James Becker - The Nosferatu Scroll

Even through the fog, Bronson could tell that the cemetery was huge, a vast expanse of ground studded with ancient vaults and individual tombstones, some standing erect, others either deliberately placed flat on the earth or having presumably fallen at some point over the centuries.

Walking through one of the older parts of the cemetery, they paused at intervals to look at some of the inscriptions. These varied from the simple to the flowery: from just a name, date of birth and date of death, to elaborate verses written in Italian or even Latin, to glorify or justify the life that had ended.

Angela had been right about the source of the yellowish glow. Almost every person they passed — and there seemed to be literally hundreds — was carrying a large candle, and the combined mass of tiny flames was giving the heavy mist a distinctly yellow or orange colour.

‘So what do we do now?’ Bronson asked.

‘It’s a shame we didn’t think to bring any refreshments,’ Angela replied, pointing at the people milling around them. Many were carrying bottles or flasks, and a few had even brought wicker picnic baskets with them, others clear plastic boxes containing food.

Angela had been absolutely right: it was obvious that Hallowmas or the Festival of the Dead was a major social and family event. Men, women and children were wandering around the graveyard, obviously determined to enjoy their evening in the somewhat unusual surroundings.

‘Well, I’ve got a bar of chocolate in my pocket if you want to share that,’ Bronson said, passing it over.

Angela snapped the bar in two and handed back one section. For a few moments they just stood there, enjoying their impromptu snack and soaking up the atmosphere.

‘It’s strange, isn’t it?’ Angela asked, after a minute or two, looking around at the noisy and cheerful crowds.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Here we are in a graveyard, walking above the decaying bones of hundreds or even thousands of long-dead citizens of Venice. This should be a place of sorrow or sombre reflection, but actually we’re in the middle of a huge party.’

Bronson grinned at her. ‘That just goes to show the importance of atmosphere. In those old Hammer films you used to be so fond of, the director would try to get the audience quivering expectantly just by showing them a couple of polystyrene tombstones with some fake mist swirling around them, while some suitably spooky music played in the background. And here we are, surrounded by the real thing, and everyone’s really happy, laughing and joking. The dead aren’t bothering them at all.’

But then, in the distance, they both heard a distant howl, the sound so faint that the animal — which Bronson presumed was an Alsatian or some other breed of large dog — clearly wasn’t anywhere near the Isola di San Michele.

‘What the hell was that?’ Angela asked, her face white and strained in the darkness.

‘It sounded like a hungry German shepherd,’ Bronson suggested. ‘But don’t worry — it’s a long way off and not about to rip out our throats.’

Angela laughed out loud, then stopped as the sound of a solid thump echoed from somewhere nearby, and a scream of pure, undiluted terror cut across the noise of the revelry with the awful finality of the fall of a guillotine blade.

On the Island of the Dead, the mist was thick, and visibility was reduced to a matter of only a few yards. To complicate things further, it was difficult to identify the direction from which the first scream had come. But by now, Bronson and Angela were surrounded by people in a hurry, and who seemed to be moving south, towards the centre of the island. So Bronson and Angela headed in the opposite direction, to where they thought the commotion had occurred.

Moving aside to avoid the sea of people rushing straight towards them, they threaded their way between the tombstones and, moments later, found themselves facing a group of men and women who were standing in a rough circle, staring at one of the larger tombs.

Bronson’s police training kicked in, despite the fact that he was about a thousand miles from his home beat. He switched to Italian and pulled out his British warrant card — he knew it would mean absolutely nothing to anybody there, but it would give him a thin veneer of authority while he found out what had so alarmed everyone in the cemetery.

‘Police. Let me through … Police officer,’ he kept repeating, waving the warrant card like a talisman as he pushed his way through the unmoving crowd, Angela following just a few feet behind him.

Almost reluctantly the people parted to allow him passage. Unusually for any group of Italians, they were almost silent, staring in fascination at something on the ground in front of them. And then Bronson reached the middle of the group, and could see precisely what had sparked the general exodus from the area.

The Festival of the Dead was in some ways a misnomer. The revellers who travelled to the cemetery were not there to celebrate the dead, but rather to celebrate the lives and memories of friends and relatives who had passed away. Absolutely the last thing they actually expected to see in the cemetery was a body. But that was the sight which now confronted Bronson.

And it wasn’t just any corpse.

‘Fascinating,’ Angela breathed as she stopped beside him and looked down at the tomb. ‘Though I can’t believe this was the cause of so much panic in the crowd.’

Bronson took a couple of steps forward to study the tomb.

It was clearly one of the older burial chambers in the cemetery, an oblong stone box about four feet high and topped by a flat stone slab. The sides were carved with symbols or scenes, but the old stone had weathered so much that it was difficult to make out exactly what was depicted, while the slab on top bore faint and virtually illegible marks — presumably an ancient inscription that gave the name and date of death of the occupant.

Bronson didn’t know exactly how it had happened, but one of the sides of the tomb had cracked into three pieces and then fallen out, and in doing so had dragged the upper slab of stone with it. That must have caused the sound they’d heard, he thought. And now, the previously sealed box was open to the elements, and the body inside exposed to view for the first time in what he guessed was at least a hundred years.

Unsurprisingly, the remains were mainly skeletal. Parts of the coffin had survived, but only as fragments of wood along both sides of the corpse. A few wisps of rotted cloth still clung to the long bones of the legs, and part of the rib cage was encased in leathery, dark brown skin. In short, the corpse looked almost exactly as one might expect a body to appear if it had been buried in a wooden coffin inside a sealed tomb for over a century. Except in two respects.

Above the rib cage the neck terminated in a single shattered vertebra. The head of the body which, like the rib cage, was still partially covered in skin, and even had a few tufts of white hair clinging to it, was positioned centrally between the bony feet. That was unusual enough in itself, but to add a further layer of the macabre to the scene, the mouth of the skull had been levered open and a thin half brick jammed firmly between the jaws.

For a few seconds, Bronson stared at the desiccated — and desecrated — corpse, then he glanced sideways at Angela. ‘What did you mean when you said “fascinating”?’ he asked.

‘I’ll explain later,’ she said. ‘This is something I’ve heard about and read about, but I never thought I’d actually get to see an example of it.’

She opened her handbag, pulled out a compact digital camera and started snapping pictures of the scene before them. She moved closer to the corpse, and took several shots of the severed neck and the head with its bizarre mutilation.