by Paul Neuhaus
“What does it do? It doesn’t say here, but I’m guessing you talk to it. You talk to it the same way you talk to Hope.”
“Does it have any kind of special power?”
“If it does have any special powers, the compilers of the Codex seemed to have missed them. For the compilers, just the thought of being able to talk to a guy inside a statue was apparently enough. The entry is brief. They say what it is then then give a little history. Origins in ancient Greece (duh), known to’ve been in private collections in Cairo, Rotterdam, and Leningrad. Suspected to be in the United States somewhere. There’s nothing here to discount the idea that Medusa may have it.”
“Okay, well, that’s a start. I wonder why Medusa has it. And why Medea apparently wanted it.”
“I’d say there’s only one person who can answer that question.”
I sighed a heavy sigh. “I know. It was never in doubt I needed to go over there. I guess I was just steeling myself.” I smiled. “You wanna come?”
“Oh, hell no. I’ve heard the stories. I’m gonna take a pass, if you don’t mind.”
“I hear you. Try and let me know if you get any news about Petey and Chad and Pegasus.”
He said he had Elijah’s number and would call him if he heard anything. I left him to it and went outside to the Pontiac.
The drive over to Bel Air was quiet. There were still very few cars on the road. People hadn’t quite acclimated to the change yet, and I’m sure they were still glued to their media of choice. For myself, I didn’t bother with the radio. I was sure the jokers on the AM station didn’t have any new info, but that wouldn’t stop them from pontificating. I parked on the street opposite Medusa’s mansion. The same house she’d owned since her silver screen glory days. In recent decades, she’d become a total recluse. And the rumors of her eccentricities were true. Amanda Venables and I had gotten in to speak with her. She was still beautiful, but she was more than a little batty. Fortunately, she still wore big wigs to hide her snake hair and contacts to inhibit her ability to turn people to stone. I wasn’t especially looking forward to seeing her again, but it needed to be done.
The house was on a little hill so there was an ornate, Grecian staircase leading up to it from the sidewalk. I climbed the steps, walked the palm-lined path to the door and rang the bell. After a moment, Max, Medusa’s butler opened up. When he saw me, he immediately tried to slam the entry shut. I jammed my foot in and immediately regretted it. The door was heavy. “C’mon, Max, cut me a break. I need to talk to the old lady. It’s important.”
Max was a persnickety German. I’d say he didn’t like me, but I don’t think he liked anyone. “The… old lady is indisposed. She’s not taking visitors.”
“This isn’t a social call. It’s business. It has to do with the way the world changed yesterday. It has to do with Medea.”
The butler’s expression remained flat. “I have no idea what you’re talking about and madam is, as I told you, indisposed. Now, kindly leave.” He tried to push the door shut, but my foot was still in it. It hurt like a motherfucker. Inside of a couple of days, I’d been kicked in the pussy and had my tootsies smashed in a door. I was kind of over it.
I raised my voice. “Tell Medusa I need to ask her about the hierophant!”
Max blinked at me. Twice. “You might as well be speaking Swahili to me right now.”
Then I heard a voice from behind the door. “Oh, Max, for crissakes, let the woman in. Nothing is worth all this drama.”
Max threw the door wide, revealing his employer. “Come in, won’t you?” he said with affected hospitality.
I smirked as I stepped past him. Medusa was in the foyer wearing a bathrobe. Behind her was a mousy woman with the biggest false eyelashes I’ve ever seen. She was carrying an apparatus I didn’t recognize. “Come in,” the lady of the house said. “I was just having my asshole bleached. You never know when you’re gonna have unexpected visitors at the back gate. This is Mar’sha, my bleacher.”
I nodded to the woman with the funky contraption.
“Same time next week?” Medusa said.
Mar’sha nodded and took her leave past Max. As I watched her go, I wondered what kind of asshole you’d have to have to need weekly bleachings. I’m not exactly an expert when it comes to that particular science, but I did ponder the Medusa’s diet. The butler shut the door and waited for instructions from his employer. “You and your friend had whiskey when you were here, am I right?” Medusa said.
“Just water for me,” I replied. “I’m trying to cut down.”
“Well, I’m certainly not. A water for our guest, Max and a Cuba Libre for me. Don’t spare the mint.”
The butler started to walk away, but Medusa drew him back. “Actually, make mine a Cuba Libre without the cola. Just straight rum.” The priggish Prussian started to walk away again, and she stopped him one more time. “On second thought, hold the mint too. Just bring me rum. In a tall glass.”
With that, my host led me back to the same sitting room we’d used when Amanda and I’d come to see her the month before. As I walked through the house, I was amused again by the stuffed monkeys. The one holding his pecker was always a surprise and a delight. I took a seat with my back to the door and Medusa sat down opposite me. “Now then…” she said. “Did I hear you say ‘hierophant’ while you were standing outside my door?”
“You did.”
“Good. Otherwise I’d have been cross with you. Very few topics are weighty enough to interrupt one of my bleachings. The hierophant happens to be one of them.”
“With all due respect to your asshole, the hierophant is the most important thing in my world right now. He’s the only lead I have in a mystery I want to solve.”
“What mystery is that?” Medusa said, crossing her long legs.
“You know what happened with Medea, right?”
Medusa said, “Yes, some little birds told me.”
“I know you don’t leave the house much, but you did notice that the world has changed around us, right?”
The gorgon sighed. “Yes, yes. It’s so bloody… nostalgic. What will it do to the property values is what I want to know? I worked long and hard to build a life in this city; to own this home. Now, suddenly, it’s like I’m living in the middle of Oregon.” She said the word ‘Oregon’ as though it was something terribly distasteful. I gotta say, I’m not the world’s biggest fan of that state myself.
“Do you know how the world got this way?” I asked.
She shrugged her shoulders just as Max delivered her rum and my water. “Something to do with the Church of Reciprocity I’m guessing.”
I raised an eyebrow as I took my first sip of water. “That’s a very good guess. Did a little bird tell you that too?”
“No, nothing as poetic as that. It was a theory based on available facts.”
I put my glass down on the end table next to me and the butler rushed in to put a coaster under it. “It sounds like you have access to better facts than I do.”
It was Medusa’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “Yes, you should have better visitors at that trailer of yours.”
I smiled. When last we’d spoken, she hadn’t acted like she’d known me—or cared who I was. Either she’d been playing dumb, or she’d made some inquiries. “Someone broke into that trailer a couple of days ago. They took my pithos and a magic pinecone.”
“But you’ve got your pithos here with you…”
“They dropped it.”
“Nicos must’ve been angry with them.”
“Could very well be. I didn’t ask. The thief in question was loaded up with lotus. She’s since been… detoxed.”
“And you haven’t interrogated her? She could have much to say.”
“I still have access, but the girl seems to remember very little. One of the side effects of lotus I’m told.”
“Right,” she said with a smirky smile, uncrossing and recrossing her legs in the other direction.
“What? What is it?”
“The strain of lotus Nicos uses is more advanced than the kind Odysseus’ sailors were fed. Nicos is a wealthy man with all the benefits of modern science.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning his lotus has more… elaborate side effects than the lotus of old.”
I leaned forward. “Don’t be stingy.”
“Even when one throws off the grosser impact of the drug, one is still highly suggestible.”
“Shit. For real?”
“For real.” She folded her arms over her ample breasts. “You know, I really shouldn’t be telling you all this.”
“Why? What do you mean? There’s nobody here but us chickens.”
“Nicos has eyes and ears everywhere.”
“You’re afraid of him?”
She gave a little laugh. “Of course, I’m afraid of him. You should be too.”
I ignored the warning and pressed on. “It’s obvious now why the Church wanted the pinecone— “
“It was a Demizoi.”
“Yes. But I don’t know why they wanted the pithos. I mean if there is a reason beyond the obvious reason why anyone might want it. Either to let all the inmates out or to take over the curse and prolong their lifespan.”
Medusa drained her glass and held it out dramatically toward Max who was standing behind me. Max took the glass and retreated without comment. “First of all, you need to drop the ‘they’ when you’re talking about the Church of Reciprocity. The Church is Nicos and Nicos is the Church. He built it from the ground up, and it’s like a fifth limb for him now.”
“Okay. Speculate: Why do you think Nicos wanted my pithos?”
“I don’t have to speculate too hard. I know for certain he doesn’t need it to lengthen his own lifespan.”
“He’s a Mythnik.”
Max came back in and gave Medusa another tall glass of rum. She winced. “I despise that term,” she said. “It makes we few happy survivors sound like silly toys. Playthings.”
“Nicos is one of we few happy survivors?”
She smiled as she imbibed but said nothing.
“Oh, come on. Don’t clam up on me now. At least give me a hint.”
My hostess threw back her head and sat contentedly as the booze flowed down her throat. She opened her eyes and was still looking at the ceiling when she spoke next. “Nicos Nephus is unusual amongst our breed. He doesn’t enter into the modern world until the last days of World War Two. He was freed by an errant artillery barrage.”
“‘Freed’? What do you mean ‘freed’?”
Medusa paused for dramatic effect. For just a moment, I got a flash of the woman I’d seen in many black and white movies. “From the rock he was chained to,” she said with some relish.
I’m sure my eyes popped open as wide as they were able. I know for sure my lower jaw went slack. From where I’d put her on the floor, Hope said, “Whoa.”
Medusa was loving the effect of the bomb she’d just dropped.
“Prometheus? You’re saying Nicos Nephus is Prometheus?”
“I would not say otherwise since saying otherwise would be an untruth.”
I sat back again, blown away. For those of you without a working knowledge of Greek myth, Prometheus was one of the biggies. He wasn’t a god himself; he was one of the few Titans remaining after Zeus and the others staged their rebellion. To cut to the chase, he—against the direct will of the Olympians—stole fire and gave it Mankind. For that he was punished. Big-time punished. Zeus had him chained to a rock for all eternity. Every morning, he’d awaken to a vulture who was there to tear out his liver and eat it. Every night, the liver would grow back so the whole thing could start over again. If what Medusa was saying was true, he’d been freed from his cyclical hell sometime in the nineteen-forties. Freed to move to the States and start a cult. That was the part I was having trouble with. Why does a culture hero of Prometheus’ stature chuck it all to become an A-list Jim Jones? “You’re implying he wanted to free the Evils from the pithos. Why? Why would he want that?”
“Based on the fact you didn’t know his secret identity, I’m going to assume you’ve never spoken to him.”
“That’s right. I haven’t.”
“I have. He’s been here in Los Angeles since the early fifties. Building his empire. He’s not like he was before the fire incident. If I may draw a parallel with a stereotype in the modern world…”
“Please.”
“Prometheus is like an American dad. An American dad who was liberal and progressive in the nineteen-seventies but is old now. He’s old and he watches FOX News and all he lives for is libtard tears.”
‘Libtard’? Maybe Medusa was less eccentric and savvier than I thought. “Can you elaborate?”
She demurred again. “I don’t really want to speak for the man. I don’t know him well. All I can say is, like the caricature I sketched for you, he longs for a time he idealizes. A time that maybe wasn’t as great as he thinks it was.”
“Okay, okay. I won’t press. I gotta say, though, that was really helpful.”
Medusa shrugged with her shoulders and held out her newly empty glass a second time. At least one of those long legs was hollow. Max took the glass and disappeared again. “Would you like some advice?”
“By all means…”
“Nicos has paid you more attention than he typically pays to other… Greek refugees. He had two things he wanted from you and only got one. Don’t think that, just because his envoy was clumsy, he’ll give up.”
Obviously, that thought hadn’t occurred to me. I looked down briefly at Hope. “Okay, well. Thanks for the warning. I don’t wanna take too much more of your time. What’s the hierophant? What is it really? Do you really have it?”
“What made you think I have it?”
“Medea’s diary. She said in a recent entry that you had it and that she wanted it.”
“I told her I still have it, but I no longer have it.”
“You no longer have it?”
“There were too many people sniffing after it, so I put it in someone else’s care.”
“Who—?”
I was interrupted by a monstrous pounding from the foyer. A pounding so loud our teeth rattled, and we jumped in our seats. Max had just brought Medusa her third glass of rum. He gave it to her and headed back to the front door.
“What the fuck was that?” I said.
Medusa shrugged again. “I think we’re about to find out.”
I wasn’t about to just sit there and wait. I picked up the pithos and nestled it in the crook of my right arm. I hadn’t brought brass knuckles or a gladius, so I held my left hand poised over the jug’s lid.
Medusa seemed annoyed that I’d gotten up. She might’ve been perfectly content to keep on chatting and let whatever was happening at the front of the house run its course. She put her half-empty glass down on a table and stood with a sigh. “Relax,” she said. “It’s probably just an aggressive Rotor Rooter man.”
It wasn’t just an aggressive Rotor Rooter man. I peeked around the corner into the main hall just as Max put his hand on the doorknob. Medusa, who was quite tall herself, peeked around just above me. Anyone looking at us from the other direction probably would’ve found us comical. But any thoughts of hilarity were quickly dispelled when the butler opened the door.
As soon as the door swung open, Max died. I couldn’t get a good look at what was on the porch behind him, but I did see the results of its actions. Max sprouted spines like a porcupine. At least that was the image that first came to my mind. What’d actually happened was he’d been impaled by six or eight spears all entering him from the front and exiting him from the back. It was a horrific vision. The only consolation was there was no way the grouchy manservant could’ve felt any pain. Medusa was another story.
When she saw her caretaker of many decades breathe his last, my hostess lost her shit. She screamed so loud, I fell to the floor with one hand over my ears. It wasn’t a normal scream; it was a wo
man’s scream mixed with the cry of a predatory bird. I looked up at her from where I fell, and I could see that she’d changed. Her jaw had unhinged like the jaw of a snake. Her wig had fallen off (or been torn off) and underneath was a bed of writhing, hissing reptiles. She opened up her robe with newly-clawed hands and, underneath, she was nude. She was in amazing shape (a lot better than me) and I watched as areas of her flesh grew scales and ridges. Once she was fully unveiled, she stepped out into the hallway.
I badly wanted to see what was going on—not to mention pitch in if necessary—so I crawled out behind her and came to my feet. I looked around her and saw that Max had been shoved from the front and had fallen. Medusa reached up with her long, reptilian fingers and withdrew the contacts from her eyes. Mental note, I told myself. Don’t look her in the eye during any of this.
When Max hit the Persian rug in the foyer, a couple of the spears came out and fell at different angles. Both Medusa and I looked up from the body to see a cluster of hoplites complete with helmets and chest-pieces. Wherever the armor left them exposed, they were nothing but bone. Skeletons in ancient dress. A squad of undead. Whoever’d initiated this raid had planned ahead. Skeletons didn’t have eyes. Without eyes they couldn’t gaze upon Medusa and be turned to stone. They also, presumably, didn’t have souls which meant I couldn’t suck them into my pithos. The one time I really could’ve used a gladius and I’d left mine in the trunk.
Beyond the skeletons, I could see at least two flesh and blood people milling on the lawn. The guys’d been sent to pick up the pieces. They wouldn’t enter the house until after Medusa and I were dead.
The skeletons were silent and implacable as they stepped into the mansion. Most of them drew their swords. The one in front (who wore the armor of an officer) pulled a spear out of Max and hurled it expertly down the long hall. Medusa twisted her serpentine body, so the weapon sailed by her, close enough to almost draw blood. To almost draw blood from her. Me, on the other hand, I thought the tip was going to strike me squarely in the face. It would have if my hostess hadn’t reached up and grabbed the shaft with her left hand. The spear stopped and vibrated in her grip. I had to take a step back as she spun it in her hand until the point was aimed in front of her. Then she raised it and threw it. Looking past her, I saw the Officer twist to the side, mimicking his former target’s own maneuver. He was fast. Much faster than I would’ve thought a skeleton could be.