Coils

by Barbara Ann Wright

  “Wow,” Cressida said. “Adonis told me it would change, but I never expected anything like this!”

  Medusa glanced away as if it held no interest for her. “Not fitting in with your expectations?”

  “Nothing has so far, but that is really weird.” She nodded, impressed. “Though I suppose it isn’t weird for the goddess of magic. It takes collective consciousness to shape everything else, but I guess a goddess can do what she wants.”

  Medusa nodded. “She can do the palace, but sometimes she loses track of the fence.”

  That didn’t sound like the goddess of keys Cressida had heard about, but she supposed Medusa would know better than her. Medusa led the way to a clump of scrubby bushes gathered near the fence but close to an alley. Cressida hadn’t crossed this way before, couldn’t say whether or not the bushes had always been there, but with the changing landscape, how would she know? The fence was the same wrought iron, though some of it blinked in and out of focus, appearing as stone or wooden slats before returning to its iron appearance. If Hecate was changing it, she wasn’t paying a lot of attention. Medusa pulled the bushes aside, revealing a hole in the fence, though the edges of it faded in and out of focus, too.

  Cressida gaped. “Was that here before?”

  “For those of us who know it’s here. For everyone else?” She shrugged. “I told you. Hecate likes the occasional surprise. She has a soft spot for those who sneak into her palace. Gives her something to do, I guess. Of course, if people manage to sneak in and she catches them, sometimes she doesn’t let them leave.”

  Cressida swallowed hard. “What does she do with them?”

  Another shrug. “Let’s go if we’re going.”

  They crept through the hole, sneaking from boulder to boulder and pausing near shrubs. Cressida watched the palace’s numerous windows and never saw anyone looking out, though some windows had curtains or shutters. A few were just sparkling glass, darkened so she couldn’t see inside. “How do we avoid getting caught? You said wait until she’s distracted?”

  “She has a lot to pay attention to. There are many magic users in the Underworld. Still, even with all that, no doubt she knows we’re here.”

  Cressida stumbled. “But you said—”

  “She’s the goddess of magic. We’re not going to get in her house without her knowing. Thing is, if we play our cards right, she’ll forget we’re here. She has a lot of irons in the fire, always. The trick is to not get caught. She admires that sort of thing.”

  “But if she knows we’re here…”

  “Not where we are or what we’re doing. Trust me. I know her, and she likes a bit of hide-and-seek. Even if she catches us, she’s not going to be that angry.”

  “That angry?”

  “She’ll probably just demand a tribute. Something easy. She might even offer up your aunt as the prize.”

  “Oh good.” But Cressida’s belly was tied up in knots. Medusa sounded confident, but she didn’t look at Cressida as she talked, and even though they didn’t know each other at all, Cressida had always thought avoidance of eye contact a sure sign that someone didn’t trust her own words.

  Hecate’s front door had become the size of Hammurabi’s gates, taking up most of the front of the palace, all thick wood and iron hinges, but Medusa passed them by, heading around the side of the palace and ducking to stay out of sight. She paused at a little door in the middle of a long wall, completely out of place just like everything else. It’d been painted robin’s egg blue, setting it apart from the ominous black doors at the front. A chime hung next to it, a chain leading from inside an old copper bell. Medusa peered at it, examining it for a long while.

  “Do we ring?” Cressida asked. “Or would that show too much bravado?”

  “Why make it easy for her?” She disregarded the door after a moment and kept going, circling around the back of the building, staying in the shadows.

  Cressida stayed right at her heels as they sneaked through a creepy topiary garden and so much statuary that Cressida thought they must be passing the same ones over and over again, but the house seemed to go on forever, far bigger than it looked from a distance. Medusa finally dug through a clump of bushes and uncovered an old cellar door straight out of a horror movie.

  She looked at Cressida with a grin. “This is our way in.”

  “Were you waiting for the creepiest option?” Cressida whispered.

  “I’m a fan of the odd horror movie or two. You?”

  “Not enough to sneak into some cellar straight out of Wes Craven’s nightmares!”

  “He who dares…” Medusa lifted up one door by its old rusty handle. It creaked loudly and deeply, an ominous sound that would make any sound effects person shed a proud tear. An eerie wind gusted through the bushes right on cue, and if anyone was nearby—or below—they had to know someone was playing with the cellar door.

  Before Medusa could throw the door open, Cressida caught her arm. “If it isn’t locked, doesn’t that mean it doesn’t go anywhere important?”

  “Or she likes people to come in this way. She wants a challenge.”

  “Or, or she really likes locking stupid people in her creepy basement dungeon straight out of every horror movie ever shown.” Cressida shivered. “Any minute now, someone’s going to shout, ‘Don’t go in there!’”

  Medusa winked and headed downward with a crazy look on her face, and Cressida had to either stay with her or try things on her own. She stayed as close as she could without tripping both of them. With numb fingers, she dug a flashlight out of her backpack and hoped she wasn’t walking into certain death.

  Chapter Five

  Cressida’s stomach shrank into a hard knot. God, it is a horror movie. A dirt floor stretched ahead of the flashlight’s circle, going on forever. The concrete walls held wooden shelves full of jars, and those were filled with all manner of colors and blobs that could have been fruits, jam, or various organs. Rusty tools hung from the ceiling, and an ancient metal bedframe rested between two rows of shelves, just waiting for someone to be strapped to it by a murderous hillbilly farmer.

  Or a clown. Cressida shivered. A murderous hillbilly farmer clown. “Seriously,” she whispered, “if this was a movie, I’d be screaming at the screen right now. ‘You stupid kids get the hell out of there!’”

  “Ah, but the stupid kids never had me,” Medusa said.

  A metallic noise came from the darkness. Cressida froze, pulling on Medusa’s arm. The murderous hillbilly farmer clown would be dragging something toward them through the inky blackness. Maybe it was a hatchet or a cleaver or a length of chain, and the murderous hillbilly farmer clown was striking it deliberately along some metal surface, hunting the kids who should have never come down into the creepy basement.

  But the kids never had a good reason for being there, except maybe one of them called the others chicken, or something equally stupid. But Cressida was searching for her aunt, who might be a prisoner, who might have walked this very route, and Cressida couldn’t shame her by backing down now. June had never backed down from anything in her life.

  Which was probably why she’d gotten killed by a murderous hillbilly farmer clown.

  Shut up! Don’t be a chicken.

  Medusa kept walking but didn’t shrug off Cressida’s touch. Instead, she shifted a little in front, as if to shield Cressida from danger. When the creature they’d been hearing lurched out of the darkness—bloody dungarees, face paint, and all—Medusa lifted a hand. “Stay behind me.”

  Cressida couldn’t have done anything else. She froze in horror, just like the stupid kids. If she’d been capable of shame in that moment, she would have been a puddle of embarrassment on the floor. She’d always been the one to say, “If that had been me, I would’ve run or moved or something!” Now all she could do was stare.

  The creature lurched toward them, a boathook in one hand, and Cressida had enough time to think: that doesn’t even make sense. Why would a basement so far from water ev
en have a boathook on the premises? And why is he a clown? What use did a farmer have for the bright red nose, the blue wig? It made sense to her terror, but her logic cried foul. And why did he look like something she’d conjured in her imagination anyway?

  Medusa’s arm shuddered, and Cressida felt her biceps bulge. Her hair came alive, flowing in an invisible wind, the strands coalescing and developing heads with mouths and scales, and just as Cressida was gawking at the mass of snakes—some of which were staring at her—the boathook-wielding clown farmer stuttered to a halt, skin darkening to the gray of stone as he froze, a statue.

  The snakes turned into hair again so quickly, Cressida didn’t have time to blink. When Medusa turned, Cressida winced, shielding her eyes, but Medusa gently brought her hand down.

  “You’re safe.” Her eyes were still those of a snake’s, but surrounded by human flesh, they were compassionate, even amused. “Are you all right?”

  Cressida looked to the statue, and even though it still made no sense, and they were still in the creepy basement, she’d never felt safer. “You’re amazing.”

  Medusa gave a little shrug, though with a satisfied smile. “People in horror movies should invite me along more often.”

  Cressida took another look around. “This doesn’t make sense. We were looking for a way in, and then we found one, and I was picturing how this place would look as if it was in a horror movie, and here it is, including him.” She nodded at the statue. “I mean, I was thinking farmer clown, and there he stands, and why the hell does he have a boathook?”

  Medusa tapped one fingernail dully against the stone maniac. Another noise came from the darkness, and she frowned. “What is it this time?”

  Cressida’s mind flashed with a picture of the murderous farmer clown’s wife—also a clown—though with a paisley print dress that hadn’t been in fashion for a hundred years. When it sprang from the dark, carrying a cleaver and wearing a bright pink wig, Cressida told her mind to shut the fuck up, please, if it knew what was good for it.

  But her imagination was clearly on a roll. After Medusa dealt with the clown farmer’s wife, a doll straight from the Museum of Horribly Creepy Shit came at them by racing over the ceiling, another tactic Cressida knew she was responsible for. Then a scarecrow lunged at them from a shadowy corner. They were all horrors Cressida had seen before, from one movie or another, or were at least based on movie characters, amalgamations of someone else’s ideas. Strangely enough, Cressida’s real fears didn’t manifest: tests she hadn’t prepared for or lovers who’d dumped her. She didn’t see her parents or June riddled with cancer. It was all kiddie stuff that had been kicking around her hindbrain, and after several encounters, she tried to conjure the most bizarre things she could think of until fear faded to fascination.

  “An alien,” she whispered, “like, a big blobby purple thing with tentacles, and…” And nothing she was afraid of. The darkness stayed silent.

  “If it’s feeding off your thoughts,” Medusa said, “try to think of a way out.”

  Right. A way out. People in horror movies always needed the hope of escape before they met the serial killer. No, don’t think about serial killers!

  The dusty shelves faded into a series of cells, rusty iron bars surrounding squares of clean cement flooring with dirty mattresses piled in the corner. A scream echoed off the walls as some demented killer tormented his latest victim.

  Cressida swallowed hard, making her chest ache. “That’s my fault. I’m sorry. You’ve been in Hecate’s palace before, right? You never found anything like this?”

  Medusa shook her head. “It’s just like the rest of the Underworld, controlled by thought, but it seems more concentrated and volatile, and I think it’s picking up on you more because you’re alive.” She cast a look over one shoulder. “Your aura is brighter.”

  “So this isn’t real,” Cressida said, touching one of the iron bars. “It feels real, but…” She shook her head and tried to tell the images to go away, but they kept seeping in, and now she doubted her power to banish them. Maybe she could only create. “Maybe it’s a trap. You try to sneak into Hecate’s house, and you wind up in here forever, meeting your nightmares.” Not true, she tried to tell herself. Don’t let your imagination run wild! “But I have you, and you can turn anyone into stone.”

  Medusa nodded, giving her a reassuring smile. “That’s right.”

  Cressida kept repeating that in her head. Medusa could stop anything. This wasn’t like a dream, where if she stopped believing in Medusa’s abilities, they’d stop working.

  Was it? Stop it, stop it, stop it! She took a deep breath as Medusa gave her a concerned look.

  “So,” Cressida said, “what is it that gives people in horror movies hope that they can escape?” She thought hard on it, focused, and when she turned, there it was: a rickety staircase leading up.

  When they were almost there, Medusa turned. “But one of them always gets killed when they’re running for the exit. Because while their backs are turned…” She peered into the darkness.

  Cressida turned in time to see the serial killer rush from the darkness, but Medusa stepped in front of Cressida like a guardian angel, and Cressida’s confidence in her bloomed. The killer turned to stone before he took two steps, powerless against Medusa’s gaze.

  Medusa snapped her fingers and laughed, and Cressida had to chuckle, too. She never should have doubted. With Medusa on her side, what could possibly get in her way?

  *

  It was hard not to be proud, even though Medusa knew it was all fake. She’d never met Hecate, not in the flesh, and she wondered if the real palace was anything like this. Medea would know, being Hecate’s daughter and all, so if Cressida told anyone of her experiences, and they knew what the real palace was like, they could confirm her story.

  And oh, Medea had really outdone herself this time. The fabric of her illusions shaped by the minds of the people going through them, like a condensed version of the Underworld itself? Genius. And she was clever enough to have it shaped more by Cressida than Medusa, so that Cressida would feel as if she was at the heart of their little adventure. She would be the one guiding their path, responsible if they succeeded or failed, and Medusa would be her weapon. It was perfect, and Medusa was reminded that she owed Medea big, would probably owe her for some time to come, but with Medusa’s sisters restored, they would be capable of some very big favors.

  Still, she wanted to get a move on. Her sisters weren’t getting better the longer they tarried here. “Try to clear your mind,” she said as they mounted the stairs. “If we don’t have any preconceptions, maybe we’ll see the rest of the palace for what it truly is.”

  “The jumble that it looks like from outside?”

  “Perhaps, though try to clear your mind of that, too.” She fought to take her own advice, though curiosity kept trying to get the better of her. If the whole illusion looked like pieces of some dilapidated farmhouse from a horror movie, she thought she might scream. She didn’t know if she could influence the illusion like Cressida could, but she tried all the same, picturing “Hecate” waiting for them at the top of the staircase.

  But it stretched forever upward toward a wooden door that stood beneath a single yellowed bulb. The door’s chipped white paint was streaked with dirt and a few smears of red rust, maybe blood. As well as she could see it, though, it never got any closer. Maybe Cressida thought it should always be just out of reach.

  “Can you bring the door closer?” Medusa asked.

  Cressida muttered something, and the door stopped moving away, letting them gain on it. Medusa gave Cressida another fond, supportive smile. She had a formidable mind. At last Medusa turned the rusty metal knob. The door opened with a creak as loud as someone shaking a sheet of tin, and Medusa fought down images of the cracked and stained Formica floor that would go with the dirt basement. Instead, she thought only of blank space, waiting for whatever Cressida came up with.

  A black abyss ope
ned up before her, and she sighed. “Are you thinking of nothing, too?”

  “I’m trying to,” Cressida said quietly.

  Medusa chuckled, though her temper was beginning to flare. “Well, if we picture nothing, that’s what the palace gives us.”

  “It was a nice try, though?” Cressida asked.

  “Let’s focus on a simple room, modern. How about an apartment with concrete walls and floor, minimal furniture, an open floor plan, stainless steel appliances in the kitchen, and Hecate waiting for us?”

  It swam hazily into view until a voice chuckled from the blackness. “I never went in for all that modern stuff.”

  The modern room melted like candlewax and reshaped into a large space, the walls and floor covered in pale blond bricks instead of concrete. Huge painted columns supported a ceiling covered in frescos and friezes. Braziers lined a path to a massive dais that sported three thrones made of carved gemstones.

  Three identical women sat there, all smiling at Cressida and Medusa where they stood at the end of the brazier path. The door and the staircase had vanished, and even though Medusa knew it was an illusion, it was hard not to quake in awe before the triple goddess. She had to summon every drop of confidence and remember that once upon a time, she and her sisters had been called divine.

  Medusa stuck her shoulders back and marched forward; Cressida was looking at her to lead the way. The three goddesses smiled in sync. The one in the middle had a lamp set in the throne above her head, the one to the right had a key, and the one on the left had a hound, all part of her portfolio. Trust Medea to depict Hecate in her most impressive, three-bodied form. Their faces were mostly in shadow, hidden under a cowl, and a deepness around their eyes seemed like a well leading to unfathomable depths. Each wore a black robe blended with purple highlights, and a brooch near each figure’s right shoulder glowed like a faraway star.