The Pantheon

by Amy Leigh Strickland

  “No sir,” Peter kept his head down.

  “Do you work ten-hour days of hard labor to pay for them?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I don’t want cold cereal for breakfast. I need a filling breakfast so I can go to work and earn the money for those damn eggs.”

  “You weren’t home,” Peter tried to explain, even though he knew he could only make it worse. “What was I supposed to do, read your mind?”

  Peter’s father struck him. He sometimes grabbed his son by the wrist and twisted when he wanted to make a point. Usually he just handed out cruel punishments. Peter couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually been hit by his father. The back of Mr. Hadley’s hand caught Peter’s cheekbone. His knuckles had blood on them, a mixture of his own and his son’s.

  Peter staggered back, dazed. Mr. Hadley knew when he did it that he’d gone too far but he wasn’t going to apologize for what he saw as tough discipline.

  “No more TV,” he finally grunted. “Go do your homework.”

  Peter didn’t tell him that he’d already done it. His father knew that. Seeing ghosts weren’t going to help him lead a violent rebellion against the patriarch. He knew who had the power in this household. Peter walked to his room and shut the door quietly.

  Peter dialed Penny. She wouldn’t answer. He put a pile of tissue on his cheek and held it there until the bleeding stopped. His eyelid had a pulse.

  Penny heard a cracking branch below her window. She had been in that odd state of half-sleep where she didn’t know if she’d just been thinking or sleeping afterward. She sat up and looked out the window. She climbed out of bed and went to it. The moon was full. Someone was climbing up the ironwood tree outside. She almost screamed but she saw it was Peter and threw open the window. Cold air hit her, waking her up completely. “What are you doing?” she hissed.

  “I want to talk,” Peter hung on the blue-gray branches. The clouds shifted, casting cool moonlight on his face. He was hurt. She couldn’t just leave him there.

  “Climb down, I’ll meet you outside.” Penny closed the window. She put tennis shoes and a coat on and headed outside. Peter was watching with his hands in his pockets.

  “What happened to your face?”

  “It’s nothing. I was clumsy.” He touched the spot where the skin was split and winced.

  “Oh, yeah, I’m sure that’s what happened.” She wondered if he’d been in a fight or if it had been his father again. Both seemed equally likely.

  “Why have you been avoiding me?” he asked.

  Penny dropped her gaze to the concrete and started walking down the street. Peter followed. When they reached the bike trail and she hadn’t yet answered, he grew impatient.

  “Did I do something wrong?” he pressed.

  “My mom doesn’t like you... well she thinks... she thinks you’re dangerous.”

  Peter turned that over in his head. Unlike Penny, he’d done his research. He couldn’t help but see Bernini’s sculpture of The Rape of Persephone in his head-- the terror in her eyes, the way the stone thigh looked like malleable flesh with Hades’ fingers pressed into it. The figures depicted in the Baroque sculpture looked nothing like Peter and Penny, but their spirit was nonetheless haunting.

  Peter searched for something to say. He needed her in his life. It was unhealthy, it was dependent, but he couldn’t stand on his own just yet. “Penny,” he cracked out, “you know I’d never hurt you.”

  “I don’t know what will happen to us when-- if we remember everything.”

  “I’m not going to change,” his voice got a little louder than he’d intended.

  “Maybe it’s who we already are.” Penny stared at him with those devastatingly innocent eyes. How could he ever hurt her? Peter couldn’t even sleep knowing she might be angry with him.

  “Penny, please don’t shut me out. I need you.” He grabbed her hand. She stopped walking.

  “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what? Don’t need you?”

  “Don’t place so much importance on me. I like you but I don’t want the pressure of being your reason to live, okay?” Her voice became sharp.

  “Penny,” he begged, “I love you.”

  “Stop it!” Her words shifted from sharp to shrill.

  “Stop it? I can’t!” he yelled right back at her.

  “I can’t see you. I have to go. My mom’s going to notice I’m gone.”

  “You’re going to ignore me because your mom doesn’t like me? That’s stupid.”

  “It’s not stupid,” she replied through gritted teeth.

  “Yes, it is.” He pulled her closer by her wrist. “You know it is. I love you, Penny.”

  She wished he would stop saying that. She yanked her arm away and started running. Peter chased after her. He wasn’t going to let her avoid him.

  She ran up the bike path, eager to get away. She didn’t know what she wanted. Part of her feared him, too, and when he said the things he just had, all it managed to do was confuse her.

  Peter caught up quickly. His hand clamped down on her shoulder. He overtook her. His feet got tangled in her own and they fell. Penny hit the paved trail hard. It knocked the breath out of her. Peter landed on top of her. He grabbed her wrists and held her there. “Talk to me,” he demanded.

  “Get off of me,” she fought against him. Penny wished she’d never gotten out of bed.

  “What are you really afraid of, huh?” he barked. “You don’t mind using me to talk to your dead daddy but you don’t dare get attached?”

  “Get off!” she repeated.

  “I love you,” he said slowly. He’d stopped shouting. Penny was confused by his change in demeanor. She stopped struggling and looked up at him.

  Peter kissed her. She tried to turn her head away but he grabbed her face and forced his lips on her. He’d craved this; his dreams were plagued by the need to feel her against him. She was the one person who could possibly make him feel alive, feel human.

  Human. Was he really hoping to gain humanity by destroying her? By hurting the only person he had ever loved? Peter saw that statue flash in the back of his mind. He remembered the earth opening up and swallowing them both. He remembered her broken whimpers. That wasn’t love. He didn’t want that again. He couldn’t force her to love him. He had already tried once.

  Peter pulled away and fell back on the blacktop. Penny scrambled to her feet. Peter just sat on the track, his head in his hands. His cheek throbbed. He’d been a monster. He was still a monster. Peter knew from this life that love suffocated in fear.

  “I’m sorry.” He began to weep.

  Penny had half a mind to leave him there. She started to go but she felt guilty. She went back to him and crouched by his side. “Are you okay?”

  Peter shook his head. He couldn’t look at her.

  “What happened to your face?”

  He swallowed. “My father hit me because I used the last two eggs.”

  Penny felt her heart clench. She’d grown up without a father and some days, like today, she resented her mother, but Celene was a good mother. She was just a little overprotective. She’d never hit her daughter. Penny didn’t know what had become of Mrs. Hadley, but she couldn’t imagine living in a home with one abusive parent and nobody else to turn to. She felt a pang of sympathy. It almost made her forgive his outburst. Almost.

  “I need to get the hell away from here,” he said. “I need to get away from him, from the Titans and all of it.”

  Peter looked up at her suddenly. “Come with me.” His dark eyes sparkled. It surprised Penny.

  “What?”

  “Somewhere. Miami. We’ll get lost, no Epimetheus or Prometheus or anyone. No fires and murders. I’m going. I’m going tonight!”

  “I can’t just leave, Peter.”

  “Sure you can,” he climbed to his feet.

  “Peter, I’m not even fifteen yet.”

  “I’m sixteen. I can work for us. We can blend into the scenery there. Y
ou could grow vegetables for us to eat. Just until they catch these guys.” He was speaking so fast. “I need to leave this town; I need to go now.”

  “Peter,” she scolded, “that’s insane. We can’t run away.”

  “Don’t make me go without you.”

  “How about you don’t abandon me here,” she said, turning it around on him. “Peter, my mother, the others... we can’t leave them. We can talk to someone, if you want, about getting you out of your home but... We could never survive on our own. We’re kids. We’re just kids.”

  Peter stared at her for a long time without saying anything. The nearby sounds of tree frogs chirping swelled to fill her ears in the silence. Finally he nodded. “Right. We should go home.”

  “Come on,” she said, taking his hand. Peter started walking.

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated after a minute of walking up the trail.

  “Let’s not talk about it,” Penny found it easier to forgive if she pretended it had never happened.

  “Okay.”

  There was silence once more. They had run a long way from her street. Penny turned and looked at Peter. “But just for the record, if you ever touch me like that again, I’ll shove an apple seed down your throat and sprout a tree.”

  Peter dropped her hand, shoving his fingers deep into his pockets. His body shook with nervous laughter. There was that dark side. Only he could bring it out in her.

  “Your lost friends are not dead, but gone before, advanced a stage or two upon that road which you must travel in the steps they trod.”

  -Aristophanes

  xviii.

  The deceased was a warrior, tall and tan.

  He was a Spartan who had died with honor,

  standing in battle to defend his freedom.

  A slave took his life.

  Hermes arrived at his side, floating over

  the corpse-littered site of the Persian assault.

  “They’ve burned you,” he explained, offering his hand,

  “You can go home now.”

  The Warrior took his hand and together

  they walked for miles in absolute silence.

  There as no conversation, just peaceful quiet.

  Not one man saw them.

  They arrived at the mouth of the hidden cave.

  Winding stairs spiraled into oblivion.

  “Down the steps you’ll enter the realm of Hades,”

  Hermes instructed.

  “You will first be punished for your mortal crimes,

  then leave Tartarus and drink from the Lethe

  to forget this life and prepare for the next.

  But first cross the Styx.

  “Do you have your fair to pay the ferryman?”

  The silent soldier opened his mouth to show

  a single gold coin that rested on his tongue:

  the toll for Charon.

  “Then may it be a safe and speedy journey.”

  He watched the warrior descend the staircase.

  The unending darkness devoured the man whole.

  He went to meet death.

  “Death is not the worst that can happen to men.”

  -Plato

  XVIII.

  Lewis’ eyes burned as he strained to see in the dark. It was so early that his body telling him to go back to sleep. It was so early that the automatic footlights on the path to the Wexler’s front door were still on. It was so early that the sun was not up at the moment. Lewis hated Zach.

  As soon as he crossed the threshold, a short, squat woman held up a tray of toast and juice. The Wexler’s hadn’t hired an attractive housekeeper since Teddy was born. “Oran’ juice?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Oran’ juice?” Her accent was quite thick. Lewis stood there for a minute, blinking at her.

  “Oh. Yeah. Orange juice. No, no thanks.”

  Teddy Wexler was leaning against the kitchen counter. Lewis’ eyes fell on him as he came down the hall. Teddy was nursing a large mug of coffee which, Lewis was certain, was spiked.

  “Your parents around?” Lewis kept his voice low.

  “Nah. They’re in Hawaii. On Business.”

  “Lucky bastards.”

  “Zach tell you what was going on?” Teddy put his mug down. “He just told me to be ready for guests and hung up. Like, why the hell aren’t we at Dr. Davis’ house?”

  “Too many cops.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Lewis didn’t have to explain. Zach came down the hall with a slice of toast and a glass of orange juice in hand. “Penny is missing. Dr. Davis called the police but she wants us to check it out. She’s worried Epimetheus is involved.”

  June followed, complaining about how fast Zach had driven. “We could have hit a tree and died, Zach.”

  “There’s nobody on the road this early,” he started to tune her out. There was a pause before Zach spoke again. “She called me at an ungodly hour. She’s hysterical.”

  “It’s still an ungodly hour, Lightning.”

  Zach ignored Lewis. “Dr. Davis woke up, thought she’d heard something, Penny wasn’t in bed. Nobody knows any more than that.”

  “Oh, and Peter won’t answer his cell,” June told Lewis. “We called his house, his dad was really upset that I woke him up, but Peter was gone too.”

  “Oh,” Teddy rolled his eyes, “they’re probably off somewhere locking lips.”

  June made a face. “I don’t want to think about that.”

  “No, if they were off making out I think she’d come home when her mom started calling,” Lewis said. As funny as the idea of awkward Peter having any kind of romantic life was, someone had to use their logic right now. “Besides I don’t think Penny’s into him that way.”

  “Oh?” Teddy raised an eyebrow.

  They heard Evan’s motorized bike stop outside. June let him in. He had a clunky radio in his hands. “What’s that?” June asked. It looked like it came from the eighties. It was, at the very least, pre-digital transition.

  “Radio scanner. I’ve been listening since Zach called. It picked up the police. Someone just talked to a bus driver who saw two teenagers crossing at the bike trail a couple of hours ago.”

  “Couple?” Zach asked. He came down the hall to meet Evan. “Just the two of them?”

  Evan nodded. “Girl: blonde, height around five feet. Boy: black hair, five ten to six feet, pale and skinny. Dressed in black. That’s them.”

  “Bike trail...” Zach repeated. “Why would they be so stupid to be out after dark? I told everyone to be careful.”

  “They used the buddy system?” Teddy offered with a shrug.

  “I can find out,” Lewis offered. “I wouldn’t mind missing morning classes. I’ll go check it out.” He zipped up his hooded sweatshirt, ready to go when given the order.

  Zach mulled it over for a minute, scratching the start of a beard. He hadn’t shaven yet. He nodded. “Yeah, go find them. Run the whole trail even if you have to follow it to the Miami end. Tell them to come home.”

  The rest of The Pantheon, Dr. Davis excluded, were just arriving. Lewis waved as he left the house and then bolted. With a whoosh of wind and a blur of green high tops, Lewis disappeared into the horizon.

  “Where’s he going?” Minnie asked. She was clutching a thermos of coffee with both hands.

  “One man search party,” Zach counted their heads. “Everyone else is okay, right?”

  “Yeah,” Nick said as he pushed past Zach to get inside where it was warm. “Wanna fill us in, boss man?”

  The bike trail went by the old Olympia Heights cemetery. Lewis, who was running at half speed to spare his favorite shoes, thought that this was a good place to look for Peter, so he skidded to a halt in front of the gates. The cemetery was closed but the large gate wasn’t locked. Lewis slipped in past the wrought iron bars, looking along the rows of old grave stones. Nobody had been buried here since the second World War. The grass was green and well taken care of, though spots of white Florid
a sand emerged around the edges of the headstones and filled in the letters on the foot stones.

  He spotted two figures sitting on the steps of a mausoleum. Lewis punched it full speed and was there to cut them off if they ran. They didn’t run, though. He found Peter and Penny, asleep and huddled together.

  “Wake up!” he shouted. Penny’s eyes opened slowly. Peter didn’t move. Lewis reached forward to shake him and saw that their hands were bound together. “Crap,” he said. They hadn’t been sleeping. They were unconscious. Lewis fell to his knees and started scrambling to untie them.

  “Where are we?” Penny asked. “Lewis?”

  “What happened to you guys?” he fought with a tight fraying knot. The fibers of the rope were sharp and gave Lewis splinters. One stabbed under his fingernail, causing him to curse loudly.

  “We were walking and then-- Lewis!” Penny suddenly shrieked. A human figured had just stepped out from behind the mausoleum. Penny’s warning came just as Lewis was clubbed on the back of the head with the handle of a black umbrella.

  Peter had stirred at the sound of her shriek. Their attacker was standing in a shadow, looking down into a large bag hanging at his side. He opened the bag. Peter grabbed Penny’s wrist and sprung to his feet, running down the stone steps. A second, taller man stepped out, his hands holding a ball of blazing fire. The flames obscured his face from view. He was laughing. His laughter was deep and dark, like a bonfire.

  “What do you want from us?” Penny asked.

  “Justice,” the man with the umbrella said. His voice sounded familiar.

  Peter suddenly felt like he was being crushed. Everything went black.

  Lewis’ mouth was dry. He sat up and waited for his eyes to focus. He guessed that the vision problems were related to the pounding in the back of his head.

  He could hear running water and the grass beneath him felt coarse and dry. His eyes finally adjusted. He was sitting in a field and he was dressed in a toga! Lewis looked down at his toes. His feet were strapped into leather sandals. His favorite sneakers were gone. Lewis could see the horizon on all sides and a stone temple straight ahead. Was this a dream?