October 14, 2023

It has been a long time since Nathan was surrounded by so much water.

When he last sat in a boat, he was coming back from a yacht Veronika Lockhardt sank with magic. He remembers sitting there with Jamie, Veronika, Jinx and the Bookers; remembers sitting there covered in his boss's blood, with Eva Booker's eyes boring into his soul. That night held fire and ashes and salt and so many conflicted feelings as the boat rocked on gentle waves. There was silence for the most part. Silence, and bits of Derek's brain matter in a black duffle bag.

It all comes rushing back to him now, unpleasant memories invading his mind while he and Jamie are being taken through the Venetian Lagoon, to an island worthy of featuring in nightmares. Nathan tries not to let them bother him, reminding himself that that part of his life is over and the past is long gone. Still, the tension won't dissipate from his body and his jaw and fists are clenched.

He hopes this feeling will fade with time.

For now, he remains quiet in the small boat while Jamie interviews their temporary guide, who is simultaneously hard at work navigating their vessel. Giovanni is a jovial older gentleman with a jolly moustache, a goatee and an accent so thick Nathan has to strain to understand his English. Finding someone willing to drop him and Jamie off at Poveglia Island took a long time, but Giovanni's granddaughter is an avid enjoyer of Witchcraft Wednesday, which provided plenty motivation for the old boatman to take the risk.

(Jamie also offered to pay him a sum equal to what he normally earns in a month. This, too, ensures Giovanni will go as far as doing an impromptu little dance for them should Jamie request it of him.)

"So what's your opinion, Giovanni? Are there ghosts on Poveglia or no?"

There's a twinkle in Jamie's eyes as she asks the question. She's filming, chatting, entirely in her element. Nathan doesn't know if setting foot on the island will alter her good mood, but he hopes it stays like this a little longer.

Giovanni is beaming, despite Poveglia coming closer and closer—he is probably delighted his grandchild may see him featured on her favourite YouTube channel. "Many ghosts. Many dead. I haven't seen them, but I have heard stories from others. About strange sounds and wailing. Feelings of being watched."

"Have you brought many people to Poveglia before? Or accompanied them on the island itself?"

"Sometimes. Sometimes I bring people—tourists like you, Miss. But I don't go with them on the island. Not often."

"Why not? I bet some would've paid extra for a tour."

"I don't like it. The place is... inquietante."

"¿Inquietante?" Jamie ponders the translation. "Disturbing?"

"Yes, I think so. Disturbing. Indeed."

Nathan isn't exactly surprised by that judgment.

"Fair enough." Jamie nods. "But hey, we're going to spend most of the night there regardless. Do you have an opinion to share on that? Any words for us?"

Giovanni laughs, throwing his head back. "Yes, a question. Are you sick in the head?"

Jamie laughs as well, though quite possibly for Giovanni's and her interview's sake. The grin on her face is too much a grimace for comfort, though Nathan supposes it doesn't matter. She herself isn't visible on screen right now.

"You don't get famous on the Internet by being a paragon of mental stability, Giovanni."

The old man frowns in confusion. "A what? I'm not sure what that means."

"And I can live with that." Jamie moves the camcorder away from him in order to get better shots of their surroundings. The boat has almost reached Giovanni's intended docking spot. Nathan can see it all close to him now—a thick forest and a fence with a sign in Italian that most certainly doesn't read Welcome. If they walk along that fence, they will reach a big old building, lonely and eerie like everything else in this place. The former asylum, probably, with the bell tower that crazy doctor may have jumped from all bricked up and looming over them, tall and ominous.

Jamie said fifty percent of Poveglia's soil might consist of human remains.

Perhaps it's because of the memories, but Nathan smells ashes still.

"Don't stay out in the open for too long." Giovanni offers this final piece of advice when Nathan and Jamie get off his boat with their respective bags, having already thanked him for his services and exchanged goodbyes. "You don't want a police boat to spot you. I will leave now, but when I can pick you up, call and I will come immediately. It should take me half an hour at most."

Briefly, Nathan gets hit by a wave of paranoia. What if this Italian boatman they've just met won't come back for them at all? He could abandon them, the same way the world abandoned all those plague-sufferers confined on Poveglia to die.

Realistically, Nathan knows there's almost zero chance such a thing would happen—Jamie paid Giovanni half of their agreed-upon price upfront and will only pay the other half once she and Nathan are back in Venice proper, safe and sound. Yet, the thought haunts him for a little while.

Already the island is messing with his head.

But it's just an afternoon and a night, he reminds himself. They'll be gone before they know it.

"You ready to do this thing?" Nathan squares his shoulders and gathers his courage, suppressing his nerves and the weird feeling in his stomach. His magic scar tingles, but not so badly it becomes impossible for him to ignore

Giovanni must've been right. This place has got to be home to ghosts.

But they don't have to be malevolent.

Jamie hands Nathan the camcorder. "Basically born ready." The seriousness on her face would give her family the surprise of a lifetime if they could witness it. "Come on. Let's get to work."

~~

Ever-present disagreeable gut feelings aside, Nathan soon finds himself too busy and distracted to be worried about ghosts. He and Jamie aren't here as curious tourists; their exploration is not undertaken for fun and pleasure. They have a job to do, plain and simple.

Nathan has been working with Jamie for a few months now and found out fast that, for all her occasional flippancy, let's get to work really does mean playtime is over. Inbetween being impressed by his surroundings and handling the majority of the filming, there simply isn't time for him to be afraid.

But he is getting quite good at manning the camera, and he and Jamie make a good team. They approach the task ahead of them with determination and a shared desire to lay solid foundations for a quality video, one that should make sure Witchcraft Wednesday will continue to stand the test of time. Giovanni is gone, they're here to stay, and no matter how much the magic in Nathan's soul quietly protests, they can't return to their hotel empty-handed.

They need to spin Poveglia's ghastly straw into gold.

They explore the main building, the asylum, first. Where the fence ends, they find some former entrances—now little more than gaping holes with missing doors, half-hidden by ivy and overhanging tree branches.

"We should've brought machetes," Jamie notes on camera as they manoeuvre their way inside past the greenery, her statement lacking any real enthusiasm and cheer. She may not feel Poveglia's oppressive atmosphere the same way Nathan does, but she has the island's history internalized, still.

This is no place for lighthearted jokes or running around roaring with laughter. It is a place of suffering. An island-sized mass grave.

This video isn't about sensationalism, Jamie said over proper coffee this morning. Not about looking cool or funny on Poveglia, either. It isn't even about Witchcraft Wednesday or me. It's about the place and the people and all the terrible things that have happened. So what we'll do is tell a story, and we'll show it the respect it deserves.

If that isn't the right approach, Nathan thinks it ought to be.

The asylum is a true ruin, dirty chaos unlike any other Nathan has seen; it makes Jamie's messy studio look Marie Kondo-approved in comparison. Dust and debris litter the floor of every room he and Jamie enter, a musty stench heavy in the air.

Amateur graffiti covers filthy, brownish walls, these crude works of art bearing witness to the presence of the courageous intruders who left them behind. Ceilings sport holes and staircases crumble, their armrails rusting and stone steps more broken than whole. Nathan has never been scared of falling or heights, but fears both of these things while he and Jamie work their way up a set of stairs, documenting every cautious step.

Apparently, from the top floor, they can get up on the flat roof of one of the building's lower sections. Nathan sees Venice, peacefully basking in the light of the October sun, in the distance. Boats drift by on tranquil water—so much water, separating him and Jamie from the comforts of the city.

They collect footage of the old bell tower, prominently visible to their left.

"If there ever was a mad doctor who jumped off that tower," Jamie observes, "then this is probably the closest we'll get to seeing what he saw."

Nathan shudders at that thought.

They venture back inside and check out more rooms. A surprising amount of them still contain furnishings, the kinds nobody saw fit to steal. Empty storage boxes, old stoves, faded posters, rusting bed frames, hoary mattresses covered in autumn leaves swept in by the wind through broken windows. Nathan finds all these exceptionally eerie, tangible reminders of what this place used to be.

All of it pales in comparison to their darkest find yet.

"Okay." Jamie whistles nervously under her breath. "Okay. That sure is a human-sized furnace."

Perhaps a find like this should come as no surprise on an island where people came to die. There is a limit to the amount of bodies one can bury. When the burial grounds grow bloated, cremation becomes the better, more efficient option. And this room, this entire room, still smells vaguely of ashes.

Derek's charred, grinning face flashes before Nathan's eyes again, and he thinks he is going to be sick. If he could find a mirror here that wasn't grimy or shattered, he'd see himself white as a sheet in the reflection.

"I don't want to think about how many bodies they had to burn in there," he says quietly. The furnace itself has long ceased to function, looking almost unassuming now: it is simply an elongated, cylinder-shaped device, set in a thick wall with open doors on both sides. But its mere sight reminds Nathan of fire and death in all the worst ways. He can't stand it, no matter how much he reminds himself it cannot possibly do harm.

Jamie eyes the furnace warily. "Giovanni mentioned this in our interview. He said that if you go through, you reach a part of the building you can't get to any other way."

Nathan missed that bit of the interview, must have been zoned out when it came up. Currently, he is light-headed enough to know he won't pass through that furnace in a million years. There is only so much he can handle.

His scar hurts a little. The sharp sting of fire.

"Check it out if you want. We're only here once." He hands Jamie her camcorder. "But it's a step too far for me. I'll stay here and watch our stuff."

Jamie doesn't push the issue. She takes a minute to decide if she herself is even prepared to do it, the thought unsettling even to a paranormal YouTuber like her. In the end, her desire to catch the elusive other side on camera wins the battle. She clambers through and takes to recording.

Nathan occasionally hears her talking to her camcorder, the sound of her voice a reassuring comfort. He may or may not be keeping track of the time she is gone.

A little over twelve minutes later, she is safely back with him.

"Did you see anything interesting?" Nathan asks, despite his apprehensions. "Anything it was a shame I missed?"

Jamie shakes her head, oddly pensive. "No. Not really. There were a lot of rooms that might've been staff offices and workspaces in the past. They're a slight bit more intact than what we've encountered thus far."

"How so?"

"I mean they weren't as vandalized and they have stuff in there nobody took. A bunch of decaying books and magazines, for one. These shelves with rusty old-timey surgical equipment. Also one old bookcase with a statuette of some weird winged lion creature I think I saw at Saint Mark's Square."

"It was worth the trouble, then?"

"I suppose so, yeah. But..."

Nathan frowns at her hesitance. "What?"

"It's just that there's graffiti all over this place, but none on that side." Jamie places the camcorder in his care again. "Doesn't feel right somehow."

Nothing on this island feels entirely right.

"Let's go film outside," Nathan suggests, because it's about time. He'll be happy to be away from this ruin and its gloomy atmosphere for a little while. The air outside is fresh and doesn't smell like ashes.

They make their way out past more debris, long-forgotten objects and vines and branches breaking through windows and holes in ceilings and walls. They enter the green, pulsing heart of the island—a thick woodland jungle slowly encroaching on all edifices in its general vicinity until they're consumed whole. The trees' leaves are painted various shades of red, orange, yellow and brown, and though they are gradually starting to fall, they still come together in a thick canopy, obscuring large chunks of the sky from view. This covering makes even the chirping and squawking of seagulls and other birds sound distant, creating a deafening silence.

"It's quite nice outside. Peaceful. You can almost forget you're in a terrible, scary place," Jamie narrates for the camera. She gestures at a discoloured chair standing in nature by itself. "But it leaves its reminders."

They continue documenting the jungle, occasionally struggling to find, follow or create a path. Plenty of rabbits hop around and rustle in Poveglia's bushes, which brings Nathan some comfort—there are living creatures on the island yet. But sometimes he spots a rabbit corpse, decomposing and half-eaten, and that depresses him again. If the island contains rabbits, maybe it also harbours predators people brought here long ago. Feral dogs. Feral cats.

Nathan feels fine not encountering any of those.

He and Jamie stumble upon the final remains of what may once have been a small church or chapel, stopping there briefly to shoot some more material. Finally, they reach a wooden bridge that, according to Jamie's research, leads to the island's burial grounds.

There aren't any graves. No marked ones, anyway. All Nathan sees, all he films, are more autumn trees and desolate fields. But, if nothing else, they find a single testament to the area's true nature. A small, square stone inscribed with Latin phrases and Roman numerals Nathan can't decipher for the life of him.

Ne fodias. Vita functi contagio requiescunt. MDCCXCIII

"What do you think that says?" he asks Jamie, though he isn't sure if knowing or not knowing would be better.

"Hm." Jamie studies the inscription. "Don't dig. Those who were contagious in life rest here. From the year 1793."

"Is... Is that a legit translation?"

"Yeah. Hey, don't look so surprised. I thought it was clear by now that I'm an actual genius with Latin."

Nathan remains silent, but he sees fit to raise an eyebrow and hold Jamie's gaze.

"This stone's presence on the island is a known fact," she admits after a few seconds of that with a shrug and a slight smile. "I remember the translation from my notes."

"That makes more sense."

"Definitely still a Latin pro, though."

Nathan laughs. Just a little, but he laughs. Neither he nor Jamie has been cheerful since their arrival on Poveglia, but they have been here for a while now, getting used to the peculiar atmosphere and the ruins and the quiet—building up a tolerance. All that exploring and nothing has happened to them yet.

For the first time in hours, Nathan allows himself to relax, let loose, feel an emotion other than despondent nervousness. Jamie, whose smile grows, seems to do the same.

"So what exactly is the plan now?" Nathan asks when they've wrapped up filming in the burial grounds. The sky is getting darker, the sun slowly starting to set despite the early hour. They're setting out back to the asylum while it's still easy to see outside, but Nathan doesn't know what their next move will be. The night will be long.

"We deserve a good break first. We've been working for a while." Jamie, pleased with the fruits of their labour so far, still sports a smile. "We should find a place in the main building to get comfortable—as comfortable as is feasible here, I mean—and set up camp for the night. Any spot that isn't too drafty, dirty, scary or equipped with a ceiling that might collapse on us at any moment will do."

"I don't think such a spot exists on this island."

"We'll look for it regardless. Then we can just sit, relax, eat something. Talk. Play a few card games and get some sleep if we can manage it. I can set an alarm for... three A.M.? The witching hour. Then we do some additional nighttime exploring and filming, call Giovanni and return to our hotel. If I'm doing my math right, we should be back with plenty of time to spare before we need to look awake and alive for coffee with Gino's mom."

Plenty of time strikes Nathan as a somewhat generous estimate, but by Jamie's standards, this planning seems rather sensible. Besides, he doesn't have any better ideas himself.

"Sure. Let's do that."

Part of him still dreads the night, though no longer because he anticipates strange sounds or shadows. He still feels in his scar that a supernatural essence lingers, the sensation is subdued. It has become little more than an undercurrent, nothing even close to the sharp, threatening pain he experienced with Nightmare Derek or the fiery apprehension that came over him when he and Jamie encountered their not-deer. So far, nothing on Poveglia seems intent on hurting them, and Nathan wills himself to believe the ghosts shall slumber quietly through the night.

Their only concern worth noting tonight will be poor quality sleep. Or so he hopes.

At least it will all be over soon.