Spidersong - Alison Bergeron
Editor's Note: 2016 Horror Fiction Writing Contest Winner
Just as the earth is incomplete without the sky, Lupa and Scavo are names that grace the lips together. Even at this time, as Carnival blankets the city of Venice and paints chaos across the streets, the children of the family Lupa can be found hand-in-hand with those of the family Scavo.
Though she wears a mask over her face, there is not a soul who doesn’t recognize the tar-black curls that rest upon the shoulders of Helia Scavo, pride and joy of her family. She has lived to see seventeen Carnivals before this one, but not once, save for her years as an infant, has she attended without the strings of a mandolin lapping at her fingertips.
When a host of familiar faces ask in sunlit voices if she will play the tarantella, she tips her head to the blue and silver satin of her skirt, laces a smile across her lips and says, “I don’t play anymore.” And though the tarantella sounds hollow without her, she is content with her decision to abstain. The crowds still find it in themselves to dance and for the first time in her life, Helia is free to join them.
As chaos sweeps her into it’s arms and music bleeds through the canals, she swears she can make out an unfamiliar body, tall and shadowy, wearing the blank face of a glass-eyed bird over his own. But he is gone in a moment and the music still plays.
“It’s sad that Ragnatela’s Tarantella went unplayed.” Antea, the youngest of the Lupa and Scavo children muses as the Scavo’s gondola slides across the surface of the canal. She traces the patterns of sunlight superimposed across her face.
“I told you.” Helia begins sharply, separating the ribbons that tie her mask to her skull. “I don’t play anymore.” Antea’s face falls, for she has only lived to see fifteen Carnivals and has never known a time in which Helia did not play. “He’s gone. It doesn’t matter.”
“It’s simply sad.” Antea repeats, resting her chin on her red, satin, sleeves. She looks up to her brother, Gabriele, eldest of the four, as he wears sunset on his face like a mood and leads the gondola through the veins of the city. “He was a lovely teacher to her. He made her a prodigy. Isn’t it sad?”
“He wrote the most wonderful ballads.” Lorenzo, the younger Scavo adds. “All of those verses about the ‘beautiful woman of Venice.’”
“Isn’t it sad?” Antea repeats.
“Don’t be a pest.” Gabriele reaches to touch Helia’s hand. She pulls it away. “Don’t pay her any mind.”
“I’m simply saying,” Antea begins “She’s the only one who ever learned the mandolin part. It’s sad that it will never be played!”
“It was on my parents’ behalf.” Helia reminds her, voice snapping. “I’ll be a married woman in just a week. And someday soon, you shall be too. There’s no time for music.” Antea looks to Lorenzo. Soon Lupa and Scavo will exist in new skin, once Helia has married Gabriele Lupa and Antea, Lorenzo Scavo. In this arrangement, perceived heavenly by their parents, the two families shall never be apart and to separate them would be sin.
“You don’t believe that.” Antea sighs.
“I do.” Helia insists, praying that she believes her own words. “I do.”
The orange of dusk is soon traded for evening’s cold blue and Helia is the one to tie up the gondola for the night. She sweeps the spiders from the anchor and allows her hands tumble masterfully at the rope until she senses an unfamiliar presence nearby. Looking up, she sees him.
He stands on the bridge, draped in his shadow, wearing that same hollow face; a mirror image of the one that the doctors of the plague used to wear. The day’s festivities have ended, yet he still covers his face. He is all she can register as fear or curiosity takes control of her body.
Something bites her.
It is quick, but jarring, like a needle sinking into her hand and filling her brain with clouds. Her eyes dart down and she comes face to face with her assailant, a black wolf spider, perched on the gondola post, staring back at her with four times the eyes she has. Discomfort prickles in her skin as she shakes it away with a jerk. It finds it’s footing on one of eight legs and rushes back to the shadows where it cannot be seen.
The plague doctor is gone.
Helia rushes inside, head feeling as the sea moves, and though Lorenzo insists that she looks pale, she insists that the dishes need washing and wastes no time drowning the spiders she finds in the sink.
Morning dries out her mouth and she rushes down to the kitchen to see if her solution waits there. Thankfully, someone, her mother, her father, Lorenzo, has left out a plate of fresh figs. She thanks the room, for there is no one to receive her words, and fetches a knife with dizzy hands.
The sounds of Carnival spill through the open window as she stabs into the fruit and splits it open on the countertop. She should go out, she thinks. Part of her longs to say home though. Perhaps it is her muscles that tug at her bones tiredly. Her fingers itch to play the mandolin again, to pluck out the melodies that Ragnatela had once wasted weeks of his life teaching her with incredible tenderness and patience, but she knows she cannot. She needs to get his face out of her head. She needs keep her hands busy in some other way.
Her frame goes rigid and a sound escapes her lips as she looks down and finds that this fig cannot be eaten. From its rotten center runs a cluster of black spiders, abandoning the scene. Helia feels sick. The figs are thrown into the street, infestation in tact, and she washes the remnants from her hands. She keeps her head down to the sink, should she vomit.
A feeling of discomfort settles on her spine and creeps upwards. It’s as if her skin knows that something is amiss. Her neck snaps up and she sucks in a breath, finding herself face to face with the uncaring mask of the plague doctor as he leans through her window.
The moment passes in a flash and the world behind her eyes goes black.
Helia does not die. Even as she lies on the floor, vision still black as night, she knows this is not death. When she opens her eyes on the world once again, she is not alone. It is Antea Lupa at her side, face a cavern for concern.
“What just happened?” She asks. Helia resettles the hair on her shoulders. Even in this low moment, all of Italy could sing of her beauty.
“I simply fainted.” She assures her, making an attempt to stand.
“It was worse!” Antea insists, cheeks flushed. “You were having some kind of fit!” Helia shakes her head, tying her friend’s words to her grandiose imagination.
“Don’t be a pest.” Antea looks back through frantic, glassy eyes that threaten to spill watercolors over her cheeks. For a moment, Helia’s chest flickers cold.
“I was afraid.” The words spill from her mouth like water. “It looked like a dance.”
Helia whiles away the rest of the day on the canals, apart from the chaos of Carnival, trying to convince herself that she’s alright. She’s found it difficult to be around so much music that she cannot take part in. She touches her hands to the water. Back in the days when she still took lessons, Ragnatela had soothed her clumsy fingers with cold water from the sink faucet. It washes away the pains in your hands. The writer’s seizing muscles, the musician’s aching bones. He’d been a writer of music and poetry. He knew both pains, the seizing muscles and the aching bones. There had once been a time in which she’d taken his hands in hers and begged to share his pain. She shoos the words from her head. Matteo Ragnatela is dead. The water couldn’t wash away his disease. She doesn’t play anymore.
It isn’t until the sun sinks into the harbor that she returns. Antea is the one to help her tie up the boat and doesn’t flinch when Helia feels the air turn to needles on her skin.
He is there on the bridge again, toting his face like a disease, wearing his shadows around his shoulders. Her bones tremble but she stays in her place, as if she is a part of the sidewalk.
“Who is he?” She whispers to Antea. Antea looks up and surveys the scene, eyebrows knit together.
“Who is who?” She asks. Helia points to him discreetly. He stands as if time doesn’t touch him.
“Him.” Antea squints at the bridge, pushing stringy brown hair from her face.
“It’s a shadow.”
“No.” Helia protests. “He has a mask! I saw him in-”
“Helia.” Antea looks at her, concern creasing her features once again. “There’s no one there.” Helia spends all too long faltering for words. “I’m going inside to bed. You should do the same.” In a moment she is gone, leaving Helia frozen to her spot.
She stares into the blank eyes of the plague doctor. Her lungs seem to forget the typical pace at which she breathes, pushing air out and forcing it back into her mouth as her hands begin to go numb. A tremor settles over her frame. She’s losing her grip on the world slowly until it takes her over completely, and once again everything goes dark.
Breath pierces her throat like an arrow when she awakens once again. The air is cold and unforgiving on her skin and every exhalation appears as a ghost on her lips. Every muscle in her body aches. Her brain races to place where she is as all her eyes can register is the expanse of black sky above her.
She straightens her spine and sits up suddenly, feeling something scatter over her shoulders. By the light of the moon she can make out tiny black specks falling from her hair. The feeling of her stomach lurching propels her to stand. Spiders. The noise that escapes her lips is short and sharp as she realizes that she is out in open water on the gondola, spiders clinging to her hair.
“Antea!” She screams. “Lorenzo! Gabriele!” There is no reply though. Venice has grown small in the distance. Her bones jerk to grab the oar and it is then that she finds her hands already occupied. Her knuckles are stained white around a bundle of creased papers. The cold has begun to sink in through her pores. Soon the papers are unraveled from one another and her heart nearly stops. Sheet music. Ragnatela’s Tarantella. In this light it was as if she could see the blood sweat and tears he’d put into it. Your face inspires music, Helia. Her eyes glaze over as she stares at the notes. Your face is a tarantella in itself. She feels a pang of sadness in her heart. She’d never felt connected to anyone the way she’d felt connected to him. I only want you to play it. He’d only lived to see twenty-three Carnivals. And then he was dead.
The music is a kaleidoscope into her past, the days they’d spent at the window learning music in the light. Her fingers know the notes, in fact they are the only fingers that ever knew the notes, she had once been his prodigy, but her head knows that she cannot play the mandolin anymore. It doesn’t matter. Matteo Ragnatela is gone. He no longer listens to her play. No one does and no one will.
Her heart now resides in her throat and her pupils dance along the horizon, looking for some indication of how she got here.
Then she sees him.
He is not far ahead, in a gondola of his own, as black as her hair, rowing slowly towards an island in the distance.
“Poveglia?” Helia asks aloud. In a burst of action, she rushes forward, causing the gondola to sway beneath her as a cradle would. “Who are you?” She shouts. “Listen to me! Who are you? Where are we going?” He doesn’t reply and keeps on his way. Though it makes her lungs uneasy, she follows, praying that this is the closure she seeks.
The banks of Poveglia island seem to bite the feet of travelers. They hide the plague doctor from her sight as she sets foot on the ashen soil. Every cell in her body screams for her to return home and allow him to become a memory, but she walks on, treading lightly into a clearing at the foot of a stone tower.
There is a faint sound. Music. Suddenly, weaving through her brain is the jovial beat of a tarantella. It’s hypnotic. Her body can’t help but react. She dances even though she doesn’t want to, as if some force manipulates her as a puppet. Her face has gone pale and her limbs now choose their own path, dancing furiously in time with the music. She can’t stop and no matter how loud she screams or cries, no one can hear her, save for the plague doctor, who watches on stoically from the top of his tower.
“Help me!” She shrieks, but he is still. “Why are you doing this to me?” Hours have passed and her mind grows weary. The world shifts in and out of focus and for a moment, she swears he has the legs of a spider.
She sits up suddenly. It is morning. Carnival echoes from Venice. Under her sleeps the cold ground of Poveglia. Her heart has never felt so close to exploding. She cannot explain what she has seen, all she knows is that her bones are tired as if she had danced herself to sleep. Perhaps no one has noticed that she is gone.
Hurriedly, with the strength she has left, Helia rows back to Venice, tying up the gondola outside the Scavo house and pushing through the celebrating crowds. She is disheveled and unkempt, but it is possible that at least the region of Veneto will still sing of her beauty.
Lorenzo meets her in the kitchen, drinking wine as if it were an art. He needs these occasional breaks from the festivities outside. His eyes widen at the sight of her. He has lived to see sixteen carnivals, and not once has he seen the festival spit his sister out looking like this.
“Where have you been?” He asks.
“Wine.” Is all Helia says. He nervously pours her a glass and lets her clutch it close to her heart while she drinks. Lorenzo is sure that his words carry caution.
“...Is this because of the wedding?”
“No.” Her reply is sharp. “Don’t ask that. I have been preparing to marry Gabriele my whole life.”
“That doesn’t mean that you want to.” He reminds her.
“Mother and father.” She speaks in fragments. “Doesn’t matter. Stop talking about it. You shouldn’t speak ill of it, soon this will be you.” Her head has begun to itch.
“Sorry. It should be lovely.” Lorenzo sighs. “Mother and father are taking care of it all. The church will be full.”
“Good.” Her scalp is practically on fire.
“Mr. Lupa went to Florence to get the flowers and Mrs. Lupa arranged them.”
“Mm.” Her nails threaten to rip the skin right off of her skull, maybe even leave her brain exposed. Something is crawling there. Lorenzo looks on, concerned.
“Helia what are you-”
“I’m excited. I’m counting down the days.”
“...Maybe mother will let you play your mandolin once again.” His voice is hopeful. Helia shakes her head.
“There’s no need for it. I don’t play anymore. I threw it in the harbor-”’
“You what?” Lorenzo’s features turn to something like plaster. She and her mandolin had once been inseparable. Ragnatela would turn in his grave. He would no doubt die a second death should he see the state of his dear Helia now. Lorenzo cannot dwell on it though, something is amiss in her hair.
“Just the other day I-”
“Helia there’s something in your hair!” Lorenzo stands suddenly. Helia’s hands shake enough to put earthquakes to shame as she looks down to see that they are full of spiders. She lets out a cry and rushes to the sink, trying to shake all of them out and into the drain. They cling to her skin with no intention of letting go. She makes a rash decision. On the counter lies the knife someone had used to cut that morning’s figs, serrated edge glinting at her. She grabs it and wildly begins sawing off her hair into the sink.
“Helia!” Lorenzo screams. He cannot stop her though, for the damage has already been done.
When she's done, her hair is short, unevenly cut, thin or even bald sections showing through. Obsidian tresses lie over the drain, spiders scurrying to find their way out. Helia grits her teeth and turns on the water, drowning them all. She looks to her brother and he stares back, mortified. Perhaps the city of Venice will still sing of her beauty.
That night, the Lupas come for dinner, savouring their last days of being allowed to eat meat before Lent settles over them. A word is barely spoken as a screaming match has already broken out over Helia’s hair. She’ll have to wear a hat to the wedding. Perhaps a mask. This isn’t her. This isn’t her.
Helia is seated across from the mirror hanging by the stairs, as if to remind her that she’s made a grave mistake.
“She hasn’t touched her dinner.” Lorenzo whispers to Antea.
“Not hungry, my love?” Gabriele asks, placing his hand on hers. She forgets to pull away this time.
“She looks like a ghost.” Antea replies.
“Are you sick?” Gabriele persists. “Helia?” Her eyes are locked on the mirror. Behind her, in the window, She sees a figure. Another fit engulfs her.
Her eyes tear open. Morning again. Carnival outside. She touches her head. Still no hair, still she can’t tell if it’s been a moment or a year since her eyes were last open. Her stomach churns and her skin crawls, sending shivers like strands up her back. Fear of the plague doctor keeps her rooted to her bedsheets, clammy skin pressed against the fabric. Her eyes roam to the empty space in the corner where her mandolin used to sit. She needs to get up.
Her hands quake as they tend to do these days. It crosses her mind that it’s been something like days since she’s eaten and she still has no will to. Slowly, strength a memory, she turns down the blankets and is met with a mosaic of white and black, her nightdress, her sheets, teeming with spiders, scurrying in all directions, slowly working their way to her neck.
Her body immediately seizes up. She frantically brushes them off, not sure what sounds are coming from her mouth as she does so. Her throat wretches to vomit, but can muster nothing up. She needs to get out of here. She needs to be clean again. Her brain exists in a state of vertigo. The only action that makes sense to her is cracking her window with a music box and throwing herself out, landing in the canal with a deafening slap that leaves her skin red and her skull aching.
She can hear the muffled shouts of the people in the street. The world is a blur. She is nearly content, should this be the end of her life. But Helia Scavo does not die. She is pulled from the water by a set of strong arms and carried back to her home where she is laid on the floor, remembering how to breathe.
Gabriele looks down at her, mortified. He has seen nineteen Carnivals and not once has he ever feared the girl he’s been taught to love.
Helia coughs herself back into existence, spitting out the waters of the canal onto the kitchen floor.
“What were you thinking?!” He shouts.
“Spiders.” She breathes. “Everywhere.”
“What?” Gabriele shakes his head. “I’m going to take you to the doctor-” Helia jumps into action, trying to free herself from his arms. He is strong, though, and she is weak.
“I can’t go to see the doctor! I can’t I don’t want to see him!” She shrieks. Gabriele is shocked by her violent response. “Where is the gondola?”
“What?”
“I want to go out-” Gabriele cuts her off.
“It’s gone...it was infested with spiders.” A new knot is tied in her stomach. She fights to get away.
“I need to-”
“You must-”
“I can’t-”
“You’re scaring me!”
“Let me go!”
“Helia!” He cries as she finally escapes, rolling on her side and lying on her back, staring hopelessly yet frantically up at the ceiling. “I want you to live to see the day of our wedding!” She says nothing, though her mind races.
I’ll live. I’ll live.
Her humanity seems to spill out like strands of silk from her head. She is bony and pale when the wedding arrives. To be married during the time of Carnival is to be married in chaos. The circles under her eyes may as well be black. When she speaks, it’s of spiders, a mandolin lying at the bottom of the harbor, or men that treat the plague. The fits are more frequent, but when the doctor is mentioned, she threatens to destroy both the house and herself, claiming she already sees him everyday.
She hums to herself as Antea sits her before the mirror and attempts to reassemble the face of the Venetian rose she’d grown up beside. These days, it is only Gabriele who sings of her beauty. The rest of the world sings of the horror she’s become. Though she wishes more than anything that she could fish those obsidian curls back out of the drain, Antea makes her look presentable; a ghost made visible.
Helia has never felt so sick in her life. The church feels like an ocean, swallowing her up. Gabriele watches her stumble towards him, her body wrapped in white satin, caving in on itself, a smile plastered to his lips. He takes her bony hands in his and whispers something about love that she hears as music. The priest reads something and Helia surveys the room.
The church ceiling is vaulted, making the room dizzyingly tall. Her brain is Carnival. She is seasick. Her gondola has overturned. Her mind begins rattling off everything she knows to distract from the nausea. Gabriele's hair is the color of sunlight and his eyes are the color of canals. She’s not allowed to eat meat during lent, but she doesn’t eat at all. Matteo Ragnatela was a writer and a musician that had hair the color of florentine leather and a face that poetry had aged. Gabriele is going to say ‘I do.” at some point and then she will be forced to say the same because someone once told her she had to.
“I do.” His voice cuts through her rambling mind. Helia snaps to attention. She is asked a question. When she opens her mouth to speak, she is positive that she will vomit this time and so she stands there for a moment, waiting for something to come crawling up her throat.
Sure enough, something does.
Though she expects bile to spill from her mouth, it is something much more foul. Spiders crawl across her tongue and slide down her chin in a thick, black cloud. The feeling of legs clawing at her throat, threatening to tear her apart from the inside, only makes her shake. They scatter across her dress and while some fall to the floor, others take refuge on her shoulders and down her arms. Though she knows she should seal her lips to hold back the deluge, she finds that she hasn’t the strength and allows them to slip down the skin of her face.
The chaos in the real world is immediate, but in Helia’s head, it is silent. She looks out to the crowd as if to ask for direction, but is met with one hundred blank faces, one hundred plague doctors staring back at her, their bodies made of white plaster. This time she is not afraid. She has grown weary.
“Gabriele? Do you see?” She asks, turning to face her almost-husband. He too is gone though, a hollow mask, pointing at her throat, a statue before her. Helia is alone in this very crowded room. She hikes up the skirts of her wedding dress, and runs best she can to the door. She believes she knows what to do.
Outside, the Scavo’s gondola has returned, and though it is not free of it’s infestation, Helia does not care. She somehow finds the strength to row back to Poveglia, where the ghostly tarantella plays.
Littered across the banks of the island lay the hollow masks of the plague doctors. She bends down, as if controlled by marionette strings once again. The world comes to life as she pulls the mask down over her eyes. Through the glass eyes, she sees that Poveglia is alive, a Carnival for the dead. The iridescent spirits of musicians surround her, playing tarantella upon tarantella, layering over and over until their instruments threaten to shatter in their grip. She breaks into a run as she feels the urge to dance once again boiling in her flesh.
He waits for her at the foot of the tower, toting his face like the plague, mask pulled up to reveal his face. In his hands he holds her beloved mandolin, teeming with spiders. Helia stumbles towards him. Her heart floods with warmth at the sight of a familiar face. Though nothing seems to make sense in the web of her mind, her task seems clear as water. I love you. I love you. I love you like music.
“Matteo.” She breathes, taking the instrument from his grip, savouring the taste of his name on her tongue. Her heart floods. “I’ll play.” Her fingers lap at the strings as the world begins to blur again. “I’ll play.” His face is music. She reaches out to touch his cheek. “I’ll play.”
Helia Scavo plays the tarantella once again.
No one sings of her face, but the spiders sing of her bones.
END
Just as the earth is incomplete without the sky, Lupa and Scavo are names that grace the lips together. Even at this time, as Carnival blankets the city of Venice and paints chaos across the streets, the children of the family Lupa can be found hand-in-hand with those of the family Scavo.
Though she wears a mask over her face, there is not a soul who doesn’t recognize the tar-black curls that rest upon the shoulders of Helia Scavo, pride and joy of her family. She has lived to see seventeen Carnivals before this one, but not once, save for her years as an infant, has she attended without the strings of a mandolin lapping at her fingertips.
When a host of familiar faces ask in sunlit voices if she will play the tarantella, she tips her head to the blue and silver satin of her skirt, laces a smile across her lips and says, “I don’t play anymore.” And though the tarantella sounds hollow without her, she is content with her decision to abstain. The crowds still find it in themselves to dance and for the first time in her life, Helia is free to join them.
As chaos sweeps her into it’s arms and music bleeds through the canals, she swears she can make out an unfamiliar body, tall and shadowy, wearing the blank face of a glass-eyed bird over his own. But he is gone in a moment and the music still plays.
“It’s sad that Ragnatela’s Tarantella went unplayed.” Antea, the youngest of the Lupa and Scavo children muses as the Scavo’s gondola slides across the surface of the canal. She traces the patterns of sunlight superimposed across her face.
“I told you.” Helia begins sharply, separating the ribbons that tie her mask to her skull. “I don’t play anymore.” Antea’s face falls, for she has only lived to see fifteen Carnivals and has never known a time in which Helia did not play. “He’s gone. It doesn’t matter.”
“It’s simply sad.” Antea repeats, resting her chin on her red, satin, sleeves. She looks up to her brother, Gabriele, eldest of the four, as he wears sunset on his face like a mood and leads the gondola through the veins of the city. “He was a lovely teacher to her. He made her a prodigy. Isn’t it sad?”
“He wrote the most wonderful ballads.” Lorenzo, the younger Scavo adds. “All of those verses about the ‘beautiful woman of Venice.’”
“Isn’t it sad?” Antea repeats.
“Don’t be a pest.” Gabriele reaches to touch Helia’s hand. She pulls it away. “Don’t pay her any mind.”
“I’m simply saying,” Antea begins “She’s the only one who ever learned the mandolin part. It’s sad that it will never be played!”
“It was on my parents’ behalf.” Helia reminds her, voice snapping. “I’ll be a married woman in just a week. And someday soon, you shall be too. There’s no time for music.” Antea looks to Lorenzo. Soon Lupa and Scavo will exist in new skin, once Helia has married Gabriele Lupa and Antea, Lorenzo Scavo. In this arrangement, perceived heavenly by their parents, the two families shall never be apart and to separate them would be sin.
“You don’t believe that.” Antea sighs.
“I do.” Helia insists, praying that she believes her own words. “I do.”
The orange of dusk is soon traded for evening’s cold blue and Helia is the one to tie up the gondola for the night. She sweeps the spiders from the anchor and allows her hands tumble masterfully at the rope until she senses an unfamiliar presence nearby. Looking up, she sees him.
He stands on the bridge, draped in his shadow, wearing that same hollow face; a mirror image of the one that the doctors of the plague used to wear. The day’s festivities have ended, yet he still covers his face. He is all she can register as fear or curiosity takes control of her body.
Something bites her.
It is quick, but jarring, like a needle sinking into her hand and filling her brain with clouds. Her eyes dart down and she comes face to face with her assailant, a black wolf spider, perched on the gondola post, staring back at her with four times the eyes she has. Discomfort prickles in her skin as she shakes it away with a jerk. It finds it’s footing on one of eight legs and rushes back to the shadows where it cannot be seen.
The plague doctor is gone.
Helia rushes inside, head feeling as the sea moves, and though Lorenzo insists that she looks pale, she insists that the dishes need washing and wastes no time drowning the spiders she finds in the sink.
Morning dries out her mouth and she rushes down to the kitchen to see if her solution waits there. Thankfully, someone, her mother, her father, Lorenzo, has left out a plate of fresh figs. She thanks the room, for there is no one to receive her words, and fetches a knife with dizzy hands.
The sounds of Carnival spill through the open window as she stabs into the fruit and splits it open on the countertop. She should go out, she thinks. Part of her longs to say home though. Perhaps it is her muscles that tug at her bones tiredly. Her fingers itch to play the mandolin again, to pluck out the melodies that Ragnatela had once wasted weeks of his life teaching her with incredible tenderness and patience, but she knows she cannot. She needs to get his face out of her head. She needs keep her hands busy in some other way.
Her frame goes rigid and a sound escapes her lips as she looks down and finds that this fig cannot be eaten. From its rotten center runs a cluster of black spiders, abandoning the scene. Helia feels sick. The figs are thrown into the street, infestation in tact, and she washes the remnants from her hands. She keeps her head down to the sink, should she vomit.
A feeling of discomfort settles on her spine and creeps upwards. It’s as if her skin knows that something is amiss. Her neck snaps up and she sucks in a breath, finding herself face to face with the uncaring mask of the plague doctor as he leans through her window.
The moment passes in a flash and the world behind her eyes goes black.
Helia does not die. Even as she lies on the floor, vision still black as night, she knows this is not death. When she opens her eyes on the world once again, she is not alone. It is Antea Lupa at her side, face a cavern for concern.
“What just happened?” She asks. Helia resettles the hair on her shoulders. Even in this low moment, all of Italy could sing of her beauty.
“I simply fainted.” She assures her, making an attempt to stand.
“It was worse!” Antea insists, cheeks flushed. “You were having some kind of fit!” Helia shakes her head, tying her friend’s words to her grandiose imagination.
“Don’t be a pest.” Antea looks back through frantic, glassy eyes that threaten to spill watercolors over her cheeks. For a moment, Helia’s chest flickers cold.
“I was afraid.” The words spill from her mouth like water. “It looked like a dance.”
Helia whiles away the rest of the day on the canals, apart from the chaos of Carnival, trying to convince herself that she’s alright. She’s found it difficult to be around so much music that she cannot take part in. She touches her hands to the water. Back in the days when she still took lessons, Ragnatela had soothed her clumsy fingers with cold water from the sink faucet. It washes away the pains in your hands. The writer’s seizing muscles, the musician’s aching bones. He’d been a writer of music and poetry. He knew both pains, the seizing muscles and the aching bones. There had once been a time in which she’d taken his hands in hers and begged to share his pain. She shoos the words from her head. Matteo Ragnatela is dead. The water couldn’t wash away his disease. She doesn’t play anymore.
It isn’t until the sun sinks into the harbor that she returns. Antea is the one to help her tie up the boat and doesn’t flinch when Helia feels the air turn to needles on her skin.
He is there on the bridge again, toting his face like a disease, wearing his shadows around his shoulders. Her bones tremble but she stays in her place, as if she is a part of the sidewalk.
“Who is he?” She whispers to Antea. Antea looks up and surveys the scene, eyebrows knit together.
“Who is who?” She asks. Helia points to him discreetly. He stands as if time doesn’t touch him.
“Him.” Antea squints at the bridge, pushing stringy brown hair from her face.
“It’s a shadow.”
“No.” Helia protests. “He has a mask! I saw him in-”
“Helia.” Antea looks at her, concern creasing her features once again. “There’s no one there.” Helia spends all too long faltering for words. “I’m going inside to bed. You should do the same.” In a moment she is gone, leaving Helia frozen to her spot.
She stares into the blank eyes of the plague doctor. Her lungs seem to forget the typical pace at which she breathes, pushing air out and forcing it back into her mouth as her hands begin to go numb. A tremor settles over her frame. She’s losing her grip on the world slowly until it takes her over completely, and once again everything goes dark.
Breath pierces her throat like an arrow when she awakens once again. The air is cold and unforgiving on her skin and every exhalation appears as a ghost on her lips. Every muscle in her body aches. Her brain races to place where she is as all her eyes can register is the expanse of black sky above her.
She straightens her spine and sits up suddenly, feeling something scatter over her shoulders. By the light of the moon she can make out tiny black specks falling from her hair. The feeling of her stomach lurching propels her to stand. Spiders. The noise that escapes her lips is short and sharp as she realizes that she is out in open water on the gondola, spiders clinging to her hair.
“Antea!” She screams. “Lorenzo! Gabriele!” There is no reply though. Venice has grown small in the distance. Her bones jerk to grab the oar and it is then that she finds her hands already occupied. Her knuckles are stained white around a bundle of creased papers. The cold has begun to sink in through her pores. Soon the papers are unraveled from one another and her heart nearly stops. Sheet music. Ragnatela’s Tarantella. In this light it was as if she could see the blood sweat and tears he’d put into it. Your face inspires music, Helia. Her eyes glaze over as she stares at the notes. Your face is a tarantella in itself. She feels a pang of sadness in her heart. She’d never felt connected to anyone the way she’d felt connected to him. I only want you to play it. He’d only lived to see twenty-three Carnivals. And then he was dead.
The music is a kaleidoscope into her past, the days they’d spent at the window learning music in the light. Her fingers know the notes, in fact they are the only fingers that ever knew the notes, she had once been his prodigy, but her head knows that she cannot play the mandolin anymore. It doesn’t matter. Matteo Ragnatela is gone. He no longer listens to her play. No one does and no one will.
Her heart now resides in her throat and her pupils dance along the horizon, looking for some indication of how she got here.
Then she sees him.
He is not far ahead, in a gondola of his own, as black as her hair, rowing slowly towards an island in the distance.
“Poveglia?” Helia asks aloud. In a burst of action, she rushes forward, causing the gondola to sway beneath her as a cradle would. “Who are you?” She shouts. “Listen to me! Who are you? Where are we going?” He doesn’t reply and keeps on his way. Though it makes her lungs uneasy, she follows, praying that this is the closure she seeks.
The banks of Poveglia island seem to bite the feet of travelers. They hide the plague doctor from her sight as she sets foot on the ashen soil. Every cell in her body screams for her to return home and allow him to become a memory, but she walks on, treading lightly into a clearing at the foot of a stone tower.
There is a faint sound. Music. Suddenly, weaving through her brain is the jovial beat of a tarantella. It’s hypnotic. Her body can’t help but react. She dances even though she doesn’t want to, as if some force manipulates her as a puppet. Her face has gone pale and her limbs now choose their own path, dancing furiously in time with the music. She can’t stop and no matter how loud she screams or cries, no one can hear her, save for the plague doctor, who watches on stoically from the top of his tower.
“Help me!” She shrieks, but he is still. “Why are you doing this to me?” Hours have passed and her mind grows weary. The world shifts in and out of focus and for a moment, she swears he has the legs of a spider.
She sits up suddenly. It is morning. Carnival echoes from Venice. Under her sleeps the cold ground of Poveglia. Her heart has never felt so close to exploding. She cannot explain what she has seen, all she knows is that her bones are tired as if she had danced herself to sleep. Perhaps no one has noticed that she is gone.
Hurriedly, with the strength she has left, Helia rows back to Venice, tying up the gondola outside the Scavo house and pushing through the celebrating crowds. She is disheveled and unkempt, but it is possible that at least the region of Veneto will still sing of her beauty.
Lorenzo meets her in the kitchen, drinking wine as if it were an art. He needs these occasional breaks from the festivities outside. His eyes widen at the sight of her. He has lived to see sixteen carnivals, and not once has he seen the festival spit his sister out looking like this.
“Where have you been?” He asks.
“Wine.” Is all Helia says. He nervously pours her a glass and lets her clutch it close to her heart while she drinks. Lorenzo is sure that his words carry caution.
“...Is this because of the wedding?”
“No.” Her reply is sharp. “Don’t ask that. I have been preparing to marry Gabriele my whole life.”
“That doesn’t mean that you want to.” He reminds her.
“Mother and father.” She speaks in fragments. “Doesn’t matter. Stop talking about it. You shouldn’t speak ill of it, soon this will be you.” Her head has begun to itch.
“Sorry. It should be lovely.” Lorenzo sighs. “Mother and father are taking care of it all. The church will be full.”
“Good.” Her scalp is practically on fire.
“Mr. Lupa went to Florence to get the flowers and Mrs. Lupa arranged them.”
“Mm.” Her nails threaten to rip the skin right off of her skull, maybe even leave her brain exposed. Something is crawling there. Lorenzo looks on, concerned.
“Helia what are you-”
“I’m excited. I’m counting down the days.”
“...Maybe mother will let you play your mandolin once again.” His voice is hopeful. Helia shakes her head.
“There’s no need for it. I don’t play anymore. I threw it in the harbor-”’
“You what?” Lorenzo’s features turn to something like plaster. She and her mandolin had once been inseparable. Ragnatela would turn in his grave. He would no doubt die a second death should he see the state of his dear Helia now. Lorenzo cannot dwell on it though, something is amiss in her hair.
“Just the other day I-”
“Helia there’s something in your hair!” Lorenzo stands suddenly. Helia’s hands shake enough to put earthquakes to shame as she looks down to see that they are full of spiders. She lets out a cry and rushes to the sink, trying to shake all of them out and into the drain. They cling to her skin with no intention of letting go. She makes a rash decision. On the counter lies the knife someone had used to cut that morning’s figs, serrated edge glinting at her. She grabs it and wildly begins sawing off her hair into the sink.
“Helia!” Lorenzo screams. He cannot stop her though, for the damage has already been done.
When she's done, her hair is short, unevenly cut, thin or even bald sections showing through. Obsidian tresses lie over the drain, spiders scurrying to find their way out. Helia grits her teeth and turns on the water, drowning them all. She looks to her brother and he stares back, mortified. Perhaps the city of Venice will still sing of her beauty.
That night, the Lupas come for dinner, savouring their last days of being allowed to eat meat before Lent settles over them. A word is barely spoken as a screaming match has already broken out over Helia’s hair. She’ll have to wear a hat to the wedding. Perhaps a mask. This isn’t her. This isn’t her.
Helia is seated across from the mirror hanging by the stairs, as if to remind her that she’s made a grave mistake.
“She hasn’t touched her dinner.” Lorenzo whispers to Antea.
“Not hungry, my love?” Gabriele asks, placing his hand on hers. She forgets to pull away this time.
“She looks like a ghost.” Antea replies.
“Are you sick?” Gabriele persists. “Helia?” Her eyes are locked on the mirror. Behind her, in the window, She sees a figure. Another fit engulfs her.
Her eyes tear open. Morning again. Carnival outside. She touches her head. Still no hair, still she can’t tell if it’s been a moment or a year since her eyes were last open. Her stomach churns and her skin crawls, sending shivers like strands up her back. Fear of the plague doctor keeps her rooted to her bedsheets, clammy skin pressed against the fabric. Her eyes roam to the empty space in the corner where her mandolin used to sit. She needs to get up.
Her hands quake as they tend to do these days. It crosses her mind that it’s been something like days since she’s eaten and she still has no will to. Slowly, strength a memory, she turns down the blankets and is met with a mosaic of white and black, her nightdress, her sheets, teeming with spiders, scurrying in all directions, slowly working their way to her neck.
Her body immediately seizes up. She frantically brushes them off, not sure what sounds are coming from her mouth as she does so. Her throat wretches to vomit, but can muster nothing up. She needs to get out of here. She needs to be clean again. Her brain exists in a state of vertigo. The only action that makes sense to her is cracking her window with a music box and throwing herself out, landing in the canal with a deafening slap that leaves her skin red and her skull aching.
She can hear the muffled shouts of the people in the street. The world is a blur. She is nearly content, should this be the end of her life. But Helia Scavo does not die. She is pulled from the water by a set of strong arms and carried back to her home where she is laid on the floor, remembering how to breathe.
Gabriele looks down at her, mortified. He has seen nineteen Carnivals and not once has he ever feared the girl he’s been taught to love.
Helia coughs herself back into existence, spitting out the waters of the canal onto the kitchen floor.
“What were you thinking?!” He shouts.
“Spiders.” She breathes. “Everywhere.”
“What?” Gabriele shakes his head. “I’m going to take you to the doctor-” Helia jumps into action, trying to free herself from his arms. He is strong, though, and she is weak.
“I can’t go to see the doctor! I can’t I don’t want to see him!” She shrieks. Gabriele is shocked by her violent response. “Where is the gondola?”
“What?”
“I want to go out-” Gabriele cuts her off.
“It’s gone...it was infested with spiders.” A new knot is tied in her stomach. She fights to get away.
“I need to-”
“You must-”
“I can’t-”
“You’re scaring me!”
“Let me go!”
“Helia!” He cries as she finally escapes, rolling on her side and lying on her back, staring hopelessly yet frantically up at the ceiling. “I want you to live to see the day of our wedding!” She says nothing, though her mind races.
I’ll live. I’ll live.
Her humanity seems to spill out like strands of silk from her head. She is bony and pale when the wedding arrives. To be married during the time of Carnival is to be married in chaos. The circles under her eyes may as well be black. When she speaks, it’s of spiders, a mandolin lying at the bottom of the harbor, or men that treat the plague. The fits are more frequent, but when the doctor is mentioned, she threatens to destroy both the house and herself, claiming she already sees him everyday.
She hums to herself as Antea sits her before the mirror and attempts to reassemble the face of the Venetian rose she’d grown up beside. These days, it is only Gabriele who sings of her beauty. The rest of the world sings of the horror she’s become. Though she wishes more than anything that she could fish those obsidian curls back out of the drain, Antea makes her look presentable; a ghost made visible.
Helia has never felt so sick in her life. The church feels like an ocean, swallowing her up. Gabriele watches her stumble towards him, her body wrapped in white satin, caving in on itself, a smile plastered to his lips. He takes her bony hands in his and whispers something about love that she hears as music. The priest reads something and Helia surveys the room.
The church ceiling is vaulted, making the room dizzyingly tall. Her brain is Carnival. She is seasick. Her gondola has overturned. Her mind begins rattling off everything she knows to distract from the nausea. Gabriele's hair is the color of sunlight and his eyes are the color of canals. She’s not allowed to eat meat during lent, but she doesn’t eat at all. Matteo Ragnatela was a writer and a musician that had hair the color of florentine leather and a face that poetry had aged. Gabriele is going to say ‘I do.” at some point and then she will be forced to say the same because someone once told her she had to.
“I do.” His voice cuts through her rambling mind. Helia snaps to attention. She is asked a question. When she opens her mouth to speak, she is positive that she will vomit this time and so she stands there for a moment, waiting for something to come crawling up her throat.
Sure enough, something does.
Though she expects bile to spill from her mouth, it is something much more foul. Spiders crawl across her tongue and slide down her chin in a thick, black cloud. The feeling of legs clawing at her throat, threatening to tear her apart from the inside, only makes her shake. They scatter across her dress and while some fall to the floor, others take refuge on her shoulders and down her arms. Though she knows she should seal her lips to hold back the deluge, she finds that she hasn’t the strength and allows them to slip down the skin of her face.
The chaos in the real world is immediate, but in Helia’s head, it is silent. She looks out to the crowd as if to ask for direction, but is met with one hundred blank faces, one hundred plague doctors staring back at her, their bodies made of white plaster. This time she is not afraid. She has grown weary.
“Gabriele? Do you see?” She asks, turning to face her almost-husband. He too is gone though, a hollow mask, pointing at her throat, a statue before her. Helia is alone in this very crowded room. She hikes up the skirts of her wedding dress, and runs best she can to the door. She believes she knows what to do.
Outside, the Scavo’s gondola has returned, and though it is not free of it’s infestation, Helia does not care. She somehow finds the strength to row back to Poveglia, where the ghostly tarantella plays.
Littered across the banks of the island lay the hollow masks of the plague doctors. She bends down, as if controlled by marionette strings once again. The world comes to life as she pulls the mask down over her eyes. Through the glass eyes, she sees that Poveglia is alive, a Carnival for the dead. The iridescent spirits of musicians surround her, playing tarantella upon tarantella, layering over and over until their instruments threaten to shatter in their grip. She breaks into a run as she feels the urge to dance once again boiling in her flesh.
He waits for her at the foot of the tower, toting his face like the plague, mask pulled up to reveal his face. In his hands he holds her beloved mandolin, teeming with spiders. Helia stumbles towards him. Her heart floods with warmth at the sight of a familiar face. Though nothing seems to make sense in the web of her mind, her task seems clear as water. I love you. I love you. I love you like music.
“Matteo.” She breathes, taking the instrument from his grip, savouring the taste of his name on her tongue. Her heart floods. “I’ll play.” Her fingers lap at the strings as the world begins to blur again. “I’ll play.” His face is music. She reaches out to touch his cheek. “I’ll play.”
Helia Scavo plays the tarantella once again.
No one sings of her face, but the spiders sing of her bones.
END