To the right of the Portara she saw white field tents, with arc lights and scaffolding surrounding a hole in the marbled floor. Scattered in the immediate area were pick axes, shovels and surveying equipment.
Her research was right after all. The Nazis had been performing an archaeological excavation here. And judging by the extreme blackness of the night, they had found what they were looking for.
She stared at the dead bodies on the ground. A shiver stroked the back of her neck as she remembered the practised ease with which Steve had despatched the second German. He had never held a firearm before, let alone fired one – and the grim satisfaction on his features told her that this was not the first life he had taken.
“Partisans,” he said softly. “They saved me. Fed me, hid me from the Nazis…and trained me.”
That explained how he had survived, as well as the change in his physical appearance.
“You fought with them?”
“Yes. I fought. And the islanders paid the price for it. Koronos village…we wondered about the Nazi atrocity there, remember?”
She shuddered with the memory of Manos’ words. Have you seen an entire village burned to the ground by the occupiers? Its women and children riddled with machine-gun fire as retaliation for the brave actions of the partisans?
“So…where are they now? Why are you here on your own?”
Steve’s face was grim. “I found out why I was brought here. I’m no safer from the partisans than I am the Germans. I escaped from them earlier tonight, had to see the excavation and find out what the hell they were planning to do with me.”
“I don’t understand. If they were going to kill you or hand you over, they’d have done it when you first arrived, surely? But they kept you for a year…”
“Exactly. Kept me. Welcomed me, made me one of the ‘family’, involved me in everything…all to make sure I didn’t suspect until it was too late.” He pointed to the excavation site. “You came back for me – you know what the Nazis found here, don’t you?”
She nodded. “The altar stone. And the final answer as to why the temple was built – and what it was dedicated to.”
Steve looked at the excavation site and shuddered. “It’s terrifying, Jules. I’ve never seen anything like it – even the Nazis were scared shitless by what they found.”
“Show me.” She watched him go off to the nearest tent and heard sounds of fumbling, crates and equipment shuffled around. She looked at the excavation trenches and thought back to her studies and what she had learned of the Temple of Apollo.
Two and a half thousand years ago the tyrant ruler of Naxos, Lygdamis, had desired to build the greatest Ionic temple in all Greece, to be over one hundred feet in height. The work was abandoned due to war between Naxos and Samos – and the mysterious, unexplained overthrow of Lygdamis himself less than thirty years later.
All that remained was the Portara and the walls. And under the Venetian and Turkish rule the walls disappeared, their marble purloined to construct the Kastro. The only reason the Portara remained was because the pillars were to heavy to be dismantled and transported.
That was the official history, anyway. The night Steve disappeared he’d claimed to have discovered another theory. A theory she had denounced as the product of too much ouzo and kitron, the lemon-flavoured local liquor with the strength of rocket-fuel.
A theory she knew now to be true. He emerged from the tent with a flashlight. She leant cautiously over the wooden barrier to watch what happened to the beam of light as it fell on the black altar stone unearthed by the Nazis.
The torchlight illuminated the dry earth in a sickly hue of yellow-brown. She saw pieces of shale and bones of long dead animals embedded in the surrounding walls. The hole looked like it stretched deep underground, as the rectangular pit of blackness in the centre was untouched by the light. Then she realised.
“Jesus!” she breathed. The trench was only eight feet deep. The blackness was the altar stone, blackness that didn’t reflect the powerful searchlight beam. It absorbed it.
She looked up to the unnaturally black sky, and then back down to the physical form of darkness below her feet.
“The altar of Hades,” she breathed. “Eternal darkness in stone. That’s why…”
Footsteps. The harsh sound of worn boot heels running up the hill from the causeway. More than one pair.
“We’ve got company,” he hissed. He picked up the carbine from the first soldier, checked the magazine, grunting in satisfaction to find it full.
Three figures raced past the left side of the Portara, automatic weapons held at waist height. In the daylight cast from the Portara, Julie saw that they were dressed in shapeless grey trousers and ragged fishing jumpers. Heavy stubble coated their olive-skinned features.
“Stephen!” The first one barked in a harsh, guttural voice that sounded familiar. Julie stared in disbelief as the partisan came closer, his Thompson sub-machine gun pointed unwaveringly towards the couple.
He was younger, his mane of hair had yet to turn grey but there was no mistaking his commanding presence and the cold steel of his eyes
“Manos!” she breathed. Steve tore his eyes from the advancing partisans and gaped at her.
“You know him? How?”
“He tried to stop me coming…oh, my God.”
Console yourself knowing it was his destiny…like Ariadne abandoned by Theseus, it is for greater purpose.
“No further, Manos! You’re not offering me!” Steve raised the German carbine.
Manos halted, his weapon held at the same height as Steve’s. He turned to his comrades and whispered a few words in Greek. They nodded, and retreated. They glared at Steve before turning in wonder – and horror – at the sight within the Portara.
“It is destiny, Stephen. What you were born for. Why else would the Gods have chosen you to come from your own time?”
“Gods!” Steve laughed mirthlessly. He gestured towards the Portara. “Apollo, Dionysus…nothing about Hades, though! The real reason Lygdamis built the temple – and why he was overthrown.”
“For good reason,” Manos growled, his eyes flickering over the excavation trench. “If he had succeeded in completing the temple, Hades would be triumphant. His realm would no longer be confined to the underworld. Night would be eternal on this plane also.” The fingers on the Thompson trembled as he saw the unnatural darkness that had settled on the islet.
“As below, so above. And now, history repeats itself. The madman in Berlin wishes to rebuild the temple, to dedicate it to Hades as the tyrant Lygdamis once did. To bring eternal night to the world in exchange for power. With the unearthing of the altar stone, it has already begun. Only one thing can prevent this…”
Manos became aware of Julie’s presence. He cocked his head and eyed her quizzically. He took in her twenty-first century clothing and pale skin, and then glared at Steve.
“She is your woman, yes? She came for you? She should not be here. Send her back.” There was alarm in his voice. “Send her back now!”
“I’ll go when I’m ready.” She put her hands on her hips and glared at the partisan. “And Steve’s coming with me.”
Manos shook his head. “You think you are doing good? Stephen’s destiny is here and now. One life for many. It is the will of the Gods. You would change that – and damn us all!”
On the other side of the Portara, the sun had risen fully, disappearing behind the lintel and out of the picture frame. It was at that moment that Julie realised the other two partisans had gone.
She felt a heavy blow to her back and the ground reached up for her. The breath left her lungs in an explosive gasp and the shards of marble cut into her face.
“Stay down,” a thickly accented voice whispered in her ear. “Please. It is for greater good. He must be offered to bring back the light - ”
His words were cut off by a short, controlled burst of gunfire. She felt something moist and sticky drench her scalp and the force t
hat pinned her to the ground was gone. She twisted away from the dying partisan, fighting to regain her breath. She saw what was coming, but couldn’t speak. She raised an arm and pointed frantically at the man running towards her fiancée.
Steve spun on his heels. His machine gun thundered again and sent the second partisan sprawling into the corpses of the German soldiers.
More gunfire broke the stillness of the unnatural midsummer night. A short, measured burst from Manos’ Thompson ripped into the back of Steve’s right leg. The bullets passed through his thigh and kneecap and sent up small puffs of dust and sand as they buried themselves in the blood-soaked ground.
His shrill scream of pain shattered the thickening atmosphere. He collapsed and fell heavily, the machine gun spinning from his hands.
Manos raced towards him. Tossing his gun to one side he delivered a devastating punch to the back of his head, just underneath his ear. Steve stiffened, paralysed by the blow. Manos reached under his shoulders with both hands and dragged him across the ground.
Towards the Portara.
Julie struggled to get to her feet. Still badly winded, each movement was agony. Red mist clouded her vision, but through it she could see two figures framed in the fading sunlight of the Portara. The blood that dribbled from Steve’s shattered knee turned a liquid crimson by the light on the other side as Manos hauled him over to the bisected base of the doorway.
Manos knelt on Steve’s belly, one hand clasped on Steve’s chin and thrusting it back, fully exposing the neck.
The other hand raised a knife skywards. A knife that Julie’s archaeologically trained eyes recognised as a sacrificial dagger.
Manos held the blade aloft while he spoke to the sun on the other side of the Portara. The edge of the blade glinted in the fading light.
Julie dragged herself upwards. She picked up the gun, amazed at how heavy it was and how alien it felt in her hands. Her breathing slowly returned to normal, but her heart still hammered in her chest.
Slowly, take it easy, she told herself. Manos is praying, invoking one of his precious Gods. He won’t kill Steve yet.
She knew she had to get close to them both before she trusted herself to pull the trigger. Nothing less than point blank range, or Steve would undoubtedly be shot as well.
She crept forward, the machine gun heavier with each tentative step. It stank of oil and cordite, the stench of war and death, but not as foul as the smell of the dead partisan’s blood on her clothes and hair. She gagged and forced the bile in her throat downwards.
Manos’ invocation was louder and more beseeching. She made out the name Apollo more than twice.
Apollo? she wondered. Since when did the sun god demand a human sacrifice? She’d studied other religions that had sacrificed humans, but this was something else – and flew in the face of everything she knew about Greek history. They’d never offered humans as sacrifices, and certainly not to Apollo, the god of reason, harmony and order.
But Manos seemed to know what he was doing. He’d kept Steve here, waiting for a full year to pass so that he could offer up Steve on this day. Not just because it was the longest day of sunshine in the year – but because it was the first anniversary of her betrothal to Steve. The first anniversary of his being taken from her.
…like Ariadne abandoned by Theseus, it is for greater purpose.
No, she told herself when she was less than ten metres from the pair. Whatever power brought Steve here brought me as well. Whatever destiny or purpose Manos thinks Steve has waiting for him, it won’t involve being sliced to pieces on a two and a half thousand year old marble ruin. No bloody way.
Five metres. Although Manos had his back to her, she saw tears fall from him and land on Steve’s exposed throat. Manos’ voice wavered with each word he cried out. The offering he was about to perform was tearing him apart, but she felt no sympathy.
“Fuck Apollo. Fuck Dionysus, Hades…and fuck you, Manos.” She pulled the trigger.
The machine gun bucked and writhed in her inexperienced hands. Bullets scoured the pillars of the Portara, chunks of marble torn from the doorway rained down in a painful shower. She finally got the weapon under some control, and kept the smoking barrel pointed firmly at Manos’ back until the magazine was empty.
The marble frame shimmered like a heat haze, just as it had done on the other side before the time portal opened. She knew time was short.
She tossed the spent weapon over her shoulder, crouched down and pulled Steve’s arm over her shoulder.
“Grit your teeth, darling. This is going to hurt.”
Steve grinned in response. He let out a sharp cry of pain as he accidentally put weight on his shattered leg. He bit his lip and grinned again.
“Not as much as that bloody knife would…”
“There’s my tough guy,” she laughed. “Partisan fighter. War hero and time traveller. The man who defied the Gods.”
The sunlight seemed less bright than before as they stepped through the Portara. Perhaps that was due to the red haze that still misted in front of her eyes. Or the shimmering and vibration of the pale marble pillars. She briefly looked back, took in the dead bodies on the blood-drenched ground. The thick, oppressive blackness of the starless night. The stillness of the treacle-like sea.
The scaffolding and archaeological equipment surrounding the excavation site and the altar stone of Hades.
She shuddered as she helped Steve over the still-twitching body of Manos. She almost felt pity for the dead partisan. Whatever madness had affected him, it had led him to believe that he was doing the right thing.
Yeah, well. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, isn’t it? And the blood of innocents…
Still, it was over now. Just one more step…
“That’s odd,” Steve muttered hoarsely. “Have we gone through?”
She froze. No sizzling sound. No strange smell of blood and burning. But the Portara was definitely behind them. They faced the causeway that led to the Chora of Naxos.
Or what used to be the Chora. She couldn’t make out too much detail in the unnaturally black night, but she could just make out the ruins of the Venetian Kastro. The sugar-cube houses of marble had vanished. There were no tell-tale signs of candles or neon lights that formerly illuminated the courtyards of the tavernas and bars.
There were no tavernas or bars. Just endless rows of uniform, grey brick, one-storey buildings in military-precision rows. Barracks.
No, not barracks. The flames from the furnace reflected on the windows, showing clearly the vertical iron bars and the gaunt, hopeless faces of the prisoners within.
The water in the harbour was as still and lifeless as that seen on the other side of the Portara. Black, treacly fluid that clung sickeningly to the hulls of the gunboats moored on the jetty like clotting blood.
The stench hit her then. Where the pizzeria had once stood, scenting the evening air with appetising aromas of stone-baked pizza and souvlaki kebabs, there was a different set of ovens. The fumes belching from the tall chimney reeked of burning meat.
“Oh, Jesus…”
She turned around, unable to face the sight of the naked human corpses loaded onto the crematorium’s conveyor, a never-ending stream of dead humanity waiting to be sent to the fires. Some of them weren’t completely dead, twitching or in some cases flailing their wasted limbs frantically at the soldiers who mercilessly battered them with the butts of their rifles.
Staring at the Portara, she expected to see the nocturnal scene they had just left – or maybe, in some bizarre twist, the opposite. A bright blue sky under a scorching Greek sun. She saw neither.
The Portara was no longer a doorway leading to nowhere, acting as a picture frame to the magnificent vista of rocky headland and blue sea. It was what Lygdamis had always intended it to be – a doorway to a temple.
A temple that now stood, fully formed and completed. A temple that dwarfed the doorway leading into it, a temple that reached high into the unn
aturally black sky, even taller than the hundred feet the ancient tyrant had originally planned.
With the smoothness and brilliant white of the marble blocks, the temple had obviously been constructed recently – perhaps within the last sixty years. Just after the war ended.
The temple was of Ionic style, as the original tyrant had desired. The torches set in regularly placed alcoves flickered menacingly in the thick black air, burning like the crematorium fires on the Chora below. Massive red banners centred with white circles and black swastikas moved slowly, heavily, like funeral shrouds for the world. Manos’ words came back to haunt her.
As below, so above. And now, history repeats itself. The madman in Berlin wishes to rebuild the temple, to dedicate it to Hades as the tyrant Lygdamis once did. To bring eternal night to the world in exchange for power.
The wooden doors set within the frame of the Portara were closed, bolted and barred shut. There was no way in.
Steve began to laugh. A high-pitched, nervous giggling that escalated to shrill peals of manic laughter.
“What now, Jules? What now?”
Julie shook her head slowly. It took a huge effort of will to move it, and an even bigger effort to remain calm, to refuse to give in to the screaming black demon of panic and madness within her.
Apollo had called Steve. But something else had called her. Something else had granted her wish and enabled her to go to him.
Something that knew Steve’s rescue would set in motion the chain of events that led to this. The smell of death that had filled her nostrils when she stepped through the portal should’ve been warning enough.
She stared at the wooden barriers. There were sounds of movement from within the temple. Harsh tramping of jackboot heels, the cocking of rifles, the sharpening of knives. The new priesthood of Hades were making ready to welcome the travellers.
“We wait,” she said finally. “We wait for sunrise.”
She sat down, cross-legged, and put her head in her hands. She tried to ignore Steve’s screams.
Eventually, the doors opened. But sunrise never came to the Portara.
Anthology of Ichor III: Gears of Damnation Page 28