by Неизвестный
According to this strange rumour the village still stood, the huts had been replaced by cottages and farmhouses, but those who lived there still possessed this strange ability to make them unrecognisable, to alter their faces.
I set out to investigate this myth because whenever I heard it uttered it was with a just little too much sincerity. Over time I had established that the people in my town really believed that it could be true. It was whispered in the pubs and muttered in the churches, it was a legend with lifeblood that circulated all around me.
I began by visiting all the villages on the map and saying that I was writing a piece for a magazine. Leaping at the chance for their names in print, locals always claimed to know of the myth but nobody admitted knowing where this village was. I was all for resigning myself to defeat, having questioned a local tending his garden in the last village on the map with no result, so I drove absently home, taking roads I did not know, looking for a pub where I could console my failure. I was taking a high road along the spine of the Downs and I just happened to look down over a thicket when I spotted two cottages through the trees. I pulled over and tried to see a road whereby I could access them, but there was none in sight. I pulled over and with one final attempt to solve the mystery that had gripped me, I began walking the steep decline of ridges and rabbit burrows.
It was not too long before I entered the small wooded area at the bottom of the decline where I had spotted the homes. I was nervous about trespassing but figured if I had to climb back up to my car then a farmer with a blunderbuss might as well chase me there. I took a final drag of my cigarette and knocked cautiously upon the door to the first building I came to. It looked like little more than a barn; windows without glass and crumbling grey brickwork. A teenager answered, perhaps fifteen years old, with a face like a plucked grebe. His small black eyes flickered in lidless sockets and his long, pink tongue stretched out, wetting dry and chapped lips.
I boldly stated my intent as I imagined a journalist might and he ushered me inside into a dark empty room without furniture or decoration.
“It’s no secret,” he said. “It’s just that no one ever asks.”
“So it’s true?” I questioned. “Can you do it? Can you change your face?”
“Sure can,” he said. “Want me to show you how?”
I nodded silently, taken aback at his willingness to verify the rumour to a stranger and a little afraid, faced with this magic that, despite my atheism, felt distinctly heathen.
“You have got to take a drink of this first,” the boy said passing me an old brown bottle that had been nestled in a crevice above an empty fireplace. “It’s just nightshade, agarics and a few berries.”
“But that’s poisonous,” I queried, holding the bottle with an outstretched arm.
“And so are they,” he said, pointing at the cigarettes in my top pocket.
He had a point. I took a small, wary sip.
“Now copy me,” the boy instructed.
He puckered his lips into a beak shape and sucked at them making a hissing sound. I puckered my lips and sucked. He pointed to his nose and wrinkled it upwards whilst squinting his eyes, furrowing his damp forehead like wet, sticky dough. I wrinkled my nose and frowned.
“See, it’s easy,” the boy said and, taking the bottle back from me, held it up before me, moving it into the sunlight streaming through the window so that I could see.
I peered into the murky brown glass and staggered backwards, bringing my fingers to my face to disprove with touch what I saw in my reflection. Looking back at me in the glass, birdlike and scowling, was the boy.
“No, no, no,” I yelled, backing away from him and clawing blindly at dust motes dancing in the sunbeams.
“Just drink again,” he said, passing me back the bottle.
I drank, this time a desperate mouthful, and then looked again at my reflection as it blurred, flickered like white noise on a television, and then settled. My face was back.
This had overwhelmed me, left me in white-skinned shock and panting like an agoraphobic in a shopping mall. I should have questioned the boy, ascertained the finer details of this ancient sorcery, but I staggered away clutching the bottle, back towards the dark looming trees. I just wanted to get away, it was all too much for me.
Somehow in my desperation to escape I had taken a wrong turn, the wood when I saw it from above looked not much more than a few acres but here I was lost. There was no point in directionless wandering so I sat down upon a mossy log to collect myself, to replace my confusion with logic and reason, some sense of direction.
I had been sitting quiet and still for some time, getting my breath back and calming my nerves, when I heard a rustle in some bushes nearby. A squirrel foraging, surely, or perhaps a bird looking for twigs to build its nest. Then silence. And then more crunching foliage.
I had to quell this irrational fear that was taking over me again so I went bravely straight to the bush and parted its curtain of fresh green leaves outlined with gold. To my horror a little bearded figure with the legs of a goat pulled a face at me and scampered away.
“What the hell?” I gasped, and then crept forwards to the cluster of saplings where the little creature had run to.
Another noise resounded behind me, the crack of a twig like a gunshot. I span around, peering into the verdant veil that surrounded me.
A flourish of notes whistled on the March breeze, played by some camouflaged piper. I turned to the left, then spun full circle, I felt trapped. All that I could see were trees and bushes but I sensed a guerrilla ambush and elfin snipers high above me disguised among a parliament of rooks who looked upon my plight like a silent jury.
Seeing nothing I turned sharply back around, sensing something behind me. Before me was a much larger version of the little goat person I had spotted before. Two horns on his head arched back like comet tails and upon his goat legs were hooves, soiled with damp bark and dead leaves. Around his neck, against a muscular, tanned, worn leather chest, hung musical pipes from a leather tong.
Feeling scared and cornered, my actions were dictated by pure instinct, thought processes lost on the wind with Pan’s hypnotic music. I gulped from the bottle that I still held in my hand and I imitated his face. I widened my eyes and imagined his beard upon my chin, his curly hair upon my head and those horns, yellow like old bone.
“Thank you, sir,” said Pan, and took the bottle from me before scuttling off into the woods.
As soon as the sound of his footsteps faded from earshot I ran, and I ran until I eventually came to the edge of the wood. I traced its border until I was below my car and then I climbed back to it as quickly as I could, desperate to flee that fearful place.
I flung myself into my car and turned the ignition, I wanted to get back to the comfortable and familiar confines of my home, the town whose roads and walls stood firm against the invasion of the pagan forces that ruled the strange village that I had fled.
I looked into the rear view mirror and screamed in horror, for the Great God Pan was looking back at me. I reached up and felt the horns atop my head, the beard as thick as lamb’s wool. I screamed again, a harmony of echoes reverberated back and forth through the valleys and over the blue, rolling Downs.
I rushed straight from my car and headed back to the woods. I had to find the boy so that he could give me more of the potion; I had to get my face back. My legs spun like wind turbines in a gale, I leapt over tufts and anthills with my eyes streaming in the cold air and my arms flailing wildly to keep my balance.
I ran into the wood and retraced my path to the boy’s decrepit house but when I reached it, Pan was stood outside.
“Help,” I shouted past him, my voice desperate and wavering.
The door opened to my relief and I called for the boy to rescue me, but stood in the doorway was another horned goat man.
“No,” I cried and fell to my knees sobbing as the half-man, half-goat creatures skipped away from me into the woodland to the
sound of those fearful pipes.
Eventually it grew dark and I crawled to a fallen tree where, exhausted, I fell asleep against its soft bark.
When I awoke two goats were stood beside me. I could never go home looking like this. What was I to do but the lead the goats from the wood to graze?
Phasma
by Gary Power
Bill Graves stepped onto the tarmac at Mytilene airport on the Greek island of Lesvos to a reception of chill wind and light rain, not the usual swell of warm air that would normally be expected in late June. Rainfall for the summer in Greece averaged one day a month so he figured that there would be a marked improvement for the rest of his stay.
He wasn’t just there for pleasure, though. As founder of successful internet website “spiritwatch.com,” he was also there in a work capacity having attended a fascinating but harrowing midnight seance one rainy Sunday afternoon in Whitechapel, London.
Bill was the Fox Mulder of suburban Britain. He meticulously studied and documented other people’s supernatural experiences with an enthusiasm that bordered on obsession. The seance had for him been an intensely personal experience. During the sitting the medium, a quaint and rather inebriated woman became possessed by the spirit of a particularly malevolent Second World War British soldier. The squaddie graphically and proudly described his part in the assault and murder of a Greek woman and her teenage daughter in a building just a few miles from the Greek fishing town of Skala Kallonis in Lesvos. The seance was unusually intense and all those present found themselves distressed by the medium’s graphic description of events. What really intrigued Bill though, was the unnerving way that the woman had stared at him while talking in the gritty and strangely familiar tones of the long dead soldier. Her gaze reached within him and touched him at a personal level. It was a case that he felt compelled to follow up. He was in need of a break anyway; what better excuse than to mix a holiday with a spot of ghost hunting as well.
The journey to Skala Kallonis could have been a pleasant one but the Greek taxi driver drove like a man possessed. Olive trees and idyllic canopied restaurants flashed by as did breathtaking panoramas and pretty fishing villages. Much of the island was untainted by commercialism and pleasingly dated by its lack of progress.
By the time he reached his destination the clouds had cleared and the wind was no more than a sultry breeze. He was dropped off in a small square just beyond the waterfront. Several tavernas surrounded the square, each one attempting to seduce holiday-makers with sumptuous cocktails and authentic Greek dishes or freshly caught fish. He settled for the Argo, a lively taverna run by an amiable man named Theo and his spirited niece, Anita. With its pleasant mix of locals and tourists it was the perfect retreat. From there he established a base, a homely bed and breakfast adjacent to a dusty football ground.
None of the locals seemed to know anything of the wartime murder of the two Greek women. His only revelation was of the mysterious disappearance of a local Pelican whose mischievous antics included pecking the bottoms of female holidaymakers.
He consoled himself with a walk along the volcanic sands of the beach and a shot or three of ouzo at a waterfront bar. The crystal waters of the Gulf of Kalloni lapped gently at his feet as night began to fall and he found himself appalled that such a terrible atrocity could have happened in such a calm and peaceful place.
Twinkling lights dappled the far shore and Bill found himself caught up in the romance of the moment and wishing that he had company to share such a precious memory with. That was when he saw a girl standing in the water before him. The light was poor and detail scant; it was as though she’d appeared out of thin air. She was definitely there though, and she was staring in his direction. Bill looked around but nobody else seemed to have noticed. He laughed nervously. He’d travelled so far on such flimsy evidence, but now his instincts told him that events were taking a turn. There was something unworldly about the situation. The girl was staring with manic intensity.
She started to move toward him, but her legs made no ripples in the dark water that surrounded her. He shuffled uneasily in his seat as she got closer. Her simple clothes were wet and torn. She was pretty... and she was smiling at him. He stood and looked around; still no one had noticed. He took a deep breath as the girl moved from the water and stepped barefoot onto the sand. She was saying something and at the same time unfastening the buttons of her dress. Her words were nothing more than a whisper but they lingered in the air and echoed in his ears. She pulled at her ragged clothes and teased him with glimpses of flesh. Bill closed his eyes and sighed deeply.
When he opened them again they were face to face but now he was staring into the darkened pits of eyeless sockets. He retched as maggots wriggled from beneath the festering flesh of her once pretty face. Her naked body was gaunt and livid. She was a corpse come to life, whispering words that hissed in his ears.
“Come to Apothikes.” she said, and then she walked through him. Bill remained in a state of shock. He looked around but the girl was nowhere to be seen.
The experience left him physically and emotionally exhausted. He needed a rest... and a stiff drink. More than anything he needed to try and make some kind of sense of the incident. At least now he had something to go on. “Come to Apothekis” he muttered himself as he returned to his room.
He drifted in and out of sleep that night. Thoughts of the young girl stirred in his mind. The night was humid and without air conditioning he found himself having to leave the windows wide open in attempt to relieve the stifling heat. The cool air circulated, but so did the mosquitoes. The constant whine and threat of painful bites made him even more restless. Finally, at three in the morning he sat himself at the window and lit up a cigarette. The sky was alive with stars. A gentle breeze caressed his face as he looked into the distant void. He found himself anxiously anticipating what the next day might bring. Something stirred in the darkness below. There was someone there. A woman was staring up at him. Her body was nothing more than a silhouette cast against the dusty football pitch. Her face was lost in shadows, but her gaze burned into the darkness. He could feel her stare and he found himself unable to look away. She appeared to be dressed in simple clothing, much like the young girl that he had seen on the beach, but this woman was older. With palms upturned she raised her arms and as she did so her body gently lifted into the air. Bill’s heart began to pound. This was surely a dream, a nightmare. For so many years he’d wanted to see a ghost and now he found himself reacting like a terrified child. The woman was a manifestation of evil. He could see it in her eyes – the way they burned in the darkness like two hot coals pushed into her skull. She uttered his name; her tone was gruff and filled with rage. Her foul breath reached out to him and filled his lungs with the suffocating stench of death. He was frozen with fear and unable to move. Somehow he had to break the hold she had on him. He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. His pounding heart began to slow down. It felt heavy in his chest and dragged the breath from his lungs. She was draining life from him. She wanted him dead and he didn’t know why. He made one final effort to get away; from somewhere he summoned enough strength to slam the wooden shutters together, throw the latch across and stagger back to his bed. For a few precious moments there was silence. Like a terrified child he drew the sheets to his face and stared into the darkness. She was still there; he could see the light from her eyes seeping through the wooden slats. The latch rattled noisily as she tried to force her way in. He rested his head on the pillow and tried to make sense of things. The line between fantasy and reality was becoming blurred. Eventually he fell asleep, but it was a restless slumber filled with anxious dreams and disturbing nightmares. When morning finally came he woke in a cold sweat with sunlight streaming in through open shutters – the shutters that he had closed and locked the previous night.
He rented a battered car that morning and bought a map of the island. Apothikes glared out at him from the paper. It was a small village maybe ten kilometres or
so along the coast. Everything seemed to be falling into place; a story was unfolding. Apothikes obviously held a very dark secret.
The morning was hot, and with the air-conditioning working only intermittently the temperature in the car became almost unbearable. The winding road narrowed to a single lane that eventually became nothing more than a dusty dirt track. At times he wondered if he’d taken a wrong direction but turning would have been impossible and he was forced to see the road to its conclusion; if the car ever made it that far. There were no other vehicles or people to be seen, just olive trees spread across acres of dry and barren land and glimpses of craggy coves. The track finally opened out after passing through an unexpected bank of low clouds into a wider expanse close to the waterfront. There were a several ramshackle houses and a few more modern ones dotted about in haphazard fashion. He pulled up next to a canopied area beneath which were several tables and chairs. It was hardly a thriving community – there were no shops or roads – but it was pretty and peaceful, a perfect retreat that was timeless in its simplicity.