Demogorgon

by Brian Lumley

  Then the seat-belt gave him trouble and an air-hostess had to show him how, and as for following life-jacket instructions as they were given just before take-off … Trace could only hope that the plane would stay in the air all the way to Rhodes. If not – well, he would have to be one of the first casualties.

  The beginning of the journey was not especially memorable: the take-off wasn’t as smooth as he thought it should be; ‘breakfast’ was pure plastic; even the duty-free whisky seemed to taste just a bit off, and the mixers weren’t right. But later, for consolation, there were wonderful views of the Alps as the plane soared effortlessly high above them, and fantastic glimpses of tiny turquoise, gold, azure and mother-of-pearl islands off the coast of Greece, in the Aegean, and down the Sporades to Rhodes itself.

  And then the landing, (better than the take-off) and as quickly as that the flight was over, leaving Trace wondering just exactly where almost four hours of time had gone to. Finally came the deplaning, the stepping forth into blinding sunlight and blasting heat. Trace half-shuttered his eyes and shrugged: well, this was what he’d come for, wasn’t it? Among other things …

  No tunnel here but metal steps down to the cracked concrete flags of the strip, and airport buildings a little less than impressive, where sweaty, tattily uniformed customs officials peered at passports, probably failed to understand, but stamped them anyway. And beyond the barriers:

  ‘Karpathos!’ called a plump, jowly girl in knee-length shorts, holding aloft an imperative mill-board. Her voice rose strident over the general babble of disembarking passengers. ‘All for Karpathos, to me!’

  ‘Heel, boy!’ thought Trace. ‘Sit! Roll over! GOOD dog!’ Balls to that! He wasn’t even about ready to be regimented. If he’d wanted that he could have joined the French Foreign Legion – or gone to a holiday camp in Torbay! But he went to her anyway, his jacket draped over his suitcase, heat sticking his shirt to his back.

  Three others were there before him, two men and a woman. He had seen them before (‘seen’, in the case of the two men, rather than noticed especially) at Gatwick and on the plane, but then he’d been far more interested in what was going on around him. In any case, they were simply three fellow passengers; though to tell the truth the woman, whose looks were really quite striking, had caught his eye more than once or twice. Now, however, he paid them more attention, and was pleased to note that all three seemed to be travelling separately. That is to say, the woman did not seem to be attached to either of the men.

  Of the woman:

  She was a green-eyed redhead, slim, tiny-waisted, maybe five feet six inches in height and beautifully proportioned. Her eyes were slightly tilted almonds, long-lashed, and she wore her hair forward, cut in a fringe over her eyes, and in two long plaits behind her elfin ears and forward to fall inside the fold of her shirt’s collar. She wore flat white shoes, blue slacks and a gauzy blue puff-sleeved shirt open to the beginning of the valley between her slightly loose and obviously unfettered breasts. She was dusky, looked half-oriental, half-Arab; there was mystery in her; Trace believed he’d never before seen anyone quite like her. And she was going to Karpathos.

  But so, too, were the two men. Of them:

  One was thirtyish, sallow, thin as a pole and balding, whose expensive clothes seemed ready to slide from him the moment he exhaled. His accent was strongly American and nasal, reminding Trace of a jingle he’d heard somewhere or other, designed (he understood) to illustrate the language of New York’s Bronx district:

  ‘Toity poiple boids, sittin’ on de coib,

  Choipin an’ a-boipin, an’ eatin’ doity woims!’

  Normally he’d find an accent like that charming and amusing, but somehow not from this fellow.

  The other man was short and fat, jowled like a bulldog, wheezy in his breathing and slow in his movements. He reminded Trace a lot of Sidney Greenstreet in those old black and white ‘tough dick’ gangster films. His hair was black, unruly, full of dandruff. He wore a silk handkerchief flopping three-quarters out of his breast pocket; his trousers were too tight and showed a lot of his socks; his shoes seemed tiny on feet far too small to adequately balance his lumbering body.

  While Trace had checked them over, unconsciously committing them to memory, the chubby travel agency rep had ticked their names off the list clipped to her mill-board. Trace had missed the names the men gave her, but he was all ears about the woman. Her name was Miss Amira (A-mee-rah) Halbstein. German? Trace would never have guessed it. Looking at her more closely, he saw that her nose was perhaps a fraction too large and very slightly humped, much like his own, in fact. Jewish? Hard to tell. He wasn’t, for sure!

  Then it was his turn. He mumbled his name, saw it struck through with a biro on the list. ‘Just the four of you, then,’ the rep smiled. ‘Well, you’ve all got seats on the Lindos coach, out there,’ and she pointed through the arrivals lounge windows to where coaches stood, waiting on the shimmering tarmac road. ‘We’ll drop you off at our transit hotel in Rhodes town for the night. A nice place but pretty basic – and it’s just for one night, of course.’

  ‘And tomorrow morning?’ Amira Halbstein asked, her voice softly husky – like the fuzz on a peach, Trace thought.

  ‘Tomorrow you’ll be called at 7:00,’ the rep answered. ‘You’ll breakfast at the hotel, if you require it. Transport: you can arrange transport individually, if you wish, but the cheapest – and friendliest way – would be to organize a taxi between you back to the airport. Whichever, just as long as you’re back here for 8:15, OK? As for tonight: you’ll find Rhodes town a wonderful place and very interesting. If you’ve been here before you’ll already know that. And if you haven’t … well, I won’t spoil it for you. Will you excuse me now?’ And off she strutted with her mill-board, calling, ‘Lindos? All for Lindos – to me, please. To me!’

  After a moment’s hesitation, merely glancing at each other, the two men picked up their cases and made for the glass doors – together? But the woman had three small cases and seemed to be having some difficulty with them. Trace said, ‘Can I help?’ and was surprised how deep his own voice sounded. His offer, however, had been spontaneous, genuine. He wasn’t simply trying it on.

  ‘Oh!’ she said, looking up at him. ‘Why, thank you. But I couldn’t help noticing your limp, Mr Trace, and – ’

  ‘That’s nothing,’ he said at once. ‘Nothing at all. I must’ve got cramp standing around so long.’ (Had he been limping? That damned left leg of his; his bloody ‘funny’ foot!) But how had she known his name? The list, of course. Stupid of him. But then again, that could mean she’d been as interested in his name as he’d been in hers. Things were really looking up.

  He picked up her third case (and found it light as a feather), led the way out of the lounge and to a coach with a sign for Lindos hanging from its door handle. Already the coach was filling up with what looked like a pretty decent, obviously excited bunch of holidaymakers. They were mainly Brits off the same plane as Trace, but there was also a handful of Germans and several Scandinavian types, even a French couple. Trace waited for the driver to stash all four cases away in the compartment under the bus, then turned to look for the girl. No sign of her …

  People were still boarding and it seemed to Trace he’d be wise to get aboard and grab a double seat. Harder than he’d thought, that last: all the doubles were taken, mainly by people on their own, with hand-luggage on the seats beside them. The two other men for Karpathos were seated in the back, each on opposite sides against the windows. They didn’t look at Trace where he stood peering about. In the end he chose a seat behind the driver, next to a small, middle-aged lady who smiled at him as he sat down beside her.

  And still no sign of Amira Halbstein.

  ‘She went back inside the arrivals lounge,’ informed the small woman beside Trace, touching his elbow.

  ‘Eh? Oh! Did she?’ (Was he that obvious?)

  ‘Yes. The attractive girl, I mean. Are you together?’

 
‘Er, no – I just helped her with her luggage, that’s all.’

  Trace half stood up, looked toward the arrivals lounge through the dusty window; and as the driver climbed aboard and started up the engine, so she came running, a carton of two hundred Greek cigarettes clutched in her hand. So that’s where she’d been: to buy smokes.

  As she came aboard Trace smiled at her but she hardly seemed to notice him, brushing past and taking a seat beside a florid German half-way down the coach.

  ‘Ah, well – and so much for that! thought Trace. Except he suspected he wouldn’t be giving in that easily.

  The trip into Rhodes took maybe twenty minutes, was completely uneventful in itself. Gazing over the top of the little woman’s head out of the window, Trace wasn’t much impressed. There seemed to be a lot of building going on: blocks of holiday flats going up, ghastly concrete things in the modern mode; and the locals looked a mainly dowdy lot, wandering about in their black shirts, black lace shawls, dark trousers and skirts. And as for the tourists – they were everywhere, in gaudy shorts and T-shirts, burned brown and often almost black by the sun.

  But as the bus sped through the town he began to catch sight of massive walls, Moorish buildings and minarets, and suddenly things looked better. He knew that Rhodes had a fabulous history, began to actually feel something of the antiquity of the place seeping in to him through the windows of the coach. Why, the entire island was history itself – yes! The Crusaders had landed here, and stayed; signs of their handiwork, the feel and atmosphere of their time and culture, were everywhere; the modern concrete was soon forgotten, couldn’t stand up before the stern reproval of ancient stone and towering fortifications.

  So that Trace very quickly fell into a sort of drowsy reverie – broken by the abrupt arrival of the coach at the hotel in a narrow street near the docks.

  The street was busy and the chubby agency rep got off first to usher her charges off the coach, up steps and into the hotel’s reception area. ‘Pretty basic,’ she’d called it, and Trace could see why. Back in England he’d give it two stars – maybe. But his room had a shower and a huge bed, and the windows were shuttered to keep out the sun and let in a cooling breeze off the sea, and after all it was only for one night.

  And what the hell! – from what he’d seen in the brochures, this was luxury compared with what he could expect on Karpathos.

  He showered, changed into a white shirt, faded fawn jeans and sandals, headed for the hotel bar. It was closed, or at least there didn’t seem to be anyone in attendance. ‘Shit!’ Trace muttered as he turned on his heel, intent on leaving the hotel and finding himself a quiet bar in the town.

  Except – there behind him stood Amira Halbstein. The sight of her stopped Trace dead in his tracks. He looked at her, at the bar with no one behind it, back at her. He hoped she hadn’t heard him swearing.

  She came forward into the barroom, smiled at him, said: ‘Did you want a drink? Me, too, before I eat. I’m told there are lots of good tavernas in town.’

  ‘Drinks are out, I’m afraid,’ Trace answered ruefully. ‘Here, anyway. Place looks deserted. No one at the desk, and no barman.’

  She laughed openly and Trace liked her laugh. ‘Who needs a barman? The Greeks are a very understanding race, Mr Trace.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Of course. Here, let me show you.’ She lifted the bar flap, stepped inside, took glasses from beneath the bar. ‘Yours is – ?’

  ‘A whisky, please, with a little ice – if there is any. But don’t you think this is a bit naughty?’

  Again that laugh as she made drinks, perched herself on a tall stool on her side of the bar, leaned forward to stare at Trace from where she propped her face in her palms. ‘Naughty? Not at all. I came down earlier and spoke to one of the staff. He said that if I wanted anything …’

  Trace nodded his understanding, sipped his drink appreciatively. ‘Ah, what it is to have a pretty face and figure, eh?’

  ‘Not at all,’ she answered coolly. ‘It’s like I said: they’re understanding, that’s all. And very accommodating.’

  She was used to flattery; Trace’s comment about her looks had passed right over her head, without touching her at all. It was an approach he’d avoid from now on. ‘Where were you thinking of eating?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, anywhere. A Greek salad, a glass of retsina, that will be sufficient. But I also want to walk a little. Somewhere in the Old Town, I think. I’m told it’s crowded with ghosts. Romance and magic and history rub shoulders here, you know.’

  He nodded. ‘I sensed that on the coach. So we’re both first timers, eh?’

  ‘In Rhodes? Yes. I’ve been to others of the Greek islands, but this is my first time here on Rhodes. Karpathos, too.’

  ‘Miss Halbstein, I have to warn you that I don’t speak Greek,’ Trace began, ‘in fact I don’t know very much about Greece or the islands at all, but – ’

  ‘– We’ll get by,’ she cut him off, smiling again. ‘I take it you’d like to be my escort?’

  ‘Well, since we’re both strangers here …’ He let the sentence hang there.

  ‘Very well, it’s settled,’ she shrugged. ‘Shall we have another drink first?’

  ‘No,’ Trace shook his head, unable to believe that it was this easy. ‘I mean, I don’t think so. Not here, anyway. But you can introduce me to retsina, if you like, when we find a place to eat.’

  ‘We’d better introduce ourselves first,’ she answered. ‘I’m – ’

  ‘Amira,’ he cut in, his turn to smile. ‘I know who you are – if not what.’

  The smile never strayed from her small, pleasing mouth, but he thought he saw her tilted eyes narrow just a fraction. ‘What I am? I don’t think I quite … ?’

  ‘Your nationality,’ he held the bar flap open as she came out from behind. ‘You embarked in England, but I’d guess you’re not English.’

  ‘No, I’m Israeli originally – but I was educated in England. See how I get about? Anyway, I can tell you all about me later, but what about you, Mr Trace?’

  ‘Call me Charlie,’ he responded at once.

  ‘Charles?’

  ‘No, it’s Charlie – to my friends, anyway.’

  ‘Charlie Trace, from London, England,’ she said as they left the bar, walked through the reception area and out into the bustling street. ‘Fine, so now we know each other.’

  In the street she unselfconsciously took Trace’s hand, which made him start just a little, but she didn’t seem to notice. ‘Where to?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, if we follow the waterfront we’ll be able to trace it back again later,’ she said, logically. ‘That way we won’t get lost. I suggest we get as far away from the hurly-burly as we can, and then just walk. City centres are far too noisy for me. And sooner or later we’re bound to stumble over a quiet little taverna.’

  In less than ten minutes they found a market, wandered between stalls selling fruit and vegetables – which Trace noted didn’t seem of especially high quality, except perhaps for the potatoes and melons, the latter being huge and glossy – and trinkets in bright, alleged ‘coral’, and fancy lace which old Greek ladies were fashioning right there and then, and ice cream, soft drinks, cigarettes and postcards. There was food, too: little shops round the outer ring of the stalls issued mouth-watering odours of spiced lamb and chicken sizzling over charcoal.

  Trace could have eaten right there and then, but not his companion. Still holding his hand, almost dragging him along behind her, she struck out uphill, along narrow, high-walled, winding streets badly in need of restoration, climbing away from the new and into the old. And she was quite right: here if anywhere romance and legend and the lore of the ages intermingled and lingered over; and as she finally slowed her pace and they walked side by side, there was little pressure to talk but simply a desire to soak up something of the timeless aura of the place.

  Here and there the beds of the narrow alleys had been concreted over, where watercourses had bee
n driven underground and now gurgled unseen. But in other places, where the streets were neatly cobbled and still in good repair, the original channels or gutters ran along the sides of the streets as of old, with tiny outlet holes, like mouseholes, jetting water from the gaunt stone houses along the sides. These were simply water channels, not sewers. Trace didn’t know what happened to the sewage here, but obviously it was dealt with adequately. In a place where the streets were crowded and mazy, winding under tottering stone arches and high walls that fought a desperate fight against the invading beams of sunlight, he might reasonably have expected to smell the natural stenches of life, but they were quite absent. Obviously the Greeks had found the answer to this problem a long time ago. Trace said as much to Amira.

  ‘Not only the Greeks,’ she answered, ‘though of course they’ve always been here, from classical times to the present. Can you imagine? But under all this rock and rubble and concrete the Italians found temples to Zeus, Athena Polias, Apollo? It’s thought that the Cretans were first here, three and a half thousand years ago, then the Mycenaeans from the Peloponnese. Probably the two races intermingled. Anyway, the peoples we know as the Mycenaeans are the same race as the warlike Achaeans. Rhodes was very prosperous under them; so says Homer, anyway, and Pindar. According to them Zeus loved the Rhodians. And the legends: did you know that Tlepo-lemos set off from here on his Trojan expedition? He took nine ships to Troy.’

  Trace listened, fascinated – and a little lost. He wasn’t much on world history, classical or otherwise. But that voice of hers: gold-dust blown in soft eddies from her pulsing throat. And he knew his fascination wasn’t at all historic.