by Amy Cross
***
“Your grandmother is dying.”
Doctor Young stood in the doorway and watched as Ephram set some cans of beans on a shelf. The old man glanced over at him, but he swiftly resumed his task.
“She has been dying for forty years,” he muttered eventually. “As long as I remember. And complaining about it too. My God, that woman has turned complaining into an art-form.”
“This time she's actually dying,” Doctor Young countered. “She's getting weaker by the day, and I suspect her internal bleeding will only worsen over the next few weeks. There's nothing I can do to help her. It happens to us all in the end. Well, most of us.”
“When is Alistair coming back?”
“Doctor Burns? I have no idea.”
“He knows what he's doing.”
“And I don't?”
“He is her doctor,” Ephram replied, as he finished stacking the beans and began to flatten the cardboard box in which they'd been delivered. “He knows her.”
“I know her,” Doctor Young pointed out. “I know the human body. They're all more or less the same. I'm afraid that none of us are special snowflakes, Mr. Kazakos. We all have the same bits plugged into the same other bits.”
“My grandmother has been dying since I was a child,” Ephram continued. “She has taken to her bed so often, she might as well just live there. There is always something wrong with her. Do you know when I would be truly worried? The day she got up, came downstairs and declared herself to be fighting fit and healthy. Then I would be concerned that something was wrong.”
“You're in denial,” Doctor Young replied as he made his way over to the door. “Like all children, you think of your forebears as having superhuman abilities to dodge death. Well, not all children, but most.” He opened the door, before turning back to Ephram. “It gives me no pleasure to say this, but your grandmother is going to die very soon. It doesn't matter what you or I say. Her body is failing, and everyone has to die eventually. I remember when my mother died. She was all I had, really, and I couldn't believe that the world could be so cruel.”
“How did she die?” Ephram asked.
“She was murdered.”
“I'm sorry to hear that.”
“I'm over it now. I watched the whole thing happen. I was just a child at the time, so my memory is rather vague. The killer was going to do the same to me, but he chose to spare my life. I'm eternally grateful.” He paused. “But perhaps I've said too much. My mother was the victim of a horrifically violent attack when she was in the prime of her life. Your mother, by contrast, has lived for a century and is now coming to her natural endpoint. You're lucky that you've had her around for so long, but it's time to grow up.”
“You're telling me to grow up?”
“I am. It's not my fault if you have no children of your own, no-one to continue your family once the older generation has expired. Once she's gone, you're going to be all alone in the world, and I'm afraid you have only yourself to blame.”
With that, Doctor Young headed out of the shop and made his way to the street. He couldn't help but feel a little satisfied by his morning's work, and he still had several patients waiting for him at the surgery. Each of them would have some sickness, some disease for him to exploit, and the anticipation of a little cruelty put a spring in his step as he walked away from the store. He could feel his father's temperament rumbling in his chest, and he liked the sensation.
V
“It goes on forever,” Didi muttered as the three women continued to make their way along the stone corridor. “If I knew there was gonna be so much walking involved, I think I'd have stayed home.”
“Why did you follow us?” Kate asked, leading the group and using her torch to light the way.
“I told you. I saw the pair of you heading out of the mansion, and I figured you were up to something. That, and I wasn't really feeling much like another pool day. Edgar's been in a foul mood lately, so I want to make him miss me. A girl's gotta cultivate an air of mystery, hasn't she?”
“You know no-one's buying the act,” Kate added.
“What act?”
“Are you buying the act, Alice?”
“Act?” Alice seemed a little more hesitant. “Oh, well... No, I mean... It doesn't quite make sense.”
“The brain-dead bimbo act,” Kate continued. “You might have got Edgar fooled, Didi, but I can see right through you. No matter how hard you try to act like an idiot, I can tell there's something going on deep down. Picking that lock only confirmed it all.”
“Well, aren't you perceptive, huh?” Didi replied.
“So what's the real deal?” Kate asked. “At first I assumed you were putting on an act in order to get Edgar on your side, but now I'm pretty sure there's a lot more to it. It's like you're got some whole other agenda going on that you don't want anyone to know about. And don't act like you followed Alice and me out of sheer curiosity. You're here on Thaxos for a specific reason, and you followed us because you think we might be able to help you.”
“Maybe you should learn to mind your own business,” Didi muttered darkly.
“Steps,” Kate said suddenly, as the light from her torch picked out a set of stone steps ahead. “Looks like the only way is up.”
“We must have been walking for miles,” Didi replied, with a hint of complaint in her voice.
“Are you sure we should keep going?” Alice asked.
“Don't you want to know what's up there?” Kate replied, stopping at the foot of the steps and shining the torch toward the top. “I do.” With that, she started to make her way up.
“Someone sure went to a lot of trouble with this place,” Didi continued as she followed, with Alice keeping close behind. “I mean, hell, they carved a huge chunk out of the island with this place. Can you imagine how much it'd cost just to get a set-up like this going? Not to mention all the people you'd have to employ.”
“Do you hear something?” Alice asked.
Kate glanced back at her.
“You don't hear it?” Alice continued. “Like something moving nearby.”
They all stopped, but as Kate turned to look ahead, all she could hear was the sound of her own breath. She waited, mainly to give Alice the benefit of the doubt, but she wasn't too worried.
“It's gone now,” Alice added hesitantly, “but it was there a moment ago, I swear. It was like a kind of scratching sound in the distance.”
“Your mind's playing tricks on you,” Kate told her. “It's totally understandable. This is definitely a pretty creepy place.”
“You sure you've got enough juice in that torch for us to keep going?” Didi asked.
“And a spare,” Kate replied as she continued to make her way up the steps. As soon as she reached the top, she found that another corridor led away to the left, and another to the right. “Okay,” she continued, “this is where we need to be careful. Have either of you heard of the Odessa Catacombs?”
“No,” Didi replied, “but let me guess. Are they catacombs? Are they in Odessa?”
“They run to at least two thousand kilometers,” she continued, “but some people think they could be double that. The Odessa Catacombs are a labyrinthine series of tunnels that no-one has ever fully mapped. There are stories of people who wander down there and are never seen again. It's possible to get lost and end up dying of dehydration, going around and around in the dark with no way of ever working out how to get back to the surface.” She paused. “I'd rather not take a risk in this place. We should turn back.”
“That sounds like a sensible idea,” Alice replied.
“You're the expert,” Didi added. “The fun's starting to wear off this place anyway.”
“I'm coming back, though,” Kate added, feeling the fire of discovery still burning in her gut. “I'm going to find out what the hell's been happening down here.”
“And then you'll be the most famous historian in the whole world, right?” Didi asked with a smile.
“It's not about fame,” Kate replied. “It's about contributing something to our understanding of the past. Whatever happened here, it's undoubtedly relevant to the whole of Europe. Nothing this large could stay hidden on Thaxos alone.”
As they turned and headed back down the steps, Alice led the way. Moments later, however, they came to a junction, with the corridor again running off in two different directions. The three of them paused, each trying to work out what was happening and each hoping that one of the others would come up with an answer.
“This is different,” Alice said, her voice filled with concern as she turned to Kate. “There weren't these two turns a moment ago. It was just a straight corridor.”
“We must have made a mistake,” Kate replied, pushing past them both so she could take the lead again. Shining the torch in each direction, she tried to work out where they'd gone wrong, but finally she had to accept that Alice was right. They'd encountered no junctions before the steps, yet now they'd found one. Running through the route again in her head, she couldn't see how they could have made a wrong turn on such a short and simple journey.
“We're not lost,” Didi said after a moment. “Tell me we're not lost.”
“We're not lost,” Kate replied, even though she couldn't hide the doubt in her voice. “We can't be. We just walked in a straight line. There's no way we could have gone through a junction without noticing.”
“Maybe we got the wrong steps,” Alice suggested. “We must have done. Somehow there must have been two sets and we...”
Her voice trailed off, and it was clear that even she didn't believe that such a thing was possible.
“Okay,” Kate continued, “let's just stay calm. All we have to do is retrace our steps and make sure we don't panic. We're not idiots.”
For the next few minutes, the three of them went back the way they'd come, focusing on making sure that they didn't put a foot wrong, but eventually they came to yet another junction, this time leading off in three different directions.
“Any ideas?” Didi asked, clearly starting to worry.
“This is impossible,” Kate replied. “Unless the walls themselves are moving, there's no way we can be lost.”
“But we are, aren't we?” Didi continued, pulling her phone from her bag. “What do you know, huh? No signal.”
“We're deep in a stone labyrinth,” Kate pointed out as she checked her own phone. “Of course we can't get any signal.”
“So what do we do? Come on, you're the historian. What's the best approach for a bunch of people who've suddenly got themselves lost in a place like this?”
“We...” Looking first one way and then another, Kate tried to come up with a plan. She still couldn't work out how they'd managed to lose their bearings, and she was certain that they'd followed their own footsteps precisely, in which case they should be back at the main tunnel that led to the chamber. It was as if all the logic of the situation had simply been blown away.
“No more fooling around,” Didi continued. “Come on, professor, you're the brains here so why don't you tell us what to do? I don't fancy staying down here much longer.”
“We need to keep calm,” Kate told her.
“The more you say that,” Didi replied, “the less calm I feel.”
“It's logical,” Kate continued. “We... We all know the route we took originally, and we all know that we didn't deviate from that route when we turned around, so we...” She paused again, lost for words. “This can't have happened. We didn't make a mistake, so we should be heading back to the chamber already. We should be walking along that same stone corridor.”
“We're not, though,” Didi pointed out, clearly starting to lose her temper. “You're the one with the torch and you're the one who acted like she had it all sussed out, so you'd better not drop the ball now we're in trouble!”
“It's okay,” Kate replied, taking a deep breath. “I've got it. We just have to go back this way, and I'm certain we'll be on the right path.” She turned first to Didi, and then to Alice. “I swear. We can't go wrong. It's physically not possible for this route not to lead us straight back to the chamber.”