Black Venice

In renaissance Venice, a young woman becomes obsessed with a shadowy, elusive organisation called L'Alato after her grandfather tells her stories of how they dealt in matters of the occult.

I closed my eyes and I prayed.

God terrified me, but that made me pray more. After church, I always came away with the bells ringing inside my head. They rang of God's wrath, a harsh, booming sound that reverberated inside my skull. There were words on his kindness too, but the walls ate them before they could reach me. The words of wrath knew where to find me, and they always did. Every week when I went to church. Every night when I knelt to pray. They kept me good.

I closed my eyes and I prayed.

That's why they never scared me. They wrapped themselves in night and had eyes of blood but they were mortal. They were flesh. They were not God. God was the air, and the water and the stone. God choked me through his eternal presence. Venice was already half submerged in water. How little it would take for him to tip his mighty chalice and finish the job. Every time it rained I cried because I feared it wouldn't stop. He promised he would never do it again but I didn't believe him. You can't trust something without a face.

l'alato did have faces, of sorts. False faces, like the ones people wore at masked balls. But l'alato had no balls to attend, for they dealt in more sinister occupations. I think everyone had seen them, at some point or another.  The priests would always condemn them at church, calling them blasphemers, heathens, demoni figli. Their raspy voices echoed around the churches but that only amplified their fear. But then, everyone was afraid of them. I suppose I was afraid of them. But they also made me feel safe. Nonno used to tell me stories of them, when I awoke mewling like a kitten after a nightmare. He always sat in his chair by the fire, keeping a constant vigil over the embers. I would crawl onto his knee and we would travel, sometimes to when Nonno was young and Nonna still lived. Other times, when my mother wasn't listening, his voice would grow hushed and he would tell me of the ones who kept us safe, who kept us from the twisted shapes that cavorted in the dark spaces. He told me about l'alato.

The winged. Mother used to spit the name like it was foul upon her tongue. She said they thought they were angels, she said that they were blasphemous. That they were insane. At church, I looked at the angels that were etched upon the ceiling. They did not look like l'alato. l'alato looked more like demons. Once I asked mother if Nonno was insane too, but she said he was just old. I couldn't argue with that. Sometimes I worried that his parchment skin would catch alight there by the fire. When he died, I prayed even more than usual. I prayed for God to be kind to him. It was a hollow prayer.

Looking back to those times, so long ago, I suppose Nonno and his whispered tales started it all. But I can't blame him, that wouldn't be fair. He may have sparked my interest, but it was my own curiosity who blew on the coals. So I went to mother and I asked her about l'alato. In hindsight, this was stupid of me to even consider. Her answer came in the form of a sharp slap to the head, and it came swiftly. But her retribution could not dislodge the ideas that had taken hold within my brain. They had already made themselves comfortable, had found a dark and warm corner in which to lie and to manifest themselves, and I, poor child, was a slave to them. It did not help that I would see one of them, every so often. A hooded mystery, slipping through the streets like  a liquid eventide.  I was utterly transfixed. In the immaculate marble face of Venice, I had found a single blemish, and I cherished it. I tried, as subtly as a child can, to tease some information out of the priest at church, but his realm of thinking stopped and ended with the Bible, and he could not see the things which lay beyond it. I got nothing from him.

So it was from the voices of Venice itself I slowly began to learn about l'alato, and the voices were many. I heard that l'alato were phantoms, conjured by a wizened mage somewhere (they were always unsure of the exact details), and that beneath the cloaks and masks there was but smoke. I heard that they were monks who had turned from God and who now worshipped a more nebulous master. I heard that they were simple Venitians who had put on heirs and fancy dress in equal proportions and pretended they were Gods. Each theory conflicted with the next, but the inquisitive little girl had an appetite that needed to be sated, and she devoured them all. My obsession grew, burning brighter within me each day as I fuelled it with the tales of old women gathered on market corners. In the dead of night, I sat in a candlelit orb and I constructed worlds of men and not men, committing them to paper to make them solid. Word of my interests began to reach my mother, who would plead with me, begging that I put the whole horrid affair to bed. I said that I would, but she knew I was lying. She always knew. Sometimes you can't trust those with faces, either.

Then, one evening as I returned home from a walk, she could take no more. I'd hoped to catch a glimpse of my mortal obsession on my stroll, but l'alato seemed to reside with the bats until dusk. She was standing there like a wraith as I entered, and she didn't say anything. That silence screamed louder than she ever could. She was so calm, like her anger itself had retired to its sickbed. I hate myself for what I did to her. I seem to hate myself for a lot of things, but that especially. She looked so weak there by the fire, by Nonno's old chair. Those secret worlds I had constructed were now crumpled in her fist. Her skin looked as if it was stretched taut over her skeleton. The bones of her cheeks like jagged shards of glass threatening to poke through the flesh. Her eyes were unfamiliar to me; those keen green eyes, they were so full of life once. That night, they appeared dusty. Dusty then. Dustier now.

Oh, mia madre. Mi dispiace.  

She took me to the church and the priest anointed my head with foul scented oils while she cried softly in the background. She called all manner of religious people. They all smelled so unnaturally clean and their words were picked with care like glass from the floor. The word "possessed" floated about the room more than once. God had got word of my curiosities and now he was sending his soldiers to put a stop to them. I pretended that it worked, that the flames had been stamped out by these old men and their porcelain words. But I lied to them, a further sin to add to the many I had supposedly indulged by trying to investigate l'alato. I lied to each of God's servants and I lied to my own mother. But in a way I wasn't lying. Now I knew all that I wanted to know about the Winged, and the thought of knowing more no longer fascinated me. Now I wanted to find them.

My mother was always tired. Wearied by the many weights that life laid upon her slender shoulders, and of these weights I was the heaviest. Her tiredness allowed me to sneak out at night without her knowing. To slip out of the window and let the cool air baptise me. To sit on the rooftop and see the laughing ladies and their laughing men move between parties. Sometimes I would see a gondolier, slipping soundlessly through the arteries of Venice. As for me, I sat deep in its heart with dusk as my blanket and I waited. I waited for many nights. Sometimes I woke upon that roof and the sun had risen, but mother never caught me. Perhaps she knew, but just didn't care. Perhaps she figured I was up there singing sinister melodies with el diavolo himself. Regardless. She was always there in the morning, in the same place, staring at the chair that Nonno once occupied. She barely seemed to notice I was there.

I think she preferred the company of the dead.

Then one night, as winter began to bite at me and I began to lose hope…I was rewarded. The moon was a mere sliver and there was little light to be had, but I saw her all the same. A shadow dancing across the rooftop, graceful as any dancer as I had ever seen, beautiful as any scene Caravaggio ever conjured. But this was real. Not a painting. This apparition was there before me, wading through the soupy blackness and relishing every moment of it. This was something more than human, to command the night itself to her whim. My blood boiled with excitement and the fire roared as I watched her. Tiredness was banished to a nether realm by a great vigour which possessed my limbs and forced me to my feet. Then I began to run. I tore across the rooftop until I came to the edge and then I looked up. She was standing there, cloak and mask and all I had seen a thousand times before, but different because now we were in her domain and her world which she could bend and shape like clay and I was seeing it all, the aching beauty in her movement calling to me like a lost lover.

She stood there, and I stood there. Jump, her painted face whispered, the words loud in my ear. Jump, the cracked lips commanded. The cold in the air was a distant memory now as the fire within me spread throughout my body and gave it strength. The whispered words were perfume in my brain and I was intoxicated. Then, across the way. A flicker. The glint of cerulean iris beneath mysterious visage. There was more to be discovered here, secrets to be unfurled and indulged in.

I jumped.  

A twinkle. A phantom smile. I had performed well.  She was pleased. I walked to her in a dream, convinced it wasn't real. The contents of my imagination had leaked out and made themselves solid. But this chimera, who conducted the orchestra of the night, was more beautiful than anything my imagination could have expelled. A gloved hand upon my shoulder. Then suddenly her delicate painted features came away and there was a woman. Not a plume of smoke, a demon or any other kind of bewitchment. A woman.

You've been looking for us, the woman said.

Yes. the girl replied.

The cathedral was not what I had expected. It lay dilapidated and unloved in a forgotten corner of Venice, groaning miserably in the wind. Serena seemed to think it was very impressive, saying it disguised itself just as l'alato did. Serena. She was beautiful, extremely beautiful. It was her business to be so. She was a courtesan, servicing the ruddy-faced rich men of the city who employed sensual women to hold an arm each and prevent them from toppling over from the combined weight of fat and wallet. But her true obligation was to l'alato, she made that very clear. I could not say that she was not convincing. Her words were like a forked tongue slithering in my ear, but sweetened as if coated in honey. As we made our way to the cathedral, she told me tales of how she would take care of her clients, then steal whatever glinted within their fine abodes, which, apparently, was often a great deal. She also mentioned how, on one occasion, she had deftly slit the throat of one particularly sinful tax collector as he slept soundly between his satin sheets. The blood richer than any wine, she laughed. Those were when the first doubts began to drift lazily to the surface. But I kept walking, smothering them beneath the surf.

Serena took my hand and lead me up to the cathedral under the vigilant watch of stained glass eyes. She breathed some words of comfort and presented a manufactured smile before placing her delicate fingers upon the ornate wooden door and pushing. She still had my hand and began to bring me in with her, so there was no resisting even if I had wanted to. So I was swallowed by the cathedral and found myself deep within its belly with no way of escaping.

The cathedral was dimly lit by the dancing flames of candles placed at regular intervals along the aisle. The wax had dripped and pooled in the crevices within the stone floor, and I was careful not to step in it. Serena continued to lead me along at a forceful pace, half dragging me now. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I saw a number of hazy figures seated around the altar, the flickering light of the candles making it appear as if they were made up of a thousand writhing insects, all moving and squirming.

As we approached, one of the amorphous pastors detached himself from his shadowy pew. Serena stopped and, placing her hand upon my back, shoved me forward. I was terrified. A river gushed in my heart, echoing off the ancient ceiling and betraying my fear to the gargantuan man who stood before me. His muscular arms folded across his bare chest, he tipped his head up slightly to get a better look at the petrified child that stood before him. Cold grey eyes, strong defined chin, lips a smile had only haunted. The details are burnt as if by a poker into my brain. The scars do not fade.

As this man stood staring at me like I was a chicken for the slaughter, I caught sight of his chest. I stifled a gasp. It was riddled with a labyrinth of symbols, lines, ancient letters long forgotten. His hands too, I noticed, were tattooed with the same network of alien runes, and no doubt if he had removed his cloak I would have seen them snaking along his back. The only place that was free of them was his face, as if he had needed something to distinguish him from the cracked stonework of the cathedral's walls.

After an eternity, he gave a curt nod and introduced himself in a low, earthy rumble. Agostino.

After a moment, a spectre further along the pew shuddered. Its laughter was unnaturally loud in the cathedral, which seemed to mimic the eternal silence of oblivion itself. The phantom shifted into a portly man whose robe was noticeably too small for him. He was evidently wealthy, for he had a blinding array of golden chains and jewellery strung like a noose around what little he had for a neck. This was not what I had imagined as I had sat among a sea of blankets and concocted romantic adventures of l'alato. I could not see this balloon of a man, panting now from his journey from the pew to Agostino's side, cavorting with the moon and stars as I had seen Serena doing not two hours ago.

However, this red-faced anomaly proved a distinctly less imposing figure than Agostino. I mustered up the courage to squeak a greeting at him. And then suddenly they were all there, a choir of shadows, gazing relentlessly at me, hood and robe and piercing eyes. But then they parted like a black curtain, parted as if to suggest a malevolent performance was about to begin. But then, instead,  I saw a crippled shadow. I had not noticed him before, for he sat as still, barely breathing. Should he have chosen not to blink, I would have thought him a corpse. The old man sat crooked and hunched upon a chair, but he wore the same ebony garb as the others. He was part of l'alato just the same as they, but Agostino, Serena, and all the rest, they treated him differently. There was a care and a respect in them as they attended to him, making sure he was comfortable and warm. He was their leader. A leader whose strength lay in his knowledge rather than in his limbs. This knowledge had taken its toll on him, crumpling his face like an ancient scroll. He reminded me of Nonno, sitting there, the chair as much a part of him as his arms or legs. As I drifted toward him, bolstered gently along by unknown fingers at my back, I saw that the ancient scroll had been written upon.  The same intricate maze that ran over Agostino's chest and arms this man had allowed to wander his face also, making it look like his features were a vase shattered by a stone and hastily put back together. None of the others had the marks upon their faces. I saw them upon hands and necks, but none graced the cheeks of those that gathered at my back, waiting, just as I was, for the fractured man to speak.

A voice came.

A seal, the old man said, running wrinkled fingers across his tattooed chin. A seal to keep them out.

Then, another voice from behind, the vibrancy of it assaulting the air after the elder's frail, decrepit words.

We mark our skin, and they can't take us. Incantations and rites. Keeps us pure. Keeps us holy. Only Giorgio feels the need to mark his face. There is no practical need for this. But he is warmed by our efforts, our victories. He wants all to know what he is, and what he belongs to. What he founded.

How do I remember these words? How do they echo so clearly in my ear today? Gianetta spoke them so long ago, in a different life. But that life taunts me when I look in the mirror, appearing in my eye just for a second so I can't forget it. Can't quite forget. Can't let myself forget.

Founded didn't sound right to me, even then.  l'alato had always seemed an immortal thing to me, like it had sprung into being with the Garden of Eden. The idea of someone founding it made the endeavour mortal. Human. Wrong. But I was hardly about to criticize them. The leader, Giorgio, stretched out a gnarled hand and looked into my eyes. I stared back into his. Those milky irises sang to me of pain, of great suffering and great torment, of a life lived for a single purpose, a purpose which had destroyed all others and hushed ideas of love, friendship, and family. Soothed them into a deep slumber and then smothered them so they would not be heard from again.

As these miserable thoughts violated my head, I suddenly realised my hand was in his. Giorgio was smiling. I thought little of it. I had merely shown an old man some comfort, some sympathy in holding his tired hand. But I hadn't. In holding that old man's hand, I had signed a contract in my own blood. But I didn't realise that. I was still a child, really. Perhaps a young woman in form, but a child at heart.  Giorgio reminded me of Nonno, and, sentimental infant, I took the opportunity to feel close to him once more. But he smelt wrong. Nonno had smelt of smoke and leather, a scent I had drunkenly consumed as a child sitting upon his lap. I had cared little of anything else as long as that scent filled me. Giorgio smelt like forgotten flesh, something someone had cared for once but had long since fallen into disrepair.

I drew my hand quickly away. Giorgio was still smiling, and I was unsettled, all traces of nostalgia gone. Motion behind me, and a garment was draped about my shoulders. That cloak. As if some celestial tailor had taken a starlight needle and woven the night sky into cloth. It kissed my bare skin and whispered to my doubts, my fears about l'alato, so that I no longer felt them. As the hood was lifted by unseen hands, all that existed was the girl and the black, inky form of the guise which had wrapped itself around her.

The cloak was more than mere silk. In every stitch was an idea, forming a vicious tapestry of propaganda. It enveloped the girl's brain as well as her body,  casting out an obsidian tendril and strangling her mind. They had her now, and they knew it. Perhaps they still own that little girl, although she isn't so little now. I still have that cloak. Incarcerated in a prison of oak and earth. But still there. Still seething. I couldn't get rid of it, it's still wrapped around my brain, an insidious web that will never let me forget. I can't get rid of it. We're both trapped, that gorgeous cloak and I, prisoners to one another.  It would like me to think we need each other. Sometimes I believe it. But not often.

It felt natural to be outside. My cloak seemed to breathe in the twilight air, taking in great greedy gulps. The raiment itself was too big for me, but I cared little. I was flanked by my own, those who had accepted me and welcomed me.

You're curious, Agostino had said. We like that. It's what brought all of us here, curiosity. Giorgio saw that in you, and he sees potential in you. He built l'alato up from nothing, by himself, and now nothing can stop us. No man, no demon, no-one. He says so. It's what keeps him alive, his pride. What keeps him going. It's what keeps all of us going.

We all do our part. We all have our jobs, our talents. We don't all perform l'esorcismo. Girgio is too old, and Sigismondo is too fat. But they have their uses, like I say. Giorgio raises our spirits, and Sigismondo feeds our bellies. After his own, of course. You look good in that cloak. You should come out with me one night, you'd get plenty of attention.

They're not some kind of spirito maligno. You understand? Forget everything you heard in church about how they look and how they act. Most of it isn't true. They're evil, that part is entirely correct. But they're crafty. They'll appeal to you, try to manipulate you any way they can. They breathe lies. They are beings from a realm where pain is currency, and that's all they know how to deal in. You can't reason with them, or bargain with them. They have no concept of mercy or remorse. They are pure wickedness and sin solidified. But that...doesn't mean they're not fascinating.

This was from Gianetta. Her words have always rung loudest in my ears. She studied the demoni, their ways, their forms, their types.  I think she was a doctor, before her obsession with darker alchemies led her to l'alato. She helped develop ways to hurt them, to remove their influence from people. But she also wanted to find a way to use them, to harness their power. The way she talked of the creatures sometimes, I thought she almost admired them.

There was much talk as we walked, the people around us shrinking into their houses as we strode by as one. I learned much about how everyone found l'alato; Gianetta had sought them out like I had, dying to know more of this sinister elsewhere that housed beings whose biology was so alien to her. A demon had killed Agostino's daughter, a gentle girl of only thirteen. No-one knew any more than that, except that Agostino would take on il diavolo himself to avenge her.  And it would be a close fight, Serena said. The courtesan was only too happy to describe how she first came into contact with a demon. She was “servicing”-for that was her preferred term for it- a client, and he had been acting strangely all evening. Indeed, once they were alone, he expressed...violent urges. Serena, being no frail waif, protected herself until Agostino burst in.

I saw it crawl out of him there and then, Serena grinned, And I told Agostino, after his work was done, that he was taking me with him. So he did.

But of all of these stories, none interested me more than the story of the fifth member of our troupe. He had remained silent the whole journey.  He scared me, a little. I knew the motivations of the others now, they were human, and I understood them. I'd heard them laugh and talk.  I had heard Ulisse do neither. His skin hung loose over his bones, I could see, even with his hood drawn up and his ashen mask upon his face. So thin. Something between skeleton and man, not comfortable in calling himself either. There were only whispers and speculations as to why he joined l'alato. But one detail reared its horrifying head again and again.

He sold his wife.

Sold her to them.

To save himself.

And this idea made me more terrified of the skeleton man than any element of his appearance. Sometimes I wonder if Ulisse still lives. But then, how could such a skeletal creature die? What would decay? What would rot? And what wisp of spiritual essence would go on? Could a man like Ulisse possess such a thing? No, absent of both skin and soul.

I had not asked where we were going. The fabric whispered against my skin and silenced such thoughts. I was happy. A lull before the storm picks up again, with stronger winds and taller waves than those which came before. It was only as we began to head into areas of Venice that were alien to me that I began to have doubts. The buildings leaned toward each other as if for comfort as their old supports were eaten away by the canals. The water itself was murky, keeping the mysteries of the sand to itself. I huddled close to Serena, and she wrapped me in a silken wing to comfort me. But I didn't need to worry. It was evident that even in these darkest corners of the city,  l'alato struck great fear into the hearts of men.  Murderers and thieves did not care for inflated men of wealth and class, but they preferred them to the faceless ones who carved their flesh with alien tongues and drove crooked creatures from the minds of mortals, leaving them hollow inside.

I can reflect now. I took Serena's gesture as one of kindness, but I don't think it was that. If I had been seen, girl of pale face and ragged hair, if I had been seen among l'alato...it would have made them vulnerable. I had no painted face to hide behind as the others did.  These people believed that the hooded spectres that stalked the streets were something more, something beyond what their eyes could see, and this scared them. So they left them alone because they did not understand them.  But the moment they saw me...the moment they saw a girl among them, they would have seen compassion. They would have seen humanity. And then, we would all have seen blood. l'alato used their mystery as a weapon, for there is something that people fear more than knives and sabres. We fear what we cannot see. It is why we favour the lit path over the one in shadow. It is why we all want to be immortal. So we never have to face our greatest uncertainty. Our veiled epilogue holds us prisoner all of our lives, with the extended manuscript available to only a select few. And they all hold different versions.  

So that is why no-one ever tried to stop l'alato. To Venice, they were death incarnate. The whole city was a masquerade, and they were the hosts.

Eventually, we came upon a manor, which had evidently once been home to someone of importance but now merely echoed of a grandeur that once was. The haughty grandfather to the dozens of cracked and crumbling buildings around it,  we stopped outside the aged structure’s rusting gates.  Someone confirmed that this was our destination. I knew it was. It was the kind of hollow, mournful vessel a malevolent being would inhabit, and poison from the inside out. No light came from any of the windows, and the front door hung agape like a toothless mouth screaming in perpetual pain. The gates…they made a dull, metallic sound like chains being rattled. This mansion was now a prisoner of the shadowy creatures that dwelled within it. Constructs of flesh and blood were not the only victims of those sinister creatures who delighted in causing torment. 

Agostino went first, allowing the dark walls to swallow him. After a moment, he called out, saying there was no danger. We followed then, but I always remained close to Serena. The mansion's interior cried of a lost splendour, of a beauty that had leaked from the brickwork and into the canals before anyone had time to collect it.  To savour it. No-one, it seemed, had treasured this residence in many years. A blanket of spider's silk covered all; it gave the impression of wading through a thin mist. There was not a sound within. Only the noise of gasping breath and pumping blood vying for dominance in my body. Ulisse hovered from room to room soundlessly, shaking his head as he returned to signify that the ground floor held no horrors for us. Then, all eyes rose to the ornate stairway. The cracked wooden steps led up to a balcony above, lined with paintings that water had distorted. Painted eyes gazed down from deformed, cracked faces, and they all waited patiently for a decision to be made.

We began to ascend, each creak of foot upon wood heralding our movement.  Agostino halted at the top. There were many doors here, and an enemy could spring from any one, he explained.

We split. Each take a door. Listen at it. Look through. Do not go in. Hear anything, see anything, signal to me. Do not yell. Do not call out.  We’re just a family of shadows here.

A family of shadows. Agostino’s words have proven to be more accurate that he probably ever realised. But when the words were fresh upon his lips, my childlike mind didn’t see the truth in them, the irony. Instead, some vile alchemy in them caused a memory to rise to the surface. Some years before. A girl of pale, tear-streaked face. Wandering through a darkened hallway, scared of the moon that haunts her through her window. She follows the warm light ahead of her, allowing its comfort to calm her. She finds a face in it, smiling as always. Her Nonno, trading stories with the flames as he always did. He said he could understand the crack-and-spit language of the fire, but she never could. She always tried, but could never achieve the same consul that came naturally between her grandfather and the coals. It made her jealous sometimes. She didn’t like to think that they were talking together in tongues she couldn’t understand.

But in this memory, this snatch of forgotten life that Agostino had conjured, there was no apprehension. Fire and man beckoned the girl, and the girl went gladly. A familiar scent enveloped her and she felt safe upon her Nonno’s knee. Even when the hands came she felt safe. Because he had a kind face. Because it was warm by the fireside. And because, just for a moment, she believed she had heard the flames speak. They danced and sang, causing flickering people to appear upon the walls.

A family of shadows. I imagine they were laughing at this little girl who still had no idea of the world. 

What is it? Came a hiss, dissipating the fog of my memory instantly. I found myself at a door, with Gianetta beside me. She was peering through the keyhole intently.

There’s a light inside, she whispered as our extended family of shadows came near. Agostino grunted and fixed us all with a stare. His eyes told me that behind this door I wasn’t about to find the same kind of light that had comforted me all those years before. Agostino pushed me back a way, then drew himself up before the door. Everyone was coiled tightly, poised to take action should anything fly from the room once the door was opened. 

I braced myself as foot connected with wood and the door flew open, but nothing was ejected from within. A few moments passed, with the violent noise of this motion echoing around the labyrinthine mansion. Then, tentatively, we entered. There were candles upon the floor, placed in a seemingly random fashion, and the light from them seemed to have divorced the heat it would usually have been coupled with. Strange symbols adorned the walls, along with substances I didn’t recognise or didn’t want to. 

I forced myself to observe these things, so that my eyes did not drift to the corpses upon the floor. There were not many, three or four, but their prescence shocked me regardless. I had seen dead bodies before, of course. But these were different. Their mouths were twisted open in an eternal scream, and empty eyes stared out into an unknown abyss. I was the only one who appeared disturbed by them.

No smell, Gianetta remarked. They had one of them inside when they died. 

This fact affronted me yet more; it seemed as if these creatures were taunting us even in death, using our loved ones like puppets and then not even granting them the courtesy of decay. Even grubs and beings of the soil were afraid to eat the flesh that had been touched by their hand. The sight of the corpses made me feel utterly sick, and I put my hands to my mouth. To L’Alato, it was purely business, another day at the market. They observed the runes upon the walls intently and talked among themselves in snatches of quick chatter. Clearly this was not what they had expected to find here. 

Then, from the far end of the room, an unnatural noise. Laughter. In this context, such a sound was an abomination. All heads turned to observe a shuddering figure propped up on a makeshift altar in the darkest corner of the room. Each giggle from its blue lips was accompanied by a trickle of dark red blood which oozed from within. I stumbled backward, completely terrified, and was caught by Serena. 

You need to go, she whispered just loud enough for me to hear. It isn’t safe for you here.

The laughter had risen to a raucous cackle which assaulted my ears, and I wanted nothing more to escape from that room. But I knew that this unholy thing knew I was there, and would know if I left. So I remained, shrouded in Serena’s cloak, as Agostino and Gianetta advanced upon it. I could not see the figure very clearly, as we were on the opposite side of the room to it. But even from there I could see it was incredibly thin, thinner even than Ulisse, who stood some way behind Agostino. The thing’s eyes penetrated the gloom like sinister lanterns. 

I couldn’t hear what Agostino and Gianetta were saying to it. Their voices melded into a single hazy note. But I could what it was saying. It sounded like a man. It sounded excited. It was enjoying this, our being here. It was in control of this whole situation. 

You’re very famous, it was saying. We’ve all heard of you. Oh yes oh yes, the demon killers of Venice. They have wings, they say. They’re not men anymore! We’ve all heard of you. 

It seemed to speak in a kind of twisted poetry, a sing-song voice with a suppressed giggle in every syllable. Agostino said something to it in a raised voice.

Oh, he’s brave! Beware Agostino! Beware his mighty fists! You’ve been fighting all your life, Agostino, you’re beginning to think it’s all you’ve ever known. You say you fight because of your daughter but really you just need an excuse. 

A flash of motion, and Agostino had grabbed the host by his neck, while it chanted and crowed in his grasp. He was furious, but Gianetta remained measured. She whispered in his ear and after a few moments he threw the emaciated man to the floor, while the creature within him continued to laugh incessantly. The two of them walked back over to us, leaving the thing there, writhing in its own exaltation. We  gathered around and pretended to ignore it as Gianetta spoke.

It’s weak. Extremely weak. The body it’s using will be dead within the day, and it’ll be trapped inside there, unable to escape. 

Agostino grunted that that was a better fate that such a creature deserved, but Gianetta hushed him.

We’ve never come across one this weak before. We need to take advantage of it. It’s about to die and it’s desperate, and we can use that. 

Another experiment? Serena laughed, but Gianetta fixed her with a cool stare and her laughter quickly died. 

I’ve been studying these things for years now. How they think. How they act. How they play with your mind. But also their power. They can do things man cannot. They have strength, and agility, and knowledge beyond mortal reckoning. If we had that knowledge…we could use it against them.

I didn’t like how she was talking. It scared me. She was talking of meddling in arts we had no business in; talking of them with glee and relish. There was a gleam in her eye as she spoke, a spark of that curious fire that had burned within me. 

I can control it, Gianetta said finally. I can let it take me but I can control it. Take its power but keep my own mind. It’s too weak; it will bend to my will.

There were murmurs of apprehension, but it was clear Gianetta’s mind was set. Ulisse and I had both remained silent. I was too scared to say anything at all. I cannot say why he remained silent. I don’t know what processes took place within his spidery mind.

Gianetta said she had to spend some time “preparing” herself, so we waited. I wanted to leave the oppressive walls of the room, but Agostino said we all had to stay together. Wrapped in Serena’s cloak but still freezing, I pretended not to notice that it was watching me. But it wasn’t possible for me to ignore it. Those harrowing eyes were the centre of our universe. We were trapped in constant rotation around them.

Agostino lent against the wall beside me, his arms folded and his eyes closed. I am sure the creature’s incessant stare burned through even his eyelids. Serena walked about the room restlessly, sometimes exchanging snatches of conversation with Gianetta, who sat preparing various oils and mixtures on the floor. Ulisse stood at the door, a silent, skeletal guard. I was beginning to wonder if he even possessed the ability to form words. 

A clatter as Gianetta’s work concluded. The eyes of both man and demon followed her as she rose. The creature smiled inanely through the dead flesh, sitting cross-legged like an eager child waiting for a game to begin. Gianetta inhaled deeply from one of her mixtures. She seemed calm. She daubed the head of the host with another substance, forming a dripping symbol, then drew another on her own collarbone. Agostino was tense. He looked as if he was about to jump in, to stop her. But he didn’t. I think, despite our very real fear, we were all curious to see what was going to happen. 

Then Gianetta asked Agostino for his knife, her palm outstretched. He laughed. She said nothing, but kept her hand out. Agostino relented, delicately placing his heavy knife in shaking fingers. Gianetta was trying to hard to appear calm, but her body betrayed her. Her body betrayed her. A phrase hauntingly appropriate. She told us, in a voice that was fighting to suppress a tremor, that she needed to break the protection that had been cast over her. She told us that whatever happened now, we weren’t to intervene. 

Then, slowly, she turned toward the hollow thing, the wretched creature who had adopted a house of skin and bone and painted the walls with its own vile persona. She turned to it with tears in her eyes and an unnatural admiration in her soul. She took the knife and, holding out her other arm, sliced confidently. A gasp. No scream. I could see blood trickling down onto the floor like sand from an hourglass. Gianetta had severed her protection, vandalised the tapestry of runes that formed a wall between L’Alato and those they hunted.  She was defenceless, naked. She gripped her arm tightly to stop the bleeding, and called to it. She called to that ancient being that had nestled deep in the marrow of an innocent man, and she offered it a new home. But it sat. It smiled and it waited. It was amused by this little thing, shouting and bleeding in front of it. To such a creature, Gianetta was a dog stood on its hind legs, calling itself human. She was nothing to it. She screamed at it, demanded that it take her. She flung her arms wide and spoke in words of Italian, Latin and others that were far older and had lain dormant in the brickwork of ancient buildings for many centuries. And after a time, the demon relented. It gave Gianetta what she asked for. What she had wanted so dearly. 

The memory is broken; there are shards everywhere. The candles went out as one, and the room was devoured by the darkness. Gianetta’s screams seemed to come from everywhere, an inescapable symphony from the orchestra of suffering. Serena had been beside me and I reached for her, but my arms grasped empty air. I was panicking, tears streaming down my face. I could hear movement in the abyss around me, but the sound was drowned in screams. I stumbled wildly around, a blind girl desperately seeking anything familiar, anything she could grasp and cling to until the chaos burned itself out. But there was nothing. She was alone in oblivion with pain as her companion, lying thick in the air around her. I sank to the floor as the sound of Gianetta dying surrounded me. It was as thick and murky as the waters in the canals outside. I was drowning in it. It filled my lungs and stung my eyes. I wanted the cold comfort of death in that moment, just so the pain would stop. Then the tortured sea took me and I thought no more.

The screams were still in my ears when I woke. It felt like I had been lost to the world for years. The candles were lit again, and the room was completely silent. The contrast to the previous anarchy was startling. I sat up, feeling dizzy and sick, and saw figures crouched at the other end of the room. Agostino’s bulk was unmistakeable. After a few minutes, I gathered enough strength to stand and walk with uncertain, infantile steps toward them. The sight of Gianetta’s body caused me to retch. Her limbs contorted. Her blood a second skin over her white cheeks. Her mouth twisted open, still screaming in whatever eternal plain she now wandered. There were marks on her that looked like burns, but I didn’t want to think about them. I didn’t want to think about the kind of pain that could cause a person to scream like that. The kind of pain that only death can release you from. 

She had no eyes. Two hollows caves stared back at me, the flesh around them blackened and cracked like burnt paper. Serena’s hand on my shoulder felt cold and wrong; Agostino’s words sounded distant, as if we were underwater. He was saying the demon was gone, that it had burnt itself out in killing her. The words didn’t make sense to me. He draped his cloak over her, whispering useless, stupid prayers, and then he said we had to go. 

The wind bit at me as I came outside; I drew the cloak up around my shoulders. But then it was almost as if I remembered it was associated with l'alato, and I recoiled from the soft fabric. All glamour that had previously drifted around those cloaked figures had evaporated, leaving behind a truth that shied away and tried to hide itself.  Agostino lumbered out through the door next. He carried Gianetta's corpse in his arms, and had laid his cloak over her so that she looked like a satin mummification.  Serena and Ulisse followed close behind. Serena cast me a look as she closed the large doors behind her. I trembled, and the cold air was not the culprit.  We walked out through the tall, imposing gates, not one of us making a sound, and trudged slowly along the empty street until we came to a bridge stretched across a muddy expanse of canal. I was in front, and it took me a few moments to realise the melancholy party behind me had stopped. I turned slowly, as after the night's events I cared very little about anything except returning home and forgetting the world outside even existed.  But they had paused on the bridge behind me, and I walked slowly back toward them, muttering some words of inquiry. 

We can't bring her back, came the reply from Agostino.  This is as far from a normal death as it is possible to get. No-one can see her.  We can't even risk burying her ourselves; her bones hold the taint. We can only let Venice bury Gianetta. 

And then, slowly, he let Gianetta's body slip out from his cloak and tumble like a child's doll into the canal. I didn't see it hit the water, but I heard the dull splash it made as the water took the body for its own. Agostino, Serena and Ulisse were huddled together looking after the corpse, perhaps muttering some inconsequential words of prayer, but this was too much for me to bear. After such an excruciating death, to have the body discarded and given over to the strange arms of a backwater canal? Without proper ceremony, ritual or blessing? This was altogether too much for me to bear. The mask of l'alato had come away and there was only a rotted face behind it. 

I ran. I didn't know where I was going and I didn't know which way was home but I knew I wanted as much distance between myself and this diseased people I had fallen into company with. So I ran. I heard them calling after me, but I ignored them. I slipped down sidestreets and took as many twists and turns as I could to make sure none of them could follow me. But I don't think a single one of them engaged in any kind of pursuit. Eventually, when my lungs burned and demanded rest, I stopped and bent over, heaving great mouthfuls of air. Then I cried. I had not seen a single soul as I ran, and the city seemed like a ghostly shell, like a corpse in itself, and my sobs echoed around its hollow walls. 

I didn't see any of them for many months. In fact, no-one did. It seemed to the Venitians as if l'alato had jumped back into the hellish mouth they had been borne out of. I suppose only I knew any better, and it was not as if I was about to tell anyone. My mother began to talk to me once again, but we were always distant and nothing seemed to truly bridge that gap. I got back into my routines and found a job in the market, but I always felt like an actor playing a role. None of it ever felt genuine. In fact, few of my emotions felt genuine after that night. I kept the silky cloak under my bed, hidden but never forgotten. I thought about burning it as soon as I got home but I didn't. 

Then one night Serena came to my window. It was very late but I never seemed to sleep especially deeply so she was not required to make a lot of noise to rouse me. I gestured for her to step inside but she seemed reluctant to do so. As if she didn't want to cross the threshold into a world she did not belong to. A world I now felt divorced from also. She merely hung there in the frame and spoke. She told me that l'alato had destroyed itself. She told me first that Ulisse had betrayed them. She said she was not surprised, that a traitor always remained a traitor and that they had all known that. She went on to describe how the demons had come for them one night in the cathedral, and how she had barely escaped with her life. Sigismondo and Giorgio had died then and there. Her voice cracked as she spoke of Giorgio, telling me how he had thought l'alato invincible, infallible, and how they had all let him down. 

Then she told me how, after the incident, Agostino had hunted Ulisse relentlessly, but that he hadn't proved very hard to find. She had gone with Agostino when he tracked him down, and watched as he'd killed him. He did it with his fists, but Ulisse never said a word the whole time. He never screamed, and he never begged. Agostino did though. He screamed and cursed the heavens and the earth and all that lay between and when he had beaten all of the life from the man who did not care he fell to the ground and he wept, for his lost daughter and for himself. I noticed this seemed to be the thing that really scared Serena. That confirmation   that they, the immortal and revered l'alato, were really human after all.  Finally, she said that she was leaving Venice. That she could do nothing for it now that she was on her own.  Remembering her face, her exquisite features tainted by the worries which lay beneath, I think she came to me seeking some sort of comfort. Perhaps she sought some manner of companionship, borne out of shared horrors we had both witnessed. But what had tainted her had touched me also, only it had made me cherish solitude. 

So Serena found no friendship in the broken girl, and she went from the window. She said little in the way of a goodbye. I think in my eyes she saw the emptiness that she had created in me, the black fire that burned within. I think it scared her. Maybe more so than any of those demons she had fought. This was a disease that lived in the dark walls within man. 

I still walk through Venice, sometimes. Others would stay away from it, regard it as the wound from which the evils of my life had pored from. But I don't see it that way. The evils of my life came from structures of flesh and bone, and wherever they are so it is. And you can't run from them, not really. Venice is beautiful is the Spring. The smells of the markets and the air thick with happy voices.  Like walking through a painting. Often I think back to the events that occurred in the city in my childhood. I see the echo of that pale figure who waited on rooftops for her dreams to materialise. She is clear and she is real. I marvel at her. I hardly recognise her.

It is easy to ridicule my younger self, looking back. For being foolish, naïve, a romantic. Easier still is to ridicule l'alato, for being cruel and vicious and hungry for the tastes of another world. For allowing a young girl to taste them too, forever souring her tongue to earthly food. No doubt Agostino, Serena, Giorgio, all of them were neither pure nor good. But they believed they were. They believed the evil they committed was done so for a greater cause. A noble cause. So then, were they truly evil or simply ignorant? A ragged cat who is both deaf and blind cannot help but to bite all hands that come near for fear that one will hurt it. Such a cat is not evil, but scared. I think l'alato were much the same. 

I was scared too. But instead of fighting, I ran and hid and pretended the evil did not exist. But the evil was in my flesh and it always was. I've often thought myself worse than l'alato, for they at least believed themselves righteous. They could convince themselves of it as they at least attempted to do good. I merely locked myself away from the world and told myself it couldn't find me, didn't know where I was. But I always knew I was lying to myself. I could have tried to do some good, to repair my fractured soul but I did not. I don't think I ever will. I would like to say that it is because I know it will do no good but that is a lie and I said I would not lie.  I hide because it is easier. It is easier to lock myself away and tell myself I can never be cured and see no-one and close the curtains and listen to the dark things that crawl between my bones. It is easier than living and it is easier than dying. 

But sometimes I like to pretend that I am human again, when my whispering skin grows silent for a moment. It is in these moments where I venture into Venice again and walk the streets. Sometimes I think I see people with demons inside them but really I don't know. I think perhaps they don't possess people as much anymore.  I think they realise they have little reason to do so. Like me, they have discovered that man hosts a dark thing deep inside from the moment he is born, and he may choose how much it is fed.  I walk and I look at people go past, and really they are all members of l'alato. All masks and veils and constructed grace. I stop at a bridge and I look down at the sky.

I close my eyes but I don't pray.

God isn't listening. He's too busy laughing.