A Beast in Venice: (Literary Horror set in Venice) (26 page)

“Where’s the knife?”

“It’s Still stuck in my side.”

“Pull it out before she does and cuts your throat!”

Brigham touched it, but the pain was too great. “I can’t. It hurts like hell.”

Lorenzo reached down, found the dagger, jerked it out, and threw it into the street. Brigham screamed with pain.

“Shut up. Now finish the job.” Lorenzo said.

Brigham held his side. “I think I’m gonna bleed to death.” 

“Do as I say. You’re not going to die. Hurry up.”

Brigham managed to get the rope around her wrists and secured them. Lorenzo put a gag in her mouth, and they marched her toward the portal.

“What are we going to do if someone sees us?” Brigham asked.

“That’s no problem. I have documents showing me to be acting on behalf of the Inquisition. This woman is a heretic.”

They continued on their way, unaccosted, arrived at the portal, and stepped through into the present.

“How was the woman able to get through?” Brigham asked.

“She was touching me.”

“What if someone stops us now? The Inquisition is over.”

“No one will bother us. I am known here.”

Brigham doubled over in pain from the wound in his side, and he was beginning to feel ill, for want of blood, he supposed.

“We will need to tend to that wound,” Lorenzo said.

“Yes.”

“And to your other needs.”

“I think so. I’m starting to feel right poorly. Is that the need for blood?”

“Yes. We will patch your side, then take care of your sickness.”

They entered Lorenzo’s vault with the woman and handed her to a servant, who took her to the dungeon. Lorenzo summoned a doctor.

When the doctor arrived, Brigham lay on a sofa near a large hearth. The doctor took a pair of ominous-looking scissors from a medical bag and cut Brigham’s shirt up the side. He leaned over to examine the wound.

“I need more light,” the doctor said.

Within minutes, two large electric lamps were placed according to the doctor’s instructions, and he proceeded.

He wiped the exterior of the wound with a disinfecting agent and then probed the interior. Brigham shouted from the pain.

“How about a little anesthetic?” he growled through gritted teeth.

“Yes, I’ll numb it,” the doctor said. “I need to sew this up.”

“Wonderful.”

“I would ordinarily suggest surgery, but the mere fact that you are still alive proves that no major organs were damaged.”

“That’s good news.”

Lorenzo nodded. “Glad to hear it.”

The doctor injected a local anesthetic. After a few minutes, he probed the wound with a swab. “Can you feel that?”

“No,” Brigham said. “Nice and numb.”

The doctor cleaned the wound, stitched it up, and dressed it. He gave Brigham pills for the pain and antibiotics to stave off infection.

Brigham changed out of his blood-soaked, eighteenth-century clothes and put on a robe. Then he and Lorenzo sat at a large dining table.

“Now for something that will make you feel better,” Lorenzo said.

“I hope it’s less violent and disgusting than what happened to me at Charles’s place.”

Lorenzo nodded. “Of course. You will see that things aren’t so bad here.”

A handful of servants came in with the table settings and a bottle of wine, followed shortly by a platter that appeared to contain carpaccio of beef and a small bowl of blood. This was not, however, beef, but carpaccio of the woman from the eighteenth century.

Brigham felt he would vomit. He couldn’t eat this stuff; it was cannibalism.

Lorenzo laughed. “How do you think we live? How do you think you are going to live from now on? You have sacrificed your right to stand on any moral philosophy that disallows the eating of one’s own kind. You knew that from the beginning. Is it any less cannibalistic to drink the blood of others at little underground clubs?”

Brigham stared at the plate of human meat.

“Oh, the trappings of vampirism are interesting,” Lorenzo continued. “Dark, sinister, Gothic. Thousands of people play pretend, like your woman friend. They dress up, they put on makeup, and they go so far as to have pointy teeth implanted. Do you see pointy fangs around here? No. They sip blood from vials or small cuts. But they’re not capable of actually drinking blood or of eating human flesh. The reality of it, then, is much harsher, is it not?”

B
righam nodded, still staring with unfocused eyes. He became ill and ran from the table to the courtyard to vomit. No one followed him. He paused for a moment, leaning against a column, then vomited again. He couldn’t do it. He stumbled from the courtyard and headed toward his apartment. Back at the apartment, he showered and dressed. The pills helped the pain, but he still felt ill and weak. He hadn’t had any of the blood or flesh. But there was nothing he could do until later. He prepared to meet Gloria and Mauro. 

XXI

Moonlight bathed the white marble façade of the Church of Santa Maria Valverde in pale and ghostly light. Mauro explained that the church had been abandoned for many years and that it was associated with an abbey where, during the plague of 1348, all the monks died except for the abbot.

The front door had been replaced by one fashioned from bare wooden planks and was secured only by a chain and padlock. Mauro dispatched the lock with a crowbar. They entered, closed the door behind them, and replaced the chain so the door appeared to be locked.

The church had been stripped and was being used for the storage of building materials, although this night it was nearly empty. Beams of moonlight from high windows shone into the stark marble interior with light the color of bone.

The plan was to search the tombs, as the map from the book indicated that this church might be used by the shroud eaters to store people.

Mauro attempted to open one of the tombs by inserting the crowbar into the gap between the floor and the lid, and raising it slightly. The stone at the edge of the lid chipped, and the lid fell back with an echoing crash.

Mauro gritted his teeth. “Dammit.”

“That’s all right,” Brigham said. “Try again.”

Gloria shined a light where the crowbar met the marble. Mauro inserted the crowbar again, and the lid moved. He raised it sufficiently for Brigham to shine his light inside.

Nothing.

Brigham winced in pain.

“What’s the matter?” Gloria asked.

He told her about being stabbed.

“You should see a doctor. The emergency room isn’t far from here.”

“I’m fine,” Brigham said. “I’ve seen a doctor, and he took care of it. It still hurts, though.”

“Okay,” she said, “but watch yourself. And honestly, you don’t look all that good.”

“I’m fine, really. I’ll make it.” At least he hoped. The pills had taken the edge off his desire for blood, but it was overdue.

Mauro lifted the next tomb. It, too, was empty. He shook his head. “Brig, I don’t know. This isn’t a good idea.”

“What?” Brigham said. “Now you say it’s not a good idea? What’s the problem?”

Mauro rubbed his hand over his cop hair. “These are graves. There might actually be people in them. And it’s a church. Sacred ground.”

“Didn’t you think of this before?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Come on, you know this church has been deconsecrated and that there’s nothing in these graves, or at least not the original occupants.”

Mauro was shaking his head, gazing at the floor.

“Look,” Brigham said, “there are only a few left. Pop ’em and we’ll get outta here.”

Mauro sighed. “Okay, but let’s hurry.”

“That’s the spirit.”

A bottle shattered on the pavement outside the front door, and drunken voices echoed in the quiet of the night. They listened. A group of inebriated American youths, still engaged in the drinking of beer, had stumbled upon the church and seemed to be fascinated by its haunting beauty.

Brigham motioned for Mauro to hand him the crowbar, and he moved slowly toward the door. The drunken boys were discussing the possibility of breaking into the church. One of them was pissing into the canal. They approached the door and started fiddling with the chain. One tried to peek through a small hole in the door. As he did, Brigham struck the door with the crowbar. They all shouted in terror and sprinted down the street.

“I bet they don’t stop running until they get back to Alabama,” Brigham said.

On the third tomb, Brigham peeked in. There was something in it. “We’ve got to raise the lid a bit higher.”

Mauro was having difficulty keeping the lid up for more than a few seconds. Gloria found lengths of wood stacked along the wall and used one to hold the top up for a moment. Brigham still couldn’t see, so she got another piece of wood and stuck it on top of the first. Brigham peered in with the light.

He jumped back, landing in the middle of the church.

“What is it?” Gloria asked.

Brigham opened his mouth to speak, but words wouldn’t come out.

“Brigham, what is it?”

Barely able to speak, he wheezed, “Samantha.”

“
What
?” Gloria said.

“It’s Samantha. Samantha Raymond. Charles’s wife.”

“She’s in the tomb?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“No.”

“Is she alive?” Mauro asked.

“I don’t know. Move the lid all the way off, if you can.”

“I think we should get out of here,” Mauro said. “Please, let’s go.”

“I’m with Mauro on this one,” Gloria said. “Leave well enough alone.”

Brigham shook his head. “No, she might need our help. I met her. She was very nice to me.”

They moved the lid and Brigham looked in. Mauro mumbled something under his breath. Brigham reached into the tomb to check for a pulse. As he did, Samantha grabbed his arm, pulled him into the tomb, and began to bite his face.

Gloria shouted to Brigham, but he wasn’t able to answer. She found a long pointed strip of wood and struck Samantha on the head. Samantha didn’t let go of Brigham. Gloria struck her again, but Samantha only glared at her.

“What do I do?” Gloria shouted to Mauro. “She’s killing him.”

“Stab her.” Mauro said.

Gloria jammed the point of the wood into Samantha’s eye, pushing it to the back of her skull. Samantha screamed as blood sprayed from the wound. She let go of Brigham, and Mauro and Gloria pulled him out of the tomb.

Brigham lay on the marble floor of the church, panting.

“Are you all right?” Gloria asked.

He swallowed and caught his breath. “Yeah, I think so, though my side is fucking killing me.”

“We’ve got to get you to a doctor,” she said. “Let me see your face.”

“I’ve already seen a doctor. I’m fine.”

She examined his face. “Nothing serious. We distracted her in time.”

Brigham looked into the tomb. Samantha lay in a pool of blood, surrounding her head like a red halo. “Holy fuck, she’s dead. What are we gonna do?”

“What was she doing in there in the first place?” Gloria said. “I thought shroud eaters didn’t do that.”

“We don’t,” Brigham said. “She’s obviously not a shroud eater. More the vampire side of the family.”

They all stood at the edge of the tomb, looking at the corpse, stick protruding from her eye, mouth open, blood everywhere.

Mauro renewed his plea that they leave.

“Are we just going to leave her?” Gloria asked.

“What else can we do?” Brigham said.

“We can get the hell out of here,” Mauro said.

“Maybe we should call the police,” Gloria said.

“That’s the last thing we should do,” Brigham said. “I say we just close this thing up and split. Don’t leave anything behind.”

“Then what?” Mauro asked.

“We’ve still got to go to San Francesco della Vigna.”

Gloria shook her head. “No, you’ve had enough for one night, and so have we.”

“More than enough,” Mauro said.

“And you’re hurt,” she said. “If you don’t want to go to a doctor that’s your business, but you are going home to rest.”

They made sure that no one was about, left the church, and secured the door.

SHAKEN AND EXHAUSTED, Brigham headed back to his apartment with the others. He walked, holding his side, stopping on occasion and doubling over, wracked with pain, the illness of needing blood beginning to overwhelm him. At the apartment he reclined on the sofa.

“Hand me that nice green bottle over there.”

Gloria handed him the gin.

He washed down two pain pills and two antibiotics.

“What are those?” Gloria asked.

When he told her, she took the bottle from him. “You can’t take painkillers with alcohol.”

He wiped his mouth. “That rule applies only to you mortals.”

He felt the color return to his face and his strength coming back.

“That was an exciting evening,” Mauro said.

Brigham and Gloria nodded.

“We’ve got one little ol’ problem, though,” Brigham said. “We jammed a stick through the eyeball of Charles’s wife. He’s likely to take that shit personal.”

“Yeah,” Mauro said, “what we gonna do about that?”

“How will he know we did it?” Gloria asked.

“He’ll figure it out,” Brigham said.

“I wonder if he’ll call the police,” she said.

“Oh, I don’t think that’s a problem,” Brigham said. He’s not exactly operating within the confines of the law.”

“That’s worse, in a way,” Mauro said. “That means he’ll take the law into his own hands.”

“No doubt.”

“What do you think he’ll do?” Gloria asked.

“I have no fucking idea,” Brigham said, “but he’s got a very creative imagination, and you can bet your ass it’s gonna come with a medieval twist.”

“What if he
did
kidnap Rose?” Mauro asked.

“Give me the gin,” Brigham said. He took a swig. “If he’s got her, I suspect we’ll hear from him soon on that point.”

“What do we do in the meantime?” Gloria asked. “Do we continue to hunt for her?”