Decatur (42 page)

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

All the places in this book exist.

The Italian island of Ischia is lesser known than its smaller, glamorous sister Capri, and more frequented by Europeans than Americans. Ischia is a place of age-old spas, distinctive food, lush gardens and awe-inspiring vistas. But there is a mysterious place of brutal darkness attached to the island: the Castello Aragonese, embattled from 474 B.C., when the first fort was built by Greeks from Syracuse, until well into the 19
^th
century, when British bombardments almost destroyed it.

I visited the stronghold in 2006 and found my way to an ancient Sun Temple, as well as to what the signs identified as a “Nun’s Cemetery” located on the grounds of the former convent Our Lady of Consolation. I was unprepared for what I found there, profoundly disturbed by the burial practices, horrified but also… bewitched.

This story was born out of that visit.