Devin avoided the well-worn footholds on the top. The arch of the foot and pebble-shaped toes were evident in the carved stone. Another lost mystery. Who stands at the top of a well? The lower sets were crude, for climbing. The rope burned his soft hands despite using every step. He hit bottom with a grunt and barked his scalp on a stone. He clutched his head and fell back against the wall, blinking, seeing nothing but darkness, no stars.
He clutched for the Xanax bottle he knew was in his tweed suit.
Once, during a lacrosse match, he’d bumped heads with a teammate so hard that he’d briefly gone blind. He panted, breaths echoing off the close walls of the pit. The dank heady scent now coppery with blood. When his vision returned, the opening above resembled a full moon.
“You okay?”
“Cut my head.” He pressed his palm to his scalp and felt blood pulse from the wound. Pattering on the floor like a leaky showerhead. “Need a bandage.”
Lani tossed down her bandanna. “Keep pressure on it and breathe slow. I’ll get the kit. I’m a medic for search and rescue.”
He wadded the fabric, gritted his teeth through the pain. The hooks dragged down his guts. He clenched his eyes shut, and red welled through the deep blue. The wind keened across the stones above, whirled down to tickle his hackles.
A long minute and Lani rappelled down, calves and hamstrings flexing. She squeezed down beside him with a penlight. “Let me check your pupils. I heard you whispering to yourself.” She took his head in her hands and swabbed the cut with alcohol which stung like a bastard. He grimaced into her shoulder, tasted her salt.
His father would faint at the sight of his own blood, and Devin had been terrified of inheriting the same unmanly affliction; the first time he skinned his knee crashing his bicycle, he’d been relieved, watching the blood well through the skin. His mother wasn’t home, so he cleaned it in the sink and picked the stones out with her fingernail scissors.
“Don’t think you need stitches,” Lani said, dabbing, penlight in hand. “But you should work topside. We’ll hoist you up.”
“I’m all right,” he said, knowing the blackout was a mild concussion, like it had been on the lacrosse field, but not wanting to lose face. He let her tie the rope around his hips and climbed his way out with Bracken holding the rope, braced against the well stones.
He drank a bottle of water. He said he’d work slow, lowering the bucket for Lani and sifting what she dug. Bracken did most of the work.
“Sending up,” Lani called, and Bracken pulled up the bucket, spread its contents on the sifter, and shook it as Devin picked through pebbles for chips of bone.
“We found the fetish,” Bracken said. “After we scoured pretty much everywhere, the doc walks out of her trailer with it. Must’ve had a brain fart.”
“What do you think of the site?” Devin asked, eyeing a shard that could’ve been a tooth, but was only quartz. He tossed it in the discard pile.
“I’m just a second-year student, but looks like sacrifice to me. Like when they got overpopulated, they came here and had a feast. The layers, we haven’t narrowed down the aging, but this wasn’t one big slaughter. The doc thinks they did this every few years, to cull, maybe.”
“Just the men.”
“Well, you know. You don’t need a lot of males to reproduce. Like drones in a beehive. You want more, for genetic diversity, but you don’t need that many of us.” He grinned. “My dad was just a sperm donor.”
“He left? I’m sorry.”
“No, nothing to be sorry about. He was a literal sperm donor. Moms said, why go to a bank when you can buy local? I’m the product of artisanal free-range man juice, from an athletic Silicon Valley tech guy. I saw him on weekends growing up. We still hang out, run together. Got a half marathon in New Orleans next month.”
Devin frowned, then counted how often he’d seen his own father, and said nothing.
“Hey, did you dream last night? Real weird, like?”
“I thought you did more than dream, the way she hangs on you. Lucky young sod.”
Bracken grinned and looked away. “It’s not like that.”
“We got something, Brack! Get the doc!” Lani’s voice echoed up from the pit.
Something turned out to be teeth. A crescent of them, from the lower jaw. Adriane was the best digger but disliked heights. Lani rigged her in the rope and they eased her down. She spent the rest of the day freeing a jawbone from the packed humus.
“This is the best preserved find yet,” Emma said, examining the mandible, wearing gloves. “We’ll have to take much more care in the well. Don’t want to risk stepping on anything. It’s too tight down there. We’ll rig a harness and work in shorter shifts.”
Adriane had bared the rest of the skull. Lani climbed down with a digital camera and showed them photos on its screen. Two eye sockets filled with rich earth, staring up from the pit.
Emma measured the jaw with a caliper. “Adult female.” The lower incisors were well-worn, as were the pointed canines. The molars were not. “I think we found her head.”
They celebrated with dinner on Devin’s expense card, at the local rathskeller. Roasted pig knuckle, wurst in curry sauce, local beer and wine. Devin drove them back to camp, where Adriane started a fire and they poured Scotch into coffee mugs.
They drank and huddled around the fire, warmed by the meal, the liquor, and the elation of the discovery.
“Looks like it was Kurgans after all,” Emma said. “Someone cut her head off and dumped it down a well.”
“And buried the rest of her with seven warriors.”
“Maybe she was defiled later. The dating’s not in.”
“That puts the damper on the mother goddess crap. Even guys with serious mommy issues don’t want to behead her,” Lani said.
Bracken grinned.
“Even if matriarchal prehistory is a crock, I’d be willing to give it a try,” Devin said. “You couldn’t muck it up much worse than we have.”
Emma shrugged. “History’s full of horrible women.”
“And that’s what we know,” Adriane said. “We tend to be left out of the record.”
“Countess Bathory,” Lani said. “Bathed in the blood of young girls, to stay young. Don’t get any ideas.”
Adriane huffed. “That’s a myth, but I might try some on my ashy elbows. German air is dry as hell.”
“Delphine LaLaurie,” Bracken said. “She was a serial killer in New Orleans. I’ve been to her house. She tortured her, uh, servants.” He looked into his cup.
“And we’re not so weak,” Emma said. “If women had an innate hatred of war and genocide, we would have stopped it.”
“They did in Lysistrata.”
“And Spartan women told their boys to come back with their shields, or carried on them.”
Devin tilted his head. “It’s nice to think about, anyway.”
“Of course it’s nice to imagine a polyamorous paradise,” Adriane said. “It’s only recently in most cultures that women have had any choice in their mates. Makes you wonder about sexual selection. If we’d have evolved differently, if parents didn’t choose their children’s mates for thousands of generations.”
“I was chosen,” Bracken said.
“We all know the story, turkey-baster boy.” Lani elbowed him.
“I’m more interested in what we’ve been learning by tracing mitochondrial DNA,” Emma said. “Sexual selection isn’t a hard science.”
“Speaking of hard science, I once heard a biologist say evolution selected the shape of the human penis, so it could scrape out a previous mate’s, uh, semen.” Bracken grinned into his cup.
“You’re done,” Emma said.
Lani snorted. “Whoever came up with that idea needs to study bonobos. They’ve got plenty of competition, and they’re hung like this.” She held out her pinky finger.
“And you’re done, too. Don’t need my students falling in a trench and breaking their neck. Not on my watch.”
Lani wandered off with Bracken, snorting and laughing, and Adriane retired to her tent. Emma permitted herself a last sip. “I can’t tell you what to do, but you shouldn’t drive tonight.”
“I wasn’t planning on it.”
Her eyes were hidden by the fire flicker on her glasses, but he could tell they held no welcome.
“I’ll nap it off. Spare a pillow?”
She smirked and rolled up her coat, left it on a rock.
Alone with the crackling fire, Devin imagined what it would be like to live in the village before the Kurgans wiped them out. Something he did out loud on his television program, narrating the low-budget reenactments. Explaining how though we might look the same as our forebears, the “yawning chasm of the ages” made us practically different species. Language separated us, but also beliefs lost to time.
The darkness hid terrors, and the night sky held a thousand eyes of jealous and ruthless gods who demanded sacrifice. Even the Christian one had asked that of Abraham, as a test. We sacrifice our children to different gods now.
Mammon, for instance. Devin had wanted the best for his children, but split with his ex over pushing them to compete to get into the city’s best pre-K programs. He’d recalled when his mother sat him down after two years in the magnet school. We expected more of you. Look at your father. You’re tearing his heart out.
He never wanted his children to feel how he had that day. Didn’t she think he could provide for their children? Let them live. You never know what might happen, his ex had said. Meaning he might die young of a heart attack like his father.
Devin had been on his first book tour. By the time his mother called, the old man was a buried artifact for future archaeologists to find. I didn’t want to upset you, now that you’ve finally found your way.
Devin snorted awake. The fire was reduced to embers. Laughter echoed from the dig. He buttoned his coat against the chill wind.
His head was fuzzy, his cock painfully erect. A carefree groan came from afar. He stepped closer, following the lines of cord to avoid a fall. The moon had lost a sliver and rode low in the sky. He’d been out for hours. And missed something good.
Boots in the dirt, socks as well. Bare footprints on the paths. He could use another hour of sleep, but a little voyeurism might perk him up for the drive home.
Lani would be on top, of course. Lean and tattooed. His cock led him like a dowsing rod.
No silhouettes writhed in the tents. The muted sounds came from below. His multitool had a small penlight, and he used the beam to follow the path through close dirt walls toward the well.
A low moan, pleasure with a hint of pain, from around the earthen corner. He leaned to see.
Instead of tan tattooed skin, pale flesh glowed from above the pit.
Emma frog-squatted on the edge of the well, bare feet planted in the footholds. Naked but for smudged handprints that marred her skin.
“Where are your glasses? You’ll fall in.”
“I’ve been in.” Her smile a wide drunken rictus, she rocked to a silent rhythm. Breathing in little huffs, wisps in the chill. He stepped closer.
She laughed at the tent in his pants. “So desperate. Just like you were then.”
“Hey. You wanted me.”
“Of course I did.”
She was in the most unflattering of positions, hunkered and leaning, drooping like those outrageous Venus fetishes. Her eyes slick little stones in the light. His hand crept like a spider, unbuckled his pants.
She beckoned him closer.
Her curls were untied, snaking over her shoulders. Closer, he saw the handprints weren’t dirt but smears of blood. Her handprints and others, patterned like cave pantings. Blood pattered into the pit from between her legs.
He gaped. She laughed her awkward little heave, and swung the chert knife. He stumbled back and twine snapped.
He hit the opposite edge of the earthen wall. He heard his leg snap, the blessed chill of shock blunting the agony as he crumpled into the trench. Alone with the wind’s keen and the white blur of the moon.
Feet slapped the dirt beside him. He blinked and the moon became Emma, in a crouch.
“I need help,” he croaked.
“Always what you need. Do you remember now?”
Sweating with Emma outside O’Dell’s office, watching through the frosted glass while the professor consoled Tara Branigan, their only competition. Tensing as the stoic valedictorian scurried out the door and down the hall as if wounded. Devin’s heart had pounded and he sank his fingers into Emma’s soft white forearms like clay.
Don’t fuck this up for me. I need this.
No tears. Her fists knotted in rage. Her shoes slapped the institutional gray floor and she fled. O’Dell squinted out the cracked door, waved him in with a conspiratorial smile. No Frizzell? Emotional girl.
“I’m sor—”
Emma cupped sticky fingers to his lips. “She’s a blood goddess. You fed her. Woke her.” She patted her belly, low. “She thanks you.”
He gripped her arm. “You will get me out of here!”
She stabbed the stone blade into the meat of his thumb. He tore it open yanking away, stared at the gaping red mouth in his skin.
“She showed me what was before. The Kurgans, and their mounds? They aren’t monuments to warriors.” Huff. “They’re wards, to keep things in. Her. Us.”
The multitool had landed just out of reach. He clawed for it, and she thumped his ruined leg. The pain wrenched his eyes shut.
My cattle you were, and so you shall return.
The blue-ochre witch from his dream spoke behind his eyes. He screamed. Blood washed down the eyeless face, and her shriek became a cackle.
“You need some of us to breed!”
Laughter from above. Lani and Adriane leered down with blood-slicked faces.
“She chose,” Lani said. “You’re meat.”
Bracken cowered at their feet, naked and stunned. A neat hole in his forehead trickled blood down the bridge of his nose.
“She says it’s better if you do it before puberty,” Adriane said. “Stone Age lobotomy.”
Emma gripped him by the hair and pressed the skull cracker to his temple.
Devin whimpered as the flaked stone razored into his flesh. “Tell me your name!”
“Mother,” Emma said, and swung the hammer stone.
S.J. ROZAN's work has won multiple awards, including the Edgar, Shamus, Anthony, Nero, Macavity, and the Japanese Maltese Falcon, and S.J. was recently given a Life Achievement Award by the Private Eye Writers of America. She's written thirteen books under her own name and two with Carlos Dews as the writing team of Sam Cabot, plus more than fifty short stories, and has edited two anthologies. S.J. was born in the Bronx and lives in lower Manhattan. Her newest book is Sam Cabot's Skin of the Wolf. www.sjrozan.net
Under the Wave off Kanagawa (Kanagawa oki nami ura), also known as the “Great Wave” by Katsushika Hokusai
THE GREAT WAVE
BY S.J. ROZAN
The water’s cool silk slipped past her shoulders, her breasts, her hips. Terence permitted her to swim whenever and for however long she wanted, in the tiled pool in the basement just outside her suite. He required her to swim nude, as she had done at the beginning, when she was here by choice and the smooth sluicing delight of her swims always brought her out joyful, aroused, and aching for him. Arousal, ache, certainly joy, were no more, but she was grateful for the sensation, however temporary, of fluid, enveloping protection.
She drew breath and dove. Powerful kicks and strong strokes propelled her through this underground underwater world, and though she still, always, felt a stab of despair when her fingers found the slick hard wall where the water ended, once she kicked off and turned she was again alone and almost free. Terence couldn’t swim. Her life, her body, the place she now lived, he had and would continue to invade; but in the water she could be without him. She knew he was sitting forward in his rattan chair, watching her,
and so when she resurfaced to swim laps she alternated the side of her breathing as she changed direction. The whole time she was in the pool she never saw him.
She swam as long as she could. He never hurried her. Some days she thought she could stay in the water forever, until night came and day again and night, until he grew weary and walked away, until he slowly rotted in place, until the walls of her luxurious prison crumbled and she stepped from the water into the sun.
Trying to make that longed-for absurdity come to life, she swam sometimes for hours. But eventually her arms would start to shake, her breathing became labored, and in the end she had to emerge. Always patiently waiting, Terence would enfold her in her oversize soft, thick robe. She’d fold her arms, hugging the robe’s warmth to herself as she walked, a gesture he’d always found alluring. He’d admire her supple form—he was generous with compliments—and lead her to the spacious subterranean suite in which she’d made her home for two years, three months, and eleven days.
No, of course: he’d made her home.
She’d lie down on the silk sheets. He’d lean over and gently kiss her.
She knew what to do: what they’d done when she first came here, when the dark pull of him was thrilling, when the danger and the lure, when fear and love, wore one face.
Isakawa said the same of the sea. If I could be elsewhere, I would not, he’d told her. But I am always afraid to be here.
So after her swims she made love with Terence, however and for however long he wanted.
At first she had refused. No: at first, when he’d locked the door and told her she couldn’t leave, an electric exhilaration raced through her. A new game, its imaginary stakes higher than they’d ever played for. The night he did that, their lovemaking was already finished. She’d thought they were both spent, but when he turned that lock, when he sat back down on the bed and gently, carefully explained that he could never lose her and so she must stay, she could feel her body flush, her skin begin to tingle. She played her role, he played his, and she reached heights that night she’d never known existed.
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