Whispering Bones (10 page)

There was nothing there.

“Anna.”

She snapped her head around to come face-to-face with Alejandro.

“What happened to you? I was in the trailer when I heard you call.” He looked at the scratches on her arms. “Are you hurt? I saw you fall. What were you running from?”

“I—”

Anna turned to look once again at the trees. Not a leaf rustled in the still air.

“I… Nothing. I don’t know, I thought I saw something moving in the trees, but...”

“Are you hurt?”

“No. No, I’m fine.”

Alejandro continued to stare at her, obviously concerned. “You’re shaking. Tell me what frightened you.”

How could she possibly explain what she had seen? The dreadful grin on the ruined face of the dead child rose in her mind and panic took another bite out of her. She had to get a grip before she lost it completely.

“I, I don’t know,” she said, looking back over her shoulder at the forest. “Maybe it was an animal,” she lied. “I’m fine. Really.”

They returned to the construction trailer, where Alejandro located his portable first aid kit and disinfected the scratches on her arms. She did her best to appear normal, even though what just happened had left her badly shaken. Alejandro must have seen through her act because, as he tended to her cuts, he asked more than once if she was all right.

“I’m okay. The heat must have gotten to me, I just got dizzy. That’s why I fell.”

A few minutes later, they gathered their things, leaving behind the equipment they would need again the following day, and headed back to the landing to await the arrival of the water taxi.

The first drops of rain began to fall just as they reached the stone steps. In the distance, she spotted a boat moving rapidly toward them. Moments later, the water taxi pulled up to the landing at the foot of the stairs. Anna smiled weakly at Alejandro when he said, “Right on time. C’mon, let’s get out of the rain.”

They climbed on board. The Romanian driver appeared as sullen as ever, acknowledging them only with a curt nod. The boat pulled away and Anna looked back at the island, now shrouded in a drizzly fog. She could not get the image of the dead child out of her mind. The mere thought of it started her trembling again. She didn’t like this place, she decided. Not at all. The apparition aside, something about the island just felt...wrong.

A moment later, a small beep sounded, followed right away by another. She pulled her cellphone out of her bag and saw Alejandro retrieve his as well. Both phones had jumped back to life.

As the boat carried them away from the island, she spoke little, glancing occasionally at Alejandro. He didn’t appear to share her apprehension about the island, and she debated whether to tell him what she’d seen. The apparition had frightened her badly, but Anna didn’t know how to explain it without sounding crazy. Maybe she’d find a way to bring the matter up before they returned the following day.

Just thinking about going back there set her nerves on edge. She did her best to convince herself she’d be all right the next day. She’d been hired to do a job, after all, and would have to see it through.

Venice, Italy

1927

Dr. Rossi sat in his office, his desk littered with paperwork from the files of the nine patients whom he had spent the entire morning examining. Leaning back in his chair, he stared out the bank of windows overlooking the field. For the life of him, he’d not been able to come up with a single explanation to account for the symptoms displayed by the six male and three female patients he’d placed in quarantine yesterday.

Starting with Carbone, the man he’d first noticed while making his rounds, he conducted a thorough examination of the patients, separately. Each of the nine displayed symptoms of schizophrenia, a fact not unusual in and of itself. What
was
unusual, though, was that none of them had displayed any such symptoms prior to having arrived at the hospital. They had only begun to show symptoms of the disease, including extreme delusions, within the past several months, even though all had been confined to the hospital for at least a year. Confounding as that was, something else disturbed Rossi even more. Each of them—male and female alike—appeared to be suffering from the exact same delusions. They claimed they were being tormented by spirits—apparitions of rotting corpses who wailed incessantly, day and night, giving them no rest.

Rossi removed his spectacles and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He knew very well schizophrenia, being a mental illness, could not be transferred from one patient to another. And yet, for all intents and purposes, that is exactly what appeared to be happening. His inquiries had resulted in information that none of the patients affected appeared to have spent much time interacting since the delusions began. Most of the time, they’d been kept in restraints, confined to their beds. That seemed to rule out the possibility they were merely feeding off each other’s paranoia.

Rossi replaced his spectacles. It occurred to him this might be the reason he’d received the appointment of head surgeon. Fenelli had mentioned that the previous head surgeon had reported the patients’ conditions, stating he’d been unable to determine the underlying cause. Shortly after, the man had been dismissed and Rossi appointed to the position.

He returned his attention to the files. There had to be an explanation for the phenomena. He decided to review his notes again, from the top. Perhaps he’d missed something the first time around, a common thread that would explain the strange similarity in the patients’ behavior.

* * * *

“Come. You must try to eat something. You cannot go on like this.”

“Go away,” Rosaria said from beneath the bedcovers. She knew her mother-in-law meant well, but wanted nothing more than to be left alone, as she had since birthing her dead son.

Her mother-in-law placed the tray of food on the night table and sat next to her on the bed. “It’s been over a month,” she said. “It’s not healthy, what you’re doing. You cannot hide in bed forever. And Massimo is very worried about you. He’s suffering, too, Rosaria. The child... It was his as well. You are not the only one in pain.”

At the mention of her husband’s name, Rosaria shrieked, “Leave me alone. That’s all I ask. Just go away.” Her mother-in-law, normally the kindest of women, had just placed a dagger in her heart by reminding her she had failed Massimo yet again. She’d not been able to so much as look at her husband, at any of them, ever since.

She heard the woman’s footsteps as she left the bedroom. Rosaria burrowed deeper under the covers, wanting only to sleep so she would no longer have to think.

Several hours later, she awoke to Massimo’s voice as he gently shook her. She looked into his pain-filled eyes and turned away.

“We have to talk,” he told her. “I can’t bear to see you like this any longer,” he said, stroking her hair gently.

Why, she wondered, could they not just leave her alone? Such a simple request.

When she didn’t respond, Massimo said, “I’ve spoken to Serafina. She’s agreed to ask Dr. Rossi to see you again.”

“I won’t go,” Rosaria replied dully.

“You will. If you continue this way, I’ll lose you, and I won’t allow that to happen.”

Tears welled in her eyes. “I wish I had died too, with our son,” she told him.

“No. You will get help. You will recover, and then we will get on with our lives.”

Rosaria detected the underlying pain in Massimo’s voice, yet she could not console him. The terrible emptiness that filled her soul since the day she’d delivered their dead son had drained her of all compassion.

Only after he lay down in bed next to her and put an arm around her did she say, “Fine. Whatever you want. I’ll go, but please leave now. I want to be alone.”

The following evening at eight-thirty, as Massimo sat in the drawing room of Dr. Rossi’s home making small talk with Serafina, Dr. Rossi examined Rosaria in his study. Almost an hour passed before he opened the door and Rosaria walked out. Rossi motioned for Massimo to enter, ushered him in, and closed the door behind them.

Rossi looked appraisingly at him and said, “Your wife is very ill, clinical depression. She requires treatment—medication and complete rest.”

“Can you help her?” Massimo asked.

“I can. Although I must insist she be admitted to hospital. I have many patients under my care suffering with similar conditions. She would be best treated at the facility on Poveglia, where she can remain under my constant supervision.”

“Is it necessary,
Dottore
, the hospitalization, that is? Can she not remain at home while undergoing treatment?”

Rossi stared at him for a long moment before answering. “Do you wish your wife to get better?”

“Of course.”

“Then this is the only recourse. She needs to be hospitalized, for her own sake. She told me she has considered taking her own life, and on more than one occasion.”

“I see.” Massimo remembered Rosaria had expressed the same intention to him the previous night, and ceased arguing. “Will I at least be able to visit her?”

“Not at first, although eventually, yes.”

When Massimo didn’t respond right away, Rossi said, “You must realize, Massimo, depression, especially the severe depression which your wife is experiencing, is an illness. You must disregard the stigma which many place on the mentally ill. If you want your wife to be healthy again, you must trust me on this.”

Massimo’s heart sank to his stomach at the prospect of admitting Rosaria to a mental institute, but the possibility she might try to take her own life frightened him even more. He got to his feet. “All right. When shall I bring her?”

“As soon as possible. Within the next day or two, at most… She will be in good hands, I assure you.”

“Yes. Thank you,
Dottore
,” Massimo said before shaking Rossi’s hand and taking his leave.

* * * *

Poveglia Island

One Month Later

Rossi placed a chloroform-soaked rag over Carbone’s mouth and nose and waited. Fenelli stood next to him, looking on at the proceedings with interest.

“And this will take no more than ten minutes?” Fenelli asked.

Dr. Rossi attempted to keep the excitement from his voice when he responded, “More like five or six minutes in total.”

After a month of observing Carbone and the other eight patients who had become more and more delusional with each passing day, Rossi had requested, and received, permission to conduct leucotomies on the affected patients. Carbone, now motionless on the stainless steel operating table, was the first.

“I’ve come up with a method that does not require holes to be drilled into the skull,” continued Rossi. “The transorbital method will result in far less discomfort to the patient as well as improved results. The procedure is simple, as you will see.” He raised the right eyelid of the now unconscious Carbone and placed the sharp point of an ice pick underneath so that it rested against the top of the orbital socket. “Hammer,” he said to Fenelli.

Fenelli handed him a small mallet from the instruments next to the operating table.

Rossi used the mallet to drive the ice pick upward through the thin layer of bone into the brain, following which he moved the ice pick from side to side. “This will sever the nerve fibers of the frontal lobe from the thalamus.”

He glanced at Fenelli. The man had turned white as a sheet.

Rossi carefully removed the ice pick and repeated the procedure on the left side. As he worked, he said, “The only physical discomfort to the patient will be bruising around the eye area for a week or two.”

When he finished working on the left side of Carbone’s head, he removed the small ice pick from the man’s eye and quickly disinfected the area. “There. All done. The patient can be returned to the ward. If I’m correct, he’ll no longer be delusional when he’s conscious again, and will no longer exhibit violent behavior or require restraints.”

Fenelli appeared glad to have a reason to leave the room. “I’ll get the attendants.”

Rossi thought the man looked as if he would pass out. Not all doctors are cut out to be surgeons, he reminded himself. “And have them bring the next patient in,” Rossi called after him, anxious to complete the surgeries so he could begin assessing the results.

By the time he washed up in the anteroom, Rossi had performed leucotomies on all nine patients. Soon, he would know the results of his improved procedure, which he felt certain would be regarded as a medical breakthrough in the new field of neurosurgery.

* * * *

Lying on her cot in Ward Three, Rosaria clutched the sheets tightly around her and squeezed her eyes shut. Strands of moonlight drifted into the ward from the reinforced windows, and she had no desire to see
them
again. If she had wished herself dead before, it was nothing compared to the way she now felt in this strange place.

Rosaria knew she had lost her mind. She’d always thought the insane were not aware of their insanity, yet she appeared to be acutely cognizant of the fact she was no longer of sound mind.

She refused to open her eyes, even after the woman in the cot next to her began to sob. The woman cried every night, although quietly enough not to alert the night attendants.

Too sick at heart to care, Rosaria had permitted herself to be admitted to the hospital at Massimo’s urging, had even allowed herself to become encouraged by Dr. Rossi’s assertion that she would recover here. But when the apparitions had begun to appear shortly after her arrival, she understood she was beyond help. The phantasms conjured up by her feeble mind terrified her. They followed her everywhere. They were always there, hovering in the doorways and corners, wandering through the wards at night, sometimes even hiding under her bed--the hideous dead—rotting corpses that stared at her with waxy eyes, their diseased flesh stinking of death and the grave.

She took a deep breath, didn’t like the taste of it, and knew one of them was nearby. How much longer could she keep her insanity a secret before Rossi found out? She should have refused to come to the hospital. At home, she would have found a way to put an end to her miserable existence. Here, she had not the means to end her life.