and began knocking over furniture, rifling through a desk, sending papers and books flying, and clearing shelves of glass and ceramic containers, crashing them to the floor.

Then silence.

Broken glass crunched as the person moved slowly toward the back room. The intruder’s feet shuffled just outside the curtain. Brigham and Mauro raised their weapons to the ready.

“Goddamn, they made a fucking mess of it,” the man said under his breath. “All this blood is gonna ruin my shoes. I paid six hundred euros for these fucking things. The jobs I don’t get.”

An American.

The intruder’s cell phone rang.

Shit. They both had cell phones that could ring at any moment.

“Hello?” the man answered. After a pause, he said, “I can’t find it, but I still have to check the back room.”

After another short pause he said, “No, there’s nobody here… Yes, I’m sure… No, it was locked. I had to break in… How was I s’posed to know the door would be unlocked? Why in the fuck would you whack these two geezers, making a helluva mess, I might add, and leave the fucking door open?”

A tinny sound came from the phone as the person on the other end shouted.

“No, he ain’t here,” the intruder said. He listened for a minute and then said, “Fine, I’ll check back when I finish.”

He was quiet for a moment.

He moved slowly around the room then stopped.

Fuck.

The curtain flew open.

Brigham would have liked to have passed out.

Mauro hit the intruder over the head with the wrench, sending him to the floor, blood spraying from his skull.