May 15, 2022
It's a late Spring evening in Morales, cloudless and warm, and Jamie Carrera is having a good time.
She's sitting on Stella and Gino's patio; the couple recently moved into this new suburban home together and Jamie, eager to see what they made of it, came over for the house tour the first chance she got. Stella and Gino succeeded in turning the house into their own, she soon noticed as the two proudly showed off their hard work, and the end results are beyond awesome. Even the backyard around her, lush and filled with plants, is groomed to perfection. Jamie's certain her sister and future brother-in-law will be happy here. With that thought and the pleasant buzz of her second glass of red wine in her mind, Jamie's happy, too.
It's a really nice evening.
"So I'm interviewing this trailer park lady about her project, and the longer we're talking, the more I'm starting to think she's not actually trying to make an amateur horror movie, but rather, you know, a snuff film of sorts. And at first I was like, well, maybe that's just how things go in Appalachia. But then I didn't feel like taking the risk of potentially getting murdered on camera, so I noped the fuck out of there. Got the rest of my filming and research in the area done and steered clear of her for the rest of my stay."
Jamie's telling this to Gino alone, because he hasn't heard this story before. Which, given how wild and fascinating a story it is, is pretty much unacceptable. Stella, who has heard it far too often and therefore treats this particular near-death experience of Jamie's with vexation, decided that her latest rendition of the tale was the perfect moment to take a bathroom break.
Gino proves himself an excellent audience. Maybe the story takes him by surprise or maybe it's the alcohol, but he laughs, setting his glass on the table to avoid accidentally spilling his wine. Jamie likes Gino. He's a good guy, genuinely, always kind and showing interest in other people's lives. Even in all the weird shit Jamie encounters while making her videos.
(Though she supposes Gino's mother back in Italy is kind of into tarot, so perhaps he's used to a dash of strange in his life every once in a while).
So she'll forgive Gino for being a little boring here and there, with his always-colouring-between-the-lines attitude and his tedious job at that big pharmaceutical company of which Jamie always forgets the name no matter how hard she tries to remember. Stella really vibes with boring sometimes, so they're basically perfect for each other.
"Did you report her to the police?" Gino asks as he adjusts his glasses. Despite having spent nine years living, studying and working in the States, there's still a slight Italian lilt to his words. "I mean, whether she was up to no good or just strange, it may have been worth reporting, no?"
Jamie thinks about it for a second, trying to recall. She shrugs. "Oh, yeah, I did drop by the police station at the end of my stay to ask if they'd heard anything about her. Turns out she got arrested for tax fraud in the meantime, so..."
Gino finds this even funnier, laughing again and shaking his head. "How do you even find these people?"
Jamie doesn't, actually. They just seem to keep finding her. She's about to say so, but realises the question was probably more rhetorical than literal when Gino speaks up again before she has had a chance to reply.
"Listen," he says, "you may already have heard about this, and maybe you simply haven't done anything with it because of the pandemic, but there's an interesting place back home in Venice that would be right up your channel's alley. You should consider making a video about it sometime."
Jamie, always open to new ideas, lights up. "Do tell me more."
Gino obliges, launching into a story so morbidly intriguing it's a miracle Jamie didn't stumble across it before. He tells her about an island in the Venetian Lagoon with a history stretching back centuries—a history marked forever by disease, insanity, death. He tells her the island is supposedly so haunted, so full of spirits, that visiting it is prohibited by law. He tells her it's a wilderness now, not much more than a collection of ruined buildings nature reclaimed, but that the place's inaccessibility hasn't stopped the more adventurous types from checking it out, anyway.
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