by P. W. Child
Order of the Black Sun – Book 12
THE MEDUSA STONE
by
Preston William Child
© 2016 P.W. Child
Edited by Anna Drago
Chapter 1
“He looks like Jesus.”
Abbie glared at her dark haired college roommate and gasped in astonishment. “Excuse me?”
“I said ‘He looks like Jesus.’ I could never date a guy like that,” the mousy-faced bulimic scoffed modestly. “I think it would be…” she hesitated as Abbie gawked.
“It would be what? I will tell you, Jessica. It will be fucking hot!” Abbie exclaimed as the two students rounded the wet street corner where the dangling sign of the pub creaked eerily in the wild night wind.
“No, it would be…sacrilegious. Imagine getting all hot and heavy with this bloke and in the throes of passion you look at him, and you see Jesus hovering over you, all panting and sweaty,” Jessica explained her aversion for the man they were less than clandestinely following through the streets of Edinburgh.
“Jesus!” Abbie recoiled. “Uh, so to speak.”
“See? It would just be weird. So if we can get up close and personal, you can close the deal. I mean, he is delicious, but he looks way too close to those pictures in my mother’s house,” she told Abbie, still grossed out by the unfortunate resemblance that confronted them both on this night of man hunting and pub crawling.
“Your loss. I don’t spend time overthinking stuff, especially with an arse like that! Check it. I would follow that tight fitting buttock bulls eye to the ends of the earth,” Abbie vowed dreamily. “Or wherever we end up.” She winked at her friend and dragged her aside when the man turned and looked around for a moment.
“At least out of Blair Street, I reckon,” Jessica muttered as they left the lovely joviality of the student haunt at the infamous vaults.
“Wonder who he is looking for?” Abbie nudged Jessica.
Jessica whispered with no small measure of suspicion, “Maybe he can feel you fucking him with your eyes, you cheap bint.” Abbie giggled at her friend’s chastisement, but she did consider that maybe the attractive stranger could feel the presence of his two adolescent stalkers. He had a peculiar look about him; that was no maybe. She loved the image he portrayed. The tall, slender man with the bears and almost feminine features had long black hair that fell to his shoulder blades, ending in kinks that coiled lazily against the virgin glow of his loose buttoned shirt.
“He reminds me of Duncan McLeod, actually,” Abbie told her friend. “Not Jesus!” she frowned at Jessica, still trying to dismiss the obviously subliminal or spiritual vexation between them.
“I don’t think he is a Highlander, love,” Jessica remarked as she plastered her thin lips with lip gloss that made her mouth reek of strawberry and Jägermeister with that faint hint of garlic she exuded from the light meal they shared at a cheap restaurant near South Bridge earlier. “He does look exotic, though. Are you seriously going to follow him all night?”
Her friend slapped her playfully, “Only until we catch him. Look at him! He keeps moving. I mean, fuck, can he not pick a place and be done with it?”
The two 20-year-olds stood in the shadow cast by the irregular placement of building corners, waiting for the tall, dark stranger to make a decision. It felt like an eternity, but it took him less than 20 seconds to figure out where he wished to go next. As soon as he turned, the two girls were on his trail again, ceasing their randy discussions long enough to concentrate on remaining undetected.
Although being way too cavalier with her taste, Abbie felt especially attracted to the oddly out of place man they had been following out of sheer fascination. It was unlike her to do this. Normally, she was the one being chased down. Jessica, though, could not care less about her friend’s exploits. Being a business major, she realized that her life was bland, even by party standards, to resort to stalking a bloke with her erratically minded best friend.
The light breeze was mild in this part of the city, which was already a tad alien this time of year. Just like the appearance of the interesting looking stranger in the night club, the climate seemed to have come with him as if he wore it like a cloak. Even the sky bore fewer clouds than usual, giving Edinburgh a roof of occasional fleecy shapes that drifted lazily across the shimmering street lights.
Below, the calm heavens the city streets twisted as the night drew on toward the wee hours of Sunday morning. Utterly inebriated from the evening’s drinks, Abbie and Jessica stayed out of sight as their ankles suffered under the torment of the cobbles. While they navigated on stiletto heels with the motor skills of timid fawns in the maze under the castle towers, the two girls noticed that the stranger was leading them to less populated areas where the shadows felt darker, and the stench of the sewers was more prominent.
“God, I am going to yak!” Jessica complained as they ducked under a foot bridge off Cowgate. “Is all this worth it, Abs? Jesus, grow up.”
“You will not believe this,” her friend whispered, sounding alarmingly sober-ish to the nauseous business student whose hand she was holding too tightly. “But I am not just following him because he is so dreamy. I think this beautiful specimen is actually up to something shady.”
“Aye. Exactly my point,” Jessica groaned, tugging hard at Abbie’s hand to urge her in the opposite direction. “I am beginning to get a very bad feeling about all this, mate.”
“You are just paranoid because you feel like shit, babe. Keep it down or puke it out, but stop trying to talk sense into me, alright?” Abbie insisted. “I am hell bent on seeing where he is going. It is evident that he is not out to pick up babes or drink his troubles away. Something really intense is going to happen, I bet you.”
“Betting your life, perhaps?” her friend persisted.
“Shut up!” Abbie rasped as quietly as she could. Her feet were killing her, throbbing from her calves down to her toes with a fiery sting she could not ease. But she had to see what was ensuing with the attractive stranger with his long locks and almost marble perfect features. “He is heading to Chambers Street. I wonder what he is thinking. He keeps looking behind him.”
“Aye!” Jessica scoffed. “He is smelling your bloody pheromones, you skank. Come on, babe, let’s go home. Please, let’s just get out of here.”
“No! Just a few more minutes, just to see what he is up to,” the other girl whispered, her face now totally obscured by the shadows out of reach of the street lights. She sounded utterly spellbound. “Look, he is checking his phone.”
“Probably a drug deal,” Jessica burped, fighting to hold her liquor.
“Come,” Abbie said as the man moved on towards the next block of buildings. On their left, the National Museum of Scotland lurched like a lonely giant while ahead of them the lean figure of the stranger danced over the pavement like a black specter.
Suddenly Jessica stopped dead in her tracks, almost jerking her friend right off her feet. Abbie was furious, fearing she would lose sight of the man she was adamant to meet before going home.
“What the fuck are you doing?” she seethed through her rapid breathing.
“Look!” Jessica pointed ahead in terror. “He is going towards Greyfriars, Abs! Grey…friars…Kirkyard! There is NO way I am setting foot on the world’s most haunted graveyard.”
Abbie had not realized. She took a second to look past where the stranger’s silhouette was dangling farther and farther away. Blossoming into full view was the infamous Greyfriars Kirkyard, reputed to be the home of various wicked phantoms reminiscent of the ancient history of Scotland. Behind the entrance where the man
was headed the black trees swayed solemnly over the antique gravestones underneath. Abbie thought of thinking twice, but her curiosity for the gorgeous mystery’s end game was overwhelming.
“Wait, you are actually considering this?” Jessica marveled, still pulling roughly at Abbie’s hand. “Come on, let’s get out of here!”
“Jess,” Abbie sighed, “I thought you’d be tougher than this.”
“And I thought you’d be more sensible than this,” Jessica moaned. “You know the shit that goes down in that place! I’m out.”
Jessica just started retreating at first, hoping that her friend would follow suit, but Abbie was too engrossed to move. Her fingers reluctantly unlocked from Jessica’s, evoking a disappointed wail from her.
“You are not serious,” Jessica said, shaking her head in disbelief. “You are not serious!”
“Babe, I’ll call you as soon as I have met him, I promise,” Abbie promised with a gentle tone.
“You’ll be dead,” Jessica replied, still shaking her head.
And so the two girls parted regrettably, although Jessica walked much slower away from her friend than Abbie raced towards her target. She crossed the converging streets in the meager moonlight, still smelling his cologne as she slipped into the deserted dwelling of superstition and memories. The grass was short and wet under her uncomfortable shoes as she stole along the shadows of the trees, navigating carefully through the old stones and markers.
It was quite beautiful, she thought, and marveled at the age of the plain, dark grey monuments, weathered and corroded by time. He looked majestic, like a character from a Gothic novel, striding toward the center of four decrepit tombstones. They looked unremarkable and small against his towering silhouette, but that was all she could observe for the moment.
The man stopped and turned immediately, sending Abbie into a thick oak tree as she lunged out of sight. Her heart pounded in excitement and a little touch of fear, wondering what would happen if he discovered her hiding there. The student pinched her eyes shut and tried to steady her hard breathing. From a short distance away, she heard the sound of voices, perhaps three different men is she listened correctly. Words in a foreign tongue confused her, but by their hastened words and rapid verbalization, it was clear that they were arguing. Heated whispers disturbed the deathly peace of the vast graveyard as she stood inanimately, waiting for the handsome stranger to part with his company so that she could follow him home and hopefully still strike up a conversation.
Suddenly, Abbie heard an altercation ensuing, but she stayed still in fear of detection while she tried to figure out how many people were involved. The ground shuddered slightly as one of the men hit the lawn with a thump and soon after Abbie could hear a crack of a jaw under the knuckle of another.
‘Fight! God, I am dying to see if he is winning!’ she thought. But as she tried to look, her courage abandoned her, and she reassumed her position. The cracking of bone sounded through the silence a few more times before it stopped, leaving the place draped in nocturnal tranquility. Afraid to emerge too quickly, Abbie gave it a few more seconds to listen for the stranger’s footsteps.
All she could hear was the odd vehicle flashing by in the Gordian Knot of streets outside the enclosure, some distant music from a party and the rustling leaves all about her as the night breeze stirred. There were no footsteps, though. Holding her breath, Abbie slowly inched her head forward to see around the hard bark of the trunk that concealed her. To her disappointment, the stranger had vanished and so did whoever he had argued with.
Flustered by her fruitless hunt and the wasting of drinking time on her pursuit, she sighed and started from the security of her hiding place. Her absent quarry left her utterly disenchanted. But something struck her as unusual, so much so that she did a double take on the place where she last saw the stranger. Abbie’s eyes stretched in terror and incredulity as she gasped at the vision before her.
“Oh sweet Jesus!” she shrieked behind her hands.
Where there were four ordinary grave markers before, a figure in stone had now joined the formation. It was a statue of a short, plump man raising his arm in defense and he stood in plain sight, fashioned from the same material as the tombstones.
“That is impossible!” Abbie whispered to herself, astonished at the ludicrous arrival of such a heavy statue out of the blue. “That is just fucking impossible!”
As the irrationality racked her brain, Abbie hastened to the exit, hoping that she would wake with a horrible hangover and only the remnants of the nightmare left in her reasoning. She kicked off her shoes and swept them up in her hands, racing for the streets where rationale prevailed, and she dared not look back even once at the cursed witchcraft of Greyfriars Kirkyard, left in her wake.
Chapter 2
Dr. Heidmann’s heels clapped on the pristinely polished floor of the museum. In his hands, he held a plethora of plans for his upcoming exhibition on Ancient Greek Art, The Mythos Paradigm with which he hoped to establish a renewed interest in the beauty of antique sculpture. A failed artist himself, he endeavored to bring what he could not capture with his diluted talent to the masses, regardless. James Heidmann was driven purely by a love for art and a passion for educating the modern mind on the unfathomable treasures of a millennium past, for the most part.
His footsteps echoed through the hallway of the magnificent Queen Elizabeth II Great Court. The museum was still closed, but he had to deliver his ideas to the curators before opening today, otherwise he would forfeit his slot for consideration. The slight built 50-year-old wore his trademark bow tie which hardly made up for his scruffy hair and round framed glasses. As he rushed along the corridors, the sublime works of architects and painters hardly merited his attention, but he certainly enjoyed the smell of the vast complex where he had always wanted to lecture.
At last, he came to the board room where he was to meet with one Mrs. Soula Fidikos, art curator Prof. Helen Barry and a prospective backer and benefactor, Mr. David Purdue. When Dr. Heidmann reached the formal façade of the office where they waited, he could not help but feel a jolt of excitement burst through him. Naturally, he was very nervous, but for the sake of what he tried to achieve such foolish impulses had to take a backseat to the task at hand.
His sweaty fingers opened the doors. Greeted by three very friendly professionals with teacups in hand, Dr. Heidmann already felt better.
“Welcome, Dr. Heidmann,” smiled Professor Barry. “I take it you did not get lost in this Minotaur’s maze?”
“Almost,” he exhaled in relief.
“It has long been a suggestion of mine to implement holographic tour guides to usher people about in the British Museum. It emphasizes the evolution of its regality so much more,” the tall, lean billionaire told Dr. Heidmann humorously. The bewildered and exhausted Heidmann smiled and nodded as he offered his hand in greeting. “David Purdue. Pleased to finally meet you.”
“Oh, an honor to meet a world renowned explorer and inventor such as yourself, Mr. Purdue,” Dr. Heidmann panted. “Please excuse the moist palms. I was quite worried that I would be tardy.”
“Not a problem,” Purdue chuckled. “And please call me Dave.”
“And this is Mrs. Soula Fidikos, Greek historian and owner of one of the biggest private collections of antique art in the world, all the way from her beautiful home on Maltese soil,” Prof. Barry introduced the serious- looking woman in black. Her appearance fascinated Dr. Heidmann, but he knew better than to stare. In fact, he hardly made eye contact with the strangely ravishing woman – oddly, for she possessed very little esthetic beauty. Her hair was jet black as her eyes, matching the hue of her clothing.
“Lovely to meet you, Mrs. Fidikos,” he smiled, taking the lady’s hand gracefully for a brief formality.
“The pleasure is mine,” she replied. “It is so good to see that my own passion for the ancient world is shared somewhere in the world. Hardly something I come across often.” Her remark was aimed at Prof
. Barry with the display of a stern look in jest, to which the professor reacted instantly.
“Oh, come on, Soula! I have always been more of a modern art, colorful palette person. You know that,” Dr. Barry defended. Purdue and Soula had a good laugh about the professor quick excuse.
“Tea, Dr. Heidmann?” she changed the subject, and he accepted readily.
“Now, tell us about your exhibition,” Soula requested as they sat down at the large desk to peruse his designs and proposals.
“Where to begin,” Heidmann stammered, momentarily caught off guard by the woman in black.
“Begin with which pieces you have to display here and if there is anything as yet undeclared you may have that the world should know about,” she soothed his chaotic mind. He found her mesmerizing, even in her less than attractive guise.
Soula’s large dark eyes, her nose oversized in the most subtle way and the careless cleavage of an ill-fitting undergarment caught his attention. Around her forearms and neck she wore what appeared to be platinum jewelry, but unlike the pieces most women preferred. They were all thick and featureless, like solid mercury adorning a tanned hide. Lace and embroidery decorated most of her low cut dress that hung down over her boots, falling perfectly over what were arguably the most perfect curves he had ever seen. The contrast between the black attire and the mirroring jewelry was notable, but her fingernails were clean and only slightly grown out. Her elegance and wealth were hampered by a careless personal chaos.
“I have procured some of the classics with permission from their various resident institutions, such as the Riace bronzes and the fallen warrior from the Temple of Aphaia. There is a list of pieces I have managed to borrow so far for the exhibition, but I do have an excessive collection of my own,” he informed the three people while their eyes surveyed the list and ideas noted on the documents.
“Your own collection, Dr. Heidmann,” Purdue mentioned with inspiring interest. “Where is that kept currently? If you wish to have those exhibited, we should have a look at the logistics and transportation details before deciding which works would best benefit an exhibition.”