Whispering Bones (17 page)

Come with me and retribution will be yours. There are others like you here... Join us...

Rosaria did not look for the light. She heard Rossi utter a curse as he sliced deeper into the grey matter that had once been the driving force of her living body. He had taken everything from her, and her hatred of him was great. Great enough to overshadow the evil which she knew resided in the entity beckoning to her from below.

Rosaria floated down, coming to rest next to the demon child. Together, they watched as Rossi removed the brain from her cadaver and placed it carefully into a jar of formaldehyde next to him.

A cold shiver ran through Rosaria’s soul when Isabella’s tiny dead fingers suddenly latched onto her arm. The moment she made contact, Rosaria was inundated with moving images from the past that flashed through her altered state with terrifying force. When it was over, she understood everything.

She turned to Isabella, no longer frightened by the blank eyes and decaying flesh. Then her gaze shifted to Rossi, secure in the knowledge that he would soon join her in death. That thought eclipsed all else, even the fact that her decision to remain had bound her immortal soul to the creature standing next to her for all time.

Poveglia Island

Present Day

Anna’s hard-pounding heart reverberated in her ears as she continued to search for Alejandro. Something had tried to trap her in the crematorium. What if Alejandro had fallen prey to whatever lurked on this evil island?

She stopped at the closed door of the next building. The door gave way when she pushed it. Standing on the threshold, she stared into the single large room. Debris and rusty bed frames littered the floor, as well as old mattresses and stuffing. She did not enter. By the dim light filtering through the only window, she could see the place was empty. Alejandro was not here either.

Only the main hospital remained to be searched, but the door had been locked yesterday when she’d tried it, she reminded herself. She ran past it to the landing and reached the stone steps leading to the water without seeing him.

Tears sprang to her eyes as she sat heavily on the step. Black dread coursed through her. What had happened to Alejandro?

The white-capped water around her remained devoid of traffic. The sky had turned sour and bruised clouds dipped toward land. The approaching storm must have driven any boats, including the police vessel, back to the mainland.

Anna took a deep breath and tried to control the panic racing around her mind like a caged animal. She forced herself to think rationally. A little over six hours remained before the water taxi would arrive for them. Her best course of action, she determined, would be to return to the trailer and wait there. If Alejandro turned up, that’s where he’d head to first.

She turned back to the path, convinced Alejandro had met with some misfortune. Anna decided to wait at the trailer for half an hour, and if he didn’t turn up, she’d conduct another search.

Retracing her steps, her eyes trained on the path before her, Anna spotted something she knew had not been there before, near the walkway leading to the hospital. Stopped in her tracks, she stared down at a large swath of blood on the ground. It looked as if something bloody had been dragged there. The blood trail continued up the walkway leading to the hospital doors.

Alejandro. He must be badly hurt... So much blood.

She followed the crimson trail, which ended directly in front of the closed doors of the hospital, doors which, only yesterday, had been locked. Her heart hammered away as she stood motionless in front of the closed doors. She didn’t want to go in there. It would be safer to return to the trailer, but Alejandro was obviously hurt and bleeding badly judging by the amount of blood on the ground. What if he’d had an accident? But then, why wouldn’t he have returned to the trailer where the first aid kit was, she argued with herself. Why would he have dragged himself here?

Anna knew her indecision was wasting precious time—Alejandro might be in there, bleeding to death. Still she hesitated, remembering what had happened in the crematorium, paralyzed by the prospect of what she might encounter if she entered.

As if in answer to her thoughts, the heavy double doors swung open in front of her. The sight of the doors opening by themselves sent her heart lurching and made her hackles rise. Gooseflesh danced across her skin as, in the distance, she heard the first low rumble of thunder.

Don’t. Don’t go in there.
Don’t you dare
!

A weak cry sounded from inside the building, a man’s voice.

She stood at the open doors, peering inside, her heart thudding in an alarming manner. “Alejandro,” she called out in a badly shaking voice, “are you in here?”

Another sound of distress, louder this time, came from deep within the building. She felt certain the voice belonged to Alejandro, and the fact decided her.

Anna stepped inside before she lost her courage, every nerve in her body jangling. She took another tentative step and waited, remembering the way the crematorium doors had closed behind her. Nothing happened.

She glanced around the large vestibule. The place was in shambles, everything covered in layers of thick dust and grime. Most of the paint had flaked off the walls, leaving them pock-marked. Broken tiles from the ruined floor and pieces of old furniture littered the ground. Heavy cobwebs hung in the corners and blanketed the overhead light fixture like a cocoon.

At the other end of the vestibule, to the right, circular steps spiraled upward, probably leading to the bell tower. Opposite them, to the left, another set of stairs led to the second floor of the hospital. To her immediate left stood an open archway. On the floor directly beneath the arch, she spied a large red stain—more blood.

Anna moved cautiously to the portico and found herself staring into a long room. Beyond it, she could see another arched opening, and another beyond that, ending in shadow. Tattered and mildewed mattresses and old bed frames cluttered the floor. Gloomy light penetrated the room from the banks of reinforced windows on either side, but the corners remained in shadow. Anna realized this section of the hospital, the
asylum
, she corrected herself, must have housed the patient wards. Still standing under the archway, she glanced to her left to make sure the main doors remained open. They were.

Before she could talk herself out of it, she entered the dim ward, walking quickly through it into the one beyond, seeing nothing but debris in either. She hurried into the third ward. All three of the connecting rooms were empty, save for the ruined beds, torn mattresses and stuffing scattered about.

She reached a door at the end of the last ward, which stood slightly ajar. Anna peeked inside. The windowless room must once have been a laboratory of some sort. She opened the door all the way. On second thought, it looked more like an operating room, one from days gone by. To the right sat a steel table, draped in cobwebs, rusted and dented, but still upright. Through the floating strands of dust covering it, she could see what looked like rudimentary surgical instruments lined up on top. Next to the table, an old-fashioned gurney stood propped up in the corner. On the wall to her left, a row of dilapidated cabinets remained mounted to the wall, although most of the doors had come unhinged. Some were still attached, hanging at crazy angles, while others had fallen off, resting on the floor below. On one of the shelves she spied several large glass jars lined up, blanketed with dust so the contents weren’t visible.

She traveled carefully through the dim room to the wooden door at the other end, taking care not to trip on the loose floor tiles, and opened it, expecting to see another room. Instead, the door opened onto the outdoors, a back entrance to the hospital from which she could see the path and the building she had explored before this one. In the sky, dark clouds rolled and twisted. Lightning flashed and the rain came. The storm had arrived.

Alejandro was somewhere inside this building, she reminded herself, and hurt. She had to hurry. Having come this far without encountering anything sinister, she decided to return to the vestibule and take the stairs to the second floor to search for him there.

As she walked by the bank of cabinets on her right, Anna glanced at the dusty jars lining the shelf. Something, although she could not tell what, appeared to be floating inside them. On impulse, and before she could stop herself, she grabbed one of the containers, holding it up in front of her and blowing off some of the dust. Whatever floated inside appeared fairly large. She used her hand to wipe the grimy glass.

Anna stared incredulously at the contents of the jar. Shocked by the sight of the brain floating in the murky liquid, she released the container. It went crashing to the floor, spilling its vile, slimy contents in every direction, and filling the air with a putrid stench. Some of the oatmeal-like substance spattered onto her boots and the bottom of her jeans.

She screamed, the sound drowned out by a crack of thunder so loud it shook the walls.

Poveglia Island

1927

Night fell on the island. The spirits gathered.

Rosaria looked around, astounded by the vast number of dead inhabiting the place. Most appeared as the putrid and pus-ridden corpses that had so frightened her in life. She now understood their appearance reflected how they had died—from the plague, centuries ago. But she also saw others who were like her—Carbone’s spirit had chosen to remain, as had the other patients who died as a result of Rossi’s experiments. They looked as they had at the moment of their death, still wearing their blood-spattered white hospital gowns, and with the tops of their heads missing, revealing the empty cavity within. Their eyes, like all of the others’, appeared as blank, waxy slates. Rosaria did not cringe from the sight of them. Her own appearance, she knew, was no different. That she had become one of the creatures of the night which had so terrified her while alive no longer seemed of consequence in her new reality.

They gathered in the field at the island’s center, and Rosaria could sense what lay beneath the earth here, could discern from what served as her eyes the skeletal remains of thousands upon thousands, piled like refuse beneath the unconsecrated ground. They would never be at rest, the dead lying below her feet, no matter how many centuries passed, no matter that the oldest of the bones had ground to dust, turning the earth white as it took its fill of them.

Isabella spoke, and Rosaria directed her attention to the one who led them. The demon child hovered above them, her bare and rotting feet off the ground, her decaying arms outstretched and her filth-encrusted hair floating around her ruined face. A guttural voice that bore no resemblance to a child’s emanated from Isabella and swept over them like an ill wind.

“The hour of the next fulfillment approaches. Who among you will partake of the killing?”

The dead erupted in screeching howls. Rosaria raised her new voice, moving in frenzied unison with the others. The intended victim was well known to her, and the prospect of watching Rossi suffer and die at their hands excited her beyond measure. And he
would
suffer, she told herself, seeing the malicious grin on what remained of Isabella’s face. Oh, yes. She was certain of it.

* * * *

The clock in Rossi’s office chimed the half hour. At two-thirty in the morning, he sat on a crumpled blanket at the edge of his bed, staring at the dissected brain sitting on his desk. With a trembling hand, he raised an almost-empty liquor bottle to his mouth, swilling down the remaining contents in one gulp. Then he tossed the empty bottle against the wall. It shattered, sending shards of glass spraying across the floor.

Another dead end.

The thought opened the floodgates to panic, and it crashed over him like a tidal wave. His examination of the brain of the woman, Rosaria, had turned up nothing—nothing other than a normally functioning brain. He had once again failed to determine the cause of the illness plaguing the island—and him.

The clock ticked away, reminding him that time was running out. What the devil was he going to do now? He’d been certain the last subject would provide the answer he needed to stop the insanity growing like a malignancy inside him.

He rose and moved to the window nearest him, peeking out from behind the closed curtain. They were out there, of course. The dead. Like sentinels from hell. Waiting.

Was it his imagination or were there more of them than usual out there? Hard to tell in the pitch black outside his window, but... Yes, he realized with a start, their numbers had grown. A drop of perspiration trickled down his back as he observed them milling around the edge of the field.

The sound of raised voices reached him—shouts and running footsteps, coming from the direction of the hospital. His stomach roiled from the liquor. Bitter bile rose to his throat. He remained rooted to the spot, looking out at the creatures as they inched their way forward. They had never ventured this close before.

The shouting grew louder. He knew he should go investigate the source of the commotion, but something told him he must not venture out on this night. The apparitions outside his window grew bolder, moving closer and closer, until they stood mere feet from his window. He let the drape fall back so he wouldn’t have to see their rotting forms, but just knowing they were out there sent his heart tripping.

The shouts and accompanying sound of running footsteps receded. A moment later, he heard a wooden thud, like the sound of a boat banging up against the landing, and the splashing noise of oars hitting the water. The night staff—they were leaving the island! Only they had access to the emergency boats. He had to stop them. They couldn’t just leave him here on the island, alone with the insane...
A
nd
the dead
.

Something must have happened, but what?