Pietra and Other Horrors

By Mari Biella

“I was living in a world of monsters, and the darkness brought death on its wings.”

Ghosts, vampires, werewolves and zombies... all of these, and more, can be found in PIETRA AND OTHER HORRORS, a chilling collection of five short stories.

PIETRA: When a mortally-ill traveller arrives in Venice, he finds the city in the grip of terror. A string of inexplicable deaths and disappearances have caused a wave of panic, and the authorities have no idea who – or what – is responsible. These events pale into insignificance, though, when he encounters a mysterious woman one night. Pietra is beautiful, intriguing and secretive, and he longs to know more about her. He soon becomes aware, however, that a malign being has singled him out for attention – and that Pietra might not be all that she seems.

THE SONG OF THE SEA: An ancient horror is lurking just off the picturesque Cornish coast.

THE LORD OF THE CROSSROADS: A photojournalist on assignment in Haiti is plunged into a world of darkness, magic and Voodoo.

SUMMER: An old house is haunted... but is a ghost or one of the human residents responsible?

WHEN THE WOLVES RAN: When terror comes to a quiet village, it is left to a doctor to do battle with a savage beast.

PIETRA AND OTHER HORRORS is best read after dark... if you dare.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mari Biella
• Release date: Feb 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463323199

Mari Biella

Mari Biella was born in Wiltshire and grew up in Wales. She has been writing from an early age, and her mother still has some highly embarrassing poems and stories to prove it. Her published works are "The Quickening", a psychological ghost story set in the Victorian Age, and "Loving Imogen", a collection consisting of a novella and three short stories. Her free short story, "The Song of the Sea", may be downloaded at Smashwords. Mari currently lives in Northern Italy with her husband. She’ll read just about anything she can get her hands on, but particularly enjoys literary fiction, psychological horror, and crime fiction. She blogs at http://maribiella.wordpress.com/ and www.authorselectric.blogspot.com/, and tweets as @MariBiella1. Find her on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/mari.biella or on Goodreads at http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5817666.Mari_Biella.

Book preview

Pietra

and Other Horrors

Mari Biella

Pietra

Copyright © 2016 Mari Biella

The Song of the Sea

Copyright © 2013 Mari Biella

The Lord of the Crossroads

Copyright © 2017 Mari Biella

Summer

Copyright © 2014 Mari Biella

When the Wolves Ran

Copyright © 2016 Mari Biella

Smashwords Edition, Licence Notes

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite eBook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Table of Contents

Pietra

The Song of the Sea

The Lord of the Crossroads

Summer

When the Wolves Ran

Author Note

PIETRA

Here too, the man said, there is darkness.

I gazed out of the clouded window and into the twilit square beyond, and did not doubt it. A raw winter night had begun to descend, and the streetlights were flickering on one by one. People hurried past, wrapped up against the freezing air, and a church clock struck the hour. This was a side of Venice that very few visitors ever saw, and I supposed I should feel privileged.

I know, I said, and stirred my tea idly. There weren’t many other customers in the bar at this hour. A middle-aged man sat at a corner table reading a newspaper, and a harried-looking woman was chatting to someone on her cell phone. The owner, a plump little woman with dyed black hair, was standing behind the bar watching TV, paying us no attention at all.

My companion glanced at me, and smiled. He had ordered some coffee when he arrived, but I noticed that he hadn’t touched it.

"You think you know, perhaps, he said. I think it’s a little like sex, or death. You have to experience it to truly understand it. You say you haven’t been in Venice for very long, so I doubt you’ve had the chance to become acquainted with all its secrets."

Our common nationality had brought us together, providing an instant link between two strangers. This often happens when compatriots meet abroad, I’ve found. Divorced from your usual environment and feeling yourself a stranger, you form friendships with people you wouldn’t have a word to say to at home. This man, for instance: if we’d been in Birmingham or Cambridge instead of Venice, I doubt we’d have been sharing drinks and small talk. The only thing that bound us together was an accident of birth.

Or so I thought, at least. It was hard to tell what kind of person he was, and his appearance betrayed few clues. He was dressed rather elegantly, with an immaculate white shirt and dark blue tie visible above the collar of his woollen coat. His hair was cut with almost military precision. His accent suggested public schools and quiet villages in the Home Counties. And yet, curiously, his rugged face and strong body made me think of a physical labourer or farmhand. He was neither, of course; but then I couldn’t for the life of me imagine who he might actually be.

How long have you been here? I asked.

The man gave a melancholy smile.

A long time. Years. I haven’t been a permanent resident – I’ve gone away for months at a time, a whole year once – but something keeps drawing me back here. I don’t know why. Even Venice loses its charms after a while. When you’ve lived for a certain number of years, everything begins to seem dull.

You don’t look very old.

I’m older than you think. He said it very definitely, as if he had no doubt what I thought. "Ah, well – I suppose that, ultimately, I simply love this city. It was where my life changed; where my life truly began, perhaps. Everything before that was like a shadow – and even that shadow, it seemed, was destined to fade out before its time.

"Let me explain. I was ill when I arrived here – deathly ill, in the most literal sense of the term. I had a year, according to the doctors, eighteen months if I was lucky – or unlucky. It wasn’t to be a peaceful end, you see. No gentle fade to black. Instead, I faced months of watching my body degenerate, of becoming a prisoner in my own flesh. I had already begun to notice the decline: I was clumsy, uncoordinated, not fully in control of my own movements. The disease was still in its early stages, though, and I was well enough to travel and make the most of the little time that was left to me. I set out from home one morning with very little idea of where I meant to go, trekked around aimlessly for several weeks, and then found myself in Venice.

"I found a room in a small pensione, not far from St Mark’s Square. It was a basic little place, I suppose, but it suited me well enough. I didn’t want to go to one of the big hotels, where I might meet someone I knew. I didn’t want pity, and I certainly didn’t want to be the object of people’s curiosity. I wanted to be left alone, and my little boarding house allowed me that luxury. It was November when I arrived, and most of the summer’s visitors had already retreated back across the Alps. The pensione, then, was practically deserted, and I preferred it that way.

"I soon grew comfortable there, and even came to like it. I should tell you what it was like, that place, since it’s important in terms of what happened next. It was an old building, tall and narrow, which was accessed via a small courtyard. My room was at the back of the house, and overlooked a tangled garden. When I gazed out of my window I could just make out, through the branches of the trees, an old palazzo.

"I found myself becoming fascinated by that palazzo – indeed, it’s surprising how interesting such things can seem, when you’ve little else to do. It had a lonely, melancholy air that was not altogether unpleasant. The shutters were warped, the windows were cracked, the paint was peeling, and another tile seemed to slip off the roof every time the wind blew. The garden too had been neglected, and had grown wild, with waist-high grass and ivy that crept over the statues and fountains. It must have been a beautiful place once, but now – now, like so much else in Venice, it was on the brink of decay.

"I searched for the palazzo’s front entrance in the nearby streets, and eventually found it in a narrow lane next to a canal. Stone steps led up from a small landing stage, and the front door was just across the street from them. I imagined noblemen and ladies stepping out of gondolas there, and walking the few steps to their home. How saddened they would be now, to see what it had been reduced to! – for the front of the building was in no better condition than the back. Rickety shutters covered the windows, and cracks ran through the masonry. A snake had been engraved above the front door, as if it were keeping guard; its cruel eyes glared out at the city, and its mouth was open in a snarl that revealed its fangs. It must have been a striking sight once, but now it looked only faded and decrepit, a being that could do nothing and harm no one.

"An elderly couple ran the boarding house where I was staying, and I asked them one day who the owner of the palazzo was. The old man shrugged in that casual way that Italians have, and said that it was the property of a