Poe - [Anthology]

by Edited By Ellen Datlow

  I bounced these questions around and decided that the idea of a mysterious force was ludicrous. I had been thinking like a fantasist, tailoring reality to fit the template of a fiction. Reality was not that neat, beset by quirky, random weathers, and I persuaded myself that this little sexual storm would pass, proving to have been a curious coincidence of stress and hormones, irrelevant to any matter of significance. But as I threaded my way through the brush in late afternoon, I saw Taylor sitting on the steps of the Pleasure Dome, shirtless, his muscular torso gleaming with sweat. I was so taken by the sight, I didn’t register the thoughts running through my brain; yet when I realized I’d been wondering how his skin would feel against mine, I was mortified by their tenor and by the image I presented, leering from behind a bush, and hurried back to camp. Once inside my tent, I had no lingering desire to caress Taylor’s bare chest, but the incident was a powerful indicator that some unknown force was affecting us: the transitions I’d experienced with Claudia and Nubia had involved the same abrupt mood swings. I tried to analyze my feelings during the homoerotic episode, but was unable to filter out my heterosexual aversion. I took three Benadryl and conked out on my sleeping bag.

  I woke before first light, feeling (thanks to a dream in which I was tag-teamed by Claudia and Nubia) more secure in my sexuality. No one else was up and rather than waking them I decided to plumb one of the obvious mysteries of St. Gotthard. Taking a flashlight and a hatchet, I walked over to the Pleasure Dome, intending to break into the basement; but the flashlight failed to dispel the spooky atmosphere of the interior and I sat outside, waiting for sunrise. The sky above the peaks paled to gray, then to rosy pink, and I saw Perdomo moving through the brush alongside the Castle. I thought he was hunting for a place to piss, but he kept going, moving with a peculiar jerky gait, stopping now and again to gaze up at the sky. I lost sight of him and, the sky having lightened further, I went about my business.

  Shadows filled the stairwell leading to the basement, but there was sufficient light to work. The wood of the door had swollen and I was unable to force it. I began chopping with the hatchet, the blows loud as gunshots in all that silence, and opened a gash in the upper panel. Foul air rushed out—the door must have been sealed for a very long time. I shined the light through the hole and made out a portion of wall and floor, both of naked rock. I attacked the door with renewed vigor and, after a minute or two, succeeded in creating a gap large enough to slip through. Beyond the door lay a narrow corridor, like an adit in an old mine, angling left and downward. If the Moravians’ purpose had been to construct a basement, I wondered why they hadn’t excavated the ground directly beneath the Pleasure Dome. By my reckoning, the tunnel was leading me out under the plaza. The air grew fouler as I proceeded. Though it was cold and damp, I stripped off my T-shirt and wrapped it about the lower half of my face. A hundred feet farther along, the corridor opened onto a cavern. The light did not penetrate to the opposite wall, but the scraping of my soles set up reverberations that told me I had entered a vast enclosure.

  As I went I swept the light across the ground. Stalagmites bloomed from the darkness like pale, stubby phantoms, the tallest reaching to my waist. The occasional high-pitched cry came to my ears. Bats disturbed by the light. I hated bats. I had gone about seventy or eighty feet when the floor began to slope downward at a steep angle. Pausing, I shined the light ahead. At the bottom of a defile, a scattering of gray sticks was ranged about a fissure in the cavern floor. I had a shriveling feeling in my gut, but continued my approach to within a few yards. Dozens of human skeletons surrounded the fissure, some lying together, one atop the other and in side-by-side embraces, in every manner of sexual attitude. I played my light across the mingled bones. There were more than a hundred skulls, perhaps as many as two hundred. Pieces of jewelry glinted among them, but I could see no evidence of clothing. Assuming they had been here since the late twenties (at the longest), I would have expected to find shreds of fabric; it appeared the Moravians had come naked into the cavern, drawn to the fissure by something within, and died while having sex. Panicking, I lurched back a step, slipped in a declivity and sat down hard. My panic did not lessen, but I knew it would be pointless to run. The thing that had caused this was no longer in the fissure. The Moravians had freed it when they excavated the basement. Now it was loose in St. Gotthard, influencing us, stimulating our sexuality, albeit not to the extent that it had the Moravians. The skeletons spoke to an uncontrollable impulse. They must have been driven into an orgiastic frenzy that superseded the need for nourishment.

  I sat by the lip of the fissure, gripped by despair, staring at the skeletons’ pitted skulls and intertwined limbs, and realized I was seeing my future, all our futures. Finally I roused myself and made my way back through the cavern, along the corridor, and out onto the steps of the Pleasure Dome. A flotilla of white clouds trawled across the peaks and the leaves in the brush covering the plaza trembled in a breeze, each cupping a glint of sunlight, and the massy crowns of the forest trees... they, too, glittered, trembling as though in joyous agitation. It was possible at that moment to believe that St. Gotthard wasthe most beautiful spot on earth, a landscape whose separate elements enabled a perfect balance between the small and the majestic. Yet no force of beauty could dispel what I had witnessed or discredit what I then believed—however pleasing to the eye was the face presented by the world, the corruption that lay beneath was a truer face, be it the inner awfulness of men and women, or the secrets yielded by a cavern in the Andes.

  As I pushed through the bushes on my way to tell the others, I ran across Perdomo lying in my path. I made a detour around him, but then he moaned and struggled to sit up. I asked if he was all right and he stared up at me dumbly.

  “Are you all right?” I asked again.

  “What... ?” He cast about as if searching for something and then glared at me. “Did you take my rifle?”

  “It’s back at camp.”

  He tried to stand and fell back. “A lo verga! I feel like shit! How did I get here?”

  “Don’t you remember?”

  “No, I...” He put a hand to his brow.

  “What do you remember?”

  He didn’t answer; I repeated the question.

  “The forest,” he said. “And those fucking statues. The helicopter.”

  “You found it?”

  Perdomo nodded. “I radioed Merida and told them about Abreu. I said we needed another pilot.”

  “Are they sending one?”

  Another nod.

  “When... when are they sending him?”

  “Tomorrow or the day after, they said.”

  “When did you radio them?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Was it in the morning? The morning after Doctor Borregales told you to find Captain Abreu?”

  “I think... yes.”

  The sun was nine o’clock high. If the army had sent a helicopter at first light, we might expect it in an hour or two. I wondered what the chances were that they had acted in a timely fashion.

  “What else do you remember?” I asked.

  “The village. They left a trail that was easy to follow.”

  “They? The Moravians? You followed their trail and that’s where you found the captain?”

  Bewildered, Perdomo asked, “How do you know this?”

  “You told us. You returned two days ago and said Abreu had dysentery and the Moravians were taking care of him. You don’t recall that?”

  “Two days! It’s not possible.”

  “What’s the last thing you remember?”

  Perdomo ran a hand through his hair. “The captain was unconscious, lying in a hammock. In a casita. They said they had given him some medicine and he would sleep for hours. Then I went outside and they were waiting. They were naked, men and women both.”

  “Are you certain they were Moravians?”

  “Their skins were dark from the sun, but their faces... they were gringos. There were hundre
ds of them. They crowded close, telling me how fortunate I was.” A frightened look erased his confusion. “Something happened to me!”

  “What?”

  “I became dizzy.” Perdomo put the tips of his fingers to his face, an oddly feminine gesture. “I can’t remember.”

  After three or four more questions, none of which he could answer, I helped him up. Once on his feet, he shook me off and again expressed a desire to be reunited with his rifle. The surly Perdomo had returned, but that didn’t relieve my concerns about the smiling Perdomo who had replaced him for two days. I let him lead the way as we crossed the plaza toward camp.

  Nubia’s tent flap was closed. I called to her and heard movement inside. She poked her head out, buttoning her blouse, squinting in the bright sunlight, and asked what time it was. Before I could answer, Claudia stepped from the tent and, hard on her heels, Macyory. Taylor emerged a moment later, looking rumpled and sheepish.

  “Anyone else in there?” I asked. “A couple of dwarves, maybe? Barnyard animals?”

  Scowling, Nubia said. “What do you want?”

  I told her what I had found in the Pleasure Dome and what Perdomo (sitting cross-legged beside the dead campfire, happy with his rifle) had confided in me. Nubia ordered Taylor to have a look in the cavern.

  “You think I’m lying?” I said.

  “I think it’s wise to verify your findings.” She finished buttoning her blouse and went over to Perdomo.

  Claudia, with Macyory at her shoulder, asked if there was anything they should do, and I said, “You can tell me what went on last night in Nubia’s tent.”

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “It’s obvious you had a foursome. What’s not so obvious is how it came about.”

  She folded her arms and looked at the ground.

  “Claudia and Taylor started making out,” said Macyory. “We were sitting around talking and they just went at it. And then Nubia joined in.”

  “Without any preamble?”

  “I wanted to kiss him,” Claudia said with a touch of defiance. “So I did.”

  “I thought Nubia would say something,” said Macyory. “But instead she kissed Claudia.”

  “What about you?” I asked.

  “I felt hurt,” she said. “But then Claudia began kissing me. It was strange, because I know she doesn’t like me that way.”

  A flush came into Claudia’s face, but she said nothing.

  “Do you remember what happened after that?” I asked. “Was there anything out of the ordinary?”

  Macyory hesitated, and I said, “This is no time to be reticent.”

  “I’m not very experienced, but last night I understood how to please Claudia... and everyone.”

  When Taylor returned from the Pleasure Dome, we gathered by the Coleman stove and tried to hash things out. We agreed that the most reasonable course of action was to wait for the helicopter, yet we disagreed on every other point. Taylor argued that whatever had killed the Moravians and was affecting us must be environmental, a gas, a poison escaped from the fissure. Nubia said it was too erratic to be environmental and I said it seemed less erratic than opportunistic, afflicting couples when they were alone... until last night, anyway. Perhaps the fact that it had gone to such extremes, seizing upon four people at once, was evidence that it had grown stronger. Claudia stubbornly refused to admit that anything was out of the ordinary. She argued that the Moravians might have died as the result of poison or gas, but that a natural poison would have dissipated after so many years, and therefore could not have affected us. She added in a snotty tone that I must lead a sheltered life, indeed, to consider a foursome extreme. As to Perdomo’s blackout (he kept apart from us, declining to participate in the discussion), Macyory blamed it on some psychological defect. It reminded Nubia, however, of instances of possession such as she had witnessed in Brazil. When I remarked that I’d never heard of a case of possession lasting for two days, she replied that the fact I hadn’t heard of it didn’t invalidate the notion.

  We had been talking for about an hour when Perdomo came over to us, carrying his rifle and pack, and told us he was leaving.

  “It’s no good here,” he said. “I will send another message when I reach the helicopter.”

  “Remember what happened the last time you went for a walk,” I said, and Claudia chimed in, “You’re supposed to protect us.”

  “From what?” Perdomo gestured with his rifle. “From something in the air? A ghost? I have things in here...” He tapped the side of his head. “Things that are not mine.”

  “What sort of things?” Nubia asked.

  “Feelings,” he said. “They are not my feelings. I can’t sit here and do nothing.”

  Nubia asked him to explain what he meant by “not my feelings,” but Perdomo clammed up. She urged him to stay one night more, saying that he couldn’t run from his thoughts and there were things he could do here to keep busy. He could investigate the tower, for starters. She employed her wiles and Perdomo relented. He took my hatchet and headed for the tower, while Nubia went off to the Pleasure Dome to inspect the skeletons. The rest of us remained sitting, eyeing each other as if wary of a sudden sexual attack.

  * * * *

  That night there were clouds and a sprinkling of stars, but a lopsided moon sailed clear of them, casting a cold ivory brilliance over St. Gotthard, a ghastly form of daylight that imbued the ruins with a splendor they did not deserve. Painted with moonlight, the scene lost its aura of a seedy Las Vegas—the buildings might have been relics of an ancient civilization that had aspired to nobility yet fell before its aspirations could be achieved. The Castle, its grandiose façade simplified by moon shadow, seemed the eidolon of the principle upon which that civilization was founded. Etched sharply in the windless air, the brush looked like intricate black sculpture; the rounded shapes of our tents glowed whitely like the eggs of a mythological creature half-buried in the earth.

  I kept watch, comforted by the fire’s conversational crackling. Everyone else was in their tents, even Perdomo. His exploration of the tower had unearthed nothing of value, proving that sometimes a locked door is merely a locked door. He lent me his rifle and taught me how to operate the safety and went to bed. I sat with it across my knees, but before long I set it on the ground—holding it made me edgy. I took solace from the thick Andean silence, but my mind wouldn’t settle, flying from anxiety to anxiety. When Nubia came out of her tent, dragging her sleeping bag, I was relieved to have company. The ruddy light scrubbed the lines from her face, and her physical attitude, sitting with hands held above the fire, her hair tied back, made me think of a stoic young priestess coaxing a spirit forth from the flames. After an awkward silence she said, “I’m truly sorry about what I did to you.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, surprised to hear those words issue from my mouth. She must have been surprised as well; she looked at me askance and said, “Are you forgiving me?”

  “It’s not a question of forgiveness. Maybe it’s just I had a chance to say some things. I—” I shook my head. “I’m all talked out, okay.”

  “You said some things that were hard to bear. You were entitled to say them, but they were harsh.”

  “They wouldn’t have been as harsh if I’d had the opportunity to say them years ago.”

  She started to respond, but I cut in. “We’ve both said harsh things. Maybe we should be satisfied with this much progress and move on from here.”

  “If that’s what you want.” She pulled the sleeping bag up around her knees. Sap popped in the fire. “I’ve been reconfiguring my ideas about the book.”

  “You still think there’s a book in this?”

  “We can’t be certain about anything we’ve learned, so it can’t be a book with any scholarly pretensions. Maybe a novel.”

  “A novel? I don’t see it.”

  “The other day you were saying Remarque must have been fixated on some connection between Eros and terror. It got me thinking about
the Greek and Roman cults of Eros.”

  “I don’t remember telling you that.”