Outcasts: Short Stories by Nick Wisseman

by Wisseman, Nick

  When the noon rush began, Aliah did her best to watch the lab door inconspicuously and count the conservators as they exited. It wasn’t hard; for once she was glad no one ever noticed her. Terry was the last to leave. After the head conservator joined her clique-of-the-moment in the break room, Aliah steeled herself and slipped into the lab. She felt incredibly nervous, but it helped that she didn’t have to overcome any locks; while getting into the anthropology wing took an electronic ID card, once inside, you had access to everything (except for the storage areas, which took a separate swipe).

  Of course, the open door also meant she wouldn’t have any warning if someone came into the lab before lunch was over. But that’s why she had an airtight alibi, right?

  Right…

  The bone bead was exactly where she’d seen it last. Thankfully—Aliah hadn’t thought through what her plan would be if the bead had been moved. But it was on the same table…and that meant it was moment-of-truth time.

  Biting her lip, Aliah looked around to make sure she was alone, turned back to the bead…and then looked around again. Cursing softly, she told herself to stop stalling, peeled off her right glove, and positioned the database sheets so her hand would be hidden from the door. Finally, with a shudder and a swallow, she reached out and touched the cylindrical bead again.

  The same chaos of rape, murder, and crucifixion immediately assailed her. But the images were stronger this time, lasting longer and hitting harder as Aliah made herself maintain contact. Other scenes started to filter in as well, memories of the young man pleading, yelling, taking a knife to himself…

  There were too many images coming now. Too many, too fast, too forcefully for her to process. Overwhelmed, Aliah tried to wrest control back from the bead by focusing on one scene. The murder had the most distinctive surroundings; with a supreme effort, she managed to pull the moment into the foreground of her vision and push aside everything else…

  …Between the folds of two enormous red curtains, a throng of people—European people—take their seats in a majestic theater. Most look jubilant, or drunk, or both, but a few seem ill at ease.

  Especially the dark-haired young man at the center of the scene. He stands on one side of the stage with six other soldiers, spaced at even intervals around…the old man. Whose back is covered by a flowing white cloak.

  Music sounds, and those in the audience who haven’t found a spot yet hurry to do so. The curtains open, and two stunningly large horses pull a god-like statue on a cart past the soldiers and onto the stage. Eleven more statues follow, and after a pause, a thirteenth arrives that looks like a younger version of the old man.

  Then the old man himself strides into the spotlight, motioning to the soldiers that they should stay where they are. Alone, he walks slowly, proudly into the main theater, to a roar of approval…

  As the young man tenses.

  He pulls a dagger from its sheath with a bandaged hand. Switches the blade to his good hand. Uses the bandaged hand again to finger something around his neck—the bone bead, strung on a necklace—nods at another of the soldiers, and runs.

  Past the other four soldiers.

  Onto the stage.

  And up behind the old man as the scene lurches forward.

  The crowd’s noise changes from adulation to alarm, and the old man begins to turn, his white cloak billowing around him in a slow arc. Just as the young man closes, something flashes on the old man’s chest. The young man pauses for a split-second, as if taken aback…But only for that split-second. Still in motion, he drives the dagger into the old man’s neck.

  Chaos erupts as the young man continues past his falling, spouting victim and charges to the other side of the stage, the bead necklace banging against his chest with every stride. None of the audience members starting to climb onto the stage get within arm’s reach, but heavy footfalls from behind indicate the pursuit is close and growing in numbers.

  The young man dashes through the theater’s private passages and out its rear entrance. Across the street, two horses are tied to a post with knots that look ready to give at the slightest provocation. The young man hurtles towards the closest mount, and—

  Trips on a root.

  He tumbles face-first and then scrambles to pull himself upright. But he’s not fast enough to avoid the spear whose blade suddenly protrudes from his chest and clatters against his necklace. Gasping, the young man manages to turn himself over as the blood pouring from his wound begins to obscure the scene. His killer—the other soldier he’d nodded to—wrenches out the spear for a second blow, and then everything fades, first to red, then to black…

  …Aliah pulled her hand from the bead in a daze, trembling with vicarious emotions. She’d never experienced anything so intense…But she still wasn’t any wiser as to what it all meant. Who was the young man? Who was the old man he’d killed? And why—

  Why was the splinter visible just below the surface of her right palm?

  She stared at the fragment in horror before instinctively trying to brush it off with her other hand. The splinter remained where it was for another moment, though, before swimming away again, deep enough into her arm that she couldn’t see it anymore.

  Aliah did her best to get her breathing under control. At least she hadn’t cried out this time; she was still alone. No one was coming to test the alibi now lying useless on the floor (where at some point, she’d dropped the database sheets). But if she hadn’t known better—and come to think of it, she really didn’t—Aliah would have said the splinter had been trying to reconnect with the bone bead, that the little sliver had migrated from her foot or wherever it had been hiding in her body to…say hello?

  Did it miss its larger self?

  And more importantly: what did it want from her?

  * * *

  Aliah spent the rest of lunch researching the bone bead as thoroughly as possible…while trying not to worry too much about the damage its splinter might be doing as it wandered through her veins and arteries.

  She started with the database, thinking it made sense to work from the most modern records on down. Searching for the object number inked onto the bead’s plain side brought up a discouragingly scanty file, however. It was as “bare-bones” as the records got, Aliah thought to herself with a weak smile. No picture, very little description, and a brief conservator’s note that the bead was believed to be “Greek in origin; possible animal sacrifice remnant.” There was also an uncertain sounding suggestion that the inscription translated to “Justice.”

  The old hardcopy ledgers weren’t much more helpful. Apparently the bead had been acquired in 1894, and that year’s ledgers—the museum’s first—were as short on details as they were brittle. But they did at least narrow the bead’s provenance to “possibly Macedonian.”

  The last source Aliah had time to consult before lunch ended and the department swung back into motion was the bead’s lot file. This folder had paper copies of every document related to the batch of artifacts the bead had arrived with: donation letters, receipts, labels from past exhibits. Lots of general information, but nothing specifically useful…Although it was interesting to know that the bead had been inducted as one of the thousands of artifacts left over from the 1893 World Columbian Exposition.

  Interesting, but not particularly meaningful.

  As lunch ended, Aliah headed to Anthropology’s main room feeling helpless. She’d learned a little, but not enough to have any idea what was really going on. And she had no clue where to look next. Maybe—

  She stopped short when she realized what Mary and Brianna—the two Chattiest Cathies in the department—were carrying as they gabbed: a large World Eaters poster board with the title “History’s Greatest Whodunit: The Murder of Philip II, Alexander the Great’s Father.” Below this text was a scene vaguely like what she’d witnessed less than an hour ago.

  No fucking way.

  * * *

  The other major discovery of the afternoon was that touching
any object, “artifact” or not, could now set off a surge of unwanted memories. Things that hadn’t been around for very long—like pens or coffee mugs—usually didn’t have anything more than indistinct flickers to relate, but enough items wanted to communicate vivid, emotional remembrances that Aliah took to wearing fresh gloves at all times to stay sane. It seemed like she was getting more sensitive, as if viewing the extended assassination scene had opened the floodgates for whatever this…ability…was. At least her clothes hadn’t shared in any traumatic incidents, she thought wryly during one of her calmer moments. Because then she’d be fighting the urge to strip naked with every second.

  And no one wanted to see that.

  But feeling collected enough to be self-deprecating was the exception rather than the rule; most of Aliah’s remaining shift was one big panicky haze, as she tried to do enough work to get by without risking another invasive flashback.

  Eventually, after what seemed like a three-day wait, the clocks read 4:30 and people started filing out. Aliah wasn’t the first to leave, but she was close to it. And she was the only one still wearing gloves, the blue disposable kind this time (with a box of back-ups in her bag). It would look weird on the train. But for once, she didn’t care what strangers might think of her. Her only objective right now was to get home…Get home and think.

  It took her awhile to focus when she finally made it to her apartment, though. A sort of depressed inertia set in as soon as Aliah closed her door and shut out the world for the day. But after twenty minutes of trying not to touch anything in her own home, she forced herself to get in front of the computer and start learning everything she could about Philip II…Especially how he died.

  Four hours later, after browsing what felt like hundreds of online articles and speculations, she had a basic story, a host of theories…and far more conflicting information and confusing names than she knew what to do with. To help get things straight in her head, Aliah did her best to summarize the essentials in her own words:

  THE CONTEXT: With his victory at the battle of Chaeronea in 338 BCE, Philip II of Macedon cemented his kingdom’s hegemony over the rest of Greece securely enough that he could begin turning his eyes east towards Persia. Two years later, he set this next expansion in motion by sending his most trusted generals into Asia Minor with an advance force of 10,000 troops. But before he could follow with the rest of his army, Philip was assassinated by Pausanias of Orestis, a member of his own bodyguard. Alexander the III, Philip’s son by his third wife Olympias, seized the throne amidst the ensuing turmoil. After consolidating his Greek holdings, he picked up his father’s plans of conquest and pushed them further than Philip had ever dreamed: through not just Persia, but Egypt and India over the span of a legendary ten years. History would later acknowledge these exploits by immortalizing him as “Alexander the Great.” The name may never have been earned, however, if his father hadn’t been killed when he was.

  THE SCENE: The assassination took place in the theater of Aegae—the ancient capital of Macedonia—where Philip and Olympias’ daughter was in the process of being married. For the celebration, Philip summoned foreign representatives from many of his subject and allied territories: much of the festivities were designed to emphasize his ascendant power. The highlight of this display was a procession through the theater at sunrise of the second day. Statues of the twelve Olympian gods were paraded into the building, followed by a similarly fashioned statue of Philip, and finally by Philip himself. The king entered alone, having warned his bodyguard to stay well back so he could demonstrate his supreme confidence in the safety of his own dominion. As the old man approached center stage to acknowledge the cheering crowd, Pausanias rushed forward and killed Philip from behind. Chaos erupted as three other members of the king’s bodyguard chased after the assassin, who almost made it to his waiting horses before tripping and being run through as he tried to stand. By the time the traitor’s body was brought to the main hall, Alexander was king, and Philip’s reign was over.

  THE THEORIES: The conspiracy theories that arose—

  Aliah stopped typing for a moment, wondering if the various claims about who’d masterminded the killing were even worth delving into. The only thing the speculations had in common was that they suffered from the same basic lack of reliable evidence: none of the contemporary accounts still existed (aside from Aristotle’s brief reference in his larger work on politics). Which meant almost everything was drawn from Greek and Roman sources written centuries after the fact. So none of it was verifiable.

  Except by her.

  But from what Aliah had already glimpsed, some of the musings about Pauasanias’s motives seemed true enough. And maybe more of them would bear out once she could make herself sit through another extended viewing or two…It was probably worth another page.

  THE THEORIES: The conspiracy theories that arose, both at the time of Philip’s murder and in the centuries since, fall more or less into five categories:

  – Personal revenge

  – Family infighting

  – Dynastic infighting

  – Greek politics

  – Persian politics

  PERSONAL REVENGE: If nothing else, most theories agree on Pausanias’s motives for killing Philip: jilted love and a sense of injustice. The main question is whether others manipulated these motives for their own ends. But the basics are as accepted as anything gets with this subject:

  Pausanias came to Philip’s court to be a royal page, a position bestowed on the sons of noble families the king wanted to keep in line (by taking what amounted to an honorary hostage). At some point after his arrival, Philip took Pausanias as a lover. It’s unclear how long this relationship lasted, but it seems to have gone on long enough for Pausanias to have been promoted to Philip’s personal bodyguard (the “somatophylakes”). Eventually, however, the king grew bored with the affair, and turned his affections to an even younger soldier. Spurned, Pausanias publicly confronted the new favorite and called him a whore. The accused took this blow to his reputation extremely hard, and after hinting at his despair to his friend Attalus—one of the generals Philip would soon send into Persia—the boy effectively committed suicide by fighting without trying to defend himself in the king’s next battle.

  When news of the younger soldier’s death reached the court, Attalus held Pausanias responsible. For vengeance’s sake, he got the king’s former lover drunk and then had him sexually assaulted. Once he’d recovered, Pausanias went to Philip seeking justice. But the old man was reluctant to move against Attalus, who was both a valued military leader and a relation by marriage. And the death of the king’s younger lover was surely still a sore point. So instead of rebuking Attalus, Philip tried to placate Pausanias by giving him a higher position in the somatophylakes.

  Pausanias seems to have taken the token gesture for what it was: twice spurned now, he redirected his enmity towards the king who kept rejecting him.

  FAMILY INFIGHTING: The generally accepted story that Pausanias tried to run towards two horses, though, and the “fact” that his pursuers killed him rather than bringing him in alive for questioning, leaves open the possibility that he didn’t act alone. Was he supposed to have had assistance from someone who thought better of committing regicide at the last second? Was that help one of the three other members of the bodyguard who killed him before he could implicate his accomplices and/or patrons? And why did a member of Philip’s personal bodyguard, who attended on the king’s person at all times, wait until a politically significant moment to make his move?

  The easiest answer to these types of questions is that Alexander, Olympias, or both engineered Philip’s assassination. Olympias’ marriage to Philip had never been a love-match, and well before that fateful day in the Aegean theater relations had turned to out-and-out hate. Things got so bad, in fact, that Philip repudiated his marriage to Olympias and cast doubt on whether he considered Alexander a legitimate heir. So did an intra-family power play result? Proponent
s of this theory point to Alexander’s messy purge of potential rivals in his pursuit of “justice” after the killing (which included the crucifixion of Pausanias’s corpse) and Olympias’ supposed glorification of Pausanias’s body and memory.

  DYNASTIC INFIGHTING: Other potential forces behind Philip’s assassination include almost any number of Macedonian factions who disapproved of the direction the kingdom was headed, or simply wanted a shift in power. These possible instigators include Antipatros, Philip’s chief advisor, who apparently resented the king’s recent alliances with generals like Attalus. Attalus himself has also come under suspicion.

  GREEK POLITICS: It’s also been supposed that one or several of the Greek city-states Philip made a point of subjugating were involved: having been crushed militarily at Chaeronea, entities like Athens may have sought more covert means of regaining their autonomy.

  PERSIAN POLITICS: Finally, some theories suggest that the Persian king, Darius III, arranged the assassination to disrupt Macedonia’s invasion of his country. Persian agents may have approached Pausanias directly or worked indirectly through other disaffected Greeks.

  But if this was the case, Persia’s gambit only won it a brief respite. It took Alexander two years to stabilize the kingdom he so abruptly inherited, but once he had, he turned his eyes back east.