by Jack Ketchum
She knelt beside the girl’s bed and blew gently into her face. The eyelids fluttered.
“You awake?”
The girl slept on.
She watched her, thinking of the Greek boy on the dance floor as he’d tried to hold her, thinking how easy it was to get rid of him once she’d wanted to. 'You know what Greek boys like, don’t you?' she’d said, deadpan, and the boy thought he understood so he smiled knowingly and laughed and watched her as she nodded toward his friend at the table, who smiled too, and then she said, 'Am fucking. Go fuck yourselves. The two of you. I’ll watch.'
She smiled now. There wasn’t much worse you could say to a Greek. He’d wanted very much to hit her but he hadn’t. He hadn’t dared.
The Swedish girl’s breathing was shallow and even. She slept deeply. Lelia did not and was glad of it. What if someone came to you in the night? Robbed you? Touched you?
Like this.
She pressed her forefinger to the girl’s shoulder, rested it lightly there for a moment, then drew it down behind the shoulder blade across the rib cage and finally to the base of her breast. Then she stopped and looked at her. The face registered nothing.
She turned her hand palm upward and gently moved it down and with the back of her hand to the mattress drew the breast out toward her so that the weight of it rested in her hand. It was warm and slightly damp. The girl hadn’t moved. She looked at the nipple. It was large, a pale brown color, soft now.
She wondered how long it would get.
Let’s see.
She moved her thumb and forefinger together and gently turned. She felt the skin wither and tighten.
It got long. Very long.
There was a tiny sound, almost a purring in the girl’s throat and she saw the eyelids move in the side-to-side motion that told her the girl was dreaming. Lelia almost laughed aloud. The Swedish girl was having a little dream. She moved in closer so the girl could smell the scent of her, the fine dusting of expensive perfume.
Maybe she should lick it. Or bite.
See how it tasted.
But no.
Leave something, she thought, for later.
JORDAN THAYER CHASE
MYKENE
“Paracalo.”
He called the waiter and ordered another Metaxa, draining the glass in front of him. “Meh pagukia?" asked the man. With ice?
“Sketoh," said Chase. Add nothing.
There was a white elastic strip around the tablecloth holding it down against the evening wind and somebody had penciled in TOO MANY FOREIGNERS IN GREECE along the front of it. That was true enough, thought Chase, though whoever had written it was probably a tourist himself-the English was just too perfect. The sign above him, for instance, read RESTAURANT BAR HOMER. HERE WE HAVE GREEK SERVICE. ALL GRILLDED.
That was more like it.
He watched the waiter move off toward the bar.
He was drinking more than he should, he knew, three empty glasses lined up in front of him and he didn’t know why except that he needed it. The power of a place took a while to roll off you. Sometimes a long while.
He kept coming back to the candles.
He presumed they were left by an earlier tour group though he had seen no such tour group. And that only explained the least interesting thing about them.
How could he have missed fire?
He’d read somewhere that black holes in space had the capacity to suck in light like a vacuum cleaner but that was space and this was a cave in the countryside of Greece.
So how could he have missed them?
By the time they’d guttered out and his eyes finally adjusted to the dark he’d found himself alone in what turned out to be a roughly circular cavern about twenty-five feet deep by twenty feet wide with high pale limestone walls. For a while he’d inhabited the silence like a ghost.
Like a very humble ghost. There was awesome power in the place.
It calmed him.
Then it frightened him.
He’d felt it before. In Mexico once, and once in England. And worst of all on a foggy New England afternoon, the very last day of his childhood. Times he didn’t like to remember and wouldn’t remember now.
He felt too much. Too often.
Murder in the eyes of a man in the streets of Toronto. A hotel fire in San Francisco that killed two children and a fireman. The imminent deaths of his favorite aunt, a teacher in the eighth grade, his father.
Stop it, he thought.
It was always the same but always different too in the way that anything elemental was, like water in a stream or like fire. You recognized the familiar power. It was the configurations that surprised you.
He recognized the feelings too-the tuning-fork intensity, the sense of having access for a moment to some impossible vantage point where you could see worlds turning, growing green or barren, imploding or exploding, mountains formed and seas going dry. It was wonderful and terrifying. And it was meant to be watched with humility if it was meant to be watched at all.
Even the elation of it, even the joy, was painful. It could drive you crazy if you let it.
You had to lighten it, make it livable.
Like you’re doing now, he thought. Sitting here drinking.
So that in a way he’d been glad when the tourists arrived. They couldn’t see him. They’d stood in the post-and-lintel doorway and held their lighters and matches inside but they wouldn’t go in. Instead they’d done the sensible thing and gotten the hell out of there. He’d sat back on his heels and watched them, feeling like a spook, feeling almost like laughing out loud. They’d dissipated his tension and he was glad for that but he’d resented them too. Nothing spoke to them. Nothing ever would. He was alone in that. There was room to love this gift of his but room to hate it too. It defined him and made him one of a kind, and lonely.
There was another reason for resenting them too. The cave had broken off with him once they’d arrived, stopped communicating. He was jealous of that communication. It was what had called him here.
And now he’d have to go back again.
Which, he thought, is the main reason you’re drinking.
The waiter set down the Metaxa. Chase thanked him and raised the glass. The waiter nodded. The amber liquid felt hot and smooth.
He thought about going back in.
There were only two options, really. One was to wait until morning and beat the tourists but beat them early this time so that he’d have at least a half an hour or so before they arrived. It might be enough time.
The other was better, and more threatening. Even slightly embarrassing. Something a kid might do.
He could go tonight and jump the fence.
If he did he wouldn’t have to worry about tourists-just the police-but from what he’d seen police were in short supply here. He hadn’t seen a single uniform since arriving.
Still it was risky.
He supposed a Greek jail could be nasty. But his connections were international so that even in a worst-case scenario, jail wouldn’t be much of a problem for long. It wasn’t that. It was something much simpler.
It was night.
He’d be jumping the fence at night, walking the dromos alone, entering the tomb. The prospect worried him. Places got stronger at night, they often did. And in daylight, this one was strong enough.
He could still hear it humming like the droning of a thousand bees.
He’d see.
He’d have another Metaxa. Then he’d see.
You should call Elaine, he thought.
But you won’t. Not now. Not yet.
He lifted his drink and, impassive, watched his hand tremble. It wasn’t much to speak of, just a slight tremble sending honey-colored ripples in concentric circles over the surface of the brandy. It was enough to remind him though and to intrigue him. And he thought he knew what his decision would be.
LELIA
SANTORINI
She slept in the sun and dreamed that she was not one woman
, but three.
The first woman that she was stood first in a cornfield and then in the woods beneath a cypress tree and there were deer beside her and wild goats and in the tree above a lynx or a lion and all these things- cornfield, tree, animals-she blessed, and they blessed her.
The second woman lay peaceful and naked in full moonlight.
The third woman stood at a crossroads at dark of the moon and howling dogs surrounded her. She walked with the souls of the dead. And blessed nothing.
JORDAN THAYER CHASE
MYKENE
He paid the bill and walked up through the quiet town into the hills. There was a half moon and plenty of stars, leaching color from the landscape, turning it gray and white. The wind was gone. He heard only his own breathing and the scrape of shoe leather and the hiss of fabric on fabric-reassuring, personal sounds. He walked mechanically, thoughtlessly, his mind open and empty of fears and speculation.
To the left of the gate there was a gap between the fence and the pebbled road large enough for him to pass through. He wriggled under. He felt composed and ready. He dusted himself off, walked up the trail and turned and ahead of him was the long wide passageway and beyond that the mountain and the tomb. All of it pale and glowing.
For a moment he felt a sense of push and pull in equal measure, washing out from somewhere inside the mountain. He was excited now, eager to take what was given, all his earlier ambivalence put aside. He felt the energy of the place feeding him, searching him out and giving him instructions. Move slowly. Do not presume.
He stepped out onto the passageway.
The sounds began.
Low at first, building.
Finally, an electric jolt up his spine.
At first he thought of bats-then birds, the ones he’d seen this afternoon. But neither was right. Because birds just chattered and bats- what did bats do? Well, they did not do this. This was one voice, a single sound. And he couldn’t place it. He couldn't link it to bird or animal-there was something of both. And he kept thinking bats, bats, ridiculously, because he knew it was not bats, yet thinking that was all which allowed him to go on because he wasn’t afraid of bats and he was afraid of this.
This hissing. Howling. Screeching.
All of these together and building. Building continually as he walked slowly forward, slowly and without wanting to but without wanting to stop either, because the sound was so obviously a warning yet it called to him too. It beckoned.
He felt privileged, powerful, terrified.
Farther.
And now for a moment he did hear birds, but only the usual bright chirp of birds. Not this bizarre unearthly shrieking.
Then it was back, jarring him. blotting out all sounds not its own, louder and more violent the closer he came, like the hissing of a snake, the snarling of a huge cat, wildly feminine somehow though he knew the tomb to be a king’s. In the still night air it seemed impossibly loud and he was trembling, the fear in him boiling swiftly to the surface.
Go back to sleep, he thought. Whatever you are.
And then he was standing at the entrance, eyes probing the darkness while the screeching rose higher. Warnings, he thought. Portents. Signs. His throat was dry, his stomach churning. I must be crazy, he thought. There are no gods. No gods awake. He felt a white-hot flash of pure superstitious terror. He willed his legs to move. He took a single step inside.
And got his final warning.
The scream broke over him like an angry fist, a naked rush of power. He flinched. Then ducked, cringing, because out of the darkness something flew at him, he felt wings brush his forehead, graze his cheek. He stood frozen while claws and feathers swirled around him. Sparrows. Tiny sparrows at the call of something huge and inhuman that commanded him now to go, commanded him imperiously to go now so that he turned and did, the screeching voice behind him driving him back, burning at him like a cattle prod while the birds flew away over his head and he asked himself - Why? why all this? - until finally he stood at the entrance to the dromos where he had begun.
He turned and looked back, breathing hard, thinking - Whatever you want, brother - and something washed gently over him, a heavy wave of understanding.
He dropped to his knees.
***
In the shrieking dark, all sounds stopped together.
He closed his eyes.
The calm was more than calm. It was something like peace.
In the dark behind his eyes an image skittered into focus.
A man. Himself. Climbing a mountain. Glowing with an inner light. There were ruins at the top of the mountain and ruins all around him. Delos, he thought, though he had never been there and did not know the place.
The image changed.
It was a woman, or something half-woman, something amorphous and cruel, a scaled winged lion with the breasts and face of a woman- the contours of the face almost blank, hazy, shapeless, yet vaguely familiar to him. Her arms were raised in triumph.
The image shimmered, changed.
The face remained the same but now the body was black and wholly female except that where the hair would be-on the head, in the armpits, between the legs-snakes writhed and hissed. He shuddered. The woman’s eyes dripped blood.
It changed again.
Now the body was pale and soft and beautiful. It reached up naked for him out of a churning sea. He felt a pure cold blast of hatred buffet him like a foul wind and knew that this was the crudest image of all, and heard his own voice whisper You will die here. The image faded.
He opened his eyes.
It was over.
Kneeling there he could feel the air inside the tomb quiver like the wings of bees, pulsing outward.
He stood and walked to the gate. He did not look back. A breeze was up and the night was cool and lovely.
***
At the bottom of the mountain there were dogs barking.
Farther along cats hissed in a closed and silent taverna. He registered them merely as sounds, familiar and unimportant.
Days later he would realize that they were neither.
LELIA
SANTORINI
Ula or Mia-whatever her name was-was tied securely to the bed.
Naked.
It would be that much more distressing for her when they found her.
She wondered how long that would be. A day or so probably. Plenty of time.
She walked to the dresser where-finally-the Swedish girl had put away some of her clothes, opened the top drawer and pawed through the t-shirts and panties until she found what she was looking for. The girl was vain. The glasses were there but she refused to wear them. She was also, in her way, orderly. She had tucked the rent money for the two of them into her eyeglass case so that neither would be tempted to spend it. A child’s idea of order. Ultimately, very silly.
And very stupid to tell her about it.
So stupid she almost had to steal it. It was almost a point of honor.
She threw the glasses on the floor and heard them crack against the smooth concrete. She dug out the money and counted it. The girl was honest. It was all there-two thousand four hundred drachmas for three nights in the room, about twenty-four dollars American. It wasn’t much but that was not the point.
The point was that the girl was unbearably dumb. She’d decided that-and decided to steal from her-the day before yesterday on the black-sand beach at Perissa. The girl had allowed two German men to sit with them and buy them beers and the men were boring, stupid. They spoke no Swedish and little English. Yet the girl hadn’t bothered to discourage them.
Lelia had, but it hadn’t taken. How many times could you snub a man, ignore him, laugh at him even, before he got the message? Finally she could stand it no longer. She got up and said she was going for a walk and when the one with the bump on his nose and the languid smile said, 'Perhaps I too go with you she’d turned and whispered Perhaps you fucking die into his ear and that was the last she’d seen them. And that was when she decided to
take the girl’s money.'
There wasn’t much risk involved. The landlady had asked for only one passport and the Swedish girl had offered hers. The Swedish girl was very generous, very thoughtful, very nice.
Lelia had met virtually no one on the island and no one had her address or even her full name. Even the girl knew her only as Lelia. So there would be no tracing her. By the time they found the girl trussed and gagged her hydrofoil would be long gone-the landlady only came in to clean every other day-and nobody was going to try to locate her for twenty-four dollars anyway. Nobody cared about that kind of money.
Except the Swedish girl.
She knew the girl would care because the girl had confided in her. She was nearly broke. She was going to try to find work on the island. Waiting tables, maybe. Unfortunately she had no papers. It was hard to find work unless you had papers because it was illegal for a Greek to hire you. but it could be done. The girl was young and she guessed that to some she was attractive and given a little time, some bar or restaurant would hire her. High season was approaching and the police tended to look the other way when the islands were mobbed with tourists-it was too much trouble not to-so as long as you kept a low profile and did not attract attention, they left you alone.
Too bad. The girl was going to attract a lot of attention.
Tied naked to a bed with eight hundred drachmas in the pockets of her dirty jeans. Less than ten dollars. Less than the bill for the room.
A lot of attention.
Her stay in Greece was going to be a short one.
Little girl, she thought, you should pick your friends more carefully.
She was staring now, following her around the room as Lelia packed up the last of her things, dark eyes blazing. Lelia ignored her. There was a dirty sock in her mouth and two more held it firmly in place. She could yell all day at the top of her lungs and nobody was going to hear. Her wrists and ankles were already badly chafed from struggling against the nylons that tied her spread-eagled to the bed. She’d done her worst in that area-tried and failed. Obviously they’d hold.
