October 15, 2023

Nathan feels a lot better now that he has slept.

He woke up around noon, alone in the hotel room, and his physical state had resembled what it had been before the Poveglia visit. He'd treated himself to a shower, clean clothes and focaccia he picked up from a bakery around the corner. He'd enjoyed the tranquility and opportunity to rest, but his mind had strayed to Jamie far too often. He'd wondered if she was okay, if she was at least having some fun—probably not, considering her company, but Nathan had tried to manifest the good vibes, anyway.

He'd found a note she left for him on the hotel room desk, squiggly scribbles on the back of a crumpled old receipt. Jamie's handwriting is as illegible as that of Nathan's PCP, but deciphering it has gotten for him easier over the past few months. He'd found a laptop password, accompanied by a short message.

In case you want to extract the footage☻
xxx J

A lot of effort seems to have gone into drawing the smiley face just right, so Nathan laughs, slips the note into his pocket for safekeeping, and gets to work hooking the camcorder up to the laptop with the ghost of a smile on his face. He ensures all Poveglia footage gets backed up on the laptop, then leaves the daylight footage for what it is and checks out everything Jamie recorded while he was unconscious at night.

He watches all of it multiple times, both fascinated and disturbed. The footage is great for a Halloween special—looks like it came straight out of an amateur horror movie. Nathan pushes away his lingering guilt about leaving Jamie to save his ass and focuses on the creature in its dark robes and plague doctor mask. Jamie was right: that thing could've been a participant in Hell's darkest Carnival celebration.

This creature must have hurt and killed the ghost Nathan encountered. Might have hurt and killed a lot more people than just that one young man. Help us, the ghost had said, but how many did he mean with us? And what kind of help does he need specifically? Nathan chews on his focaccia, still on the fence as to whether he actually wants to help this spirit. The island affected him in dangerous ways he still doesn't understand, and he and Jamie, he feels, barely escaped with their lives.

But telling himself to walk away, turn his back on this ghost in need, doesn't feel quite right. Nathan isn't sure why.

He's leaning back in his chair pondering this when a knock on the door frees him from the reverie. He opens it, relieved to see it's just Jamie returning and not some annoying visitor. "Welcome back. How'd the coffee appointment go?"

"Terrific experience." Jamie's tone of voice is flat. She zombies on past him into the room. "I got my future foretold and vomited in Gino's mother's bathroom."

This statement doesn't even come close to entering Nathan's Top 10 Strangest Jamie Quotes, so he doesn't bat an eye. "Okay," he says, watching her go with some concern; her family can't have been very happy about at least one of the occurences mentioned. "Are you good now? Too many energy drinks?" He saw the empty cans in the trash. It didn't take a genius to figure out what fate the drinks had met.

"Yeah, it's a little better at this time. Just caffeine crashing." Jamie kicks her shoes off with some difficulty and all but collapses on her bed. "You can say it, go ahead. Taking the energy drinks was one dumb idea."

"You already know it wasn't the best move. No need for me to rub it in."

"...Oh. That's... That's nice. Thanks."

"You know what's also nice? This focaccia stuff. There's still some left, if you'd like to eat." Nathan doesn't receive any sort of response, so something clearly isn't all right. "Did... Did anything happen that you want to talk about?"

"I dunno. It was just a disastrous mess." Jamie sighs, sitting up again. "I just... I had to come back here. Y'know, when we were leaving, Gino and Stella took their new boat for a ride. Mom and Dad wanted to stay on Murano and explore, and they asked if I'd like to tag along. And I couldn't say yes—felt too awful—and they didn't like the rejection much. Said it was a shame and maybe I could've enjoyed the island more if I thought how I spend my nights through a little better." She laughs. "I don't know why I'm laughing, because it's not even funny. I know it's not."

Nathan turns the desk chair so it's facing Jamie's bed and sits down. "With all due respect, I think you could use a break. Some time to just relax."

"Relax. Relax. Sure, I'll... I'll get some rest. I just need to sleep some stuff off and... Were you talking focaccia before? I'd like focaccia if the offer still stands."

It does. Nathan would bring what he still has on the desk over, but Jamie is on her feet again before he has a chance. He hands her the rest of the bread, relishing the brief instance their fingers touch. Jamie only now seems to notice what he'd been doing before her arrival—her gaze rests on the camcorder and her laptop, the still of the Plague Doctor displayed on its screen. "Oh, nice! You got to the footage." Her expression darkens. "We still need to figure out what we're going to do about Poveglia and what we experienced there. If we're going to do something about it at all."

Nathan doesn't find this topic conducive to relaxation at all, and his first instinct is to tell Jamie so. But maybe this is what she needs—an issue to solve within her area of expertise, a proper distraction from the family issues she doesn't feel she's equipped to handle. "How about this? We make our Poveglia action plan, but because we have until the end of next week here, we don't make work of it right away. We take what's left of today slow, and tomorrow we reserve a good chunk of the day just for sightseeing and enjoying ourselves. Thoughts?"

Jamie smiles slightly. "Sounds good to me. Let's do that." She nibbles on a piece of focaccia, pensive. "Technically, I have all the footage I need for an interesting video, so there are no pressing reasons for us to be involved with Poveglia any longer. But I had a lot of time to think on the ferry ride back here, and I thought about your ghost. What he looked like and what he said."

"What about it?"

"It's bothering me. That boy has to have died after Poveglia got permanently abandoned in 1968, and the same might apply to the others on whose behalf he asked for help. I mean, a tattooed teenager in twenty-first century clothes, covered in graffiti... That's a recent death. But I've done extensive research on Poveglia for the video, and there isn't any mention at all of people dying or disappearing there after the island's days as an insane asylum. As far as the lore and the entire Internet are concerned, your ghost doesn't exist."

"You're saying that nobody knows that he and whoever else he was talking about died on Poveglia."

"Exactly. I mean it's unlikely their bodies were ever found. Your ghost is dead, but to the family and other loved ones he left behind, his fate must be one big question mark. He's a missing person, or even a presumed-dead cold case."

Jamie clears a little space on the desk and sits there, so Nathan rotates in his own seat accordingly.

"The Doctor kills, but none of these killings have been noticed, so there's gotta be a strategy to them. It might be a combination of lengthy stretches of time between individual deaths, depending on how long that thing has been out there, as well as clever target selection. Your ghost? Probably a lone graffiti artist who snuck onto the island in secret at night to spray some paint. Excellent sort of target, don't you think?"

Nathan thinks about a lot as he listens—stuff like how sitting on a desk like you own the place while doing solid amateur detective work has to be one of the sexiest non-sexual things a woman can do. But, on a more serious note, the words hit the nail right on the head, and he now understands why walking away just wouldn't feel quite right.

If Nathan and Jamie don't help Poveglia's lost ghosts, nobody else will.

"I think there are two things we could reasonably help with," Jamie continues to outline. "We could prevent future murders and we could find the ghosts. Their bodies and names, I mean, to bring their next of kin closure. None of that will be easy to do, but it doesn't seem impossible, either." She sends Nathan her most serious look. "It isn't worth our lives, though. This can get dangerous. Especially for you, keeping in mind how Poveglia got to you. So if you ask me, I feel like you should call the shots on whether we help or not. If you say we shouldn't for any reason, we walk away and leave it at this. I'm promising you right now I'll accept whatever decision you make."

Nathan thinks it over. He knows what Jamie would ultimately want to do—she may indeed find peace with whatever his verdict will be, but in her heart of hearts, she wants to leave having done as much as possible to help. Because Jamie is kind, and Jamie cares. Sometimes to a fault.

Nathan is less sure of what he wants. All his instincts, honed by a past marred by danger and struggle to survive, tell him to stay far away from the entire situation. They tell him to keep both himself and Jamie out of trouble, protect them from the risks and hazards Jamie already noted will be involved.

Nathan's instincts kept him alive and out of jail through a decade on the streets dealing drugs for Derek McLaren. Nathan wasn't smart enough to steer clear of the business and the man as he should have, but he was smart enough to thrive in it in a quiet way—he had a great sense for when to get shit done and when to fade into the background, when to be a tough motherfucker and when to keep his head low pretending he didn't exist. The Nathan Devereaux who worked for Derek wouldn't have hesitated to hightail it away from Poveglia and shove the island's existence to the back of his mind, leaving it to collect dust and cobwebs in a forgotten corner of his brain.

But the Nathan Devereaux sitting in this Venetian hotel room isn't the same dude who once worked for Derek. Maybe Jamie rubbed off on him, or maybe he's finally in a position in which he can afford to be someone less driven by selfish survival, but he can no longer walk away from those in need without it gnawing at him increasingly.

Not to mention that people died because of the person he used to be. His mother. Clients, strangers who overdosed. Others he couldn't protect from violence, murder, dangerous men like Derek.

Nathan may only have killed one person directly, but there is more blood on his hands than that. Blood he can never wash off, because the past can't be changed and the dead should remain asleep. But though he may be forever tainted, this Poveglia ordeal may be the Universe's way of giving him a chance to do something truly good.

Call it atonement, repentance. Making up for old sins and crimes. This is moving forward, improvement, showing himself he really can be a better man than the person he once was.

Nathan can't change his past, but he doesn't have to repeat his mistakes.

"We're not walking away from this," he decides. "Not right now. We could always change our minds if it gets too dangerous. But I think helping in the ways you mentioned... We could at the very least try."

"Awesome." The usual enthusiastic twinkle is present in Jamie's eyes, but duller than it's supposed to be. She gives him a conflicted smile, as if there's a part of her, no matter how small, that wanted him to decide differently. Her gaze seems to linger on his lips a slight bit too long, but it's most likely just wishful thinking on Nathan's part again. "Then it's settled. We're getting this done."

"We should be cautious, though," Nathan is quick to add. "That night on Poveglia could have ended with one or both of us dead if we hadn't gotten lucky. We shouldn't go back to the island to look for that Plague Doctor and its lair, or ghosts or corpses or anything, unless we're thoroughly prepared. We need to make sure we know as much as possible about what we're dealing with before we even consider returning."

"Right. You're right. We need to be... careful... in our decision-making..." Jamie zones out for a moment, but snaps back to attention in seconds. "What do you suggest?"

"Figure out what that masked creature is and how we can get rid of it, for one. Do you have any concrete ideas? You saw it in the flesh, and this is sort of your field."

"It's not human, that's for sure. Given Poveglia's history, it must be a type of revenant."

"Revenant?"

"Something returning from the dead. A creature like Nikulasson." Jamie hops off the desk, trading its comforts for pacing the room. "But there are so many different types of revenants—I mean, we agree this one is nothing like the bishop, right? And all these things, they're said to have their own strengths, weaknesses, quirks... Like, there's a revenant in German folklore that supposedly eats its own burial shroud, and it's called a Nachzehrer— I know I'm pronouncing that wrong, because some German guy in my comment section corrected it, but that same guy also spelled 'vampire' differently three times in the same sentence, so..." She falls quiet at once as a realisation dawns. "...And all of that was an entirely irrelevant tangent. Sorry."

"Don't be. It's enhancing my listening experience," Nathan says. "But you can just go back to where you left off."

"I... Yes, yeah, of course. What I'm trying to say is there are many things the revenant could be, and the difference matters." Jamie frowns. "I can string some theories together based on what little I've seen and creatures I've covered in videos, but there's only so much I know and can find. Ideally, I'd be able to get a knowledgeable second opinion."

Nathan knows exactly whose opinion she means. "Veronika."

"Veronika. I know she's busy and she probably doesn't know shit about Poveglia, but she is getting a PhD in Folklore and Mythology. She has access to sources and information I can't reach on a short-term basis." A triumphant grin begins to form on Jamie's face. "If I send her all my notes, video footage and theories on Poveglia, she'll be interested, and she may have some valuable insights to share."

"That's a great start." A harmless one, too. Determined to help or not, Nathan is very happy about that. "Now if we can agree this is as much of an action plan as we currently need, it's time for chilling. You relax, and I'll research some places in the city we can check out tomorrow. Maybe we can still get tickets for that fancy building on Saint Mark's Square. The Dog's Palace?"

Jamie laughs. "You mean the Doge's Palace?"

Nathan knows that's the name. He just wanted to make Jamie laugh.

"Dog, Doge, I don't care what the Italians called the man. All I know is he has one hell of a nice palace worth seeing."

"Facts. Get those tickets for tomorrow if you can. I'll pay. Doesn't matter what they cost." Jamie sits down on her bed again. She's thankfully a lot less tense than she was when she came in, mumbling about disastrous coffee appointments and futures foretold.

Which reminds Nathan...

"Consider it done. But..." He hesitates. He isn't sure if the timing is right or wrong, but he's too curious to let the question slide just like that. "...If you don't mind my asking, what did you hear was in your future?"

Was I in it somewhere?

"My future?" Jamie hesitates, too. "...Change."

"What kind of change?"

"Tarot cards don't get much more specific, Nate. I got the Death card, but Death means change. Or as Gino said: sometimes Death just means new beginnings." Jamie gives him her most reassuring smile. "And cards are only cards."

No matter what it means, Nathan still doesn't like the idea of a Death card. But the answer was clear, Jamie doesn't say anything more about it, and Nathan won't hound her when she really should be taking a power nap. So he turns to travel blogs and Google Maps on her laptop, poring over the many sights and activities Venice has to offer.

He swears he feels Jamie sneaking glances at him while he works, right until sleep takes her.