"They"

Present Day



         Elizabeth Esposito ran desperately along the narrow and winding streets of the ancient city known as Venezia.  She gasped for air as she continued to run through the dimly lit corridors of buildings whose shadows loomed over her in the night.  Elizabeth’s heart pounded constantly in a rhythm that was faster and heavier than her footsteps as her bare feet pounded on the stone streets stained with blood.  People stood, lining all of the streets, making sounds much like muffled screams. Elizabeth could also hear whispers as she jolted past Them.  The whispers unnerved her, and the muffled screams terrified her to the point of insanity.... She looked around as she ran, hoping to see her pursuer, but she only found the hundreds of people standing around her, crying, screaming, shrieking. She thought to herself in the midst of the chaos that surrounded her, “There are so many of Them, just lined on the streets like dying bodies… Unable to move, and not capable of speaking anything more than murmurs and screams... I have to get out of here!” She suddenly stopped, and looked around through her now tear filled eyes.  “What do you want?!?” she screamed out into the night. “Show yourself! What the hell do you want?!?” She turned, seeing the woman standing behind her in her beautiful white silk dress that gleamed in the dim moonlight.  The woman started to whisper, just like the rest of Them. This was all too much for Elizabeth. She turned around, and started to run again. Her heart continued to race at an extreme speed. She heard the whispers and screams even louder now, almost as if they were inside her mind and not around her at all.  Suddenly, her heavy breathing was cut short, and she fell to the ground with a thud. The whispers died down, and They gathered around her in a chattering silence.



6 Hours earlier



         “This really is a beautiful city, don’t you think?” said a tall man whose face was concealed by locks of dark curly hair that poured over his face. He spoke to a beautiful young woman, one Elizabeth Esposito.

         “Oh yes, it is quite stunning, although I find the mass of people here to be startling.” She paused, and then spoke again, diverting the conversation in another direction. “This city also has an interesting past, or so I have heard.”

         “Ah, yes, it does. There are many reported sightings of ghosts here at nighttime.”

         “Really?”

         “Yes, I thought they would interest you” The man knew that speaking about the paranormal was Elizabeth’s favorite pastime, for she was given the gift and curse of communicating with some other realm. A realm where They, as she called the spirits, roamed neither in this world nor in another. It is another place altogether, where spirits who were evil in their life are damned to go. Or so Elizabeth believed.

         “So are these tales simply the same common ghost stories, or do you think there is something behind them?” Elizabeth inquired.

           “I can’t tell you that, for I honestly have no idea. All of the reports have been of spirits walking the streets at night, but many say they are not like common spirits, and that they all have some malicious desire for blood.”

         “This sounds fairly typical.  I think that those stories are simply stories, created to scare the tourists away.”

         “Well, if that was the design, the stories definitely failed.”

         Elizabeth anxiously smiled and looked around at the city before them, bustling with people and the sound of laughter and lighthearted conversations. 

         “So, shall we continue to the boat? This island they speak of may be the only thing worth our time here.” Elizabeth said to the man, accompanied by a slight fit of nervous laughter.

         “Oh yes, the island will definitely be worth the time, I can assure you.  It is legitimately haunted I believe…“ He paused for a moment, thinking about what Elizabeth had just said, and then continued, “I assume you still have trouble with the crowds of people?”

         “Yeah, they’ve bothered me since I was a small child. The swarms of people that I have experienced here in Italy are the reason I moved back to the states. I always now associate the terrifying crowds of people with Italy in general, so I had to leave. My fear of crowds actually has a name you know. I think it is something like Enochlophobia. It gets so bad for me sometimes, even in the small town I live in.”

         “Well, let’s get away from all these people then. We’ll have plenty of time to catch up on the boat.”

         Sparing no time in the city they walked quickly to the boat that would lead them to Poveglia, the island of horror, as it was referred to. 



         

“…Poveglia’s sinister history is one that is not easily forgotten. Its dark history started with the Black Death, or bubonic plague, that swept over Europe. The number of dead in Venice at this time was not acceptable. Bodies were piled in the streets, and the stench became unbearable. It was decided that the island of Poveglia would be used as a dumping ground for the victims of the Black Death. This system worked somewhat efficiently, until the fear of the Black Death became so great that more extreme measures had to be taken.  People panicked, and the citizens who showed symptoms of the Black Death were all taken to the island, thrown into the pits of rotting corpses, and left to die in agony. The victims included women, children, and babies. There were over 160,000 victims disposed of on the island…”

         Elizabeth gasped after reading this passage from a book she bought, containing details on the haunted island of Poveglia.  She looked down, completely shaken by the idea of so much death, especially in the way that the living people were disposed of.  Her mind wandered on the idea as she sat on the small boat that was taking her to the island.  The man she had been talking to earlier was sitting beside her, watching the scenery they passed by on their journey. 

         She viewed the scenery for a matter of minutes when she became very bored with it. There was nothing exciting. No ghosts. Nothing Paranormal. Everything was very normal.  Too normal for her.  So she again opened the book and read more:

         

“Later in the island’s history, it was the site of a hospital, where ghosts of the rotted corpses were supposedly seen. The doctor who ran the hospital went insane, and he started to perform gruesome experiments on his patients. In the hospital’s last years, the doctor started to see the spirits as well. It is rumored that the ghosts led him to the hospital’s tower, where he remains to this day, enveloped in the walls of the building itself…”

         These tales of the island completely enthralled Elizabeth.  It was gruesome and terrifying, but she loved it so. 

         “We’re here,” the man with the dark hair said to her. 

         “Huh?” She paused. “Oh, yeah. Sorry, I just totally got sidetracked in my thoughts.  You know, it is really nice to be able to get away from the people… Just sitting here, reading about ghosts, and now we’re about to investigate ghosts.  It’s just kinda relaxing, you know?”

         “I can see that, although I’ve always been more of a social person personally….” After this statement, their brief silence was rather awkward and anxious.  “So, shall we set foot on the island?”

         Elizabeth hardly heard him as she looked out upon Poveglia, totally mystified by its eerie and foreboding nature. Layers of fog swirled around the old hospital’s tower, encasing it in darkness.  The air was still, completely still, and nothing seemed to move.  No sound, except their breathing and the murmur of the boats engine dying down, could be heard. 

         In silence, Elizabeth arose and walked cautiously off the boat.  Her heart began to beat faster as she thought to herself, “This is it. This place will be the monument of my career… I can already feel Their presence here… It is so thrilling.”

         She continued onto the beach, and started to walk at a much faster pace.  One of Them was calling her.  She had never felt such a connection to Them before.  It was as if she could read Its thought and see into Its soul.  Suddenly, an overwhelming feeling of emotion came over Elizabeth. It was a sensation of hate and love, warmth and cold, darkness and light, life and death.  It was a feeling that she could only describe as insanity…    It called to her and gently caressed her mind while it stabbed her through the soul with a bloodstained knife.  She was totally taken and absorbed by the feeling.  The world around her seemed to fade away.  She was surrounded by darkness… Surrounded until she saw Him.  He was an old man whose physical features were darkened by the shadows of the swirling fog that now encased both him and Elizabeth.  She looked at his face with curiosity and perplexity, not understanding what was happening.  She saw His eyes, glowing bright with the color of blood.  She looked at His clothes, stained in dark maroon.  In one of His hands, He held a pair of pliers, bent and twisted from years of use, and dripping with blood.  In His other hand, He held some reaming body part, too mangled and beaten to be recognized. 

         When Elizabeth Esposito saw this, she screamed and shrunk back in terror.  “Oh my goodness!  It’s the ghost of the doctor.”  She fell on the ground, shivering and murmuring frightening prophecies.  She looked around quickly, trying to find some way to escape the dreadful nightmare she was in…  A way to escape from Him.  Then, in the distance, a figure appeared before her.  The figure was that of a young woman, a ghost, wearing what was once a beautiful white silk dress.  Now the dress appeared dark crimson from years of blood, staining the fabric forever.  Elizabeth cried out to the woman, the lady in the red dress.  She cried out for help, for some way of escape from the dreadful nightmare she was trapped in.

         The woman walked toward Elizabeth, and held out her hand. She whispered very quickly, “Take my hand, take it.” Elizabeth turned around to find the doctor had vanished, before she took the woman’s hand.  The woman chattered the most eerie of whispers, and she cried out screams of pain as she spoke to Elizabeth in a soft and quiet voice.  “There is a light in the distance, a beacon of hope in the dark of the night.  A light, a light.  There is a light… Una luce in lontananza.” She whispered. “You can leave this dreadful place, you can leave. Just promise one thing. Promise. Promise. Promettiamo di me! Promise! Promise me one thing.  Take me with you, take me away.  I do not want to stay here. I cannot stay here! Take me away! Via! Via! Via con voi!  Take me with you!”  Her frantic whispers haunted Elizabeth.  Her grip had become tighter on Elizabeth’s arm, and Her fingernail pierced Elizabeth’s skin, causing it to bleed slightly.  Slowly, out of the fog, They began to appear.  More and more corpses and ghosts came nearer to her, surrounding her from all around.  She was frightened by Them all surrounding her in this way.

         Suddenly the lady in the now red dress vanished completely, and the fog engulfed all of Them walking toward her.  The world around Elizabeth began to return to its former state.  She walked toward the man she had come to the island with, with an obviously startled and terrified expression on her face. 

         She spoke to him in a desperate tone, telling him they had to leave the island. “Don’t you understand?  He is after us and now He wants us because he has … I have seen terrible things, and we have to leave right now!”

         The man just stared back with a puzzled expression until he finally asked, “What just happened?  I saw you standing there for a few minutes, and now you look as if you have just seen a ghost!” He paused and looked down ashamedly. Elizabeth began to walk away as he looked up saying, “It is just a figure of speech, and I meant nothing by it. I believe you.  I do… I’m sorry; I’m just concerned for you…”

         “Like hell you are!  You have no idea!” she yelled at him, still in a state of shock from the vision she saw. She ran to the boat, got in, and took off, leaving the boat driver and the man she knew behind on the island. 

         As the boat quickly left the island, she saw a bloodstained dress floating in the water… She sobbed and whispered, “I am so sorry, I just can’t…”





Present day once again



         Elizabeth once again arrived at Venice’s main boat area.  It was now dark outside, and the streets appeared empty.  She walked through the streets, looking for her hotel.  She searched and searched, and could not remember where it was.  She continued to walk, until she found herself on a small bridge, totally lost in the ancient city.

She took time to pause, and looked up.  The city stood silently in front of her, until she heard a whisper. It was a nearly silent whisper, but it was terribly audible in the silent city.  She started to run, realizing it was Them.  The whispers began to grow louder and encroach around Elizabeth.

         “Oh no, oh no… They are here” More and more appeared in the streets, and the woman in the white bloodstained dress pursued her.  Elizabeth ran, desperately trying to escape Them.  Her worst fears of crowds became overwhelming to her, and she eventually fell to the ground with a thud. The whispers died down, and They gathered around her in a chattering silence.  She slowly arose again, to find the woman in the dress standing before her.  She whispered again, the most frightening of sounds and whispers.  “You chose to not take us. I told you to promise. To promise. Promise. Promessa. You chose to not help! You chose! Now you sealed your fate. Fate. Fate. Destino. Fate! You are one of us now forever. Forever. Forever.”

         Elizabeth shrank back in fear, unable to move, muttering meaningless whispers.