A Beast in Venice: (Literary Horror set in Venice) (9 page)

Brigham held it up to the light, then handed the flask to Mauro.

Mauro examined it. “Can we use this to tell whether a person is a shroud eater without killing them?”

The old woman nodded. “They can’t stand the smell. They react violently to it.”

“Once you give it to them, how long before they die?” Mauro asked.

“Just a few minutes.”

“What’s in here?” Brigham asked. “Is it poison?”

“Its contents are a secret,” the woman said, “but it’s not poison to regular people.”

“What about small animals?”

The old woman frowned with annoyance. “You mean like a dog or cat?”

“Yeah.”

She shook her head. “Shouldn’t bother them.”

“And when the shroud eater dies,” Brigham asked, “does it get, shall we say, messy?”

“No, but they may vomit.”

“Sounds messy to me,” Mauro said.

Brigham shivered. “Just don’t give it to them in a good restaurant.”

Mauro removed the stopper and sniffed it, then held it out for Brigham to smell. It was odorless. They thanked her and started for the door. The woman said something Brigham could not hear.

“What’d she say?”

“She wants fifty euros,” Mauro said.

“Fifty euros? What? Does this shit have gold in it?”

“Give her the money, and let’s get out of here.”

“Me? This is all your idea. I’m only here to try to protect you from yourself. Anyway, I ain’t got no fucking money. You give it to her. You gondoliers always have a wad.”

Mauro took a roll of cash from his pocket, sifted through several hundred-euro notes, peeled off a fifty, and gave it to her.

“Now that you have this stuff, what are you going to do with it?” Brigham asked.

Mauro shrugged. “I don’t have all the answers yet. Guess we have to find a shroud eater or two.”

“We? There’s that ‘we’ again. What I think we should do is find a beer or two.”

“That sounds good. Giving her all that money gave me a thirst.”

They continued toward a bar. Brigham became silent.

“There’s smoke coming from your ears,” Mauro said.

“What?”

“You’re thinking real hard about something. I’m not used to seeing you do that. It scares me.”

“It ought to. I just had an idea,” Brigham said.

“Wait a minute. I think that guy over there needs a gondola ride.”

“Your gondola’s on the other side of town.”

“Then I’m just gonna run.”

“You ain’t goin’ nowhere. I need to get a small perfume bottle.”

“Why do you need a perfume bottle?”

Brigham held up the vial. “I’m gonna put some of this stuff in it and test it out.”

“Test it out? Who will you test it on?”

“I’ll tell you later. Now, let’s just get the bottle.”

They went to a shop that sold good Murano glass. The person on whom he intended to test the liquid would recognize a cheap imitation, and he planned to tell him it was a gift for Rose. Brigham Stone, Esq., didn’t buy no bullshit Chinese imitation perfume bottle for his wife. He bought a
bona fide
antique Murano glass bottle, and they headed for his studio.

“I thought you didn’t have any money,” Mauro said.

“I lied.”

Mauro smiled, mumbled something in Venetian, then turned to Brigham. “Well? Are you going to pay me back?” He held out his hand.

“Pay you back? Fuck, no. The whole thing was your idea. You forget the fifty and I won’t kick your ass. Tit for fucking tat.” 

“Okay, but you better sleep with one eye open.” 

“I already do.”

MAURO STUDIED THE PAINTINGS scattered around Brigham’s studio as if he were in a museum.

“Nice work, Brig,” he said. “I haven’t seen your paintings in a while. I like them.”

“Thanks. Now sit down before you hurt yourself. And don’t touch nothin’. What will you have to drink?”

“Coffee.”

Brigham halted mid-step. This was a man who normally had two glasses of prosecco before ten o’clock in the morning. “Coffee? It’s almost noon. You okay? You want I should get a doctor?”

“I’m turning over a new leaf,” Mauro said.

“Aw, bullshit. You talked to Rose.”

Mauro hesitated.

“Spill it.” 

“She expressed some concern.”

Brigham poured two glasses of prosecco, as he knew that Mauro the Gondolier didn’t want no stinkin’ coffee at this hour, and neither did he. Wonderful. The two of them conspiring behind his back. A bolt of anger went through his brain, but then reason returned, and he decided that as much as he felt violated by these people talking about him, they loved him, or at least in Mauro’s case liked him a lot, so it was with good intent.

“She has good reason to be concerned,” Brigham said. “I drink too much, and now I’m starting to see shit that ain’t there. Can’t tell what’s real and what ain’t sometimes.” He surprised himself with the rational nature of this response when what he really wanted to say was “Get out of here, you fucking, back-stabbing traitor to the male race.” But that was wrong and he knew it. Drunkard he may be, but he still sought truth and light and would take it wherever he could find it.

Mauro stared at the floor, kicking bits of debris. He looked up at Brigham. “Happens to us all.”

“Well, it don’t happen to Brigham fucking Stone, Esquire. What’d Rose tell you?”

“She said you drink too much and felt that I was encouraging you, and that if I had coffee, you would have coffee.”

“I know I follow your lead sometimes, but only because I want to experience what the well-heeled gondolier drinks, not because I can’t think for myself or because I worship you to the extent that I will just do what you do.”

“Of course not. I never thought that. So, if you know you drink too much, what are you going to do, quit drinking?”

“I may cut back, but there’s no reason to get nutty about it.” Brigham handed the prosecco to Mauro. “Cheers.”

“That’s probably all Rose would ask.”

“I know. We’ve had the discussion. Let’s you and I leave it at that. Now, back to the issue at hand.”

“Yeah, what are you going to do with the potion?” Mauro said.

Brigham explained who Charles was and told Mauro about the dream, which led him to the idea that Charles might be involved somehow in the matter of dead bodies showing up in canals. He still didn’t believe in vampires or shroud eaters, but the dream had affected him in such a way that he needed to resolve it for himself.

Mauro listened to the story, mesmerized. “So, you think the dream was a vision or something?”

“I don’t know. I don’t believe in such things. But it has done something to me, and I think about it all the time.”

Mauro sipped his prosecco and looked at the ceiling.

“So,” Brigham said, “I’m gonna put some of this goop in the bottle and test it on Charles.”

“How, exactly, will you do that?”

“I’m gonna show him the bottle,” Brigham said, holding it up to the light. “I’m gonna tell him it’s perfume for Rose and ask him to smell it. Then see what happens.”

“If he’s not a shroud eater, he won’t smell anything.”

“That’s right.”

“Won’t he think it’s funny that you have a fancy bottle with perfume that has no smell?”

Brigham paused. “Good point. Maybe we ought to put something in it to make it smell.”

Mauro ran his hand over his spiky, gelled hair. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. What if it changes the stuff so it doesn’t work?”

“Another good point. You’re on today, my friend.”

“So what are you going to do?”

Brigham thought for a minute. “Nothing. He’s an American.”

“What difference does that make?”

“We are very polite. He will either simply compliment me on it, telling what we call a white lie, or he will say that he couldn’t smell it and make an excuse, like maybe he has a cold.”

Mauro nodded. “I see what you mean.”

“The only real concern for me is whether he goes ape-shit and blows his guts on the table.”

“How are you going find this guy? You know where he lives?”

Brigham poured them each another prosecco. “I know where he lives but that’s not where I’m gonna do it. He goes to the same café every day at about the same time. I’ll just happen to bump into him there. The rest is a piece of cake.”

“Sounds easy,” Mauro said, sipping his prosecco.

“Like taking candy from a fucking baby.”

“So, what you gonna do if he goes all ape-shit, as you call it?”

Brigham sat down, crossed his legs, leaned back, and put his hands behind his head. “That’s a good question. I don’t really believe all this jazz about shroud eaters, so I don’t expect anything to happen. So, if he does have a response, I’ll be scared shitless. But then he’s gonna know that the jig’s up, and he better play fucking ball.”

“Where did you learn to speak English?” Mauro asked.

“A place where you woulda got your ass beat just for wearing them fucking glasses. I learned many a poetic turn of phrase at about four hundred feet under the North Atlantic.”

“I don’t know what you say half the time.”

“Neither do I.”

AS BRIGHAM SAT AT THE CAFÉ, drinking beer and waiting for Charles, strange thoughts swept through his mind. Lots of shroud eaters out today. Where was Charles? He needed another beer. He was hungry, thought he’d order a sandwich. Also a lot of dumb fucks out. Couldn’t tell the dumb fucks from the shroud eaters anymore. Never could, really. Maybe there was no difference. Were all shroud eaters dumb fucks, or were all dumb fucks shroud eaters? Were shroud eaters a subset of dumb fucks?

After a good half hour of this high-level analysis, he took his eyes off the street to drink his beer. Sitting in the chair next to him was Charles.

“Fuckin’-A, Charles, you some kind of magician or something? Where’d you come from?”

Charles smiled. “Do you mean originally?”

Strange answer, but it gave him a chance to learn something about Charles. “Sure, originally.”

“I fell from Heaven.”

Brigham blinked. He expected something more like Cleveland. “Better than from the pits of Hell.”

“The distinction is very fine. Finer than most people think.”

“I shall have to contemplate that. It’s a very deep thing to say and not subject to my immediate understanding. In the meantime, can I buy you a beer?”

“No, thanks, but I’ll take a coffee.”

“Great.” Brigham ordered a coffee for Charles and another beer and a panino for himself.

“What are you up to today?” Charles asked.

“Just sittin’ here watching people. I could sit here all day and watch people.”

“Same here. This café is the best in Venice for that.”

“And a strange lot they are. Rather kooky,” Brigham said.

“That’s right. You couldn’t make this stuff up.”

“No. Take that particularly stupid-looking son-of-a-bitch over there, for example .” He indicated with a nod. “What do you think’s wrong with him?”

“Don’t know,” Charles said, “but he looks like he belongs in a home.”

Brigham laughed. He considered bringing out the perfume bottle, but his food arrived, and he was afraid Charles would heave his guts all over the table, so he held off. After he had eaten, he pulled the bottle out and showed it to Charles.

“Feast your eyes on this,” Brigham said.

“Nice bottle. Beautiful.”

“It’s antique Murano glass.” He took the top off and held it toward Charles. “Here, smell it. It’s perfume for Rose.”

“Sorry, dear boy, I’m allergic to perfume,” Charles said, holding up his hand and turning away.

I’ll bet you are, Brigham thought. Now he was going to have to be creative.

He set the bottle on the table.

“You should put that away,” Charles said, making a wistful smile, appearing calm. “Someone’s going to grab it off the table, and it looks quite valuable.”

He knew. Somehow the son of a bitch knew.

“Nah, no one’s gonna steal it, and I like looking at it.”

“Please,” Charles said. “Humor an old man.”

“If it’ll make you feel better.”

Brigham reached for the bottle and knocked it over, sending the liquid all over the tablecloth in front of Charles, splashing it on him. “Ah, shit, look what I’ve done,” Brigham said, grabbing a napkin. “Here, let me clean it up. I’m really sorry.” He dabbed up the liquid.

Charles’s face lost its color, and he looked as though he would puke. “Doesn’t have much of a smell for perfume,” Charles said calmly. So much for Brigham’s polite-American theory.

“Maybe I got ripped off,” Brigham said. “Wouldn’t be the first time an Italian ripped me off.”

Charles stood up. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go wash this off before it stains.” He went into the café.

Either he wasn’t a shroud eater or he had great self-control. Brigham considered following Charles inside to see if he could hear retching coming from the bathroom, but shroud eater or not, this guy could still bring him a lot of business. No need to do anything else to annoy him. No, Brigham would need to go to Plan B, as soon as he figured out what that was.

The waiter replaced the tablecloth, and a few minutes later Charles came out. “I’ve got to go now. I have a previous engagement,” he said.

“Sorry again about the spill, Charles.”

“Don’t worry about it, lad. Nobody died.”

BRIGHAM FIXED A MARTINI, and sat on the sofa in his studio, staring at Pink Jesus. The martini tasted particularly good today; fruity, herbal, and ice cold. He nibbled the olive and studied the painting. Pink Jesus looked back at him, dumbfounded, as if to say, “You really stepped into it this time, son.”

What had he done? He thought Charles was a shroud eater? On what evidence? A dream? Seeing people walk through walls? But he saw spiders, too, which weren’t there. Why was he so messed up? Why was he a drunk and a shitty painter? Pink Jesus peered at him as though he knew the answer, but kept quiet.

He put Bach’s
Mass in B Minor
on the stereo and went to work on the painting he had started the other day, adding pink and magenta, and a lot of white; an underutilized color. He stretched out on the sofa to take a nap, but was afraid to sleep. He feared his dreams, the spiders, and what they meant—feared that they indicated what had become of his mind. He slept but didn’t dream.