Chapter1 Instead of an Introduction

This is my story, the story of a house, and since most houses are not so talkative, you probably guess I’m not a completely ordinary piece of real estate. I’m a house with thoughts and feelings. But how can this be, you’ll ask. Well...the truth is…I’m haunted. There you go. I’ve said it. I’m haunted, so if you have any qualms about reading the story of a real haunted house, you’ll do well to stop reading immediately. I mean it. Quit reading this second, for this book is literally stacked with supernatural events of every kind. Ghosts, vampires, demons, magically walking and talking skeletons.

However, if my condition is not something so repulsive to you, it means you have an open mind, and I can talk freely and honestly. How about that? You are still reading! I most definitely didn’t see that coming. HA, I’m joking. Of course I knew you’d stick around to read my exciting story. So since this is the case and you find the story of my life worth reading, I might as well tell you a bit of myself. For instance, you may be wondering how I became haunted. It’s not like any house can choose to become haunted just for the jest of it or as a viable career path. Isn’t it so?

I was built during the early nineteenth century by a viscount called Ernesto di Barbiere, who was incredibly proud of his well-known throughout Italy long bushy beard. He was one of the most wealthy and renowned noblemen in Italy. Some say he delved into piracy and other similar not so lawful activities. The fact remains he was rich and powerful, so when he met his much younger and more attractive spouse and asked for her hand in marriage, he was determined to charm her.

Unfortunately, love had very little to do with marrying someone back then. A young lady seldom had the luxury of falling in love with her husband before marrying him. She had her youth and beauty and a small dowry, and her husband had great fortune and power. It was a common understanding that in a successful, fruitful marriage, the man if nothing else, should be wealthy enough to support the whims of his wife and she had nothing more to do than to look and act agreeably according to the precepts of Italian nobility.

Since this was the case, the viscount decided to impress her by constructing a luxurious, comfortable country house where they could go to enjoy life throughout the hot summer months. He had many estates in other parts of the country, but this was a special gift to her. Much of the time, she came to reside in me with her lady friends. After all, she was still a very young lady who needed some leisure time away from her much older yet still handsome and healthy husband.

She saw him more as a father figure than a spouse, and since he knew that full well, he allowed her to spend her time with her friends, disregarding malicious gossip of both those of noble heritage and plain folks. The truth is that they had a valid reason to suspect the young lady was up to something. Many were sure that when she came to spend a couple of weeks in me, an ordinary country house back then, she was doing things her husband would disapprove of.

A certain man often came to dine with the young girl and her lady friends. He was mysterious and imposing, always wrapped in the same black cloak, hiding his true identity from the prying eyes of nosy neighbors. That tall man was a mystic well versed in the art of witchcraft and mysticism. The young lady had developed a somewhat unhealthy obsession with the bizarre, the mysterious, and the supernatural from a very young age. Unfortunately, it didn’t end well for her and led to her unfortunate demise and my equally unhappy predicament.

The mystic’s name was Rodolfo Migliore, and he was a truly despicably evil man. He would get to all sorts of bargains with the obscure and dangerous part of the spirit world to benefit in this material plane. When someone saw him, most often than not was overwhelmed by his dark aura. Even people considered incredibly logical and composed in their beliefs and reactions couldn’t help but immediately dislike this grim, unpleasant man and avoid him as much as possible.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case with young Signora di Barbiere. For a reason utterly incomprehensible to me, she seemed to be attracted to anything as dark and mysterious as a thirsty mosquito to a lit lamp. I have to attribute it to boredom. After all, there were only a few things a young lady could do to alleviate the mundane banality of a comfortable yet uninteresting life where creativity, originality, and sincerity were discarded as undesirable traits for any young damsel or lady in general.

Signora Di Barbiere had all sorts of unanswered questions of the deepest nature, such as: Are there jewelry stores in the afterlife? What about restaurants and sweet shops? What language do ghosts and spirits use to communicate Italian, English, Greek, or Chinese? Such deep but alas unanswerable questions had slowly begun to corrode her sanity of mind as a powerful acid slowly eating through all manner of obstacles and without a hope to get an honest reliable reply to the avalanche of mind-boggling existential enigmas, it would be impossible to go on enjoying free of worry and distress her comfortably luxurious but indeed most shallow and repetitive daily routine.

In that sense, it should not come as a surprise that she found such comfort in the imposing dark warlock, seemingly possessing the answer to every single one of those eternal enigmas and riddles causing her considerable existential anxiety and headache. After all, who would be resilient enough to survive such excruciating torment as an eternity without a jewelry store or deprived of a personal hairdresser?

Even though a heroic young woman, fearless before hardship and adversity, Signora di Barbiere wouldn’t have the tenacity to bear such an infernal afterlife. She sought constant reassurance from a mystic of a considerable caliber that she would be spared of such indignation and horror. To be fair, she had first picked the mind of the archdeacon of the closest parish. Yet, she had not received satisfactory assurance and was dismissed as a harebrained trout. So, she subsequently turned to dottore Ombroso, as the tall man preferred to be referred to.

Most of the time, il dottore met the young lady and her friends in my basement, which was not as run-down and neglected as it is today. Remember, I was a recently built luxurious residence back then, if I may say so myself. Even my basement was quite comfortable and not stuffed with junk and cluttered as I must admit it is nowadays. The ladies called it “Camera Magica”, "the magic room" because this was a place where they could delve into the supernatural to their heart’s content. However, intruding in the afterlife is not a harmless, safe hobby as you are about to read.

Oh, if only my young owner preferred bingo or tombola to mysticism, she’d probably have lived to be a ripe old woman enjoying the comfort of her riches. But then I wouldn’t be haunted and, consequently, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

So, to get to the juicy part, οne night, my young and pretty lady owner and her friends were assembled awaiting dottore Ombroso for an extraordinary, well-organized supernatural event. The summoning of a mighty spirit, the Roman emperor Augustus. This was decided when signorina Amenaide Grotto, a most trusted friend of Signora di Barbiere, expressed her interest in the time of decadent Rome. This, of course, was natural since many of us would like to know more about the actual history of our country from a real participant, a person that had witnessed it, thus learning the sordid details of it from the proverbial horse’s mouth so to say, instead of some dusty, dull volume of history with an endless recounting of dates and useless details no one is truly interested in.

The Ladies were not interested in the kind of information one could get half asleep listening to a history teacher, they were more interested in scandalous juicy gossip, the sort of things historians never include in their studies, the sordid and amusing details of daily life in decadent Rome, the discussions and events taking place behind closed doors.

The peculiar little quirks of the emperor’s wife, the delicacies they enjoyed the most, the size of queen Cleopatras’ feet, and the like. So who better than a great emperor of Rome, trapped as a spiritual fly in the magical web weaved by the spells of an insane mystic, answering the questions of some insanely bored and not too intelligent mortal girls.

The night of the unfortunate incident, which I consider the main cause of my current condition, was incredibly dark and ill-omened. The air was filled with the howling of the dogs the rustling of the leaves, and the occasional hooting of an elderly owl. The sky was dark as the moonlight could not pass through the thick veil of grayish clouds covering the surrounding land like the wings of a dark angel.

Dottore Ombroso and the ladies were gathered around the ebony table they had used for many other meetings with well-known deceased men and women of the past. I won’t bother to give a detailed description of those meetings since I’d rather stay precise and to the point.

il Dottore lit a white candle.

‘Now, dear ladies,’ he said in his usual slimy and dark tone of voice, hissing every word as a poisonous reptile, ‘remember what we’ve said: no prattling throughout the meeting will be tolerated. The great emperor Augustus has better things to do than listen to jibber-jabber. When we initiate our communication with the netherworld, keep your questions to the spirit short and to the point.’

‘You don’t have to say it twice, dottore.’ said Signora di Barbiere ‘Rest assured that we will be extremely polite to the emperor. We have prepared a list of questions beforehand for the sake of brevity, and we will restrict our interrogation solely to important subjects such as diet hygiene and some deliciously mouthwatering little gossip.’

‘That’s excellent,’ exclaimed the dark man nodding emphatically. ‘And what are those questions, if I may ask?’

‘Well… we thought it would be great to start the meeting with something simple yet interesting, such as the splendorous feasts of ancient Rome. How did Rome’s empress and the noble ladies managed to stay in shape? What were their favorite delicacies? That sort of thing.’

‘Not bad at all,’ giggled the unpleasant man, ‘What else?’

‘Well, it would be great to know how queen Cleopatra looked after herself. I’ve read in a book that she used to bathe in donkey milk. Perhaps she had other beauty secrets. As ladies, we would be most interested to know more about them.’

‘Absolutely not. The emperor would be incredibly offended if you asked him that. He wasn’t Cleopatra’s maid to know of such things.’

‘Oh yes, of course,’ replied Signora di Barbiere. ‘We most certainly wouldn’t want to get the great emperor upset. Perhaps if we had the chance to speak to queen Kleopatra herself, it would seem less awkward.’

‘That’s a whole other matter. We will discuss it further after the meeting with the Emperor. Let’s move on to the next question.’

‘Well…’ replied Signora di Barbiere ‘that’s all we’ve got, I’m afraid, Dottore.’

‘What? We are about to drag one of the Greatest Roman Emperors from the depths of the Abyss, and all you’ve managed to come up with is two measly little questions? That’s most unfortunate, signorina. Disappointing, to say the least.’

‘Oh...please, don’t get upset!’ she said. ‘I’m sure we will come up with all sorts of exciting new questions once the spirit of the great emperor honors us with its presence.’

He cleared his throat.

‘I’m sure you will,’ he replied. ‘So let’s not tarry. Of course, the emperor is dead, yet we are still alive, and our time in this mortal plane is limited. So, ladies, you know the way this works. Let us not go through the whole process again. We will sit and form a circle holding hands. Once we’ve summoned the spirit, under no circumstance are we to break the circle. If this happens, I cannot guarantee anyone’s safety. I trust you’ll keep that in mind through the whole process.’

‘We all know that, Dottore’ said Signora di Barbiere. ‘Rest assured. We’ll respect your instructions to the last detail.’

‘Oh yes,’ exclaimed awkwardly Signora Beato, a close friend of signora Di Barbiere.

The Doctor turned to her, briefly freezing her with his characteristic icy stare, meant to discourage every trace of spontaneity in the assembly of talkative ladies.

To be fair, in this particular case, he acted rather wisely. Signora Beato was especially talkative and often said the silliest things in the most ill-chosen circumstances making everyone feel awkward. She had done so repeatedly. For instance, at the end of Conte di Bastone’s funeral, instead of offering her condolences to the widow, she actually congratulated her. This, of course, was not due to malice, since malice requires some form of wit, but rather to blatant idiocy. This choice of words may seem a bit harsh, yet it is pretty accurate and justifiable, as I’m sure you’ll agree once you know all of the somewhat unfortunate events leading to the dire condition of my haunting. Not that I have much reason to complain. After all, being haunted has its perks and fun parts. For instance, I have gained amusing supernatural powers and abilities and formed exciting friendships. However, this was not the case from the start. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves now. It is not the time to talk about such things.

The face of the mystic looked even colder and more unpleasant than usual as he submerged into his inner darkness through some form of self hypnoses. His visage seemed pale and frightening in the night with lowered eyes and tight lips clasped together like a rotten clam’s top and bottom part. He seemed infernally unfeeling and cruel, with a face thin and drained of all life even if the mellow brightness of the candlelight slightly softened this stern and horrid look. The hen- ladies chanted, and the scene was not at all different from a witches’ convent gathered around their pot to spin and weave their strange magics covered by the deep darkness of a starless night.

After a while, this strange company comprised of the evil mystic Rodolfo Migliore the young yet already bored Signora di Barbiere and her “group of hens,” as I came to call her lady friends. It sounds rude, I know, but what one should call a group of irresponsible clucking and giggling wealthy ladies that consider the mysterious realm of the afterlife their private playground?

That fateful night, leading to my unfortunate haunting, the ladies could not stop their clucking. Some of them were making silly remarks that were most likely to relieve some of the tension they all felt. They all could sense something in the air, something sinister as the scent of something putrid rotting away in a moldy swamp. Well, this analogy is a bit lame, but I think you get my point. Something didn’t feel right. As if that wasn’t enough, a sudden thunderstorm made things worse. Yes, I know it sounds terribly cliché, but unfortunately, it is the truth. I would react the same way if I were reading all this without having witnessed them. Oh, what do you know? Surprise! A thunderstorm at a night when scary supernatural phenomena occur. (Yawn). I couldn’t agree more, but maybe there is a reason why most evil things occur before, during, or right after a thunderstorm. Nature senses evil forces and reacts to them the only way she can. With a cleansing rain and a bursting, almost explosive array of thunder and lightning, as any of us would burst into tears and maybe angry shouts when something in our lives feels wrong.