Forever Young E-Book

Barbara Stanzl

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 363

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Jasmine, a young anthropology student arrives in Venice, Italy, to research ghost stories. She meets a mysterious young woman who is trapped in a world as ancient and violent as any ghost story. Jasmine starts to help her new friend to escape her mausoleum of a life, and the man who is her beguiling tormentor, but gradually she too starts to fall under his spell.

Leseprobe

For our parents, Christine and Werner, and Gladys and Jim

“I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs,

A palace and a prison on each hand:”

Lord Byron

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Epilogue

CHAPTER 1

Jasmine was alone in the compartment, enjoying the first sight of Venice in the distance. Her train was crawling slowly across the long bridge that connected the island of Venice to the mainland of Italy. She saw bell towers and domes, picked out in the beams of bright spotlights and reflected in the dark water of the lagoon. Only the towers and spires could be seen, the other buildings remaining dark silhouettes, almost indistinguishable from the surrounding blackness of the night.

Jasmine stood up and pulled down the top half of the train window. With no glass between her and the view she could suddenly see a lot more. Only the lagoon refused to give up any more of its secrets. The water was so dark that anything could be hiding down there and she wouldn’t know.

The interior of the carriage was still warm from the heat of the day, but the wind on her face was cold. The train was inching toward the city and Jasmine felt a shiver run down her spine as she saw more and more of it. There were street lights, each one illuminating little more than a small patch of wall, or alleyway floor, and there were the lights of the oncoming station platforms, but beyond that there were only the silhouettes of buildings against a starry sky.

Less than twenty minutes later, Jasmine was lost among the dark mass of buildings. She had never been in a city without roads before, which was disconcerting enough, but this city seemed also to be almost entirely without people. She stopped to look at the map displayed on her phone and tried to work out where she was.

Only one street in four seemed to have a name, and none of the names she read on the side of buildings were the same as the ones on the map. The wheels of her suitcase grumbled noisily over the cobblestones behind her as she picked a direction, almost at random. The blue dot marking her position suddenly jumped three streets as her app updated her position based on esoteric factors known only to itself.

“You’re lost as well, aren’t you?” she said to the small, inanimate device. A figure appeared at the end of the alleyway, and Jasmine drew a breath to ask for directions, but then shut her mouth again. The figure was an old man, stooped and drunken, and he was growling invective at himself. Jasmine didn’t understand his words, her Italian was pretty good but the man’s words weren’t Italian, they were something else, a local Venetian dialect Jasmine guessed. She may not have understood the dialect but it was extremely clear to her that the words the man was saying were bad words. She put her head down and continued walking, coming uncomfortably close to the man in the narrow alleyway as he stumbled past her. She breathed a little sigh of relief as she emerged onto yet another small square, with yet another canal bisecting it. There was a single stone bridge across, leaving Jasmine no option but to climb the steps, her suitcase banging against each step as she went up. She reached the center of the bridge, the apex, and was suddenly confronted by a wall of noise. It was the throaty roar of hundreds of voices, and it was coming from a small alleyway on the other side of the small square. From where she was standing, at the highest point of the bridge, she could see that the alleyway was short and there was a huge open space beyond.

The voices she now saw were coming from a huge group of young people. They were drinking, Jasmine saw, and they were packed in so tight it was going to be difficult to make her way through the throng. Jasmine just stood there on the bridge, her phone in one hand, the handle of her suitcase in the other, the classic pose of the lost tourist.

She was a young woman with black, super curly hair, and below her curls, her dark brown eyes were shining with irritation. She descended into the alleyway and started pushing her way through the crowd.

“Hi,” Jasmine said, picking somebody at random from the crowd and proffering her phone. “I’m trying to find this address.”

The address on the screen was typical of Venice. It was just two lines, the area of the city and the building number.

“I don’t know it,” the young man she had chosen said, with a shrug.

“I know it,” a young woman said. “It’s nearby. Come with me, I’ll show you where it is.”

***

The alley that the young woman led her down was yet another one that her phone’s app didn’t recognize, so she just dropped it in her bag and forgot about it. She hurried her steps, having to walk quickly to keep up with her guide. Jasmine followed her down alleyways, under arches, and round turn after turn, but then her guide had gone. One moment she had been there, leading the way, and the next Jasmine was on her own in a tiny, dark alleyway. Half way down the alleyway was a dark gateway. There was a garden within that was obviously very overgrown, even in the darkness, and the house too was dark and empty looking. It could be the building she was looking for, her accommodation, she decided.

She pulled out her phone and opened the maps application. It showed her location as a red dot, and the address she had been given as a blue dot. They were pretty much, but not exactly, on top of each other. It was starting to look like the creepy old building was the place she was supposed to stay the night.

She cursed softly to herself and pushed her face up against the ornate swirls of the metal gate so she could get a better look inside. She saw a big house, with three stories. And she saw that there were windows in the roof above too, hinting at some kind of attic space. But the place was completely dark. The windows had a touch of North Africa in their complex arches, and the chimneys had the bulbous tops of the middle ages. The building looked ancient, half-derelict, but so did all the other buildings.

She cursed gently to herself and gave the handle of the gate an experimental nudge. She jerked back in shock as the gate came slowly open on screeching hinges. She was even more sure this was the right place now, otherwise, surely the gate would have been locked. She stepped through the gate, onto the short path that led across the garden to the front door, her suitcase still trundling noisily after her. She felt a wave of cold and neglect coming from the building. It was just a huge, crumbling pile of masonry, unloved and uncared for. She felt the damp radiating from the ancient stones, like the breath of a monster.

She went up a small stone staircase to reach the front door, and her eye was immediately caught by a bull-headed door knocker. It reminded her of something she had been reading on the long train ride. She had been reading about Aegeus, king of Athens, the goat-man who gave his name to the Aegean Sea. Aegeus had engineered the death of the son of King Minos, who declared war on Athens and only agreed to end the war if Aegeus would send seven young men and seven young women every nine years to Crete to be fed to the Minotaur.

She shuddered and reached for the knocker but her hand froze half way when she heard a click. The door swung wide on screaming hinges that were obviously oiled just as infrequently as the ones on the gate. Jasmine could now see a cavernous hallway with a high ceiling and a huge chandelier. There was also an enormous window opposite the front door, dominating the far wall.

By the light of the big window she could dimly see the opulence of the wallpaper, and the ornate carving of the furniture, but also big dark stains of mold, and some chips in the plaster. Two doors led off from the massive hall on either side of her, and a giant staircase led up to the floors above. Jasmine took a step across the threshold.

“Hello,” she yelled, “anybody home?” No answer came, so Jasmine put her suitcase by the front door and walked further inside, yelling as she came. There was still no answer, and soon she was all the way across the hallway, at the giant window. The view was magnificent. This side of the house looked directly out onto a canal. The waters actually lapped at the face of the building, which explained why everything felt so cold and damp. She hadn’t seen any sign of life yet, so she guessed she would have to investigate the building a bit more, to see where everyone was hiding. She reluctantly turned from the view through the huge window, and then she screamed, loud and long.

There was a single figure standing right in front of her, in the dark, silent room. She managed to pinch her lips together and force herself to stop screaming, it had just been shock, and she had to get a hold of herself. The figure in front of her wasn’t monstrous or intimidating, quite the opposite. It was a young woman, no taller than Jasmine herself, and slim, slight even. But there was something about the way the moonlight through the window caught her face. There was a slimy, cold cast to the skin of the young woman in front of her. Or was it just raindrops reflected from the glass of the huge window that made her face look weird? When had it started raining?

Jasmine couldn’t focus, couldn’t bring the features of the woman into sharp relief, no matter how much she squinted into the half light. She could hear her own heart thumping hard in her ears. Time to take charge of this situation, she thought. She opened her mouth to speak, but the young woman spoke first. There was a presence and an anger in the voice. Jasmine felt that, even though she couldn’t understand the girl’s raging-fast Italian.

She caught a word or two, but not the sense of it. She just stood slack jawed, her mouth hanging open, but her mind was racing. The voice was dark and husky, almost dry. Jasmine thought the young woman looked like a rocker, dressed in some sort of weird collection of dark, vintage clothes.

“Shit,” Jasmine hissed, the ugly word as involuntary as the scream had been. The effect was instant. The moment the woman heard that single word of English, she stopped in mid sentence. Her eyes narrowing suspiciously.

“You are English. I once knew an Englishman,” she said, but didn’t go on to elaborate.

“Shit,” Jasmine hissed again. Such lack of control over her own body, over her own lips, felt frightening. Who was this Englishman she was talking about? Was he some nutty expat who had crossed her path? And what had he done to her? And why was Jasmine going to have to pay the price for his misdeeds? She briefly considered barging past the girl and making a run for the front door, but some aura, like a nasty smell was emanating from the girl, blocking off all escape.

“What brought you here?” the girl asked. Jasmine had no idea how to answer the question. She was increasingly starting to suspect that this wasn’t her accommodation.

“I’m not sure what brought me,” Jasmine said, and emphasized the last two words. They felt strange and old fashioned in her mouth. But then she thought again, thought about how she had lost her guide from one moment to the next. “Blind chance?” she said.

“Blind fate,” the young woman corrected her. Jasmine was unsettled by the vehemence with which the young woman had just spoken. She wanted to get out of this creepy old mansion, but the girl looked upset. It looked like she would have to try to calm her down, to make sure she didn’t feel the need to call the cops or something.

“My name’s Jasmine. What’s your name?” Jasmine said, forcing a smile onto her face.

“I do not introduce myself to thieves, or vagabonds, or worse.” The girl’s eyes seemed to burn with indignation. Jasmine had heard the expression, of course, about eyes burning, but she had never seen what almost looked like actual flames in someone’s eyes before. “What is your purpose here?”

“Are you going to call the cops?” Jasmine asked. “I just arrived, and I don’t want to get into trouble with the police.”

“You should have considered that before invading my sanctum.”

“C’mon,” Jasmine implored, drawing the word out to add emphasis.

“For the last time,” the girl barked, “what do you want here?”

“I just wanted a place to stay. And my crazy old professor gave me an address that is impossible to find, and I thought the address was this place. I’m sorry I should have known it wouldn’t be this decrepit old building.”

The girl was visibly shaken by the words. “You think my home so strange,” she asked, “does it look rotten to you?”

“Not strange exactly,” Jasmine said, “and certainly not rotten... exactly.” Jasmine felt awful about her clumsy words, overcome now by pure embarrassment, an emotion strong enough to banish all fear. She was no longer frightened of the strange young woman, didn’t care whether she called the police or not. She just wanted to make sure she hadn’t hurt the girl’s feelings too badly.

“Go,” the young woman said, “leave this place and go back to your gadabout life.”

“Gadabout?” Jasmine couldn’t resist a snort of amusement at the choice of words, even though she knew it was rude. The girl’s English was so strange.

“Yes,” the girl said, “gadabout, hooligan, rowdy. Somebody who does thoughtless and damaging things for their own mindless pleasure. I think the word fits you very well.”

Jasmine couldn’t take it any more. She dropped her head, pushed past the girl and made for the front door at an embarrassed trot. She was almost running by the time she reached the door, her face blushing red, but at the door she stopped, forcing herself to try one last time. For some reason she couldn’t leave this bizarre stranger with the idea that she was some strange thrill seeker, who spent her time breaking into rich people’s houses for kicks. She turned. “I’m not a gadabout,” she said, “I don’t do this.”

“You did it tonight,” the young woman said.

“Yes,” Jasmine admitted, “but I thought this place was...”

“Decrepit?”

“No,” Jasmine almost groaned with frustration. “I thought it was the place I was supposed to stay. Accommodation, you know...”

“This is my home,” the young woman said, with a flourish of the hand. The gesture looked theatrical, with the huge window behind her making into her a dark silhouette.

“I don’t think anybody should live like this,” Jasmine said, “in the dark.”

“Sometimes,” the young woman said, “it’s unavoidable. Sometimes you just end up alone, in the dark, and there is nothing to be done about it. Like I said, unavoidable.”

“It’s never unavoidable,” Jasmine said. The smile she had forced onto her face was still there, though it was fading. But she meant what she had said. This was something Jasmine was convinced of. No matter how bad things got, you could always hang on in there, and wait for things to get better. Sitting in the dark feeling sorry for yourself was absolutely not the answer. “Let me at least turn on the lights.”

“That would alleviate the darkness,” the young woman said, “but what about the loneliness.”

“That’s easy,” Jasmine said, because in her experience it was. Making friends was the most natural thing in the world. She’d never understood at all how anyone could end up being lonely and alone.

She smiled, walked a little way back across the hallway, and raised her hand for the young woman to shake. “Let’s be friends.”

“I don’t make friends with every wandering lunatic that breaks into my home for their amusement,” the young woman said, and Jasmine was disappointed to see that her mood hadn’t softened one iota. Then something occurred to her.

“But I didn’t break in,” Jasmine said.

“What do you mean?” the young woman asked, genuinely surprised.

“The door, the gate, they weren’t locked,” Jasmine said, “I just pushed them open.”

There was a long pause, as the girl stared at her. Some trick of the light was catching her eyes, picking them out like the luminous discs of a nocturnal carnivore, a wolf perhaps, or a panther. “You just pushed them open?” the girl said at last, pensively. “You say you were brought here by blind fate?” There was more silence, the two young women regarding each other. The stranger was still some way away across the hall, silhouetted against the big window.

“If you don’t make friends with gadabouts,” Jasmine broke the silence, her words loud and confident, “Who do you make friends with?”

The girl hesitated to answer. “I’ve made very few friends,” she said at last, “in my entire cursed existence in this world. I even may have forgotten how to make friends. I find I have no earthly notion... Do you have a visiting card?”

Jasmine laughed out loud. She was really beginning to enjoy this odd young woman’s company. Where had she learned to speak English. Her grammar book and dictionary must be from the previous century or something. Probably from the shelves of some moldy old library she undoubtedly had hidden away in the house somewhere. “No,” she said kindly, “no visiting card. Just tell me your name, then come on over here and shake my hand.” Jasmine still had her arm up, and she wiggled her hand, invitingly, beckoning for the young woman to shake.

The young woman stared at the hand, shy as a deer. She wanted to come and shake hands, Jasmine could sense that, but she didn’t yet feel secure enough.

“Come on. Don't leave me hanging,” Jasmine said. She had been holding her hand out for so long her arm was getting tired, but it was working, the girl was coming closer, slowly, timidly, one step at a time. When the girl had closed half the distance between them, she stopped. She lifted her head proudly, put her hand to her breast and introduced herself.

“My name is Violetta Marquesa Romanziana.”

“Erm, OK,” Jasmine smiled, “Would it be all right if I just called you Violetta.”

“Yes,” she said. And then, after a pause, “That would probably be best. I would prefer it if you did not use my family name.”

“Which of those was your family name?” Jasmine meant it as a joke, but she could see by Violetta’s raised eyebrow that she had misjudged it. “Ignore me,” she said. “I’ve got a big mouth.” She wiggled her hand, it was still hanging there waiting for a handshake. Violetta raised her hand, and Jasmine could swear she could feel Violetta's hand approaching hers as she closed the final few steps that remained between them. It was like a wave of cold, like pins and needles, but made of darkness. My hand must be falling asleep, she thought, as they touched. “My god,” Jasmine yelped. “Your hands are freezing.”

Violetta smiled sheepishly, as if ashamed at the temperature of her hands. She was standing in a shaft of light now, and Jasmine got her first good look at her. Her dark hair was unkempt, bunched up on her head in no particular style and held in place with big silver pins. She wasn’t wearing any makeup and her skin was pale. She was thin, almost gaunt, with a pair of piercing green eyes staring out of slightly hollow sockets. Her clothes were an eccentric mix of vintage items from various epochs, half hidden by a dark, heavy cloak.

Jasmine knew a thing or two about clothes, being a fan of various fashion blogs about vintage clothing, and she could tell from the weight of the fabrics and detailing that the clothes had been expensive when new, but she also spotted inexpert patching and sewing. It was clear that Violetta was a very odd bird, which just made Jasmine warm to her more.

“You can not stay here,” Violetta said, releasing Jasmine’s hand. “Show me the address you were given.”

***

Violetta was showing Jasmine the way to the address on the sheet of paper when they crossed the large square again. It was still very full of people. “You know, Violetta,” Jasmine said, “I could use a drink.”

“For the nerves,” Violetta said, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes, exactly,” Jasmine nodded, “unless you’re in a hurry to get back home.”

“I have all night,” Violetta said. “Most of these places will be closing soon, but there is a bar that is open later. Café Noir. It is nothing more than a disreputable drinking den.”

It was only a minute away, and Jasmine thought it was a cozy place, no matter what Violetta had said about it. It had exposed beams and brick, and laminated menus with an extensive selection of snacks and drinks.

“It’s not so bad,” Jasmine said, glancing around, taking it all in. “What is that radioactive-looking orange drink that everyone is drinking?”

“It’s called Spritz Aperol,” Violetta told her. “It’s sweet, and they make it strong here, so it burns. I’ll get us each one, if you like?”

“Very much,” Jasmine said, “I would very much like a... what did you call it?”

***

It was much later before Jasmine was at last in the little apartment that had been rented for her. It was just one small room, crammed with a sofa bed, a wardrobe, a kitchen, a washing machine, and there was also one tiny bathroom. It was only just big enough for one person, but Jasmine was amazed to discover, it had an absolutely enormous terrace. It was a terrace that was as big as the apartment itself.

“Wow,” she said, rushing out into the open air.

“This is the address, I’m afraid,” Violetta told her, as she followed her onto the terrace. “Tiny and dreadful, isn’t it?”

“Are you joking?” Jasmine yelped. “It’s the best. The front looks out onto a tiny canal and the back has this terrace. It’s wonderful. Wait there.”

Jasmine worked quickly, switching on the music app on her phone, and finding a corkscrew and a couple of glasses for the red wine Violetta had bought at the bar. Soon there were two half-full glasses resting on the wall of the terrace, along with the bottle and the corkscrew, with the freshly liberated cork still impaled upon it. The first song of her jazz playlist was coming from her phone. It was Miles Davis, a lonely trumpet only just perceptible, coming softly from the phone’s small speakers.

Jasmine saw movement out of the corner of her eye, a neighbor closing the shutters on their apartment’s windows. Then she noticed that all the neighboring buildings’ shutters were closed. Jasmine didn't understand it, but Violetta explained it was the Venetian custom to close the shutters at night.

“It must plunge the home into absolute darkness,” Jasmine said, aghast. “It seems almost medieval to me.”

“It is Medieval, of course,” Violetta said, and took a sip of wine. “Excellent she said, dances on the tongue. Quite a discovery at such an ordinary bar.” There was a short silence, just the two young women, the wine and the jazz. Then Violetta glanced at Jasmine. “You’re quite the night owl,” she said. “A lot of people would just want to go to bed, after arriving in a strange city and having an adventure.”

“You bet I’m a night owl,” Jasmine said.

“I think I’m going to like having you as a friend,” Violetta said, as though finally making a decision. The two young women clinked their glasses together, two figures illuminated on the terrace of a tiny loft apartment among looming shadows. It was the only oasis of warmth and light amid the shuttered windows and deep darkness of the surrounding city.

CHAPTER 2

Despite her late night, Jasmine was up early. The sun had started to penetrate to the bottom of Venice’s narrow allies, but it was a pleasantly shaded and refracted version of sunlight. Jasmine shaded the screen of her phone, as she made her way to her appointment at the university. Venice certainly was beautiful, Jasmine noticed, as her eyes flicked from the map on her phone to the streets around her and back. As she walked through the streets it was impossible to ignore another side to what she was seeing. She became aware that there was homelessness and begging in the street, all mixed in with the hordes of wealthy tourists and locals. She was extremely early, finding the university much more quickly and much more easily than she had expected. She decided to kill a few minutes in a cafe, so as not to be embarrassingly early. It seemed like there were three cafes in every street, which made it difficult to choose one, but soon she had picked one that appealed to her and chosen a table in the sun, where she ordered with the friendly Chinese lady who worked there.

At her table in the sun, checking her email and reading the online versions of British newspapers, she lost track of time, and had to pay and leave in a rush. The university, when she reached it, was a huge structure of raw concrete, that had somehow been hidden by its architect among the backstreets and alleyways of Venice. Jasmine hastily navigated through its corridors, and was a few minutes late by the time she found the office of the professor she had been sent to Venice to assist, a woman named Professor Gabizon. Gabizon’s office door was ajar and she was at her desk.

Jasmine saw a face that was all hard angles, as if it had been chiseled, reading something on a laptop screen. Jasmine knocked on the door and popped her head into the room. Even seated behind a desk, Jasmine could see that the professor was tall and slim. Jasmine introduced herself. “Was your journey all right?” the professor asked.

“Not really,” Jasmine replied, “but that was my fault. I missed my connection, so I didn’t end up arriving in Venice until nearly midnight.”

“The witching hour,” Gabizon murmured. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It’s okay,” Jasmine said.

“How do you like the apartment we arranged for you?” Gabizon asked.

“It took some finding,” Jasmine said, with an involuntary smile as she once again remembered her adventure from the night before, “but I made a friend and they helped me locate it in the end. Anyway... I’ve been sent to assist you. What is it you would like me to do?”

“I’m not sure I can tell you just yet,” Gabizon replied.

“Oh,” Jasmine said, a little nonplussed. “It’s just I’ve been sent half way across Europe, just to assist you. I’m not sure how much help I can be if you don’t tell me what I need to do.”

“My research is quite sensitive,” Gabizon said. “I need help, but I need somebody I can trust. I need someone with the right qualifications, and I was told you might have what I’m looking for...” Gabizon’s voice trailed off as she looked Jasmine up and down pensively. Then she glanced at the screen of the laptop and then back at Jasmine. “I guess it is stupid to have you come all this way and then get all precious about my research. It would be a waste not to have you do anything,” Gabizon said. “I suppose I could start you out with something tangential to my studies and see how you do.”

“Great,” Jasmine said.

“It’s just boring research,” Gabizon warned her, “no fieldwork. We will have to work our way up to that, very slowly. For now, I need you to do some reading in the library for me.”

“Okay,” Jasmine said, “so what do you want me to read about.”

“Ghosts,” Gabizon said.

“Ghosts?”

“Yes,” Gabizon nodded. “Like I said, I can’t tell you too much, not yet, but I can tell you that an important element of my research is the relationship between ghost stories and a society’s taboos. You’ll enjoy it, there’s lots of juicy stuff to put your teeth into.”

“Sink your teeth into,” Jasmine corrected, then cursed herself. Why was she correcting the almost perfect English of her new boss?

“Really? Sink... like a ship? Huh...” Gabizon’s expression was suddenly appraising again. She stared at Jasmine for a few seconds, then touched a button on her laptop’s keyboard. There was a printer in the corner of the room that softly ghosted out a sheet of paper. “Okay,” Gabizon said. “Grab that list of books. I’ll be here for a few hours. Pop in when you’re finished in the library and tell me how you are settling in.”

“Will do,” Jasmine said.

She awkwardly squeezed past Gabizon to get to the printer and despite not wanting to, she glanced at the computer screen over Gabizon’s shoulder. There were two documents open on the desktop. One was the list of books Gabizon had just printed and the other was some kind of report. At the top was her own name, and below were blocks of text with headings like skills, qualifications, character, and most strangely, moral fibre. Gabizon closed the document, and Jasmine immediately started to wonder if she had read it right. It had looked almost like a resume, but she didn’t think it was one she had ever written.

The library was just a few doors down from Gabizon’s office, but it was a very different space. Both Gabizon’s cubbyhole and the cavernous library had the same raw concrete walls, but the library was much bigger, much colder, and much more impersonal. It was a modernist temple of learning with long wooden reading tables and metal shelves. She glanced at the list Gabizon had printed for her and went over to some shelves containing oral history, privately printed books and essays on folklore. The dark and musty books were incongruous on the clean, dust-free, beige metal shelving. She let her finger wander along the spines, looking for the first book on her list. At last she found it, a large-format book with an ornate design on the spine. Her fingers wrapped round the old leather. She took the book over to one of the cold tables and leafed through it. There were fifty stories collected within, and numerous essays about them. There were also three other books on the list Gabizon had given her, so there was no way she could be expected to read it all today. She supposed she was to use her intuition, and decide what among all this material might be useful to Gabizon. Then she corrected herself, it was inconceivable that Gabizon wasn’t intimately familiar with these books. She had probably been told to read them as a test. Gabizon was not what she had expected at all. She had been hoping to make a friend of her new boss, but instead the woman had been cold and suspicious. Maybe she would thaw, Jasmine decided, if she found some interesting new angle on the material she had been given to read, something Gabizon hadn’t considered before. The problem was that the book was like nothing she had ever read.

As far as methodology went, there was only a short note explaining that the ghost stories in the book had been collected by an anthropologist from among the fishing communities of the Venice lagoon. It was about as far from academic writing as it was possible for a text to be. There was nothing for it though, and she lowered her head to the book and started concentrating. One of the stories caught her eye, and she started reading.

The story told of an old fishing boat, operated by three fishermen. Joining them for the first time that night was one young lad. The fishermen took the boat very far out into the lagoon, and they carried on fishing long into the night. It was the first time the young lad had been out fishing so late. The three older men noticed that he was uneasy and frightened, and the rough old men found this hilarious. Still, they needed him to get over his fear and work, so they put a bright lantern at the front and back of the boat. “Look, it’s almost as bright as day,” one of them said to the boy.

The young boy wasn’t very reassured, but he went and joined the men at the side of the boat. However, when he reached out to help them throw the nets into the water they could see that his hands were shaking. To try and calm him, one of the old men pointed at the horizon, to where the lights of the city of Venice could be seen in the distance.

“Look,” they said, “you can still see the lights of the city. One of them is your bedroom window. We can’t be so very far from home, can we?” Again the boy wasn’t very reassured, but he did stop shaking enough to help the others throw out the nets. The night wore on, and the boy began to relax a little. The chill of dusk lifted once the sun had gone down, and the long night itself really wasn’t as cold. The stories of the old men were funny, and the lad started to cheer up. Now and again, the fishermen would take a small nip at a bottle of some fiery, lemon-flavor drink they had brought with them. “Just a bit,” one old man said, as he passed the bottle. “A little bit will keep you awake, but you can’t drink too much till we’ve reached our little island, and we’re safe for the night.”

“We’re not going straight back to Venice?” the boy asked.

“No lad. We’re too far out. We’ll spend the night in our hut and head back at first light, or maybe the day after that, depending on the catch.” In the shallows of the lagoon there was a maze of wooden fences, sunk in the mud to trap fish and ensure there was good fishing, even when the tide was low.

Each maze of fences had an island at the center, and on each island there was a little hut, built of cane and plastered with mud. The huts were nothing more than one square room, a door, and two windows. Each isolated hut was the only structure visible for miles around, except for Venice itself, way off in the distance. It was in one of these little structures that the fishermen intended to spend the night. But first, they had to haul in the nets.

The catches were huge back in those days, and it needed all of them working as a team to get the nets onto the boat. They all four reached into the freezing water together, got a good hold of the nets together, and all hauled at once, spilling fish onto the deck of the boat with every heave. They sang traditional songs to keep the pace, and it was warm work even with freezing water splashing about their ears.

The young lad already knew the songs very well, they were a part of him. He’d been singing them since before he could walk, and he bent and heaved mechanically in time with the song. He reached into the cold water, then straightened his back to have fish come gushing all round him. Then he again reached into the water, for another mighty heave. This time, instead of fish, something big and heavy came crashing onto the deck. The old men cursed, and the young boy screamed.

It was a dead body, dressed in the fine clothes of a nobleman. Its eyes were open, staring directly at the boy. A hand, thin as bones but still with some flesh, seemed to reach for him as he struggled to move backwards away from the terrible thing.

“Calm down lad,” one of the men said.

“It’s just a dead body,” another said. “Is it the first one you’ve ever seen?”

“Yes,” the boy admitted.

The old men moved the dead body away from the catch, and the nets were now light enough that they could be pulled on board without the young lad’s help.

As the others carried on their work, singing and heaving, already seeming to have forgotten the corpse on the deck of the boat, the young boy was left alone with it, staring into its gruesome eyes. When the older men had finished their work, they all had a nip of the fiery yellow liquor, including the young lad, and then the old man with the bottle smiled and offered it to the dead body lying in the bottom of their boat.

“What are you doing?” the young boy screamed.

“He’s not very talkative,” the old man grinned, and the others laughed long and hard. “I just thought it might wake him up a bit.”

When the rough old men had stopped laughing, they rowed to the island for some rest. The young boy immediately began to beg the old men not to spend the night at the island. He wanted to go straight back to Venice.

“It’s too far,” they told him. “We’ll rest and have a bite to eat, and we’ll get off on our way home before you know it.” They’d been fishing not far from their little island and it hardly took twenty minutes to row to it. They hauled the boat into the shallows and dropped anchor, then they jumped out into the freezing water, ready to wade ashore.

“I don't think we should leave him in the boat,” the young boy said.

“I agree,” said the man with the liquor, the one that had offered their guest a drink. “He might spoil the catch.” The young boy helped him lift the dead body gently out of the boat and they started to drag it through the water, over to the makeshift building.

“Ouch,” the young boy said. There was some wood sticking in the dead thing, protruding right in the center of its chest. It had caught the young boy’s hand and gashed him. The lad angrily pulled it out of the body and threw it to one side, so he wouldn’t cut himself again before they had finished moving the corpse.

The other fishermen were already inside, and judging by the flickering light coming from the windows had already gotten a fire going. The boy could even smell fish cooking on the fire.

“Let’s just prop him up against the wall out here,” the old fisherman said. “It’s not like he minds the cold, now is it?” When they had the dead body propped up against the wall they went in to join the rest of the fishermen inside. There was just enough room in the makeshift building for a fireplace and a single table. The boy joined the rest at the table and took a long, gulping drink of the lemon alcohol he was offered, to the great amusement of all the rest. They had a few herbs growing in pots on the island, and there was some oil, but beyond that there weren’t many ingredients, so the fish were very simply cooked. The cook knew nobody would care though, because they were all hungry after a hard night’s fishing. At last he plucked his metal skillet from the fire, smelled the contents suspiciously, then pronounced the meal ready, which was greeted with cheers from the rest of the crew.

“You’d better pop out and tell our guest that dinner’s ready,” one of the old fishermen said to the boy.

The room went silent.

“What did you say?” the young boy asked, a tremor in his voice.

“You heard me, lad,” the old fisherman said. “Just nip outside for a second and tell our guest that dinner is ready. He’s invited in, if he’d like to eat.”

The young boy got unsteadily to his feet. Something in the older men’s eyes told him that he would not be forgiven if he didn’t follow orders. The lad walked out into the night to extend the cook’s kind invitation. The boy wasn’t gone for a minute before he came running back in, to the great amusement of the older fishermen.

“He says he accepts your kind invitation.”

The men turned pale, their laughing suddenly silenced. Outside they heard footsteps coming slowly round the hut. The door was pushed open, and the dead man came in and sat down in the boy’s place, the only empty chair at the table. The eyes of the others were fixed on their guest. They all felt terror in the hearts, but they couldn’t move or speak. The blood flowed chill in their veins, and their dinner guest smiled.

When the sun rose, there were three dead men sitting round the table in the room, and a young boy, half mad with fear, who had a story to tell that nobody would ever believe. The dinner guest, the boy said, had gone.

Jasmine shuddered, and started to make some notes. This was exactly the sort of thing Gabizon was looking for, she decided. A story intended to warn fisherman about what behavior was and was not tolerated on the boats.

***

Gabizon declared herself pleased with Jasmine’s first day’s work, studying the notes Jasmine had made and grunting in satisfaction in a few places. “This is very significant,” Gabizon said. “What made you read this particular story?”

“It was a hunch,” Jasmine admitted.

Gabizon looked up from the report and stared at Jasmine. “A hunch? What is that?” she asked.

“A gut feeling, intuition,” Jasmine explained.

Gabizon then waved her away with a mumbled goodbye. Jasmine had half been expecting to be invited for a coffee or a glass of wine, so she could get to know her professor better, and so her professor could get to know her, but Gabizon didn’t seem interested. Jasmine at last left the university as night was falling, not quite knowing if she had impressed or disappointed her new boss. She decided not to worry about it, after all if the professor didn’t want to go out for a drink, she would just have to find somebody who did.

***