The Dead Travel Fast

by Nick Brown

  “And so he is.”

  She paused and spat on the ground twice.

  “An ancient Devil whose ways sometimes walk alongside ours. Certainly not the Devil that brought the killings. He, or something like him, has always been on this island. Still I wish you were not the man that silly girl chose; not because you have a bad heart but because death walks one pace behind you.”

  Theodrakis had put up with as much of this as he cared to.

  “Thank you, I know you are trying to be helpful, but no one knows better than me that death walks behind me. It walks behind me and in front of me and has ever since I set foot on this island. It’s why I’m here.”

  She screeched back at him,

  “Your death policeman, not any death, your death: a woman, a woman with dark hair needs it, it stands in her way.”

  He thought of Alekka, but why should she want him dead? He was about to ask her how she knew when he saw she was swaying on her feet. A viscous white film was spreading across her eyes. She made a sound like the mewling of a cat then in a strained voice rattled out,

  “And not here, somewhere else, colder and darker.”

  Now he was frightened: if this was an act, it was a very good one, but she hadn’t finished.

  “God be with us, how could I have missed it? It’s you, of course, it’s you watching!”

  He grabbed at her, but too late; she’d fainted, collapsing to the ground like a sack of rotting potatoes. He shouted for Hippolyta and checked to see if she was still breathing, then they carried her into the fetid kitchen and laid her on the ragged sofa in front of the blaring black and white television stuck on the same channel. Hippolyta fussed over her and Theodrakis went back outside; he needed to smoke. Eventually she came out.

  “She’s come round; I’ve put her to bed. What did you do to her?”

  He just shook his head. What could he say?

  In the night, after Hippolyta had gone to sleep with her grandmother, he lay awake on the lumpy sofa in the heat of the kitchen imagining lice and fleas crawling all over him. It was almost a relief to think about what tomorrow would bring and what he had to do. He played the crone’s words over and over in his head: was any of this real? Had she meant Alekka who would be with them on the site? What would he find and why was he here, when the policing of the whole island was now his responsibility? What did Vassilis expect of him and what would happen if he didn’t deliver?

  He set his phone to wake him before dawn but didn’t think he’d need it. Somehow he managed to grab snatches of fitful sleep. Sleep broken by noises, like the claws of large birds shifting and scraping on the corrugated iron roof.

  Chapter 22:

  Embodiment

  Tired, stiff and wretched he settled into the back seat of the taxi; the battery on his phone was flat. He should have checked in with Kostandin. He itched all over, probably psychosomatic but it felt like every micro-parasite on the island inhabited that sofa and had jumped ship to burrow under his skin. The birds were still on the roof, heavy and brooding; they watched as the taxi spluttered into life and moved off, then rose into the air and circled the shack before lazily following the car to ‘Olive Villas’. At the villas, they slotted into spaces left by the birds already roosting there.

  To his surprise Giles was waiting, holding a bulging plastic bag; he looked as bad as Theodrakis felt. Behind him was the woman, her long black hair hanging across her face. She was amused. Surprisingly, she indicated to Giles to sit in the front seat with the driver. Theodrakis waited for her to kiss Giles goodbye. She didn’t: to his horror she opened the back door and slid in next to him, close up invading his body space; she was enjoying this.

  “Ms Vanarvi, this is police business, a murder investigation, you’ll have to stay here.”

  “I don’t think so. This isn’t about murder, even though all through the night I could sense a death, maybe two, in the air.”

  “All the same, I must ask you to get out of the car.”

  “Why don’t you like me, pussycat? Most men find me beautiful. Giles here can’t get enough. Isn’t that right, lover?”

  Whatever reply Giles may have made was drowned out by her peal of laughter; she certainly didn’t look worn out like her baggy-eyed and pale partner. She looked as if she could barely repress excess vitality; she bordered on manic.

  “It’s nothing to do with liking you …”

  Her laugh cut him off.

  “But you don’t like me, do you? I could tell from the moment you saw me. I frighten you, don’t I? In fact I don’t think you like women at all, do you? Oh dear, perhaps we all frighten you; poor baby.”

  She laughed again then leaned forward to the front seat and wrapped her arms round Giles’s neck. When she spoke it was to Giles, but the meaning was meant for Theodrakis.

  “He doesn’t want me to come, honey. I don’t think he realises that if I don’t go then you don’t either. I don’t think he understands that there’s more knowledge and experience of this in my little finger than there is in the whole of his admittedly tiny little body. I don’t think he recognises that I am the one who has been sent here to deal with this, not him. I don’t think he realises who I am and what I do.”

  The voice, playful at the beginning of the speech, was harsh and malevolent by the end. He couldn’t think of a reply; it was like sitting mute in front of Adamidis again, drained and powerless. A bad day couldn’t have started worse: what would be the end? What had he set running?

  The taxi crawled up the mountain as the sun rose over the vampire village of Spatherai and transformed Mount Kerkis from dark violet to dazzling honey. By the time they reached the track leading to the site, it was already too hot. George the driver wouldn’t take them the whole way.

  “This is as far as I go, ring when you want picking up. I will collect you here, no closer.”

  The car turned and drove off. Theodrakis could see George touching the statue of the Virgin hanging from the mirror. Giles was behind Claire, who appeared to know the way. He turned and followed, his shoes kicking up clouds of dust from the track. It was too dry; the other side of the island fires had broken out and he’d seen on Yaya’s TV this area was on red fire alert.

  The birds were here already, scattered about perched on rocks and humps. The three oldest occupied the desiccated limbs of the dead stump of oak overlooking the burial. He heard a car behind him pull up sharply and Alekka got out. He turned to greet her, but might as well not have bothered; her anxious eyes were focussed only on Claire.

  Alekka had been trying to contact Steve and locate Antonis but managed neither; she’d wanted to be first on site but things were unravelling too fast. The tryst with Steve had backfired. Instead of controlling him, it re-awakened emotions from somewhere long in her past that had lain dormant over time. When she had tried to help Antonis to remember what he was and function as programmed he’d not responded; just replied with a sardonic grin on his face, “The laws of entropy are running and can’t be reversed.”

  He was right but it shouldn’t be so soon, this hadn’t been predicted. Yet it was clear to her that when they dug that thing up at Skendleby they’d released powers even Vassilis couldn’t anticipate. The laws of time and space were warping and the arrival of the woman was the catalyst, quickening everything. She should have known when she began to entertain feelings for Steve that she was dissolving.

  She understood eventually she and Antonis would decay and have to be replaced; but not so soon, and certainly not in this cycle. Father John was affected, he also was fading too rapidly; she sensed he was near but couldn’t see him. Things were falling apart, the order was changing. The birds sensed it: the old power had awoken.

  The hardest thing was the return of feeling: it robbed her of the ability to act logically. Apart from a brief starburst of happiness, she knew only the morbid sadness of doomed love and paralysing fear. Now the epicentre of that fear was standing a few yards away wearing that cruel mocking smile that filled he
r dreams. She felt like Hector standing before Achilles and seeing nothing but inescapable death in his eyes.

  “Alekka, did you hear?”

  The voice pulled her out of her daze; it was the Englishman, Giles.

  “Sorry, I was thinking.”

  “I said, do you know where Steve is? I can’t get hold of him, he’s not answering his phone. I thought he might be with you.”

  She’d hoped Giles would tell her where he was, perhaps he was dead; perhaps Antonis had killed him like he’d threatened to. No, she’d have felt that. The witch must have put the fear of the Devil into him. She was shivered by the sudden premonition she’d never see Steve again. Giles was muttering,

  “He was meant to do this, he‘d been working on this site, he knew what to look for, not me, it’s not fair.”

  Invoking the metaphysics of fairness was so typical of everything weak about men, it made her laugh and regained her some self-control.

  “So, what are you going to do? Curl up in a ball like a little baby and suck your thumb?”

  She saw the look of shock on his face and a trace of anger: good, that was better.

  “No, of course not, but I need a better idea of what I’m supposed to be looking for.”

  “You will know it when you see it.”

  The witch Claire had wandered off, why? Surely this was what she’d come for so why disappear now? It made no sense.

  “Ms Vassilis, I would like to ask a couple of questions before we start.”

  Theodrakis the policeman: where did he stand? Vassilis had told her he was certain he was an important piece of the jigsaw so why had he brought the witch with him, why bring the one who could doom them all? She tried to look into his mind to work out what he wanted but only got a vague sense of unease and physical discomfort; so she was right, her powers were diminishing quickly. Soon she would have no advantage over them. It must have started when she began to love Steve and her body temperature returned. She welcomed this at first. How stupid she had become. But still there was something in the policeman she was inclined to trust and he was far stronger than he made out. He was standing next to her now; she could see insect bites on his face he was scratching at.

  “What are we meant to do now?”

  “Why did you bring that woman?”

  “I had no choice. Look, there’s something about her. Something frightening, although Giles thinks she’s perfect: she threatened me in the car and he didn’t notice, thought she was joking.”

  “Of course; Steve too thinks she is wonderful, I think there is some glamour she covers herself with that people see and love.”

  “Then why doesn’t it work on us?”

  “Exactly: perhaps you now begin to see what you are. I will explain later. Giles is coming over, you stay with him if the woman comes back I will try to lead her off. You make sure you get hold of it when we find it: don’t let him touch it for more than a few seconds. Get it off him; put it in a bag hold the bag by the handle away from your body: it will damage you. Ah, hello Giles, so you have decided to help us after all; good, you will find the tools you need in the trunk of my car, it’s open.”

  Giles sloped off looking confused and hurt. Theodrakis took her arm.

  “Don’t be too hard on him. There’s more to him than you think, he’s suffered a great deal and we may need him in the future.”

  Alekka noticed the use of the collective pronoun; it made her feel better.

  “Theodrakis, when you find it you must take it to Vassilis but you must not give it to him, let him direct you in what to do with it. Do exactly what he says but do not let him touch it, even if he asks or threatens. If you gave it to him you would bring disaster on him, us and on people and life forms you could not even dream of.”

  Theodrakis opened his mouth to ask her what she meant but Giles was back.

  “OK, I’ll dig but you need to direct.”

  Alekka nodded and they followed her to the site. Even to her untrained eye it was obvious it had already been sifted through more than once and Giles’s first words confirmed this.

  “The upper levels have been turned over since I was last here; look, there’s material from different levels and cultures all mixed up.”

  Theodrakis asked,

  “So it’s gone then?”

  “Not necessarily, it could’ve been buried deeper. Whoever’s been looking was rushed. Steve didn’t find anything and didn’t stick around long enough to do a proper job, and from the look of this whoever else has tried just hacked it about.”

  “So someone got here before Steve and took it?”

  “I’m not sure if they got it. They made so much mess they could have just made it more difficult for themselves; but they got here before Steve, look you can still see some of his trowel work over the mess. Could be that what we want is further down.”

  He looked at Alekka.

  “What am I looking for and where is it supposed to be?”

  “A sealed lead casket somewhere down under an ancient burial urn.”

  “OK, I guess this is the urn, looks like a secondary Neolithic burial. I’m not sure anyone got underneath it though. Could you tell me if …”

  He never finished the question and Alekka never got to answer it.

  “Hiyya, honey, still busy with your buckets and spades?”

  There was a peal of laughter and Claire was walking towards them. Alekka looked at Theodrakis and walked across the dry-burnt earth to intercept her.

  Theodrakis saw desperation and a plea in the look; he watched her walk away, long legged and beautiful, to meet Claire. What a great gift Steve let slip. The two women stood a few paces apart, like Homeric heroes before single combat, then walked off towards the high cliffs above the sea. Theodrakis felt a terrible stab of anxiety.

  He spent the next two hours pacing round the pit where Giles worked; the man was more skilled than he’d assumed, working down in a methodical manner, even commenting on artefacts of significance he found as worked the layers. Giles’s academic interest irritated Theodrakis intensely: he wanted this business finished so he could get away from this awful place. Giles’s last comment killed all hope.

  “Sorry, it’s not here.”

  “How can you be sure? Go down further.”

  “There’s no point. I’ve reached an undisturbed level.”

  “So?”

  “If it’s undisturbed then it’s not been touched since it was laid down. It’s natural, not touched by humans, it’s thousands of years ago, it’s an event horizon. Everything above has been sifted. So unless this thing was hidden about two hundred and fifty thousand years before the Neolithic, which it wasn’t, then it’s gone.”

  Theodrakis felt a rush of misery wash through him; he shambled across to the pit and sat next to the sweating Giles on the lip of the excavation. He wished Alekka were here, he wanted Hippolyta. Athens felt so far away now, might as well be on another planet, another universe.

  They sat next to each other in silence. Theodrakis had watched some time ago as the birds had lifted from their perches and flown towards the sea. Almost as if they knew how the search would end before Giles did, or maybe they were needed somewhere else. The silence was total.

  Then a woman’s voice from close by.

  “Someone needs to teach Steve how to pick his girlfriends better, they get worse; if it’s possible to be worse than a possessed psychopathic murderer.”

  There was a gush of silvery laughter then,

  “But this one’s right off the scale, a real lulu.”

  Theodrakis saw the look of pleasure and relief on Giles’s face as he climbed to his feet to rush towards Claire. He watched him run across the burnt ground towards her, his feet kicking up dust. She waited for him on the spot she had met Alekka. She looked vital, bursting with life and very beautiful. She folded Giles in her arms, her head nestling on his shoulder, and said loud enough for Theodrakis to hear,

  “Whoa, steady on lover boy, you’ll have to wai
t for that till we get back to the apartment.”

  Then the laugh again, sounding triumphant this time. She spoke to Giles but her eyes never left Theodrakis. She hadn’t even bothered to ask if they’d found it, she was taunting him and loving it. Eventually, feeling like Priam begging Achilles for the body of his dead son, he forced out the question,

  “Where’s Alekka?”

  “Oh, she decided to go swimming.”

  Again, the pealing laughter.

  Chapter 23:

  The View From the Cliff

  Alekka felt her legs trembling as she walked across dusty scorched earth towards the woman; her throat was dry and in her memory she recalled that before the change this feeling had been called fear. To experience feeling again was disorienting, it subverted logic and circumscribed action. Time was running out. The creature Claire looked completely in control: standing relaxed, chewing at a grass stalk, a mocking smile playing across her lips. She was wearing a short summer dress with nothing underneath, brazen, lascivious and cruel, yet Giles, Steve and the men in the village saw her as perfect.

  “Claire, I thought you might like to walk. I can show you some interesting and beautiful things.”

  Claire laughed and Alekka knew she was enjoying this, actually found it funny.

  “Come on Alekka, you must be able to come up with something better than that. All you want is to get me away from that pit where they’re wasting their time.”

  She laughed again showing two rows of perfectly white, small, sharp teeth.

  “No, I mean it it’s so boring over there and I would like some company and perhaps you can tell me some things about Steve.”

  “Oh I could tell you some things about Steve alright, honey. In fact I can tell you everything about Steve, but I don’t think you’d like the most recent bits.”

  Alekka shivered; what could she know? Did she know where he was? She lowered her eyes from Claire’s gaze, intimidated; perhaps she should go back, she couldn’t deal with this woman. The birds were following but keeping their distance as if they too feared. Vassilis had miscalculated: this was something much more powerful than he had reckoned. She needed to get away from here, this had been a mistake. Then, behind Claire, in the mid distance, a faint impression of Father John materialised: insubstantial but knowable. He gestured towards her, indicating the path leading to her special place above the sea. If he were here and instructing her then maybe it would work out. As she was thinking this he evaporated into the heat haze, but any indecision was pre-empted by Claire.