The Chime Of The Bell- Chapter 4

(My narration)

“The island is haunted, Miss. Take care”, said a crew member as he handed me my luggage. I had two bags so he helped me carry one to the cottage. “More than a thousand deaths in this island Miss. It’s God’s grace if you come out safe”, he said as we stood by the cottage door. “I will leave you here. Addio signorina.”

He strictly refused to enter the building. It was bright daylight yet I could tell he was frightened. Not only he but the entire crew looked scared. They just wanted to finish their job and get the hell out of there. Mr. Khan must have paid them really well to drop us on this island.

“Addio”, I replied as I saw the man hurry towards the shore. I turned to look at our cottage, or should I call it our ramshackle cottage. It was a one-story brick house with red Tuscan roof tiles. Some shards of white plaster still remained attached to the walls. Weeds had grown on the walls of the building. I could notice a chimney on the top from which some branches were peeping out. Wooden planks nailed together had been used to seal the broken windows and other entrances. The front gate looked intact though. The smell of fresh paint and a pile of cement and sack bores told that some repairs had been done recently. It’s hard to imagine how terrible this place looked before the repairs.

I entered the cottage. The place looked much bigger from the inside. The large hallway led to four different rooms, two on either side. There was a large window right opposite to the main entrance from which the plague field was clearly visible. The building was approximately a century old. Even after all this cleaning it still looked creepy. The house was probably used as a residential place for the people who came to work here. Now it was covered with weeds. I looked up at the roof. It was a typical Italian style ceiling. You can find similarities of it with the supporting wooden framework of old Bengali houses. The woods that supported the roof didn’t look much promising. Some bamboo poles had been used to keep the roof from collapsing.

“Don’t worry ma’am, it’s safe to live here. We got it examined by experts”, said a man-in-black as he dragged one of Farheen’s luggage bags into the lobby.

“Oh”, I replied with a doubtful smile. Gosh, I would rather live in a tent.

Debaleena was fitting a camera on the hallway. The director stood there lecturing her about camera angles. Inside I found my friends busy discussing how sexy the yacht captain was. I was not really interested in joining them so I decided to take a solo trip of the island. I dumped my luggage in the corner of the room and slipped away quietly without anyone noticing.

The bell tower was visible above the vast vegetation which entirely covers the island. It is the most prominent and one of the oldest structures on the island. Without thinking I started walking towards it. There wasn’t any walking path but at a few places, you could spot some paved ground underneath the roots of some enormous trees. I had to make my way cutting through the bushes. With every step, my fear of running into some venomous reptile became more and more intense but I moved on. As I walked my mind flooded with all the things I have read and heard about the island.

The locals, like our yacht crew, believe that the island is cursed. Though many of them entirely refused to talk about it; during our stay in Venice, I was able to interview a few people. Some of them told me stories of some demonic being which would prey on anyone who sets foot on the island. Considering the terrifying history Poveglia bears it’s no surprise that legends and rumors about the island are as ubiquitous as the weeds here. For years, this small island on the Venice lagoon had only witnessed cruel and horrifying deaths.It first was as a lazaretto, a quarantine island for maritime travelers, one of three in the Venice lagoon. During the Napoleonic era, the English had built a fort on the octagonal battlement to protect and control the entrance of the lagoon. Parts of the fort still remain intact. Prisoners were taken ashore and burnt alive.As epidemics like black fever broke out in Europe, this island was again used as a quarantine station. The plague victims would be carried here and left to perish. As the population of the plague-infected victims increased, the Venetians began to panic and the people showing the slightest symptoms of the sickness were taken from their homes and thrown here onto piles of rotten corpses and set ablaze.

'Plague and disease were huge problems in the medieval world, especially in trading centers like Venice. But Venice had some of the strictest sanitary laws anywhere, and even though they didn't understand how germs and infections worked, they knew that isolating sick travelers was an effective way to prevent or lessen the severity of outbreaks. It was Venice that coined the term quarantine, which is derived from the duration travelers were required to stay at a lazaretto before they could be issued a clean bill of health and continue on their way -- forty days. Quaranta giorni.'

-This is how Ransom Riggs explained it in his article about Poveglia.

There were huge trenches where the dead were thrown and once full it was burnt. Around 160,000 victims are estimated to have died here. Rumor has it that the soil here is more of human ash and less of soil. I was glad that I walked towards the bell tower away from the plague field where the barbaric incidents happened. But unfortunately, this isn’t the conclusion of Poveglia’s unpleasant history.

I had almost neared the tower. As a walked past I spotted another dilapidated building with the sign “Reparto Psichiatria” ( in Italian it means the Psychiatric department) - the infamous asylum of Poveglia.

The building was almost in ruins totally covered by vegetation. Through the tembled down windows I could see stacks of bed and bed frames in some rooms. The floor was filled with debris and fallen roof tiles on which vegetation had started to grow. The walls were green with mold. To add to the horrors of this island, in 1922 this insane hospital was established. Patients reported seeing ghosts of the plague victims and hearing the hails of the tortured souls. Amongst them was an evil doctor who wanted to discover a cure for insanity. He performed experiments on his patients using crude instruments like a hand drill, chisels, and hammers. Those patients were taken to this very bell tower where they were tortured and subjected to a number of inhumane horrors. Legend has it that one day after brutally butchering a patient the doctor climbed the ladders of the bell tower, dragged by his guilt or by the souls of the patients he had tortured, and jumped to his death. It is said that he survived the fall but was strangled by some sort of ghostly mist that emerged from the ground. The story sounded hilarious when I first heard it but now thinking of it standing right under the bell tower made my blood run cold.

Just then I felt a hand on my shoulder. My heart almost jumped to my mouth as I turned around in haste. Dishani was standing there with a cigarette pressed between her lips. I could hear my heart pounding.

“Gash. You scared me!”

She carelessly gestured a ‘what’ with her arms.

“Dude anyone would freak out if you creep behind them like this and that too in a haunted island”
She sat on a broken log close to where we were standing and lightened her cigarette. “Poor you. It’s not even our first night and you are a mouse”.

“Oh shut up”. I sat beside her extending my palm. She looked at me and then at my palm. “Give me a cigarette”

“Oh, I almost forgot you smoke”.

We smoked in silence for some time before I spoke again. This haunted island had some effect on me. Its gloomy environment made me feel suffocated. I could no longer bear the sadness that had been building inside me since I set foot on the island- I felt kind of restless. It was as if my guilt and sorrow were engulfing me. I suddenly found it very tough to hold the little secret I was trying so hard to hide. “I am leaving my job”, I finally busted out.

I was staring at the ground but could feel her eyes on me. She didn’t ask, exclaim or react. She waited for me to continue. She may be the one without filters but I knew of all the people Dishani would understand the best. I went on looking at the ground. “There has been a tension growing between me and my boss lately. Ok here it goes – I fucked my boss”

The cigarette dropped off her mouth as she exclaimed “cool!”

Yea I know it sounds like some erotic novel but the problem is it wasn’t cool at all. “No Dis it isn’t how romantic it sounds. My boss has got a family…wife, children. He is no Christian Grey. He is the middle-aged professor who taught me Egyptology in Cambridge.”

A loud scream interrupted us. It came from the direction of our cottage. We immediately rushed towards it.

Reaching there we found it was Farheen. Everyone had gathered around her room.

“Aaaah…HELP ME!” , came the screams from the other side of the door.

The bodyguards had to break down the almost broken down door of her room to discover her crooked in a corner. There was fear in her eyes.

“What’s wrong madam?”

“There…”, said she, her trembling hand pointing to the wall on the opposite corner.

“What is it?”, asked the bodyguard confused as there was nothing.

“THERE IS A LIZARD. I hate lizards. This is pathetic. Get rid of it NOW”.

As we had a closer look we noticed a microscopic lizard sticking careless to the wall. It was so small that we had totally overlooked it in the first glance. The poor creature hardly had any idea how much horror his presence in the room had caused.

“Yes, ma’am”. The bodyguard immediately went to get it.

“Seriously?”, Sam asked unable to believe what she was seeing.

“Actually ma’am is afraid of reptiles”, explained an attendant standing behind us.

We sealed our lips considering that she is the daughter of the man who owns this land. We all had realized that there was going to be a lot of drama so we better get used to it.

First the smell of paint and now thanks to Farheen I had to tolerate the smell of carboxylic acid.

Want to know how much drama we had to put up with? Continue reading to the next chapter. Here is the link for you: https://wrytin.com/jayeetapaul/the-chime-of-the-bell-chapter-5-ju2a1i64