Night of the Furies

by David Angsten

  “Tell him the truth,” I said. “I’m sure they’ve noticed the Zodiac by now; he probably knows I’m here. Tell him you received a call from me, but you don’t know where I am. You came to see Dan.”

  We left the café, and I led Phoebe to the hotel to drop off her bag in my room. I was relieved that the old woman who had checked me in was nowhere to be seen, and the hotel appeared to be vacant; the guests were apparently exploring the town or sunning themselves on the beaches. We climbed the stairs to my room.

  The window and shutters were open, and sunlight shone on the bed and the wall. Phoebe pulled off her red beret and fluffed her hair with her fingers. Then she sat down on the edge of the bed to change her shoes for sandals. “Give me a second,” she said, and went to freshen up in the bathroom.

  I waited at the window to keep an eye on the street. I knew it wouldn’t be long before the cop would be coming for me. I had to find Damiana and talk to her again. She was my only link to the women on the boat; she had to be persuaded to help me.

  Gazing down over the street, I remembered the woman I’d seen the night before, gliding off mysteriously, as if she were part of a dream.

  “Okay, I’m ready.” Phoebe stepped out of the bathroom. She looked the opposite of that black figure I’d seen, and not at all a dream. I felt a sudden welling of affection, and was very glad to be with her. “I never told you,” I said, “but thank you for coming.”

  “I was glad you called,” she said. She stood there, looking at me. Her eyes were deep blue diamonds.

  We headed for the police station. I tried to take a back route to keep us out of view. We ended up in an alley that gradually tapered and became so narrow we could barely make it through. I told Phoebe the maze of streets was even more bewildering than on Mykonos. “I think they want you to get lost,” I said.

  She said there was some truth to that idea. “People have been living on these islands for thousands of years. They often fell victim to invaders and pirates, who raided and looted the towns. The layout of the streets was designed to baffle them. A band of strangers swarming into town would soon get confused or trapped in dead ends, while the inhabitants concealed themselves on the rooftops and tried to pick them off.”

  I was reminded of Damiana’s tour and her story of the island’s long history. When we finally came within sight of the police station, I told Phoebe that while she went in to see Dan, I’d pay another visit to the church. We agreed to meet up later, back at the hotel.

  Phoebe hugged me tightly. I realized suddenly just how scared both of us were. “Promise me you’ll be careful,” she said. “We don’t really know what we’re dealing with.”

  “I’ve got to try to find out,” I said.

  ONCE AGAIN, as I entered the church, I was struck by its remarkable stillness. The shadowy air seemed hazy and cool, undisturbed by the beams of sunlight slanting down from the dome. It appeared the church was completely empty, and the quiet seemed to confirm it. I listened for a moment until I heard a woman’s voice, and what sounded like the closing of a door. The sound had come from what Damiana had called the narthex, the main entrance hall at the opposite end from the dome.

  I started toward it. My steps echoed off the fresco-covered walls, whose painted saints stood mutely staring, watching me pass like an intruder. Halfway down the narthex, I noticed a passage through the wall that led to a parallel hallway. I poked my head in and heard the murmur of a conversation coming from behind a closed door.

  One of the voices sounded like Damiana’s, but it was the other woman doing most of the talking, all of it in Greek. I decided to wait until their meeting was finished, and moved back into the narthex. At the end of it was a bright, square room with high-set, latticed windows. As I walked into it, I realized it was the base of the belfry tower. A crisscrossing staircase led up from the side. A velvet rope hung across it.

  It may have been simple curiosity that led me to unhook the rope and wander up the stairs, but I suspect it had more to do with the fact that it was forbidden. I wanted to see what I hadn’t been shown; I wanted to know Damiana’s secret.

  The staircase was extremely narrow and twisted back and forth. It opened into a dimly lit second-floor room with a single round window in each of its four walls. The room appeared at first to be empty, but as I stepped out onto the creaking wooden floor and peered into the dimness, I saw a thousand dark eyes staring back at me.

  A chill shot through me. I froze.

  From floor to ceiling, the walls were lined with glass bookcases, and each shelf was neatly stacked with rows of human skulls.

  What had I stumbled upon? Some secret ossuary? The skulls seemed to be on display, yet the room had been clearly roped off.

  I moved closer to examine them. The pale skulls were old and dry. Without flesh and features, they all looked remarkably similar: gaping eye sockets, triangular nasal slot, tawny yellow color. All the lower jaws were missing. Some of the skulls appeared so small I figured they had to be children’s.

  I began to notice that many skulls had signs of injuries. On one, I saw a jagged hole above an eye socket. Another had a large piece missing from the top, as if it had been smashed with a club. Many had straight-edged cut wounds, as if from a knife or a sword or—quite possibly, I thought—an ax.

  With a shudder I flashed on the image of Dan holding Basri’s head.

  I backed out of the room to the stairwell. Voices were coming from inside the church, visitors arriving for the tour. Glancing up the stairwell, I saw it led to a trapdoor and figured it must be to the belfry. On impulse, I headed up the stairs.

  The trapdoor opened out into an airy chamber, with a balustrade around the perimeter, and pillars supporting the dome of the roof, beneath which the great bell hung. The open, arched windows revealed a stunning panorama. The mountain loomed high on one side, and the blue Aegean stretched out on the other, with the town lying neatly in between. After the dusty dimness of the dreary vault of bones, the view from this breezy tower made me dizzy.

  Gazing out over the village, my eyes fell on the square below, with its green clusters of trees and its splashing central fountain. A pair of tourists crossed the square and headed toward the church. At the same moment they entered the door, a woman in black emerged.

  My eyes immediately clung to her. It was the same cloaked woman I had seen the night before from the window of my hotel room. In fact, I now remembered, I had seen this same nun cross the square the morning I had followed Damiana. Was she the one just meeting with her now?

  I raced down the zigzag staircase. From the windowed room at the base of the tower, I hurried through the church to the exit. Tourists stood scattered around the interior, and I glimpsed Damiana gathering them together. She turned and stared as I rushed out through the door.

  I jogged into the middle of the square and scanned around for the woman. The fountain bubbled noisily. Three old men on a bench beside it, thumbing worry beads. A soccer ball rolled by me, chased by two young boys.

  Finally, I spotted the nun.

  She was crossing to a bus stop at the corner of the street. Moving swiftly, her long black robe flowed in rippling folds behind her. Her head was veiled in black as well, and her hands were tucked in her gown. She joined two other local women waiting at the corner, and just as she arrived, the small blue bus appeared.

  I hurried after her. An unshaven man in a threadbare suit jacket tipsily stepped off the bus, then the nun and the two women climbed on board.

  The door was just closing as I hastened in behind them. The driver, a potbellied Greek with elfish eyebrows and wire-rim spectacles, gave me a second glance and grumbled to himself. The bus was filled to capacity with local people, not a tourist’s face among them. They eyed me suspiciously as I made my way down the aisle.

  A stocky workman in overalls offered the nun his seat. As she turned to take it, she revealed for the first time her shroud-encircled face.

  I gaped in utter amazement.

 
; 14

  THE BUS rumbled up the street. I was so shocked I stood there in the aisle, frozen in place, openly staring down at her. When she looked up, she recognized me and instantly turned her face away. She refused to look at me again.

  I remembered well the last time I had seen her. Lying naked on the floor under Dan’s thrusting hips, a look of madness on her face, howling with pain or pleasure. I remembered her standing before the masked Dionysus, the first to be offered his drink. And I remembered her initial appearance on the yacht, the tall, slender body and long red hair, leading the trio of seductresses, kissing me brazenly on the mouth and rewarding Dan’s kiss with a slap in the face.

  “Thalia.”

  She continued staring toward the window of the bus.

  I spoke louder. “Thalia.”

  Still she ignored me.

  “You see, I remember your name,” I said.

  I wanted to rip the phony veil off her head. Give her a slap to remind her. I knew she would refuse to tell me the truth, just like Damiana. Who were these crazy women who had lured us into a murder?

  “Thalia!”

  Slowly she turned her face to me and leveled an icy stare. “I am Mother Melissa Capetanos, abbess of the Monastery of the Panaghia.”

  Everyone around us was looking at me. The man who had given up his seat for her suddenly got into my face. He pushed me angrily toward the rear of the bus, barking gruffly in Greek. I couldn’t understand a word he was saying, but I certainly got the idea. I was a crazy Americano hassling an innocent nun.

  I put up my hands and moved back. “All right, all right,” I said.

  People moved away from me, allowing me plenty of space. As I stood in the aisle toward the back, I could feel their wary glances. The bus climbed to the edge of town, stopping twice to disgorge passengers without taking any more on. Seats soon began opening up, and when there were no more people standing, I sat down several rows behind Thalia.

  She never once looked back. The bus rode high along the base of the mountain, giving us a view of the sea. On a lofty plateau of vineyards, the driver stopped for two fieldworkers waiting at the side of the road. Before they got on, several men got off, including the gruff fellow who had “defended” Mother Melissa. He cast a threatening glance my way as he descended from the bus. After all his glaring looks, it was a relief to see him go.

  The bus turned inland and climbed up higher. We passed a boy on a bike, struggling up the slope—the same kid who had waved to me at the beach the day before. Above us, the mountain seemed to recede into the sky, its peak never visible. The landscape grew rocky and rugged, with scattered patches of pines and lots of low-lying shrubs. We passed several working windmills, their white-canvassed wheels turning slowly in the breeze. At the edge of a grove of trees, I spotted a man in a sports jacket with a rifle slung over his arm. He stood watching the bus go by, and I realized it was the gentleman hunter who’d arrived at the dock that morning. The old man must have been one heck of a hiker.

  The road climbed a saddleback ridge, then dropped into a wooded ravine. On one side, a high stone promontory jutted out over the trees. Atop this flat-topped pinnacle of rock stood a castlelike cluster of buildings. With its medieval stone walls and multidomed church, I knew it must be the monastery the German students had mentioned.

  The bus wound its way along the wall of the ravine toward the mountainside entrance to the citadel. Through the trees, the blue ocean sparkled in the distance, with the white town piled like sea foam on the shore. The monastery reigned above it all in supreme isolation. Set on its towering column of stone, it looked improbable, yet perfectly appropriate, like a crown on the head of a king. The walls, damaged and crumbling, they appeared to be as old as the mountain itself, as if they had been carved from the rock.

  The bus slowed to a stop before an arched doorway with a wrought-iron gate, the only visible entry through the wall. Thalia rose from her seat and walked to the front. She was the only passenger to exit.

  When I jumped up and followed after her, no one tried to stop me. Only old men and a few women remained, and the potbellied driver seemed oblivious. I turned at the door and asked him when the bus would be returning.

  His eyes looked huge in his spectacles. “No today.” “Not at all? You mean there’s no bus back to town?” He nodded toward the monastery. “Is no open. No tourist.” I glanced out the door. Thalia was walking briskly to the gate. There were no tour buses, no parked cars, no one else around. I hesitated. It was miles back to town. I had to meet up with Phoebe. But I couldn’t let Thalia go after following her all this way.

  The passengers were all staring at me. The driver drummed his fingers on the wheel.

  “Thanks,” I said, and stepped off the bus.

  Thalia had unlocked the gate and was slipping inside. The bus pulled away as I hurried toward her. “Wait!” I shouted.

  She closed and locked the latch. As I reached the gate, she backed away. I shouted through the bars. “I have to talk to you!”

  “I have nothing to say. You should not have followed me.”

  “Basri’s dead,” I said. “My brother’s in jail. You’ve got to tell the police what happened.”

  “What happened is past. It cannot be undone.” She turned to walk away.

  “Wait!” I shouted.

  She ignored me and kept walking. I rattled the gate, then shouted again, “I’ll tell the police what you did! I’ll tell them you killed Basri!”

  She stopped. Turned. Faced me for a moment. Then she walked back toward me, stopping just out of reach.

  For a moment she simply stared at me. In the glaring sunlight, her eyes looked pale gray, the pupils shrunk to pinpoints. Not a single strand of red hair showed beneath her veil. Her mouth was pulled tight and slightly open in threat, and tiny beads of sweat had formed on the ridge of her upper lip.

  It was Thalia’s face, but she looked like a different woman.

  “Why did you kill him?” I asked.

  Her eyes didn’t blink. “You can ask yourself the same question.”

  A moment passed in silence. “No,” I said. “I didn’t… I had nothing to do with it.”

  “Then why haven’t you gone to the police?”

  I started to answer, but hesitated. Her eyes pierced mine like needles.

  “If you start walking now,” she said, “you will make it back before dark. You must leave this island before they arrest you. You must never come back here again.”

  I was incredulous. “I can’t leave without my brother!”

  “You must. It is too late for him.”

  She said this as if she thought I actually could accept it. As if it were a simple statement of fact. There was nothing I could do for Dan. I could only try to save myself.

  “Who are you?” I asked. “What is this place?”

  “I am Mother Melissa Capetanos, abbess of the Monastery of the Panaghia.” She gave me one final look, then turned and walked away.

  I stood there in disbelief. Does she really believe she can be rid of me so easily? A brass bell hung to the side of the gate. I grabbed the rope hanging from the clapper and yanked. The clang rang out across the courtyard and echoed off the mountain wall behind me. She ignored it and walked on. I rang the bell again.

  “I’ll go to the U.S. Embassy!” I shouted. “I’ll tell them what you did!”

  She disappeared through an archway across the flagstoned yard. There was no one else around. I struggled with the lock, but couldn’t open the gate. I shook the bars in frustration.

  She had been right about going to the police. And going to the embassy in Athens was absurd. Unless I had evidence against her, I had no way to prove she had been on the yacht. If I did go to the authorities, it was far more likely I’d be incriminated along with my brother Dan. She, after all, was the abbess of a monastery; I was a vagabond American. Who would Greek officials be more likely to believe?

  I had to find out who she was. I had to find out their secret. />
  I stepped back. The iron gate had to be twelve feet high and was closed off by the arching wall above it. To the right, the wall abutted the craggy mountainside, impossible to scale without ropes and climbing gear. To the left, the pinnacle dropped off steeply. I moved as far as I could along the wall and peered down over the edge. The green bottom of the dizzying ravine was visible far below.

  The gray-and-black sandstone rock was pockmarked with holes and indentations. Scattered gnarly bushes clung tenaciously into cracks. I couldn’t see ahead around the curving wall of the monastery, but I knew the best views would be overlooking the valley, so I figured there was bound to be a window somewhere. Without really giving it too much thought, I found myself edging out onto the rock, moving alongside the base of the wall.

  At first it was surprisingly easy. There were plenty of cracks and footholds in the porous rock, and the base of the wall formed a ledge I could grip. I moved along slowly and methodically. Then, about twenty feet out, I made the mistake of looking down. There was nothing but air for a thousand feet. The rock curved gradually inward under me. The sight seemed to suck the air out of my lungs, and an icy tingle clawed at my gut.

  I didn’t look down there again. I focused instead on what was in front of me: where to put my hand, what would make a foothold, where the hell I was going.

  I passed beneath a couple windows too far up to reach. At one point I came to a cavelike indentation with a ledge that was flat enough to stand on. After resting there a minute, I continued on around the face of the cliff until finally I saw something promising. Water was trickling down the rock and dripping off into the air. It was coming from a rectangular hole in the base of the monastery wall. I climbed over to it and discovered it was an open storm drain, large enough for me to fit through.

  I crawled in.

  The tunnel was wet and slimy and dark. At first I couldn’t see, but as my eyes adjusted, I discerned a distant ray of daylight. I crawled along the drain horizontally for what must have been twenty yards. When I reached the light, I saw it was coming from an opening above; the sky could be seen through an iron grate. I listened for a minute and didn’t hear any voices, only the cawing of crows. When I reached up and tried to move the grate, I discovered it was embedded in the stone.